Bye. article in Screen Idol's magazine, Guy Stone's perfect woman checklist, and I realized that I had everything you were looking for except one. That one's usually the deal breaker. Who is the lucky winner tonight? What's the point of being famous if you can't use it to get laid? Terrible lighting for me. Oh, yes, guy. That's why we're all so concerned. What if he got married? Marry who?
I keep pinching myself to see if I'm dreaming. Any luck? When a husband is not working or hunting, he's home with his wife and family. Sears, Kate! Welcome to BGM Bad Game Movies. That's right, I'm already giggling because I am midway through a convo with my illustrious host, who I'm so happy to have back. I am Bill Antonew, and with me is... Am I illustrious? I'm Daniel Krolik.
I don't even know what illustrious means. What does that mean? Doesn't that just mean that you are illustrated? I don't know. Or full of luster? Is that what it is? I've never been full of anything, much less luster. Here's something that a lot of people listening will nod their heads and be like, he finally admitted it. I use a lot of big words, but I don't know what they mean. Yeah.
The term illustrious gets thrown around a lot these days. I suppose. Thank God I have a niece who's like, what does that mean? And I'm like, you know, let's look it up. And then I find out that it was a different meaning. Something different? Yeah. I gave her the anti-mame program from when I was a kid. Like, write down all the words you don't know, and then we'll look them up later. Oh my god.
I used to do that. And one of them in that movie is heterosexual, which I always thought probably made the censors fall over themselves in fear. Anyway. But speaking of the 1950s and censorship, we are doing the film Straightjacket today by Richard Day, which is based on his play, which he adapted to film and directed.
Which I noticed, Wardrobe by Jim Hansen, who made that, if you remember that movie, You're Killing Me, I think it's called? Yeah, which is quite charming. You directed that with Brian Safi. Yeah. And I think maybe Jack Plotnick was in that as well. It's been a minute since I've seen it.
He might have been. I love Jack Plotnick. I think he's really cute and really talented. And I'm not just saying that because in the last episode, Craig Jordan suggested we interview him and I would love to get him on the show. I actually do think he's really cute and really talented. And he's connected to the Buffy universe.
Oh, that's right. He's connected to everything, though. He did a series of very strange videos during COVID where he played Disney Imagineers in the 1950s. I don't know if you've ever seen them. I have not.
they're very funny and they're so absurdly specific in their targets oh he's also he was on ellen he's in my favorite scene in gods and monsters because that's the dirty oh that's right someday yeah yeah and um that film by that french visionary filmmaker quentin lemieux is that his name it's called wrong okay anyway who cares the point is he's not even the star of this film and all we're going to talk about is jack blotnick but
He is in Straightjacket. The star is, what's the guy's name? Letcher? Matt Letcher. What do you know him from? Well, I saw him a billion years ago, don't look it up, in a Neil Simon play on Broadway. Which one? proposals.
which also starred Kelly, which also starred, it wasn't a success. It was like a very late career Neil Simon. It wasn't a success, but it also featured Kelly Bishop from Gilmore Girls and Dirty Dancing. I know his face very well, partly because he's that kind of white guy, but also because I have seen him in a lot of stuff.
so he's like a he's like a theater actor who shows up in everything shot in new york is this what we're looking at well i mean i saw i saw him in this play you know i think it was like the very late 90s um but i think i think he shows up in everything i think he's still uh a middle-class working actor yeah and in straight jacket he plays a 1950s movie star clearly modeled on rock hudson and the plot revolves is a basically a satire on when rock hudson
was forced to marry phyllis gates with whom he stayed married for three years i almost thought you were going to say phyllis diller she was married to phyllis diller as a way to get people to not think he was gay It didn't work. Remember when Phyllis Diller said, I've had so many facelifts, the next one's going to be a cesarean. That's a joke I remember of hers. I love it. When my niece was younger, she had like a little Ursula doll that looked exactly like Phyllis Diller.
I'm reading Joan Rivers' second book, Still Talking, right now, which I found when I started reading it that it was actually autographed, which thrilled me to no end. Oh, that's lovely.
She talks about meeting Phyllis Diller and discovering that, you know, for all that she was so wacky with the wig and the whatever on stage, in real life she was actually, like many comedians, the offstage personality very... classy chanel suits the um sue sylvester character in mazel what's her name jane lynch oh that's interesting yeah like a kind of that was kind of a take on bill stiller and joan rivers as well who was famously like very kind and that's true in person yeah
Yeah. My very heterosexual dad saw Phyllis Diller in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway. Wow. What was that like? Could she sing? yeah apparently she was very good and apparently she was all i mean my dad doesn't remember a ton of it because i think i was quite young uh but when i look back at comments and reviews apparently she could sing and apparently she was very moving in the role too because dolly's a role you can't dolly is not
uh roxy heart like you can't just put anyone in it and have them fake their way through it like you have to sing that role yeah it's also not it's not a difficult saying because it was written for a baritone hello dolly yeah can you be a woman baritone Carol Channing. Oh, okay. But you have to belt. I don't want to hear the parade passes by from like... christy brinkley you know i don't want to hear someone talking their way rob robin givens
There's a reason why Bette did it. It's because you need someone who's a show-stopping singer. And sorry to mention it, but you need that for Funny Girl, too. Not naming names. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Anyway. But the point is, is that he was hungry. The point is that my dad saw Phyllis Diller in Hello, Dolly! in 1971. Which is the exact moment that your chromosomes found their way through his body.
But Rock Hudson did not marry Phyllis Diller, much to his disappointment. Much to our disappointment. Right. But there was talk of tabloid-style magazines, I guess, confidential. You're asking me to the...
To pay attention to the movie I literally finished watching 10 minutes ago, I can't. Matt Lloyd was going to tell stories about his proclivities because Rock apparently got around. He really did love to party. And so his team came up, first of all, with a fake... a fake scandal where photographers quote-unquote caught him getting out of bed with a woman
um because they figured a straight sex scandal was a million times better than a gay one obviously and then also married him to phyllis gates it's lampooned in this movie as being a woman he barely talks to because she's the boss's secretary The boss being a take on, I believe, Saul Lesser, the head of production of MGM in the late 50s, which is why they're talking about Ben-Hur all the time. Okay.
In real life, I think she knew him about as little. She always insisted later on that it was not a fake marriage to her, as far as she knew, and that she had no idea that he was gay. Did they ever get divorced? Yeah, they got divorced after three years. Okay.
That could have just been her saving face. I don't know. You know, when you think about... Did she talk about it while he was still alive? I don't think so. I think she was probably sought out. I think she was probably talked to... both, before and after.
I have a feeling that once, you know, his death was like one of the most headline grabbing deaths of the century, thanks to it basically taking AIDS mainstream. And I would not be surprised if there were suddenly photographers camped out around her house. She could be...
saving face by saying she didn't know but when you think about life in the 50s uh whether you're a normal middle-class family or when you're like a famous movie star the division of worlds that men and women were expected to operate in particularly if you weren't poor you know men always being at work and women always being in there um for my good kitchen
You could imagine there's a lot that goes down between people that they have no idea about, but who knows? Absolutely. I thought this movie worked quite beautifully.
Until it didn't. That's how I felt too. I didn't think this was a one-star situation. Absolutely not. And also, the cast is loaded. It is loaded. The cast is absolutely stacked. So loaded that Sam Pancake gets to do little else but say two... sassy things on a tram on a maps of the stars tour uh and you have veronica cartwright filling in for your best friend jackie hoffman who did oh my goodness who couldn't do the film version
because she was doing hairspray at the time. Wow, I didn't know that. I assume she played Penny's mom. In Hairspray? Yeah, she played all the smaller roles. She played Penny's mom and she played the gym teacher. Oh, I didn't realize that's a doubled up role. Yeah, and I think there was one more. Okay. When I did it in community theater, those were all separate.
parts because in community theater you want to give as many people uh a shot um yeah so she would have been oh my god she played the agent in the play version of this Veronica Cartwright is fabulous. She won a Glitter Award for Best Supporting Actress in this. We haven't had a Glitter Award winning film since that one by Matthew Rettenman that we did years ago. And I am a three-time Glitter Award nominee.
Are you really? No. Oh, okay. Well, I don't know. You have a Wikipedia page. For all I know, you're a hell of a lot more successful. I do have a Wikipedia page. I don't have a Wikipedia page, even though I'm running two podcasts and a very difficult life. So yeah, so this movie is a satire on the 1950s Hollywood era. It's a satire on homophobia, on societal hypocrisy. It's the kind of thing that Carly-ism...
Yes, absolutely. Which, in my opinion, is sort of what tanks it. Well, for me, what tanks it is that... Well, yeah, actually, I probably do agree. Because this movie is like... coldly funny and then in the end it becomes mushy and sincere and i didn't need that i didn't need that in order to really drive the message home the basic plot being that rock hudson is having a great time fucking guys when he's not on the set he had
agrees to this fake marriage, but then he meets a very left-wing writer, a very proudly read writer, a male writer, who he falls in love with and it challenges him basically to live. live his truth in a way that raw cuts and of course never did who who is this specimen who plays that screenwriter who plays that author what's his name um i don't remember his name he was in the play as well exactly yeah um
I think... You just set me up to shade someone. How dare you? I did. That's our Laurel and Hardy give and take. But I thought that if his presence was a little bit more substantial, the... heavier parts of the movie could have worked. Yes, because I didn't care about this relationship. I didn't care about this relationship and he didn't come across as a person with a very deep social conscience. He didn't communicate that.
He's kind of funny looking. I'm sorry to say this because he's hot and he's got a great body and he does have a nice face, but his face doesn't suit that era and that era of hair or makeup. He looks weird to me. And I think Matt Letcher's does.
It does. Although I didn't understand. This is a problem for me throughout this whole film is the low budget shows. I don't mind that these cheesy graphics that they have, but the cheap wigs drove me crazy. Like that. Oh, Carrie Preston's wig is terrible. Terrible. Terrible.
Almost as bad as Laura Linney's in The Savages. I don't remember her having a bad wig in The Savages. Yeah, there's a close-up in that movie where... Where she had, like, the dowdy brown hair? You can't unsee it. I pointed it out to Greg, and I ruined the entire movie for him, yeah. And as you know, The Savages is one of my absolute favorites. It's one of my favorites. I've never caught that. Greg chose it as one of his favorites on an upcoming episode of Riviera Rats. Oh, yay! Yay!
When I was on Kyle Brownricks' podcast a million years ago, he got very mad at me when I suggested that Laura Linney should have won Best Actress that year. Instead of Marion? Mm-hmm. Oh, all right. I mean, I like... That's a pretty stacked category other than Elliot Page, who I don't like. I don't like Juno that much, but... I agree. I agree. Anyway, the cheap wigs and also kind of cheap costumes. I found that...
What they were going for with Matt Letcher's clothing is because the men used to wear their suits really big back then and really high in the waist, but his looked like bell bottoms to me. It looked like 70s suits, not 50s suits. A little bit. And as you said quite astutely in an earlier episode, any period piece you watch is more reflective of the era that it was shot than the era that it was...
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this movie comes out in 2004. And you can really tell. I mean, not only with like the Sims 3D CGI effects that we get for the establishing shots. Sure. Well, I mean, that was so, that felt intentional enough that I was fine with it. And in fact, I could get over the cheap wigs too. Like a low budget movie, it's fine.
especially when you have such talented actors. But does he live in a motel? I could never understand what they were going for with that CGI design of his house. I know it's supposed to be a mansion, but it also doesn't look like a mid-century Hollywood star house. Well, it looks like a Holiday Inn.
That's the thing. The way that the rooms were designed and everything, I'm like, how is that someone's multi-room mansion when it looks like it has separate entrances and stuff? Yeah, I kind of agree. I kind of agree. Is it time to sing the praises of Carrie Preston, though? Sure. Carrie Preston has appeared in enough BGMs that we should be nice, and she's directed one, so we should definitely be nice to her because she is super talented. And...
This movie kind of pretends to be half about her and it really isn't so good for her for just getting through it all with a lot of it. Yeah, because she makes her entrance very late in the story and then she disappears and then she's set up as a very important person and then she disappears for...
gigantic chunks of screen time yes yeah even though that is an interesting side of the story is um that this obsession with heterosexuality is is uh abusive to gays but it's abusive to women too in the way that she can't you know it it would be terrible if it happened today too, but a woman today could also live her own life. Well, as this woman has to live his life once she gets into this fake marriage. And I think, and I think.
I think Carrie Preston used that very much to her advantage because she never gets to be anything but perky and lovely and supportive and starstruck.
and because she's such a compelling performer uh she found all sorts of really cool and subtle ways to communicate whatever this person was going on underneath that said have you watched her recent television series is that not yet but i mean i saw all of the good wife and the good fight so i've never watched i've only watched like one episode of that show i forgot that she was on that yeah no she had a huge i mean that's where the character's from the character's from the good way
Oh, she is? Yeah. Oh, I don't know anyone who's watched it except my sister. And if it's only my sister watching it, I got to tell you that show's not going to, it's not long for this world. Even my mom doesn't like it. Oh, oh, well then that's bad. that's pretty bad yeah i was trying to remember the name of it elspeth i was like what is it
No, because it was a fan favorite character. It was a fan favorite recurring character on The Good Way for years and years and years. Then she did a couple of episodes of The Good Fight. And she's also married to Michael Emerson in real life. Oh, right. That's right. I think I did know that. And she is probably well known to people for True Blood as well. Which I never saw. Okay, yeah. She was good on that. And then I love her on her episode of Sex and the City as well.
What's her name? The one that married Miranda's visitor, the interior decorator who married Miranda's houseguest. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. The main thing for me that doesn't work about this film is the same thing with... Similar films with similar people, like Psycho Beach Party or Space Station 76, where the plane... What's Space Station 76?
It's a spoof of 70s sci-fi movies with like Matt Bomer and... I just remember Matt Bomer. Who else is in it? I feel like... I mean, we all just remember Matt Bomer. But it's that kind of like Groundlings people.
Okay. I know that he's not one of them, but I think he was replacing the star. But, like, Sandpancake, I think, is in it. Or the other one from Big Bang, who I always mix him up with. But also, Psycho Beach Party is based on a play as well. Right, but these kind of, like, culty, fringe-style plays.
That when you watch them, they're a riot. And the satire that they're making fun of is... a lot of fun for the whole time but the once you adapt them to film even when you keep the same actors or whatever and you try to keep the same flavor something about like building sets and paint you know The grandeur of cinema, something like dampens the nutty, rebellious vibe of the play. Because part of it is the cheesiness. Right. And the artificiality. That's right. And because you're not...
you're not really leaning into one or the other. You just end up with like a mediocre movie as opposed to a really good one or a really, really hilarious bad one. And in all three of these cases, I think these are movies that are not even like cultish midnight madness fun. for me i just find them mid yeah although although like half my notes was just writing down lines that i thought were really funny there are any number of them
Yes, and there were quite a few lines that I also thought were funny. What is one of the ones that I wrote down? Well, when... when the boyfriend rick says i'm real that actually made me laugh at him and not with him but um or even the first scene when uh when matt lecher is in bed with a with a rando and the rando says oh that was such i had such a wonderful night and the first thing he says was i'm so sorry i'm terrible
with names yeah yeah or when he you know the the the very slapsticky humor when he flings the joint over the balcony and you just hear a woman go my hair yeah or the or the or the long-running joke about the agent being a lesbian and they made a joke about agnes
moorhead that's right yeah well like he makes constant jokes about her being a lesbian throughout the whole thing but Even though it has funny lines, I don't think this movie is particularly funny and it is daring to make a movie where the premise is funny, but the content...
isn't because there's a lot of time spent making sure that the plot is built up and plays out yeah i just i just think it bit off more than it can chew and if they wouldn't have tried to tackle the mccarthyism of it all and it would have stuck to and again it's hard if you're talking about mid-century hollywood to not address it but if you would have stuck to the plot about oh let's get this closeted actor a wife i would have stuck to that i think its goals would have been achieved
Well, or if they had included the McCarthy section without it suddenly becoming this, like... If the challenge of him daring to be his true self doesn't suddenly become as serious as...
I don't inherit the wind. I don't know what an example of something where it just becomes so, cause you know, this movie comes out two years after far from heaven, which is the gold standard of like making a fifties movie in a fifties style. And that is a movie where the premise is funny, even though the movie isn't right.
It's also, and this might be a controversial opinion, I think it's the gold standard of Dennis Quaid in a bathing suit. Oh, without a doubt. Well, other than him in the early 80s. I mean, but yes, but it's... But that movie gets away with what it gets away with because it's sincere from the beginning to the end and it wears its heart on its sleeve. And there's a million other reasons why it's better than this movie and every other movie. But this movie, it tries to be...
Again, like a movie that's referring...
to itself as a kind of movie and then decides to become itself. But you could also very clearly tell what the creators were responding to personally and all of the stuff about this Hollywood star who's living a closeted life and has to find... a beard worked because it you could tell how deeply that resonated with the creators and then when they threw in the mccarthyism and and the scouts and the studio and all of that you could tell that it was more lip servicey
Yeah, and I also don't, I didn't know that there were McCarthy hearings that were like filmed at movie studios. As far as I knew, they were always filming the actual court dates. Although the thing about the green makeup was actually very funny. That made me giggle because I do know that that's true. They exaggerate.
in this film but it's actually that in the black and white TV days that the makeup did have a greenish tinge to it to make people look normal on screen. Not to the level of what he does but yeah. I didn't track that so thank you. We also have Eric Stonestreet in this film in a small role five years before Modern Family begins. And we have my internet crush Tom Lank in a small part. Yes.
Tom Lank and Jack Plotnick should never be on screen at the same time. That's like... like they're different people and they have different talents or whatever but like they they look far too similar and have too similar a vibe for me to be able to differentiate them while they're on screen together and their line readings are quite similar as well yeah although i love them both i i love said jack plotnik cute as fuck and although
I don't understand. He can play straight guys if he wants to, but I wonder if that part would have been better served by having someone really unapologetically straight in the role, as opposed to a queeny straight guy, basically.
i didn't care either way i just wondered if yeah it sort of it sort of reminded me of the part uh in the musical how to succeed in business without really trying okay there's like the boss's nephew who's trying to get ahead and he keeps getting outsmarted by the robert morse guy yeah
And that character, I mean, Michael Urie played that character, so it's very frequently played by a homeowner. So it was giving me those similar vibes. So I did not have a problem with it. The guy who played that nephew when I did that play was very- You did How to Succeed?
Yeah, that was my first community theater. Oh, no way. Yeah. We're getting through my entire community theater history today. Because I've had quite a year of community theater. He has ladies and gents. I have, yeah. I'm on my fourth production in a row right now.
uh playing the marquis de mertuis i was gonna say because i saw a picture of you in rehearsal and i was hoping you would say that yeah yeah i'm not playing the marquis de mertuis but i do like the woman they chose no you're playing you're playing the swuzy kurtz part That's right. I am playing Madame de Volange. I wish. No, I'm playing Azoulin. There's only three male roles in that play.
it's not well it's not a big cast it's not but it's mostly women yeah yeah but it's also like seven or eight characters and a bunch of servants that's right and the servants don't speak so if they had offered me one of those i was going to say no but I wanted Azulon because I'm too old for Donsigny. And I can't imagine being cast as Valmont in a million years. Oh, come on. I didn't dare to hope. But I love who's playing Valmont. Bill, I would brave Toronto Transit to see.
you as Valmont. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, Cecile, you want to fuck? No? Great. But it is a wonderful play. Anyway, the point is, I wasn't how to succeed. And the guy who played the nephew... i won't say his name in case he's listening but he probably isn't anyway he's the loveliest loveliest guy and then he hit me up on scruff last year and he had no memory of me whatsoever which happens all the time yeah not i mean we're talking 23 years ago so i wasn't offended
He hadn't changed one bit and I remembered his name. So anyway, one thing that I also did not like in this movie, the reason, one of the reasons why Raul Hudson was so paranoid about making sure people didn't find out. Actually. I don't even know if he was that paranoid, but he was adamant about people not finding out partly because he just grew up in a world where you didn't talk about these things. But he also loved being a movie star. He wasn't just cashing in.
He loved making movies. He loved being a star. He loved being a celebrity. That's not something I get from this guy. And then in the end, when he says, I love making movies, I'm like, but you have been acting like the work is interrupting your party lifestyle.
Also, if you're gonna throw in this leg... midpoint romance plot, you need to see how that character was changed by falling in love with someone with values and ideals and who had previously treated hot men as something very disposable and very transactional. He's kind of the same person at the end, even with the whole McCarthy thing, than he was at the beginning of the movie.
Yeah, like, the whole joke is that he basically has a martini next to his bed when he wakes up in the morning. And then, like, he's Archer, is what he is. And a gay Archer. And then he... becomes a real person. And I don't know that this movie gets away with it. And I wonder, was the play different in this regard? Or is this something that happens when you turn your play into a movie where you're like, more people are going to see this. This is important. I've got to...
Or was the play 65 minutes and they had to expand it and blow it up for a 95 minute movie? Also what I wondered, yes. Adam Greer is the name of... The post that plays the writer. Yeah. Who...
I could never understand the movie within the movie because it looks like a shitty B movie. It doesn't look like something that a movie star would make, even when you take into account how silly 1950s movie was. Yeah, I mean, it sort of reminded, like, what do I know? But it sort of... reminded me of like a like an elia kazan like working man's movie from that era right but no elia kazan movie is that badly acted like that looked like something in a from a poverty row studio
Although the line, I forget the exact reading, but the line, oh, they call it a mine, so why is it yours? I thought was quite funny. Oh, it's hysterical. I'm not even saying that like, I'm not coming to the defense of movies of this era. I just don't know that they had all their ducks in a row in terms of like making it clear to me what kind of production.
In the way that this movie is obviously about Rob Hudson and Phyllis Gates, that movie should have been obviously The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or something like that. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Carrie Preston has a musical number that I adored. Voiced by not one, but two Marnie Nixons. Because clearly, because clearly it was a different person singing halfway through. I thought that was just me.
i don't think so so that was the case i'm pretty sure yeah huh interesting interesting i mean that number that number was completely extraneous Yes, but so was the whole movie. So that's fine. And it was also really funny. And my godmother used to have that organ. So the sounds of it really took me back to when I was a kid and I used to play it.
like in her house she had it in her daughter's room but yeah okay yeah i remember like i love i love turning on those bossa nova beats yeah i loved it i absolutely loved it those things were more common in people's homes during a certain era than you would care to recall let me just uh
I once, a billion years ago, I once did a young audience tour, a kids show tour all across Ontario. And one day we stayed at a B&B, I forget where, like somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Ontario. And the proprietress served. have served us breakfast while she played us moon river on an organ wow Wow. At like 7 o'clock in the morning before we had to go to an elementary school to perform Little Red Riding Hood. That is so great.
As you know, I watched this movie a few days ago so I don't remember why I wrote this note down. Him trying to figure out if Rick is gay is hilarious. What does he do?
i know that it's on oh oh you know why it's funny because when he invites him into his uh to his mansion and like he's he's trying to goad him out of saying something gay and he doesn't and doesn't and doesn't and then he says well you know i really love my mom she's more of a best friend than a mom and then he bounds across the couch because that's how he knows and then he says you could have just asked me yeah
They do have an interesting conversation that I did appreciate this film about when they're basically challenging each other about integrity. And it's one of the rare times that... And again, this is probably also a tribute to the fact that this movie is uneven in its tone, but the fact that Guy Stone, is that our movie star's name? Sure, why not? He's basically telling him it's easy for other people to lecture.
about integrity basically it's easy for everybody else to tell everybody what stakes they should and should not have in their lives without necessarily realizing their own You know, it's easy to tell me that I should come out as if I don't have a lot of overhead as a movie star. You know, he has when you become famous, you have you become an industry and you have people to support. It's not that easy to just do whatever you want. Right.
also in the cast is miss coco peru uh also known as clinton leop who doesn't really get a lot to do no but i feel like coco peru appears in so many of these projects of like connected connected colleagues and it was also the Filmmaker's previous movie was Girls Will Be Girls, which Coco was the lead in. That's right. Which is also quite funny. Well, and Coco Peru is hysterically funny, and a friend of the show, Jim Fall, always talks about how much he adores her. Yeah, yeah. But...
the most I've seen her without makeup as well. Like she's, she's in drag, but she's not like the, the glitter eyeshadow and all that stuff. Right. I could see more of her face. They go to that movie premiere and in regular scope actually made me laugh. Yeah, me too. I did enjoy him smoking through his movie premiere. There's a lot of smoking in this movie.
Although the other thing about Rock Hudson is that he didn't make a lot of black and white movies because he was an A-list movie star. So like color was saved for his projects because it was more expensive. Right. Once he becomes an A-list star, I don't know of many black and white films that he was in. They don't have to be this one-to-one in there. And all of his romantic comedy Doors Day stuff was filmed in...
very vibrant Technicolor. Yes. But even that, that's actually late in his career. He becomes a star in like the mid-50s and then his first Doris Day movie is 59. So he's already been a movie star for quite a while. Back in the days when you made like three movies a year. Or more. Or more. I do like the fact though that this movie does respect the fears and conflicts of the people of the time. It's not a movie that's pointing fingers at people being cowardly in a past.
Time. I did like that aspect of it. In ways that Ryan Murphy did not in his Hollywood series. Well, yeah, because I mean... Also something that Ryan Murphy gave us in his Hollywood series that this movie doesn't was Patti LuPone being fucked doggy style on a spiral staircase. That's right. And I know that Ryan Murphy was making that series as a way to talk about the way things could have been.
if things were better, I get it, but because... Oh, it was so preachy. Well, yes, and I enjoy so much of his stuff for many reasons, but I... do find them a little bit humorless and tends to work against them, particularly in a case like this. And I did like the line when...
When he gets, he basically gets ousted after he, he basically, his career goes down in flames after he is unveiled. And he says to Veronica Cartwright, he said, when did this business get so mean? And she goes, when they started it. Her delivery is like perfection. I like that too. And I also liked the subtle joke of a golf game happening in Veronica Cartwright's backyard when she's on the phone with him. Yes, that's right. Yeah.
And this is also someone who can talk to us about old Hollywood because of course she has been working since she was a little girl. I mean, for sure. How many people who were directed by Hitchcock are still alive? Well, probably more than. I mean, to me, she's always throwing up the cherries.
yeah i think about that but i also think about the children's hour and the birds and oh sure yeah yeah yeah alien of course uh and jack's mother on will and grace which for some reason they only had her on once and i don't understand why she wasn't as recurring a character as debbie reynolds or closer to you know yeah um
I'm rewatching Cheers, which holds up beautifully. But there's a season one episode, which I didn't know about, where Glynnis Johns plays Diane's mother. Oh, interesting. Wow. She made it to 100 years old. Yep. Spice girl. She is a spice girl and she's a sporty. No, she's a baby. She's a baby spice. I think she's a baby. Yeah. With that voice. Barbara Hershey's a spice girl, right? Barbara Hershey's a posh. Yeah. But she is a spice girl.
She is a Spice Girl. In fact, that's a heavy Spice Girl year that year. Her, Marie Antone, Baptiste, Lauren Bacall. right it is very funny when carrie preston says i use vodka instead of water now when like she goes down into alcoholism as like the sort of boozy jilted wife that is really funny
Yeah, and she face plants directly when she offers to make him coffee with scotch. So good. But Jennifer Elise Cox is also in this movie, who we all know is drop dead hysterically funny. And who also gets as little to do as Coco Peru does. Even less. You barely get her face on screen. Like why? Is there not enough room in this movie for more than one quirky female? Or she had one day to do a friend a favor. Or she had scenes that were cut.
That's the only thing I can think of because she's in, she's playing the actress that he works with the most. Right. So I wouldn't be surprised if they had filmed parodies of movies they made together that she was cut out of. Yeah, but you're right. She's very funny. She's very funny. Jack and Will from Will and Grace said that her playing the nurse with the needle on Will and Grace is something that made them die laughing for years.
Well, I remember when the Brady Bunch movies came out, there was, I think, an Entertainment Weekly review that was like, this performance is the equal of Diane Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway. It's that level. She should have had an Anna Faris situation. For sure. More, you know. Or like a Judy Greer kind of career.
Yeah, and I would not be surprised if she auditioned for all of their parts and they always got them. Yeah. Rick also works for the post office after they fall apart. That's a reference to Rock Hudson because he... Oh, I didn't know that. ...one of the jobs he was doing when he was discovered he was a post office. Okay. Roy Shire was his name. What was his name? It's showtime folks. No, it was Germanic. It was Roy Shire. And then I also thought about, you know, this is a kind of a message movie.
Again, I don't know that it necessarily earns it, but I also wondered, have things changed? I mean, things have changed. You know, we're living in a time when people can put out a sex tape and not have their career go down. Things have changed, but apparently Sutton Foster is getting divorced to hook up with Hugh Jackman. So I don't know. Have they?
Hugh Jackman isn't gay. I think Hugh Jackman is... Like a cantal? I think he's a take-all-comers. I think he's actually actor-sexual. I think he makes out with anyone who makes him feel like he's the prettiest boy in the world. That is a beautiful word that you just used, Bill. Yeah, I think that's what he is. I think Colin Farrell even more so. I think Colin Farrell will take a complimentary BJ from anybody, but he will only ever date a woman.
But I think Colin Farrell will give it just as good to anybody. Yeah. Anytime, anywhere. As you always say, Colin Firth for your mom and Colin Farrell for me. That's right. That is right. But I also wonder, even though people can be out without destroying their career, I think you're still a second-class citizen when you're now a gay actor in this business. I think... Even as an exception to that, Matt Bomer is still...
not as first in line for things if he was in the closet. I think there are things he would have opportunities for. Sure. I mean, what do I know? But I do agree with that. Yeah. I'm sure he doesn't mind because he is having a fantastic career. I wonder if he would even be considered for James Bond now as opposed to, you know, or that kind of role. Uh, sure. Yeah. I do not disagree. And as recently as the 2000s, Tom Cruise was still suing people.
who made gay accusations about, you know, so it's like, have things changed or have they, or they changed, but they haven't necessarily improved because this is still how the way, how the world sees us, how the world organizes us in terms of priority. I do want to give yet another shout out to Carrie Preston because when she goes into her like tough gangster mall voice when she's testifying at the very end, it's something that I've never heard from her before.
uh totally she's very funny in that that scene is funny again i don't understand why they're filming a fake courtroom in a movie studio that there was a logic there that was missing for me But also, Matt Letcher has a major speech in that scene. Why does he deliver it so low? He talks like this the entire time. I was like, why? Why isn't this movie... playing into its parody by suddenly becoming a melodramatic 1950s movie and have him give like a Lana Turner level histrionic speech on the stand.
yeah but but at that point like the movie's just getting crushed under the weight of the sincerity yeah like there's just a little silliness considering we started with like the cute twink and his fucking uh and too many big top and too many big topics yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so ultimately this movie is a fail for me but it's not like a wtf disaster like oh god no no there's too many funny and talented people involved
And there's too many quotable lines. Yeah, I just wonder, I wonder if plays like Psycho Beach Party and this are best left alone. Although I also do recognize the value of what you have mentioned in the past of... you know preserving certain performances for posterity by casting the theater people in the version i mean that's also why we get a stalker chanting in six degrees of separation yes but you're not capturing
the moment in time that these plays played to to the lucky people who got to see them it's like a beach party it's particularly a problem because it was a drag queen playing a teenage girl in the play who becomes, like, the detective in the movie. But also, like, how does that read on screen? Like, it reads one way on stage and another way on screen. Right. But it would have been the more obvious joke while it's having...
six feet under play the girl in the movie. It just changes things. Although we also did have a BGM that we talked about where it was two guys playing teenage girls in drag that also didn't work. So I don't know. I just wonder if that was that first period.
The one that I liked? Yeah, I liked that movie. It's okay, but I don't know that it necessarily works. But I also don't remember because these movies are... Most movies have left my brain and that one was... Yeah, but also like... at the beginning of this episode we mentioned uh a bunch of other movies that people from this movie share credits with like you're killing me and girls will be girls those are all funnier
Those are all much funnier, much better put together movies. And this was better than Space Station 76, which had zero laughs for me. And I didn't understand. what the purpose of that movie was given that it didn't even seem to be trying to be funny other than the fact that it was it's actually a it's a take off on battle star galactica because it's it's space but everything looks like the 70s But there's no jokes in it.
Yeah, and if this one would have stayed in its one very, very funny lane, I think it would have been much more successful. At the very least, it gave us a bunch of quotable lines, and it gave us a really kind of effervescent Carrie Preston.
performance uh and an effervescent cast like this this movie is full of people that i like to see so you know that's true that was okay i also wish there was more like exploitation of nudity i mean why not since you're already yeah going too sincere just have more sex uh if you've got these guys looking so pretty as you do also but also some very successful physical humor yeah
Which is not easy to do. That sort of like door slamming far stuff is not easy to do on screen. Yeah. But there was just like a moment where Jack Plottening was taking a picture of the two guys fucking and then he kisses the flashbulb and burns his tongue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which he does.
so quickly and it's blink and you'll miss it but it was so beautifully done yeah and then i also just wish that they could have held out for a higher budget to make everything just look a little bit more convincing but i know that that's or or lean into The shoddiness of what they had to deal with. Yes, absolutely. Because I do feel that they've hit an uncomfortable middle ground in that way where everything just looked kind of dowdy.
Like they had just taken over a restaurant during a mid-afternoon break. And that's what they... And then it really made it look like a BGM. Especially his house. I thought his house was really hideous. While as the apartment, like the Skid Row apartment they live in at the end looks... fake on purpose yes um but his house to me looked uh the interiors looked shitty and then again i was just confused by the schematics of the outside because i'm like what
Is that a house? Oh my god, completely. Yeah, it looked like a resort. Anyway, so yeah, this movie is like a... You know, a B minus, but not B minus. It's a C minus for me. It's not an F. Oh, yeah. And like, put it on and laugh your way through the first 40 minutes and then clean your apartment for the second half. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
There's way worse you can watch on Tubi and you'll find out when we review them in the many, many years to come. I enjoyed that the Jack Plotnick's character, his original name before he changed it for Hollywood was Moisheh Finkelstein. Yes. he's constantly trying to tell the one of the running stories in this is the production of ben-hur
Because Guy Stone wants to star in it. It'll be a solidification of his A-list status to get this huge, huge movie. And Jack Plotnick really wants it. And he's like, I can do it. I'm Italian. No, you're not. Your name is Moishe Finkelstein. The joke, of course, is that the character in Ben-Hur is Jewish. He's not Italian. It's a story of the Christ. It's set in present-day Israel.
With an actual Israeli actress playing the female lead who never did anything else in Hollywood as far as I know. Right. I remember reading about that. Chaya Hararit. But yeah, but it was filmed in Italy because this is, of course, also... Great, Bill. Now we have to put out a content warning for this episode. Thank you.
But yeah, but of course Ben-Hur was filmed in Italy, which all those big epic movies were at the time. And they were huge moneymakers for the studio, but of course huge expenditures. So you weren't going to take a chance on iffy stars. Ben-Hur famously was originally offered... to Paul Newman because he had just broken out but he refused to ever make a Jewish boy yeah wrong half though but he refused to ever make another
uh bible epic after the silver chalice he said i'm not i'm not getting i'm not making a movie in a cocktail dress ever again um and so it went to charlton heston who won a very deserved best actor oscar for for that film anyway i have yet to see ben-hur I find it kind of a slog. I actually really love... I think that's the general consensus. Yeah, because it's very... And I love William Wyler. I actually love those two tape...
1950s epics of the era. I think they're all wonderful, even when they're bad. Around the world in 80 days. Or Cleopatra. I love Cleopatra, even though it's like four hours long. But I love it. But Ben-Hur, there's something a bit too... sincere about it. I like Spartacus a lot more because Spartacus is the only one that has no religious content while as Ben-Hur is a story of the Christ.
I thought we were going to get an I'm Spartacus ending at the end when Carrie Preston stands up and says, I'm a communist. Right. But this is what I mean about why not bring it back to that humor since you're making this parody anyway. And why doesn't this movie become that movie? Yeah. Instead of, like, what do I fucking care that these two guys fall in love and ride off into this? And also there's a lot of... I don't know what this has been about.
And also there's not a lot of sexual chemistry between the two of them. If the two of them were throwing off sparks, then maybe we could invest in it as audience members, but we can't because there's not a lot going on. Right. So then if the movie fell back on... jokes it wouldn't matter because the whole thing is fake anyway you know yes yes yes yes yes yeah basically this movie should have been more like um what's the dicks movie that came out last year
Dick's the musical? Dick's the musical, yeah. It should have had that, where it's just like balls to the wall crazy from beginning to end and it never gives up. And they never try to... bite off more than it can chew yes i mean and dicks the musical is also the case of like uh they're like what they were groundlings or something what were those guys it's like a ucb it's it's uc being on the east coast and it's groundlings on the west coast
oh i see okay so and i think so i think so and these guys are doing a two-man show basically where they play all the characters and they turn it into a movie without compromising its sort of cultish appeal you know Yeah, so maybe that is an exception to what I was thinking about leaving these well enough alone. Anyway, Danny Pants, as always, an absolute pleasure to see you. Nice to have you back. We'll have you on again. Such a joy.
Such a joy. Tell our listeners where they can find you, follow you, all that stuff. So, if you want to give my very quiet Instagram a follow, I am at K-R-O-L-I-K-D. I am at Bill Antonio personally. And then, of course, please follow the show at Bad Gay Movies on Instagram and Twitter. No longer Tumblr, I already mentioned this. And visit us at badgamemovies.com. Write to us, badgamemovies2013 at gmail.com.
For all of those of you who are still listening and we started this in 2013, thanks. We still have a good time doing it. And so we hope you still have a good time listening to it, even though I ran out of original things to say a good seven years ago. Well, here we are, though. Here we are. So thanks for that. And see you next time. Bye.