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28 December 2006
Okay, I'm just now watching the movie Grease, and it is....→[More:]without question the gayest movie ever made. It's Gay with a Capital G.
I open this thread to debate, snarking, and general merriment to all.
John Travolta would've made a great greaser (and I'm a big fan of greasers, as you well now) but in some other movie than that piece of shit. My favorite antidote is the film version of The Wanderers, which has a gay subtext that's far more obvious and more intentional.
Fully Pips! Stockard Channing has always been one of the absolute sexiest women in Hollywood. And in this here movie, she jumps around in her undieware!
Jland - Gay as in campy as hell, the women are way butch, the men are way not, every other scene has serious production value trauma, and the songs are singy-songy mashpotato schmaltz.
NBC is starting a reality show soon that follows the casting of a new Broadway revival of Grease. They call Grease "America's Favorite Musical". I can't decide if that's true or not- it probably is, either that or Sound of Music.
I'm very curious as to what will happen to the Broadway revival if (when?) the TV show flops.
I posted the question about America's Favorite Musical on one of my theatre boards, but seeing as how the only people on theatre boards are obsessed queens (self included!), I felt the answers were somewhat biased (someone tried to say Evita was America's Favorite Musical, an answer I found unbelievably bizarre). I went to karaoke that very night and three teens did a number from Grease. Every person on earth knows the music from Grease, which might count for something.
I remember going to see Grease in the theaters...my brand new boyfriend took me (he was a Travolta lookalike, a dancer, and wanted to get the hand jive thing down as he was having to do a "Grease" like performance somewhere.
This was the same fellow who took me to see Superman and kept raving about how goodlooking Reeve was. (THAT was my last date with him.)
In between, he broke my heart, and from the perspective of time and distance I have to say he was the gayest boyfriend I ever had.
My college girlfriend, the one whose dorm room I gift wrapped, loved Grease. She also loved coke, and at the time of that movie's release, my roommate worked at the Penn State psychology department pharmacy. I don't remember how many times we saw it, but I do remember that we did one helluva lot of coke.
I wore out two copies each of the Grease and Saturday Night Fever soundtracks from all the parties we threw. This is probably also evidence of how damaging coke is to users' mental states.
I saw Can't Stop The Music on cable years and years ago. I still carry the mental scars. That is one of the most uh... amazing... movies I have ever seen. From Steve Gutenberg roller skating in his disco hipster manner throughout the opening credits, to Bruce Jenner manfully carrying Valerie Perrine into the bedroom, through the recording of "Liberation", I was fucking amazed. Amazed that they made it, amazed that somebody at some time actually thought this was a marketable idea. The conversation probably went something like this, "Johnson! I have an idea! What if we told the fictionalized origin of The Village People? We can get the chick who was banging Lex Luthor in Superman and that Decathalete guy who keeps showing up on Real People and Love Boat!" *moment of silence* "Oh yes sir, what a wonderful idea".
That said, if I ever saw a DVD of it in front of me, there would be a good chance I would buy it, because I can't think of a finer LEGAL pain-infliction device.
But seriously, I would love to see The Celluloid Closet, which I bet has some great info about "gay movies" before there were any actual gay movies (not that we have so many now, but, you know). I just don't want to pay $26 to see it.
My first thought was I don't think "Grease" is the gayest movie in the sense that you are using the word, LT. . .but I also can't think of one that's gayer. There must be one where the leads aren't as credibly hetero. It's a hard quality to compare across decades, too.
Dick Van Dyke! Dick Van Dyke movies are wonderfully terribly awfully gay, because he makes them so. Mary Poppins? Bye Bye Birdie? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
I loves me some Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! Hmm. That has a car too. Something about singing about cars is gay? That makes sense.
Greased Lightning, go Greased Lightning
Oh you Pretty Chitty Bang Bang
I think staging a musical version of The Chitty is an idea whose time has come.
As much as I love "Grease" (and I love it a whole lots) I love "Grease 2" even more because it is more cheesy, more schmaltzy, AND it has a guy with an English accent in it. I taped that off of the TV and pause/rewinded it until I wrote down all the lyrics, then moved to memorize that song.
Besides, guys in leather jackets on motorcycles are hotter than guys in leather jackets in hot rods. Any day.
I, too, saw Grease at the first-run movie theater. I went with some cousins, and their mother was a real prude, and kept ranting about what terrible messages the movie sent to kids. Fast-forward 30 years to me watching it with my 10-year-old daughter. I called my aunt, probably the only time I've done so, and said, yup, terrible messages for kids. I think that's when I became officially old.
I was a big Village People fan during they heyday, when I was a teenager, and I had no idea they were gay. Also, the first album I ever bought was Barry Manilow Live (just look at the gay, gay cover!). I'm not gay, but my early musical tastes sure were.
The best part is the drag race. The slow-motion capturing of the winning maneuver always makes me happy. The movie isn't really about the race; in fact, it's obvious that the whole thing is seen as fairly, well, juvenile. And yet, the win isn't arbitrary; it happens because one driver really does know how to race better than the other. Specific details, as that guy says in The Door And The Floor. Specific details.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
