The Final Girl (Ep. 32 - Nightmare on Elm Street)

October 29, 2015 Matthew Baume

My guest this week is Keith Garcia: film maker, film programmer, film writer, and film-everything-er. We'll be talking about film.

Keith grew up workshipping the final girls of classic slashers: the ones who escape punishment and make it out alive. He found strength in those girls' even-keeled strength, their persistence against terrifying odds, their discipline and virtue.

And as those girls are able to evade a killer's grasp, Keith was fairly evasive himself: quiet and shy, a bit of a wallflower. He was able to blend in to escape what he feared would be negative attention.

It wasn't until a few years ago that he discovered a different kind of girl: glamorous, exciting, explosive drag queens who seized the spotlight and demanded attention. Now he's launched an ambitious new project that explores a whole new side of feminine heroism -- and of his own identity.

Here's Keith's documentary project, The Heels Have Eyes:

And my exploration of the homoeroticism of Nightmare 2:

And for a change of tone, Skatetown USA:

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

You Can't Make Us Feel Ashamed (Ep. 31 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show)

October 22, 2015 Matthew Baume

Is there any crime in giving yourself over to pleasure? No, not according to Dr. Frank N Further, as he's seducing Brad in the boudoir. And one of the great pleasures of the Rocky Horror Picture Show is its complete abandon of reason in favor of fun, and how readily audiences are willing to play along.

My guest this week is Matthew Hintzen, senior code wrangler for the app MyRadar. He found Rocky Horror in its early days: the late 70s, when the world was just discovering how strange a midnight movie could be. At the time, he was mostly closeted, struggling to find love, and on the verge of running away from home to live on the streets. A little absolute pleasure in the form of a strange movie and stranger audience was just what he needed -- but, he eventually found, there's a dangerous down side to becoming emotion's slave.

Here's a bunch of Rocky Horror delights:

And here's Hadji from Johnny Quest. Possibly a troubling depiction, racially speaking.

We also talked about An Early Frost, which I've always found melodramatic to the point of being a little hard to take seriously.

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

I Got a Kick out of Freaking People Out (Ep. 30 - Interview with the Vampire)

October 15, 2015 Matthew Baume

How do you balance wanting to be different and wanting to be liked? My guest this week is Levi Hastings, an illustrator who grew up feeling like an outcast in his tiny religious Idaho town. He could tell he was an outsider, and so he decided to lean into it: embracing anything dark and sinister and brooding.

It felt good to freak the world out with his talk of vampires and Marilyn Manson ... but it was also a little lonely. He knew there were other people like him out there in the world, he just wasn't sure where to find them. At least not until one eye-opening road trip to Seattle.

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

People Wearing Masks (Ep. 29 - Hocus Pocus)

October 8, 2015 Matthew Baume

Why is Halloween so gay? I personally have never felt a strong connection to this holiday, aside from enjoying all the candy, but for many gay men it's the most important night of the year.

This week's guest is Jamie Maurer, who you may also know as Rantasmo, host of the YouTube series Needs More Gay. He was a shy kid, given easily to social anxiety. But instead of seeking shelter from darker entertainment, he was drawn to the spooky, the unsettling, the uncomfortable. Otherworldly stories, he found, gave him the freedom to explore his discomfort with one foot in real life and one foot in fantasy. Where he could see his fears and himself in a new light.

And that might explain why Halloween appeals to so many gay men: for those of us who feel pressure to hide their true selves, it's one night of the year when we can trade one mask for another, be someone new, and scare everyone else for a change.

Here are some of the things we talked about on this episode:

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

Trust it & Thrust it (Ep. 28 - Showgirls & Ellen)

October 1, 2015 Matthew Baume

How do you make the most of being strange? My guest Patrick Bristow found a perfect solution: stop trying to fit in and lean into your strangeness.

You've almost definitely seen Patrick countless times on TV and in movies: whenever a script calls for a strangely energetic gay or gay-ish man, there's simply no one else to call. He's been the wigmaster on Seinfeld, Larry David's dance teacher on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the relentlessly bubbly Peter on Ellen. But you may know him best as the terrifying choreographer who swoops down on Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls, hollering THRUST IT into her heaving crotch.

I've watched that scene easily a dozen times. But now let's take a look at it from another angle: that of the actor crouching on the floor, bewildered by a director's command to make the lines make sense.

Here's Patrick's introduction on Ellen:

And Showgirls, of course:

And here's Puppet Up:

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

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