Screaming on the Inside, Placid on the Outside (Ep. 98 - Mary Tyler Moore)

January 26, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Chris Schleicher

How will you make it on your own? This week's guest is Chris Schleicher, who moved to a big city all by himself with some dreams, some talent, and a determination to stop living for other people. He started his career inspired by sitcoms like the Mary Tyler Moore show, and now he makes sitcoms as a writer on The Mindy Project. Season 5 starts February 14 on Hulu, and you can catch Chris on episode 513, playing "Nurse Chris."

This Week's Recommendation: Mary's Incredible Dream

We all felt the passing of Mary Tyler Moore this week, and I'm overflowing with recommendations for her work. Go to IMDB to see a ranked list of the best episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, or listen to her interviews on Fresh Air to hear about her big break on the Dick Van Dyke Show. You can find some of her more obscure appearances on YouTube, such as the variety show The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, where she begins the pilot by shrugging to the camera, "So, variety. Okay, let's give it a try."

But at the top of my list is an incredibly strange special called Mary's Incredible Dream. It aired in 1976 and stars Mary, Ben Vereen, and the Manhattan Transfer, and it's an hourlong quasi-religious musical dream sequence that is absolutely bananas, and also very very catchy. On the show, Mary and Ben and the band drift from song to song, vaguely suggesting a narrative that always seems just out of reach. My favorite part is when she talk-sings, a la Rex Harrison, through "I'm Still Here" while standing next to giant hand with a nail in it.

It's kitschy and campy and weird and jaw-dropping and also great great fun. You might feel some guilt for laughing at what was clearly a passion project for all involved, but as Mary Richards was once reminded, don't try to hold it back. Go ahead, laugh out loud.

Nothing would have made her happier.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Going to the Beach with John Waters (Ep. 97 - Peaches Christ)

January 19, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Joshua Grannell

My guest this week is Joshua Grannell, but you may know him as Peaches Christ -- the host of San Francisco's wild midnight mass shows and creator of outlandish drag exploitation films. Even as a kid, Joshua orchestrated elaborate halloween shows that his whole family got in on. And as an adult, he's crafted an entire media empire dedicated to exposing the uneasy frights that hide just below the surface of suburbia.

You can see that media empire at work on the west coast -- Joshua has an upcoming show called Legally Black, starring Bob the Drag Queen, and it's coming soon to Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. Tickets are at PeachesChrist.com .

Also, check out the podcast Gayme Bar -- that's Gayme with a Y -- I'm on the episode posted Wednesday, January 18th, sharing stories about my queer gamer community and Nintendo's gay cowboys.

This Week's Recommendation: Nightmare on Elm Street II

For this week's recommendation I hope your delicate constitution can withstand a few frights, because I'd like you to take a look at Nightmare on Elm Street II, a film that's half about a murderer invading your dreams and half about the real-life torment of the gay actor who starred in the film.

Mark Preston plays Jesse in Nightmare 2, and he is the most budding homosexual teen who ever budded. I won't itemize every homoerotic symbol in the film, because spotting them is a fun scavenger hunt. But remember, in the mid-1980s, seeing clues that you might be gay was like something out of a horror film. You could be rejected by your family, lose your home, and there was a scary epidemic just getting underway.

When I watch this film, I can't help thinking that Mark the actor must've been as afraid of his sexuality as the character Jesse is about his deadly dreams. It's not a very gory film, but the secrecy is frightening -- especially when it's a secret that could be a danger to everyone around you.

Behind the scenes, Mark's manager was telling him that he had to lie and stay closeted. He wasn't allowed to go to gay bars, or do interviews with The Advocate. He was told to dress straighter. This was at a time when many of Mark's friends and colleagues were dying of AIDS, and after a while he finally decided that he'd had enough of giving in to fear and simply walked away from acting. He came out, he became an activist, and he learned what a lot of us have discovered: that being gay is only scary if you let it be.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

A Big Purple Man in a Loin Cloth (Ep. 96 - Gargoyles)

January 12, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Fazaad Feroze

How far up your family tree would you have to go before the way your family lives became unrecognizable? My guest this week is Fazaad Feroze, whose parents grew up in huts in Guyana before moving to the United States. As you can imagine, assimilation into American culture wasn't always easy.

Check out Fazaad's lovely artwork at FazaadFeroze.com.

Also, check out the podcast Polygamer -- I'm on the episode posted Wednesday, January 11th, sharing stories about my queer gamer project PlayingWithPride.

This Week's Recommendation: Coraline

We often talk on The Sewers of Paris about the enduring appeal of dark, scary stories, so for my recommendation this week, check out the movie Coraline. It's based on the book by Neil Gaiman, and tells the story of a young girl who's dissatisfied with her boring parents. Coraline discovers a portal to an Other World, complete with copies of everyone she knows from real life, and with its bright colors and attentive adults this Other World seems better in every respect.

But of course, not all is as it seems, and Coraline's temptations are soon revealed to lead to danger -- namely, plucking out her eyes and replacing them with buttons.

I love a lot of things about this film -- namely that it's one of those kids' movies that is so creepy and alarming that it will frighten adults as much as children. There are some creatures in this movie that are truly terrifying, but what unsettles me is the reminder that happiness sometimes comes at a price, and that price is blindness.

It's the corollary to the saying that ignorance is bliss -- bliss requires some measure of ignorance. And I don't think that's something you need to feel guilty or ashamed about. It would be impossible to make it through life if you didn't anesthetize yourself every now and then.

So despite it being a super creepy movie, I actually find Coraline comforting. It reminds me that a little darkness can be good, and that closing your eyes can make you happy -- as long as you don't let them be plucked out altogether.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

A Need to be Doused in Black Culture - (Ep. 95 - Sonari Glinton)

January 5, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Sonari Glinton

When you look back on your life, who are the adults who were wiser than you realized at the time? My guest this week is NPR's Sonari Glinton. He grew up in Chicago, surrounded by amazing artists and curators who managed to steer him in the directions that were exactly what a little queer kid needed.

This Week's Recommendation: Frank Sinatra's letter to George Michael

For my recommendation this week, do a search for Frank Sinatra George Michael. Sadly, you will not find them doing a duet together, which would have been awesome. But you will find a letter that Sinatra wrote to George Michael in 1990. At the time, George had just done an interview with a magazine about how he didn't like the pressure of celebrity. Sinatra, in response, wrote a letter (on a typewriter!) expressing his disbelief that "he wants to quit doing what tons of gifted youngsters all over the world would shoot grandma for."

Sinatra's advice was to "loosen up" and "be grateful to carry the baggage we've all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments."

The letter concludes "talent must not be wasted. ... Those who have talent must hug it, embrace it, nurture it and share it lest it be taken away from you as fast as it was loaned to you."

Now, to be fair, Frank didn't always take this advice to heart. When he married Mia Farrow, he famously demanded that she give up her acting career to be a wife. Her response was to be in the movie Rosemary's Baby, and that was the end of that relationship.

So I guess we should take Frank's advice like Mia Farrow did -- and like George Michael, whose solo career was just launching when he got that letter. Whatever your talent is, you can either choose to pass it up, or pass it along to everyone around you.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

About The Sewers of Paris

The Sewers of Paris is a podcast about how queer lives are shaped by our favorite books, movies, music, and shows. Each week, guests open up about their secret struggles, hidden passions, and surprising triumphs by plucking a piece of entertainment from their past and answering the question: What’s the entertainment that changed your life?

About Defining Marriage

Each week on Defining Marriage, hosts Matt Baume and James Morris chat about what's happening with marriage equality, featuring frequent digressions into pop culture, silly banter, and the jokes and quibbles that have kept them together as a couple for over a decade.

The first eighteen episodes of the podcast contain the complete audiobook version of the book Defining Marriage, which traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it, featuring personal insights from the lives of Evan Wolfson, Dan Savage, Ken Mehlman, Dustin Lance Black, and many more.

About Matt's So-Cast Pod

Revisit the iconic '90s drama My So-Called Life, one episode at a time. Every week, host Matt Baume & his guests delve into the teen angst, the grown-up turmoil, and the endless flannel of the 90s -- and examine the show's impact on television and our lives.