#5: Pride Cometh
Death By Consumption
6/3/24 - 6/9/24
What did you get me, your favorite gay emailer, for Pride? I accept Venmo!
Last week I read gay stuff, watched gay stuff, and ate gay stuff. My job tried to ruin the first week of Pride with a slew of work, but I persevered and still found time to consume plenty. As we all know, consumption is a requirement for all queers during Pride Month Brought To You By Chase Bank and Deloitte, so I got out there and made sure I did my part!
Faggots, by Larry Kramer — paperback
I wish I were bold enough to have read this on the subway, but I really wasn't looking for the kind of attention I might get reading a book whose cover simply says "FAGGOTS" in bold red text, so this remained inside my home all week. But I had a great time reading it! Sure, it's outrageously graphic (it opens with someone getting peed on, and there's a very descriptive fisting scene that made me almost pass out because I'm a baby), but overall I found it both a hilarious satire and also a deeply depressing moral crusade. Larry Kramer seems like he wouldn't have been very fun at a party, huh!
The fact that this was written right before AIDS destroyed everything makes the book more poignant — the sense of doom throughout is unbearable at parts, as you can't help but think, "All of these boys will be dead" — but it also makes Larry's moralizing feel more grotesque. His sexual shaming of the gay community is only a couple steps removed from conservatives' belief that gays brought AIDS on ourselves, or that it was some sort of just punishment. I'm not saying Larry Kramer ever thought those things, but the fact that the book was controversial/hated by the gay community until the AIDS crisis "redeemed" it makes me feel a little queasy. AIDS didn't redeem anything, least of all the sexual scolds.
But the one thing Larry Kramer did better than anyone else was weaponize his anger, and the depth of his feeling is palpable in every page of this book. It's often compared, for better or worse, to Dancer From the Dance, and I see why, but they could not be more different. Where Dancer From the Dance is warmly ironic and gorgeously heartbreaking, like listening to Adele after a breakup, Faggots is filthy and unforgiving, like getting back on Grindr after a breakup. Dancer From the Dance is for the Instagram gays' book clubs and Fire Island shares' bookshelves, but Faggots is for the real freaks.
In retrospect, this may have been a psychotic reading choice to kick off Pride month, but here we are!
Madame Web (2024) — on Netflix
Speaking of psychotic choices! This movie is insane. I can't remember the last time I laughed this hard at a film (at, not with). The whole thing is designed to be enjoyed on an edible, because everyone involved in making it was also stoned out of their minds. Dakota Johnson spends the entire movie operating with the least amount of urgency ever captured in an action film — she'll suppress a yawn while using a chunk of shrapnel to deflect a firework, and after someone is killed in front of her she'll literally just go, "UGHHHH." Finally, a superhero on lithium!
Is the screenplay online? I feel like I need to read it, just to soak up the stunning dialogue. We're all familiar with the iconic trailer line, "He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died," which sadly didn't make the final cut, but that just left more time for bangers like: "But I don't have a neuromuscular disorder?" "My spiders! Who took my spiders!" and, "I have to go home and watch Idol," which is a line that abruptly ends an entire scene!!! (The movie inexplicably NEEDS you to know, if you take nothing else away from the film, that this is all happening in 2003 for some reason.) Why was Zosia Mamet in this movie? Happy Pride to Madame Web, and thank you for teaching me it's okay to be weird.
What a Way to Go! (1964) — on Criterion
NOW THIS IS CINEMA. I saw this was on Criterion and felt like I was going to watch it just from seeing Shirley MacLaine and Paul Newman starred in it, but it become absolutely irresistible once we watched the trailer. Have that many reveals ever been packed in a single trailer before or since? I have never gasped so many times in 3 minutes.
Thankfully, the movie lives up to the trailer's hype; pretty much every 5 minutes something happens to either make you gay gasp or go, "What???" Everyone is having an absolute blast on screen. Shirley prances around in one stunning outfit after another, Paul Newman screams at a chimpanzee while looking hotter than he's ever looked in his goddamned life, Gene Kelly risks breaking a hip with some impressive high kicks, Dick Van Dyke does the most incredible parody of silent movie acting you've ever seen, Dean Martin is tan, and Robert Mitchum has an orgy (in a role meant for Frank Sinatra)! It's a long, winding movie that veers off in a thousand zany directions, and we screamed and laughed from beginning to end. They truly don't make them like this anymore!
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) — at Nitehawk Cinema
Sadly, not as compelling as the last Mad Max film. I hate to pit women against each other (during Pride, no less!) but Anya Taylor-Joy simply doesn't have what Charlize Theron has. Where is the gravitas! I can't help but wistfully imagine someone like Kristen Stewart in this role instead, what could have been if we had had someone who can believably pistol whip Chris Hemsworth and make it hurt. But Anya's miscasting is nothing compared to Daddy Hemsworth, who just does his horrible Marvel movie schtick, alternating wildly between furious rage and slapstick bro humor, which takes you completely out of it. He's honestly less a scary villain and more an annoying loser — every time Anya has her gun aimed at him you're desperate for her to shoot him so he shuts the fuck up.
My other complaint is that there was too much plot! Do we need Furiosa's backstory? Or do we just need the bare minimum, enough to get her on the road so we can see some weird-looking dudes die on motorcycles? Still, though, like the first movie it's a wildly shot and fast-paced action movie at the core, with some absurd sequences that more than live up to those in the first movie. The centerpiece battle was 15-20 minutes long and some of the most fun I've had in the theater all year. Also, there's a fairly substantial cameo from someone who won a season of Australian Survivor, which makes me hopeful that we might get a Sandra Diaz-Twine moment in the third Mad Max film. I CAN GET WATER TOO, WHAT THE FUCK.
New York Magazine — in print
This week's NYMag was made for me, I think. First, a cover story on Andy Cohen's lawsuit-and-possibly-coke-filled relationship with the Housewives, followed by a short article on how "Survivor" has become a show about being on "Survivor," followed by a story on the psychological tortures inflicted on the casts of "Love is Blind"????? I was, as the kids say, eating this week.
For the record, my opinion on these subjects: 1) Andy Cohen is incredibly annoying but I don't believe half the allegations (many of the Housewives, AHEM Leah McSweeney, are even more annoying than Andy and are clearly peddling bullshit lawsuits for attention), but I do believe the shows have treated Housewives of color particularly poorly over the years, especially when Ramona Singer is involved; 2) "Survivor" is absolutely devouring itself, and though I hope Jeff Probst hosts it until he's in hospice (maybe even from hospice!), I do think he's out of his element as showrunner and we need a competent adult to take over; 3) "Love is Blind" has always been a horror show, which is the appeal!, but it's insane to me that producers were caught off guard when they found the least-appealing, worst men in America, paired them up with gorgeous tiny women, and then sealed them away in private resort suites with unlimited alcohol, only to discover that WHOOPS that leads to sexual assault. Who would have thought! Beyond those major, horrifying issues, I do worry on a superficial level that the show has the same problem as "Survivor" now (also the same problem as Housewives, tbh): they're all becoming shows about people who want to become famous for being on a show. Which only really works on a show like "Vanderpump Rules."
But I have a solution. Bear with me: we need to take the most beautiful, sexiest people in America and lock them in a private community, sealed from the outside world like an uncontacted Amazonian tribe, where they will live, love, and create beautiful future generations, who will know nothing of what it means to be famous or an influencer, a pure population of stunningly beautiful and extremely strange people, from which our nation's reality TV casting scouts will be able to populate our reality shows for decades to come, without any worry that they're on the show for "the wrong reasons." I just don't see any other way these shows can move forward.
Cheeseburger — at Julius'
Every time I go to Julius' bar I'm like, "Why don't I come to Julius' more?" It's one of the oldest gay bars in the city, and one of the best dives, which also serves a shockingly good burger. So last weekend, after meeting friends for too much wine in the dreaded Dimes Square, we headed up to Julius' to get a burger and, of course, onion rings. I want to say that I think every gay bar should serve food, but the thought of what some of those places would cook up is absolutely devastating to even imagine, so instead I'll just be thankful to Julius' grill cooks for bringing many gay drunks halfway back to sobriety when we needed it most.