A Date With Oscar
I suppose there are gay guys (and lesbians) who watch the Super Bowl for reasons other than a love of broad shoulders and tight rear ends, but most of us are more interested in another contest: The Academy Awards!
Tight rear ends aside, why watch football when all those dreamy male bodies are hidden under heavy padding, and the only "wardrobe malfunction" at this celebration of machismo revealed a woman’s breast rather than a man’s basket?
The Oscars are a lot more fun, and the men are so much cuter. I’d gladly sail on the doomed Titanic if only to be with dreamy Leonardo DiCaprio, a best actor nominee this year for The Aviator. When not swooning over Hollywood’s handsomest stud, I’ll be "oohing" and "aahing" over the glittering gowns worn by Tinseltown’s latest glamour girls. And who can resist the bitchy fun of trying to guess which star has had a facelift. (When someone’s eyebrows are crawling toward their forehead, you can bet they’ve had more than a nip and tuck.)
Then there are the movies themselves. Good, bad, or indifferent, I love ‘em and would be surprised if there’s a gay guy who doesn’t. I spent most of my childhood and adolescence slumped down in a theater seat, mesmerized by the images on that magic screen while other boys played sports or stood on street corners trying to pick up girls. The movies were a safe haven for a sissy who knew that Edith Head was an Oscar winning costume designer, but thought a home run is what he attempted every day to escape the bullies when school let out.
The movies also gave me my first glimpse of gay life. Whether it was Peter Lorre’s perfumed Joel Cairo in 1941's The Maltese Falcon and the effeminate characters played by Franklin Pangborn in the same era’s screwball comedies, or the outrageously camp queens who fluttered by in everything from Play Misty for Me to The Boys in the Band, the movies showed me that I was not alone, and neither was that strange man who placed his hand on my knee at a Sunday matinee when I was 12 years old.
Real life would be unbearably dull without the movies. The best of them have wittier dialogue, better plots, and more sensible conclusions than the monotonous comedy-dramas that most of us live everyday. And in the age of the DVD, you can watch your favorite movie whenever you want, as often as you want.
For those of us who prefer the beam of a 35mm projector to a hundred days of sunshine, Oscar night is like the climax to an orgy. If you don’t want to spend the evening at home munching popcorn and licking nothing but your own buttered fingers, attend one of the many Oscar parties being held on February 27, or throw a party of your own, perhaps with a theme inspired by one of this year’s nominated films.
The nominees are: The Aviator (the epic story of Howard Hughes - obsessive compulsive billionaire, aviation pioneer, ladies man, and filmmaker), Finding Neverland (the story of Peter Pan creator, J.M. Barrie), Million Dollar Baby (Hillary Swank as a female boxer who proves to Clint Eastwood that "girly tough" is enough), Ray (the biography of music legend Ray Charles), and Sideways (whining and wine).
It’s probably best not to mix too many themes since boxing or attempting to fly (as either Howard Hughes or Peter Pan) while guzzling wine and wearing dark glasses could result in serious injuries, but you don’t have to limit your theme to this year’s films.
Throw a party in which your guests attend in dress inspired by, or meant to suggest, one of the 76 previous Oscar winning best pictures. Your more imaginative guests could give new, possibly lascivious meaning to such Oscar winning titles as Gentleman’s Agreement, Around the World in 80 Days, My Fair Lady, and Lord of the Rings. And imagine a party at which Bing Crosby’s priest from Going My Way mingles with Margo Channing from All About Eve, or Joe Buck, the hustler from Midnight Cowboy, meets Lawrence of Arabia whose homosexuality was only hinted at in David Lean’s 1962 epic.
Vote for the most imaginative costume and give the winner a prize, perhaps a DVD of their favorite Oscar winning movie, a year’s worth of movie passes, or copies of Mason Wiley and Damien Bona’s Inside Oscar and its sequel Inside Oscar 2, the most exhaustive and entertaining history of the awards currently in print. If you really want to make your party enticing, send the winner on a date with a real live "Oscar," a handsome stud decked out in gold and wielding a mighty sword.
Add to the fun with some trivia contests. Sample question: What was the first Oscar winning Best Picture to feature an obviously gay character? Answer: M-G-M’s Broadway Melody, a musical (what else?) whose cast included a swishy designer, was crowned Best Picture of 1928-29 at the second Oscar ceremony.
Have fun, but remember that the Oscar tends to go to films that make an important statement (All Quiet on the Western Front, In the Heat of the Night, Schindler’s List), shine a light on a social problem (The Lost Weekend, West Side Story), or tell inspiring stories of characters real and imagined who overcame incredible odds to achieve greatness (Rocky, Gandhi, A Beautiful Mind). Make your party important, too, by asking all in attendance to make a donation to a worthy GLBT cause, be it the fight against AIDS or the battle for marriage rights.
Would there have been a Gay Liberation Movement without the movies? Probably, but the movies played such a major role in my own (homo)sexual awakening that I couldn’t imagine coming out of the closet without having a movie to go to. On Oscar night, celebrate the movies and the gay times they’ve given us all.
by Brian W. Fairbanks
 Back to Alt. Lifestyles
|
ARTICLE
