Cinema Manners

 I hate to bitch, but....can we talk about movie theater etiquette for a few minutes? Let me just start with this. I love going to the movies, and it has very little to do with how a movie looks on a big screen.  Special effects mean nothing to me. I am all about sharing the experience of the movie with a group of other people. I am there to feel the energy of the room when something great happens on the screen...an entire theater sighing when Julie throws Tommy's locket out of the window in Martha Plympton's Valley Girl, having an entire audience cheer when someone scores a goal in The Mighty Ducks, or hearing an audience roar with laughter at Aunt Bethany saying the pledge of allegiance in Christmas Vacation-- those are the moments I live for.

There has to be a certain environment created for this to happen. For starters, you need the people. Multiplexes today have been cut from 200-300 seat theaters to a slim 50-60. A cinema that size creates a much more intimate experience, but it definitely doesn't allow itself to the energy one historically is accustomed to in a theater setting. An anecdote I'll share is the opening weekend of Gary Marshall's Runaway Bride. I saw it at a multiplex in my hometown of Waukesha, WI on a Sunday afternoon, and I remember the theater being PACKED with people. As the Touchstone logo came up and everyone quieted down, someone close to the front sneezed and someone in the back yelled "Bless you!", leading an entire audience of 300 people to break out in laughter. This set the tone for the film, and for the better part of two hours we all united in the gift of laughter and forgot whatever was going on that day. I've revisited that film several times since and always enjoy it, but nothing can match the energy of seeing it with a group of people that opening Sunday afternoon.

When I moved back to Waukesha after living in LA for 10 years, I found all the multiplexes had done away with auditoriums with a larger number of seats and replaced them with recliner seats. There still are the rare independent theaters that might run a blockbuster, but the majority of the theaters were now simply leather pink couches, fewer seats, and a very different experience than what I was used to out in Los Angeles. Some people prefer this! A friend of mine expressed how much they loved the change, replying "People are awful." 

And I get what they mean. People text in movies, they talk, they take pictures of the screen. I have no patience for this. If you are texting in a theater, and you don't stop when I ask the first time, I will have a theater employee throw you out. And if it's a kid movie and you have a child with you, I will wave and smile as you both get thrown out and your child is throwing a temper tantrum because they can't see whether the Paw Patrol gang will make it home. 

A few years ago, a Miyazaki retrospective was released to one of our multiplexes, and I went with a friend to see My Neighbor Totoro. Five minutes into the movie, he starts gabbing to me about his dating life and I did a very polite "shhhhhh", and he very loudly yelled back "You shush!". Fifteen minutes later, after sulking, he pulled out his phone and started texting. I took a breath, very frustrated, and before I had a chance to ask him to put it away, someone behind me did instead and he left the theater for 30 minutes before coming back and watching the rest of the movie with me. As we exited, I tried to clear the air and apologize if my reaction was rude but everyone else there, including myself wanted to see the movie. he responded "Yeah, people here are getting a little bent out of shape over a fucking cartoon, an old one at that..." 

And that response seems to be normal when it comes to repertory screenings of movies. "You can see this at home, why do we have to act like this is a regular movie at a regular theater?" seems to be the attitude, not understanding that people are there because they want to have that theatrical experience of this specific movie and that makes the theatrical experience even more important than if they went to see a new film that was just released. 

Not to say that this kind of behavior improves at a newer movie either. Shortly after moving back to Wisconsin, I took it upon myself to go see On the Basis of Sex. There are days I am at the movies when I find it easier to move than try to address the situation of loud rude people in theaters. That day I switched seats about 4 times. I went from a woman behind me giving her commentary about her thoughts on RBG (the phrase "Yah! That's what my sister Debbie was sayin' about her!" was actually uttered), to a bored boyfriend on a date texting, to a pair of grumbling Republicans behind me who had nothing but disgust for RBG's existence (which of course makes sense that they would pay $10 to go see a movie about her life then). Finally, I moved back to the texter, asked him to please turn off his phone, and finished the film.

But ultimately, doing the Lord's work by myself isn't enough. We need to go back to creating a culture that encourages people to want to be at the movies. One where people would much rather look at what's on the big screen than what's on their phones. And I'm not asking people to shush other people. I haven't always gotten positive responses when doing this and it can be dangerous when you get that toxic person who is purposely texting so they can challenge someone to a physical fight outside the theater when asked to stop (an experience I had at a repertory screening of Jurassic Park). I'm asking the theater to be responsible for creating a better environment.

It starts with removing these damn pink couch recliners and going back to real seats in theaters. The big problem with these couches is it encourages an environment that makes people forget they are in a public space. The nonsense that happens at these theaters now is astonishing and a direct result of expecting to hang out on a couch all evening. By treating theater-goers like they are at home, they lose all self-awareness. It used to be that when one went to a movie theater, one dressed up. I don't mean what one would wear to church or the office, but at least clothes that lent themselves to going out for an evening. Generally, the rule should be if you wouldn't wear it at a restaurant, you wouldn't wear it at the movie theater. This is a dated concept now. Going to a multiplex on a Friday, one is lucky to see other theatergoers wash their faces and comb their hair. Many even show up in pajamas and with blankets. This leads to theatergoers becoming too comfortable, to a point where they're not even there to watch the movie anymore. 

The concessions that coincide with going to the movies have fallen to the waste-side as well. We used to eat popcorn and candy. Coffee, tea, water, and soda were the only options available for beverages. Our multiplexes offer gourmet pizza. In the Midwest, this is code for pizza that smells like feet, and it truly does. It is very nauseating and in the smaller theater our multiplexes have created, the funk permeates quickly and lingers for a long time. This also leads to more conversations about the food than the whispered "Can I have some popcorn?" All of a sudden, people are arguing over whether the toppings were correct, turning on their flashlights to hand out napkins, and making far too much noise when the pizza turns out to be too hot for the roof of their mouths-- all while I'm trying to enjoy an actor in an Oscar-nominated performance.

Alcohol is a huge contributor to this theater problem as well. And I get it, people have been getting bombed before going to the movies since the advent of the motion picture. One of my favorite events in Los Angeles was the annual screening of Auntie Mame, a gay camp classic, sponsored by Absolut Vodka, with funds going to the Outfest Legacy Project. People had free drinks for two hours, went into the movie, and cheered along with it for the full 2+ hours, creating the perfect laugh track. But somehow, this worked because of the environment that the alcohol and the film lent themselves to. We were all still dressed like adults in street clothes, we knew there were 600+ people in the theater with us, and we needed to all be respectful of the other 600+ people there. When you mix alcohol WITH stinky food AND cozy couches AND the permission of blankets in a theater AND smaller theaters where you're not surrounded by that many people, it's no wonder that this leads to a disaster in manners. 

I recently was at a showing of the film Spencer with my husband and my sister. In front of us was a row of women in their 40s and 50s who had decided to make this their 'night out'. Each of them were on what seemed to be their fourth or fifth drink of the evening, and as the movie progressed, it became clear that this wasn't what they were expecting and that they had no interest as a group in watching the movie. There were about 10 other people in the theater besides them, but being a smaller theater, their behavior spilled completely over into everyone's viewing experience. Throughout the film they talked, they took selfies with their phones, they played on their phones, and they showed each other pictures of their dogs and kids. Fortunately for me, I had no idea that the phone activity was that bad. It was the talking that was driving me nuts and it was getting worse. Finally I leaned into the entire row and asked them to stop and the reaction was "Oh, sure." 

Honestly, I was a little more aghast by this reaction than the reaction of the man who wanted to beat me up for asking him to turn his phone off. We've created a culture at the cinema where talking and texting has become such a norm, that when people asked to stop, the reaction is as if you asked them to move their jacket so you wouldn't be sitting on it. They didn't see anything wrong with their behavior. In fact, they probably expected that what they were doing was totally normal for the movies, and the sad part is....this behavior has become normalized.

A New List of Five Golden Girls Facts You Never Knew, Written by an Expert Homosexual

The Golden Girls are such a staple of a homosexual male's diet, and I can't explain why. I just know that I and many of my other gay friends seem to gravitate toward it. If I'm on vacation and am watching TV to wind down, I always try to find an episode. It's hard to tell one episode from another because they're all pretty similar, but it can still suck a person in for a six episode marathon with no issue. Recently, my partner and I decided to go through the series from beginning to end, an excuse for me to buy them all on DVD, and found some pretty shocking discoveries.

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We all know the behind-the-scene stories that we have heard for years and years. Bea hated Betty. Bea carved an exclamation point in the front door to encourage high energy during taping. The house's exterior is actually taped in Brentwood, CA. Bea hated cheesecake and they ate over 100. There was a gay houseboy in the first episode. The pilot for Empty Nest started out on this show. But there are some fascinating things you may NOT have noticed as the show has been in reruns. Here is yet ANOTHER top five Golden Girls facts list for you to add to all those spam sites you've come across.

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1) The girls always wear shoes.

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They wear shoes while they're cooking, they wear shoes while they're cleaning, they wear shoes while they're lounging around the house, they even wear shoes while they get ready for bed time. There is a valid reason for this. Studio stage floors are dirty and dangerous, and there is a liability clause in actors' contracts requiring them to wear shoes on the set unless otherwise stated. In fact, for most sitcoms you watch, you'll usually see shoes on the actors. It just looks weird here because, honestly, who wears shoes in the house all the time beyond 17 year old boys? Plus, it's not unusual to see Rue McClanahan and Betty White wearing high heels around the house as well. There have been rumors that Bea Arthur pulled some strings and signed a clause stating she wouldn't sue the studio if she could walk around barefoot, but if you watch, it is very very rare that you see her without shoes on. There are times when the actors are taped from the waist up for the whole scene so the viewer can't see their feet, but in every scene a shot of shoes for each character always peaks out.

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2) There is no cheesecake for almost a whole season.

What is this show synonymous with? Cheesecake, of course! That's the general premise of the show: one of the three younger women has a predicament, and it gets resolved as they sit around the kitchen having a dessert of some sort-- often cheesecake. So it comes as a surprise while watching the episodes chronologically that it took 22 episodes before a cheesecake even appears in an episode! In the episode Job Hunting (Season 1, Ep 22), Rose loses her job as a counselor at the grief center because it closes. Now, later in the episode she becomes a waitress at a restaurant, and miraculously becomes a counselor at the same grief center a few episodes later without the restaurant or her job there ever being mentioned again........but I digress. Between being grief counselor the first time and being a waitress, she's down in the dumps and Dorothy helps her fix her resume.

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In a bout of insomnia after all this work, changing 5 sentences on a half page resume, the girls decide to go to the kitchen to have some warm milk. They decide cookies have to go with the warm milk to make it palatable, and then this leads to the suggestion of having cheesecake with it (and eventually eating a whole meal). A few episodes later in the season finale, entitled The Way We Met (Season 1, Episode 25), a flashback shows the girls devouring a cheesecake after their first fight as roommates, flashing forward to the present, where Dorothy licks the back of her fork and says "Some things never change...." as if they'd been eating cheesecake this whole first season. Uh, no. 

3) It takes Rose almost TWO seasons to say "Back in St. Olaf".

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Another staple of the show: while the girls sit around eating cheesecake on an average episode, working through their problems, Rose will tell a story about her days in the fictional town of St. Olaf, Minnesota, where the antics are similar to those of Hooterville in Green Acres. As the episodes roll on, she starts these stories with the phrase "Back in St. Olaf", but for most of the first two seasons, her stories don't start with this famous catchphrase. No, "Back in St. Olaf" actually prefaced a very sad story the first time it was used, in a touching flashback of the episode A Piece of Cake (Season 2, Episode 25) where Rose speaks to her deceased husband, an empty chair, about her desire to leave Minnesota and move to Florida to get on with her life. Anyone who has seen this episode can tell you that it is one of Betty White's finest moments as an actress, showing off her ability to handle dramatic scenes just as well as comedy. 

4) Sophia doesn't tell the first "Picture it...." story.

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Another catchphrase of the show belongs to Sophia. When the three younger women are having a personal issue, and an insomnia dessert binge doesn't solve the problem, nor a St. Olaf story, Sophia steps in with a historic story growing up to put things into perspective. These stories usually are prefaced with a phrase similar to "Picture it: Sicily, 1920" or "Picture it: Brooklyn, 1941", wherein she then goes into detail with the story's events. However, this phrase was actually not originally coined by Sophia. In the episode The Sisters (Season 2, Episode 12), feuding sisters Sophia and Angela have not spoken in years and the girls are trying to get their sides of the story. Angela then introduces the "Picture it" line by detailing the evening of the dance where the sisters had a falling out and never spoke again. In the next scene, Sophia uses the line, and uses it regularly in episodes for the rest of the series. Of course, the more intriguing part of the story than their falling out is why these two women are from Sicily, one of which still lives there, and both have Brooklyn accents without a hint of anything Italian.

5) The time span of Dorothy's and her children's ages makes no sense.

Dorothy and her ex husband Stan-- oh what a pair. They were married for 38 years before he left her for a much younger woman without a proper 'goodbye', and then reappears toward the beginning of the show constantly nagging her for money, support, and with his wish for the two of them to get back together. They have been separated at least two years at the beginning of the show and their divorce has just been finalized. This is all fun, except for a few small details that don't make sense. When the show starts, Dorothy is 55 years old. This means they got married when she was about 14 or 15 years old, depending on the month. 

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Okay, fine, we'll move on from that as plausible. Maybe the "38 years" did include the two years of separation which could have bumped this to the age of 16 or 17. Plus, after all, Stan did get her pregnant and it was a shotgun wedding. Soooooo, why are her kids Kate and Michael so visibly young? In fact, there are TWO actresses who play Kate that are far too young for the role! In Guess Who's Coming to the Wedding (Season 1, Episode 2), Kate is played by the then 30 year old Lisa Jane Persky:

 and in Son-in-Law Dearest (Season 2, Episode 23) by 31 year old Deena Friedman.

Can the people at NBC count?


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Anyway, there you have it-- five new facts about the Golden Girls that were as plain as the nose on your face but maybe never noticed!


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Three anecdotes about The New Beverly Cinema on its reopening-- including how it saved my life

It has been a long withdrawal for cinephiles like myself, waiting with our knuckles clenched for the New Beverly Cinema to reopen. In late December 2017, we all said our farewell to the repertory cinema in Los Angeles while it planned to be closed for the first few months to work on renovations. Unfortunately, as life happens on life's terms, the theater ended up being closed for almost an entire year, and will reopen its doors on December 1st, 2018. The New Bev holds a special place in many people's hearts as a cultural institution. For a reasonable price, one can enjoy an evening of vintage films (usually a double feature). I won't go on too much about the theater too much because its website can tell you more about its founding and programming, but I would like to take a moment and share some anecdotes about my own history with the theater.

In January 2009, I was set to have my first date with a very nice gentleman. Two days before we were supposed to meet I came down with a violent stomach flu. I kept our first date, which lasted about an hour, but had to cancel our second one. I understood that I had probably broken this poor chap's heart and needed to make it up to him so once I mended I gave him a ring and asked if he wanted to give it another go. I had never been to the New Bev, but he knew that on February 12, 2009 they would be running one of my favorite movies HAROLD AND MAUDE along with a film you could not get on DVD, ELECTRIC DREAMS. We set the date. I didn't have GPS at the time so I looked up the address on Yahoo! Maps and jumped in the car. 7165 Beverly.

Now....being someone who had only lived in LA for about 6 months I did not know the lay of the land and really wish someone would have told me that there is both a Beverly Drive as well as a Beverly Blvd. I probably flew up to the top of the Hollywood Hills and down into the pits of Castle Heights about 3 times looking for this darn theater at 7165 Beverly. Finally about my third time up (and repeatedly calling my date and apologizing profusely) I found someone who explained my error at the top of the hill. Flying down into the city, I was desperately praying that this gentleman hadn't thought I was flaking on him yet again and as I screeched past Formosa on Beverly, I saw him standing in front of the theater, leaning against the building. While I was 45 minutes late, he still waited with two tickets in his hand and we snuck in and enjoyed what was left of the film and the second feature. We didn't end up staying together but are still good friends.

Tuesday May 28, 2013 would be a life changing day for me. It was the day I was to begin a life of sobriety, free of mind altering substances that had controlled my life for far too many years. Anyone who has ever gotten sober can tell you that the first few days are agonizing-- physically, mentally and emotionally. Among other things, you sweat at random times and the sweat always smells vile. Your insomnia, mood swings, and anxiety go through the roof. Also, you don't make the best decisions. So, of course I chose to get sober in one of the hottest summer weeks of the San Fernando Valley in an apartment with no air conditioning. I was working a regular 3:00 pm-12:00 am shift at Deluxe Media at the time and was therefore able to get through Tuesday through Friday.

Then came Saturday, my first night by myself since I got sober. Without a single coping skill, I was alone and I was scared and I didn't have a single clue on what I was going to do. All I needed was something air conditioned to get me out of my head and away from the thought of getting hammered. That night the New Bev coincidentally happened to be playing a 3 hour edit of CINEMA PARADISO and without giving it a second thought, I drove to the theater. I remember being so filled with anxiety about this new sober journey I had embarked but somehow when the lights went down and the film started, everything was okay. I got home at the same time I would have if I had been at work and was able to get myself some rest.

The next night, the theater ran a double feature of MANHUNTER and ANGEL HEART, and I once again was able to make it through the evening safely without falling apart. I look back now and think about how much gratitude I really owe the theater. If it hadn't been there showing those specific films which were enticing enough to grab me in my state of agony, I don't know if I could have gotten through that first weekend.

Thursday March 20, 2014 was my first day being unemployed in about three years. I remember my head not being in such a great place as I hadn't really settled into the idea of not knowing how I was going to pay my bills. The concept of living in a box or moving back in with my parents didn't seem so wonderful. I didn't know if anyone in the industry would hire me again as I had been buried under a film bench for so many years. My mother called me three times to ask me what my career plans were and was already phoning cousins I hadn't seen in 10 years asking if they could help me get a job. Not to mention, as busy as LA is, when you're not working it can feel like the quietest place. That night, feeling unsure of myself and forlorn, I wandered into the double feature of CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. While I had seen both films several times, I used the screening as a time to think. What was I doing with my life and where was I headed? Did I even want to stay in the film archive and restoration field? Seeing the beautiful suspenseful shots of a black panther's shadow walking in and out of street alleys, I made up my mind that I would try to give working in my beloved field one last 'good old college try'. That try turned into working for the USC Shoah Foundation where I know have been employed for over 4 years.

So you see, The New Beverly Cinema is more than just a theater that runs old movies. It's more than just a 'neighborhood institution'. It really is a magical place that has touched me personally. I'm sure these three stories will just prompt many readers who have also gone there to say 'Well, let me tell you MY New Beverly story!' to which I simply say, bring it on. Let's all tell our stories. Let's all share why this theater is so important to all of us, and why we hold it so deep in our hearts.

Things in cinema that don't make sense!

Ah, cinema. We laugh, we cry, we enter the worlds of the characters and become one with them. And yet, there are always things in the world of cinema that for years we have always turned a blind eye to. Why? Because we've become accustomed to doing so. We've been raised to believe that this is just 'how things are' in the world of cinema. Here's a list of five things that will make your head spin.

1) The British Accent


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The classic Doctor Zhivago is the first to come to mind, but why is it that if an English language film takes place in a European country where the language of the characters isn't English, the characters have a British accent? Are we to assume that British English is the universal European dialect? Surely if filmmakers don't want to shoot the film in one of those high-falootin' foreign languages, Hollywood could at least teach the actors to LEARN an accent, right? Be it the Russian Revolution, World War II or a sword and sandal epic about Jesus hanging with his people (sorry, bad pun), it's a little, oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah...."racist".



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2) The VCR


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We've all grew up using the VCR, we've all taught our grandmothers how to use the VCR, we all watched things we weren't supposed to be watching using the VCR. When, oh when, did a VCR ever make a fast-paced sound when it fast forwarded or rewound a videotape during playback? But for 20 years every time a film had a character fast forwarding or rewinding a tape, we all heard the chipmunk screeching coming from the TV and no one questioned it. Was this a gimmick that became standardized in the industry, or is it safe to assume that directors in Hollywood have never used a commercial home video player before? This special effect really bugs because movies are supposed to provide a look to future generations about what our world was like at one time. Now, thanks to these buffoons in Hollywood, everyone 40 years from now watching films from the 80s and 90s is going to think that VCRs made this noise when they never did. Way to go.



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3) The Telephone


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It's 2018, and nearly every time we see a character putting a phone to their ear, all of a sudden we hear what their ear is hearing on the other end of the line....except not really because the 'telephone sound' filter being used is the same one from the 1960s which makes the phone sound like it's, well, from the 1960s. Phone signals are digital now Hollywood Moguls! Quit living in the past. And quit being tightwads as well. If you can afford to show one side of a phone conversation, you can probably afford to show the other side as well. Fail.


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4) Period Costumes

This is allegedly Cleopatra, with 1934 fashion.


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This is also allegedly Cleopatra, with 1963 fashion.


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Here is Michelle Pfeiffer sporting a very 1980s version of a 1960s look in GREASE 2.


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And here is Melinda Dillon sporting a very 1980s version of a 1940s look in A CHRISTMAS STORY.


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Now fashion in films is very hard to translate 100% to the decade in which a film was made, but honestly. How hard did the hair and makeup people of these four examples try to represent the era the character was supposed to represent? Could you even DO a perm like Melinda Dillon's in the 1940s?

"Tell me about the rain tree........" Raintree County, Rarity, and Homosexuality

I figured I could capture readers with a title like that. No, I am not suggesting there is homosexuality in the film RAINTREE COUNTY (although that is a paper for another day), but I do have a homosexual story about RAINTREE COUNTY that I must share. It goes a little something like this.

As a dweeb, I collect not only DVDs and VHS, but also laserdiscs-- a hybrid of the two formats that has sadly become defunct over the years. The SD quality transfers are very special to me because they come from a time when studios didn't "restore" their films to a point where their manipulations share little difference from a Ted Turner colorization (read my earlier post "Blue Bombs Everywhere" to see what I was talking about). I also love that many laserdiscs have many special features that did not make their way to DVD and Blu-ray for some reason or another.

Well, my laserdisc player started to go kaput, and a good friend of mine, for a cheap price, sold me  two new players and a ton of discs. In this batch my wonderful friend, also gay, blessed me with RAINTREE COUNTY, seen here.



A 3+ hour GONE WITH THE WIND knockoff from 1957, this 70mm epic is one of those bizarre films from that era when it didn't matter how good it was, as long as it was long, lavish, and expensive. The film has also never been released on DVD in the United States.

The first time I attempted to rent this film, after hunting, I got a DVD copy of a VHS from an anonymous source. It was, of course, cropped to 1.33:1, and being an early widescreen movie that was meant to COMPETE with the small screen of television, it did not fare well to the pan and scan process. Also, most VHS tapes made after 1983 have two audio tracks on them: Hi-Fi and Mono. The DVD was made with the Hi-Fi track, and the track had worn out, so the entire time there was a buzzsaw like static on the tape. After about 20 minutes, I called it a day. So, my little heart went a-flutter when I found this disc in my bundle, as I could now enjoy the film as intended.

Now, where's the gay link in this, beyond the fact that its main male star, Montgomery Clift was gay, and Elizabeth Taylor, the female lead, was a gay icon? Well that goes back to my history of the 1982 gay classic MAKING LOVE, with Harry Hamlin, Michael Ontkean, and Kate Jackson.

In this film, Hamlin plays a gay Los Angeles writer who sleeps with a married man, but before doing so, breaks fourth wall to talk about how much he enjoys his life as a bachelor in LA. In that moment, we see him popping a Betamax tape into a tape player, flipping on a video projector and enjoying a scene of RAINTREE COUNTY with a bowl of popcorn.




I first saw MAKING LOVE when I was 17 and it would be years before I would see it, but this scene had always stuck with me from my initial viewing. I remember thinking how much I was like Bart in that moment-- having friends, but being an outcast, preferring to spend my Friday night watching an obscure film at home. I ran to my computer to find out what film Bart decided to watch on that evening. IMDB led me to the answer of my connection of cinema to this character: for me, it was MAKING LOVE, for Bart, RAINTREE COUNTY. Years later, I would obtain a video projector, like Bart, and spend my evenings in Los Angeles winding down with movies alone with a big bowl of white popcorn on a nightly basis...that is until I was domesticated.

After receiving my laserdisc of RAINTREE COUNTY recently, I thought again about this scene in MAKING LOVE, and just how much a four shot sequence of Hamlin watching the film can add to his character. For starters, home video machines were very expensive at this time-- many over $1000, and that was 35 years ago. He's also not watching this on a TV but a video projector, another home entertainment rarity of the time! Bart clearly enjoys lavish things.

But it goes beyond the equipment. Did anyone else notice that the cover of the Betamax is solid brown and not with an official label? Thus adds another layer to the character. In doing an online search for RAINTREE COUNTY, I found that the film was not officially released on any home video formats until a 1986 release by MGM/UA (verified in this Tom Shales article from the Washington Post). And yet, the filmmakers chose to purposely illustrate that Bart is watching RAINTREE COUNTY, even if it wouldn't be released for another four years on home video.

Another point in fact: RAINTREE COUNTY is an MGM film, MAKING LOVE was a 20th Century Fox film. Why would the producers go through all of that trouble to secure a film not available on home video from another studio's library as Bart's film choice when Fox has a NUMBER of films in its library that gays idolize? The shot of the screen over Bart's shoulder specifically has Liz Taylor say to Monty Clift the most memorable quote of the film: "Tell me about the rain tree......." The filmmakers wanted the viewer to know that Bart was watching RAINTREE COUNTY for some reason. And yet, no reference to the film is made.

The questions just kept on rolling as I thought about this: Where did Bart get his copy of RAINTREE COUNTY from? Wealthy cinefiles in Los Angeles, such as actor Roddy McDowall (also gay), were known to have high quality, albeit bootleg, copies of films in their homes, going back to a time when home video wasn't an official market. In fact, according to this Mental Floss article, when McDowall was investigated in 1975, FBI agents found 1000+ video cassettes in his garage of movies-- none of which were officially released on home video. Sidenote: McDowall would also be the main source of contact with the restoration of CLEOPATRA, another Liz Taylor film.

Could the character Bart be in a clique of wealthy gay cinema nerds such as McDowall who pass around bootlegs of films? Was it possible that Bart was modeled after McDowall? Could RAINTREE COUNTY be a reference to CLEOPATRA? Was it possible that it was a cheap replacement for CLEOPATRA footage, even if CLEOPATRA was a Fox film and RAINTREE COUNTY was from MGM?

Another possibility: could Bart have taped the film off of TV? Listings show that the film was run on TV as far back as 1972. Betamax was released in 1975 but the film did run on TV several more times that decade, according to afternoon and late night movie listings in newspapers. Perhaps Bart or one of his friends acquired it this way? Could this potentially be one of the earliest examples of someone watching a film they taped off of TV?

I do not know the answer to any of these questions. Perhaps one day, when RAINTREE COUNTY finally makes its way to DVD and Blu-ray in the United States, answers will be given. Still, it stands to reason that using archival footage in a film can really add to the depth of it, and MAKING LOVE is a perfect example of this.

John Wayne's Southwestern Casserole

After a long hiatus, celebrity recipes are back! Here is me making John Wayne's Southwestern Casserole.

Barbed Wire, DVD Matting, and Lying

My partner and I decided to snuggle on the couch with a hot dish (we're Midwestern bred), some sodas, and a classic movie last night to have a cozy Friday evening at home (we're also past the age of going out). The film we chose was the cinema verte neo noir gem, BARB WIRE, starring the very serious method actress Pamela Anderson. This 1996 erotic thriller was.....not good. In fact, we made it about 40 minutes in before I couldn't take any more and we threw in the towel.

As I was watching though, something struck me as very odd. This DVD was put out by Polygram USA Video in 1999, clearly before the company went through a series of mergers and became obsolete. That being said, me picking on them is the equivalent of picking on the fence outside my window, but I did want to point out why this DVD became a bee in my bonnet last night.

So in the menu, one gets a choice as many DVDs at the time offered-- standard or widescreen? Meaning, do you want to watch this 1.85:1 or 1.33:1?



Let's look at this picture for a second. The DVD menu is suggesting that if you watch the Widescreen version of the film, there is more image to the left and right than if you watch the Standard version of the film, which looks like it is pan and scanned here.

So we choose Widescreen and the titles start. During this wonderfully executed title sequence of boobs flying all over the place, I notice that in a few shots, the top of the frame seems like heads are missing.



My initial thought is "Hrm, a DP probably wouldn't have framed it like that when he was shooting....perhaps this was shot 1.37 and matted? But that doesn't make sense because the DVD said the fullscreen version was pan and scanned...." So, later that evening in a bout of indigestion I took a look at the fullscreen/standard version of the movie and look at what I found:



Aha! It was shot 1.37 and matted for widescreen!!! But this was just the title sequence, so maybe the rest of the DVD was pan and scanned from the 1.85 version. It's a possibility, right? I did a little more digging. Well.....






And....

So here's the deal. Clearly this isn't a pan and scan version of the movie, so why is the DVD menu saying that it is? AND the disclaimer before the film is warning the viewer on the fullscreen/standard version that it's been modified from its original version in that it's been formatted to fit their square TV screen? What bull dropped that on the barnyard floor? It hasn't been reformatted-- it's just been transferred without the mattes on the top and bottom of the frame. This is so misleading and gives people the wrong idea about how fullscreen and widescreen works. So, Polygram Home Video, RIP and thanks for playing, but you totally took your viewers for a ride with this one didn't you?