Tag Archives: Patrick Swayze

To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar

June seems like a good time to revisit this film – it’s been a while, but watching it makes me realize that it’s been a LONG while.

The 90s were an interesting time. After the conservative 80s, the 90s felt like a time of revolution. We thought we were cool and edgy; we were open to the changing times. But looking back now, it’s much easier to spot that we weren’t pushing boundaries so much as testing them. We were starting to explore this LGBTQ thing (though we were still a good decade away from calling it that), but doing it safely, within familiar contexts.

Hollywood had already given us Some Like It Hot and Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire. We could deal with dudes in dresses. So To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar gave us three.

Drag is an art form which has held an esteemed position within the gay community for decades. Far more than entertainment, it was an expression of one’s true self, it was a middle finger to the political establishment, a celebration of life, an opportunity to let loose at night after being closeted all day, a dismantling of traditional notions of gender, a platform for activism, an embrace of difference and diversity, a way to foster community, to plant one’s flag in the ground and say: this is me.

[I understand that some women are concerned about the appropriation of female bodies and the highly stereotypical and overly sexualized images of drag’s display of femininity in order for men to gain power, prestige, and status within the queer community. Generally, I tend to admire a drag queen’s ability to reject gender norms and embrace a whole spectrum of expression, but I do cringe over some of the misogynistic terms, such as a queen who is very feminine-presenting (“passing”) being labelled ‘fish.’]

But with my 2020 goggles on, and drag having largely been adopted by the mainstream, I can’t help but notice To Wong Foo presents an incredibly confusing portrait of drag; namely, that drag queens are always in drag. For most drag queens, the heels and lashes and hip pads are part of the uniform of their work – often a staggeringly and prohibitively expensive uniform, but still. They dress for their performance, but they don’t live as women. They are, for the most part, gay men. There are occasionally drag queens who transition male to female, but that’s very much the exception.

Let’s call Wong Foo what it is: three cis-gender, heterosexual Hollywood actors wearing dresses and gesturing with a limp wrist. If this film were made today, there’d be an understandable outcry. But in 1995, this shit was legitimately (and sadly) groundbreaking.

Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze play Noxeema and Vida, two NYC queens newly crowned and headed for Hollywood to compete in Miss Drag America. Like all good fairy dragmothers, they bring along baby drag queen Chi Chi (John Leguizamo) to teach her the rules of the game. They travel cross country in a big ole Buick convertible, which of course breaks down in Hillbilly City. Sorry, that’s unfair. It’s nowhere near being a city, or even a town. I don’t think it has a single stop light. Population: 3 wife beaters, 4 rapists, 1 bigoted cop, and 1 lisping shop owner (see Michael Vartan as ‘Rapist #1’ and Chris Penn as ‘bigoted cop’).

Anyway, as I said, the 3 “drag queens” are NEVER out of drag. They discuss identity but don’t get it right. And not a single one of them would be allowed to compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race – I shudder to think what Michelle Visage would have to say. But mama Ru did give the film her blessing (in a cameo, she appears under maybe the best drag name ever: Rachel Tensions, confederate flag dress and all) alongside other drag stars Lady Bunny, Candis Cayne, Coco Peru, Hedda Lettuce, and Lady Catiria.

Regardless of its inaccuracies and liberties, the gay community embraced its camp, but a broader audience flocked to it too, opening the film at #1 at the box office. It’s no Paris Is Burning. It’s a product of its time, and a landmark in the ongoing fight for queer representation.

Dirty Dancing

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Is this the strangest take on an upstairs/downstairs movie? It’s gotta be up there.

Upstairs, Dr. Houseman (Jerry Orbach) has just arrived at an upscale resort in the Catskills where he and his lovely wife (Kelly Bishop!) and their two daughters are going to spend a pleasant 3 weeks doing the family foxtrot after a white napkin dinner.

Downstairs, the resort’s staff unwind after a long day catering to fussy tourists by dirty dancing. And I’m not sure which is stranger: that everyone in the room has simultaneously agreed to whatever dance moves necessary to achieve orgasm through pants, or that in such a large group of people there isn’t a single wallflower among them, not even a girl who’s a little luke-warm on her boyfriend tonight. Nope, they’re all hot and heavy, all of the time, and they don’t care who sees. Well they do care, sort of. There’s one rule: no resort guests allowed. Which is a rule immediately broken when the Houseman daughter referred to as ‘Baby’ (Jennifer Grey) simply carries a watermelon right through the doors and practically onto the gyrating lap of lead dancer Johnnny (Patrick Swayze). And then the rule is broken repeatedly and flagrantly throughout the film, so the one and only hard and fast rule is neither hard nor fast though pretty much everyone in the film is both hard and fast. And sweaty. I don’t know why they didn’t call it Sweaty Dancing. Not the same ring? Patrick Swayze in particular puts the ‘work’ in ‘working it’.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve already seen the movie. If you haven’t, you simply MUST leave a comment saying so because I need to know who you are and what the heck. Baby is a ‘good’ girl who gets involved with some ‘bad’ people and we all learn a valuable lesson about judging a book by its cover.

Oh. And Patrick Swayze is often without a shirt but never without his heels.

And there’s a botched abortion! So: something for everyone.

This is really just an excuse for me to tell you about a show on Netflix called The Movies That Made Us; season one covers classics like Ghostbusters, Home Alone, Die Hard, and, because for a minute there it seemed like they were pandering to Sean a little heavily, Dirty Dancing. They’re really cool episodes that talk about how movies got made. You’ll learn: which costars didn’t get along, who almost got cast rather than Grey & Swayze, what the woman who wrote the famous line “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” really thinks of it, and why Grey’s nipples were so, um, extroverted during that one scene in the lake. Check it out!

Movies Based on Novels for Young Adults

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It’s Thursday again, and we’ve got some real beauties lined up! Our friend at Wandering Through the Shelves had us tackle Fairy Tales last week, and black & white movies the week before. This week we’ve been tasked with listing our favourite movies based on books for young adults. And so, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado-

Jay

I felt really repelled by this week’s topic, which is kind of okay with me. I like a challenge. But the young adult genre is just not my thing. I can’t even claim that Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Twilight are bad because I haven’t and won’t give them the time of day. They’re not for me, and they don’t need me – there are plenty of teenage girls to keep these franchises going.

I think it’s a little weird how franchises like Hunger Games and Divergent seem to put teenagers in mortal danger, in order that they may save the world. It’s sort of asking a lot from people who, by and large, don’t get out of bed before noon. It made me remember movies from my own teenage years, the 90s, a time when teen movies featured parties, prom, and the gosh darned mall. And the occasional nerd makeover. But then I thought about our own teen franchises – Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer – and realized that maybe we’re not so different after all. We had teens running for their lives as well.

So for my first pick, I’m going with an even older selection that pit teenager against teenager, putting them in intense mortal danger: The Outsiders. I remember reading this book for the first time in the 7th grade. Our teacher followed it up with an in-class viewing of the movie and my teenaged hormones selfishly hijacked the situation, forcing me to weep buckets, turn purple, and lock myself into a horrible washroom stall until I could ‘compose myself’, whatever that means to a white girl with a perm so bitchin she needed a pick comb. To this day I can never decide if the casting was brilliant (Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, all in their peach-fuzz glory) or if it totally missed the boat (everyone else went on to amazing careers while the lead totally fizzled after a controversially racial comedy flopped – Leonardo DiCaprio auditioned for but didn’t get the part). In any case, it tells the story of two teenaged gangs (if they can be called that), really just right side of the tracks vs the wrong side, the Greasers and the Socs, as they tussle and rumble and occasionally kill each other. SE Hinton wrote the book when she was just 15 years old (and what have YOU been doing with your life?) and it took a class full of junior high fans of the book to elect Francis Ford Coppola the most eligible to direct, and sent him a copy of the book. He agreed, shot the movie with Hinton’s help, and 20 years later restored all the scenes got cut when his own granddaughter was about to study it in school.

The old white men who reviewed Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist didn’t much care for it, but what do they know? They didn’t get the excellent soundtrack, couldn’t relate to the nonchalant inclusiveness, and didn’t tap in to sarcastic chemistry between the two leads. Based on the novel of the same name by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, it tells the story of Nick, the token straight guy in an all-gay band, freshly heartbroken by bitchy ex-girlfriend Tris, and Norah, the girl who falls in love sight-unseen with the guy sending frenemy Tris all those great breakup mixtapes. They meet up one night and run all over the city in pursuit of an elusive indie band called Where’s Fluffy. It’s got all the makings of great teenaged shenanigans: live bands, party rockin, neglectful parents, unlimited allowance and no curfews.
Another more recent pick, The Perks of Being A Wallflower, I somehow find charming despite my advanced years, probably because the three leads are so earnest and bright and perfect. Youth is infuriating. The fact that they don’t know a David Bowie song is double infuriating. But the teenage trappings are all there: angst, awesome dance routines, riding in cars with boys, and even Paul Rudd – although this time, he’s (tragically) not playing the heartthrob but the teacher. Oh, I feel sick to my stomach. This story is a real testament to its time – the three leads are all outcasts but get this – they’re actually cool. I know. It’s strange. Counterintuitive, even. Goes against pretty much every teenage movie we’ve ever seen. But in 2015 (and apparently as far back as 2012), it’s cool to be weird. What a revelation. John Hughes was eyeing this as his next project before he died, but in the end it was directed by the novel’s author himself (which almost never happens), Stephen Chbosky, who also got to write the screenplay.

Matt

The young adult novel is an elusive concept. When I asked Wikipedia, examples seem to include books for children (Harry Potter), teens (Twilight), and twenty-somethings (The Notebook). When I first heard about this week’s Thursday challenge, I was worried I would be choosing between Divergent and The Hunger Games but, after working on it all week, I have managed to find 3 movies worth celebrating.

Coraline- Adapted from what I just found out was a novel by Neil Gaiman, this 2009 stop-motion fantasy is as different from Disney as American animation gets. My local video store even had it filed under Horror. The bizarre alternate universe to the already bizarre regular one isn’t as perfect as it first seems when a young girl discovers that her Other Mother, although more attentive and permissive than her real mother, wants to sew buttons over her eyes. Eye phobics beware. Darkly funny, oddly beautiful, and genuinely unsettling.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy- I’m still not fully convinced that this counts but who am I to argue with Wikipedia? I’ve never read J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy but have always assumed them to be a more demanding read than most in this genre. Peter Jackson’s ambitious nine and a half hour adaptation certainly expects more of its audience than anything else I’ve watched this week. I’m counting the whole trilogy as one movie to make room for other films on the list. Besides, I am not sure I trust myself to remember what happened in which film well enough to be able to write about them all separately. Together they make up one of the great American films of this century.

The Spectacular Now- It’s hard to find a movie like this from a young adult novel. There are no vampires, wizards, or dragons. The Spectacular Now is a story of young love without the usual gimmicks. Miles Teller (Whiplash) and Shailene Woodley (Divergent) showed great promise in this adaptation of Tim Tharp’s novel in 2013 and it’s no surprise that they both got to star in higher profile movies the next year. Teller is especially good as a superficially charming teen alcoholic.

Sean

Hugo – this is a very nice love story film, fittingly brought to us by Martin Scorsese. It meanders a bit but it is an enjoyable ride, and the whole thing has a fantastical sheen. Having been to Paris and passed multiple times through Gare Montparnasse, where the movie is set, I will be watching this movie again in the very near future (I did not get to it this week because we were too busy sifting through typical apocalyptic YA filler).

Holes – it is sad that all that has gone on with Shia Leboeuf takes the focus off the movies he is in. I feel he retroactively takes something away from this movie but if you can get past that, Holes is an enjoyable story about family curses. Things wrap up a little too neatly (which I can’t believe I said because I usually love a tidy ending) but it’s an enjoyable movie nonetheless and one worth checking out.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – we have had a ton of comic book adaptations recently and of all of them, Scott Pilgrim feels most like a comic book (and that is a very good thing). It’s a fun movie with a ton of recognizable faces. I feel I’m stretching the category a bit with this pick but it has been tough this week to find anything halfway decent, and Scott Pilgrim is a favourite of mine!