Gay Entertainment on the Boob Tube

Netflix has occasional treasures hidden away in their mucky swamp of entertainment. Here are a trio of jewels I've stumbled across in the last couple of weeks, along with a snappy new weekly political comedy show on YouTube from D'Arcy Drollinger. Though they all have major gay characters, that is not what any of these films are about.

Straight Up was written, directed and stars James Sweeney as an OCD gay man who tries to have a romance with a woman. The premise sounds awful, but the movie is charming, and the brilliant, rapid-fire dialogue channels the best of 30s/40s screwball comedies while staying completely modern. Sweeney is likable playing the sweet, hyper-articulate young man who yearns for intimacy but doesn't much like disgusting body fluids. What lifts the movie is the casting of Katie Findlay as the too-smart-for-her-own-good aspiring actress who is Sweeney's foil, and she walks away with the movie. After years trying to get the film made through Fox, who wanted to cast "influencers" in the major roles, Sweeney went the crowdfunding route and shot the film in 20 days for about $250,000. It was on the gay festival circuit in 2019 and was just about to be released by Strand when the pandemic hit, which may be in its favor because millions rather than thousands will probably be discovering the movie now.

Netflix just released The Old Guard, an ultra-violent, superhero action film which we chose because it's always fun to watch Charlize Theron as a badass. It turns out to be an instant classic, with a layered, philosophical script from graphic novelist Greg Rucka, and brilliant direction by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who directed the acclaimed Love and Basketball in 2000. Her handling of both gender and race was more nuanced than the usual male action film, and it's to be celebrated that a black woman was not only offered her first big-budget Hollywood directing job at age 51, but she hit a home run. I won't spoil any surprises other than that there is a scene midway which is as startlingly pleasing as that moment in My Beautiful Launderette, where Daniel Day-Lewis and his Pakistani boyhood friend, in the middle of a gritty film about race and capitalism in London, suddenly French kiss each other on the street.

During Gay Pride Month, we dipped into the LGBTQ whatever section at Netflix, most of which we had already seen or never wanted to see. At the bottom of the listings were a gaggle of Asian films and TV series that all seemed to be entitled Oh My Ghost. For a comprehensive explanation, you can read Meghan O'Keefe's ‘Oh My Ghost’ on Netflix: How To Tell All Six (!!!) Titles Apart. Meaghan writes: "In 2009, Thailand put out a super bonkers horror comedy called Oh My Ghost. It’s about four “ladyboys” (i.e. drag queens) who run a boarding house for boys...Now, I tried watching a few minutes of this, but I found it so confusing that I had to stop. However, it’s a monster hit overseas, as evidenced by the fact that there are THREE sequels."

We watched the first two and were reminded that homosexuality or gender fluidity is not a sin in Thai Buddhist culture like in the patriarchal, monotheistic West. They also have a distinctly different view of the afterlife's ghosts and demons that is parodied throughout the films, which is rather like watching Virgin Mary jokes while knowing nothing about Catholic liturgy. Best of all, it plays like a scatalogical reincarnation of The Three Stooges depicted as ugly, middle-aged Thai drag queens playing female roles, with a zaftig young person stealing the show in the role of the very corporal ghost, Pancake. In the second movie, a series of scenes around the swimming pool in successively skimpier bathing suits holding in Pancake's ample frame while trying to lure a porn star demon in a Speedo into her orbit are some kind of low, vaudeville genius.

Speaking of low, vaudeville geniuses, San Francisco has one in D'Arcy Drollinger who co-owns the pandemic-shuttered Oasis nightclub at 11th and Folsom. The club has thrived over the last five years with all kinds of live theater, including genderfuck recreations of television episodes from series like The Golden Girls, Star Trek, Sex and the City, and Friends. They have put taped versions of some of those performances online at Oasis TV on YouTube which you can find by clicking here, but live theater, music, and opera does not work for me online for some reason. What does work is a 15-minute blast of irreverence that Oasis TV is producing called Hot Trash, a weekly rundown of political and celebrity culture that is smart, funny and outrageous. Some recurring bits work better than others, but "This Week in Karens," a compilation of each week's WTF whites behaving badly moments on cellphone videos, is hysterical and invaluable. D'Arcy and a wildly talented crew have recorded 8 episodes so far, and they are all worth watching. Episode 9 drops this Monday, a perfect beginning to a work week.