Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, Welcome to this spooky Halloween episode of Humming
Speaker 1: Out Pod. I am your spooky host, Lauren.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited about this episode.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a special episode because I realized that,
Speaker 1: so Halloween's on a Thursday this year. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this when it comes.
Speaker 2: Out, it is eve of Halloween.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a thing, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a day before Halloween. And I was like, I should
Speaker 1: do a thematic episode. But before we jump into it, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm also doing a thematic queer root shout out.
Speaker 2: Shout out to you if your queer root.
Speaker 1: Is the nineteen ninety five live action Casper movie.
Speaker 3: This is a big one for some people because it's
Speaker 3: fifteen year old Christina Ricci and seventeen year old Devin's
Speaker 3: soa not the voice of Casper, but the visual manifestation
Speaker 3: of Casper.
Speaker 1: So many young folks had clear awakenings seeing this movie.
Speaker 1: Also many women who later went on to realize that
Speaker 1: they were actually lesbian's. Initially young Devin Saul. We've had
Speaker 1: this discussion on the podcast many times. But just like
Speaker 1: young Leo DiCaprio and many others of that ILK is
Speaker 1: like a very good starter boy crush if you then
Speaker 1: eventually realize like, oh that wasn't I see what that was?
Speaker 2: So yeah, shout out to you.
Speaker 1: If either Baby Christiana, reach your Baby Devin SAA and
Speaker 1: Casper stirred some queer ghostly feet or the ghost I
Speaker 1: don't want to judge. Maybe you thought Cgi Casper was hot.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Anyway, check out the movie Casper.
Speaker 4: Yo.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is like half Reducs episode but not really.
Speaker 2: But what I mean is that I have.
Speaker 1: Two guests today, one of whom has previously been on
Speaker 1: the podcast. I am here with BJ and Harmony Colangelo.
Speaker 2: Aka the Wives Colangelo. Hi, Welcome to both of you.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hi, this.
Speaker 2: Is so thrilling.
Speaker 1: So for those who maybe are newer to the podcast
Speaker 1: or maybe you don't listen to every single episode, BJ
Speaker 1: was on all the way back in March of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. It's episode one ninety one. BJ tells her
Speaker 1: coming out story and we I honestly, if you haven't
Speaker 1: heard that episode, pause this one.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Go back listen to the first like ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes of bj solo episode because she gives such a
Speaker 1: great primer on queer horror and how queerness and the
Speaker 1: horror genre are just like intrinsically linked. It goes all
Speaker 1: the way back like to like Dracula, Mary Shelley, bram Stalker,
Speaker 1: like all of this stuff. It was such an interesting
Speaker 1: conversation and as I mentioned during that episode, I am
Speaker 1: a huge scaredy cat. I absolutely cannot watch scary movies,
Speaker 1: and so I've missed out on a huge chunk of
Speaker 1: like queerness, I feel like because I can't see any
Speaker 1: of the movies that people are talking about, and especially
Speaker 1: in recent years, there have been.
Speaker 2: Like so many.
Speaker 1: I do always watch the compilations that people make of
Speaker 1: like the smooching moments, so like I cannot see Haunting
Speaker 1: a Fly and Manner, but I've seen all of the kissing.
Speaker 2: Scenes in it.
Speaker 1: Thank you YouTubers who do that for people like me.
Speaker 2: But so, so that's BJ and then Harmony.
Speaker 1: You get mentioned a lot in that episode because you
Speaker 1: two are in surprise.
Speaker 5: She talks about me all the time.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, it's very true.
Speaker 1: But so you're both podcasters, you're writers, you both do
Speaker 1: film theory, you are the co of This ends a
Speaker 1: prom which we will plug at the end, and You're
Speaker 1: also the co writers of sleep Away Camp from Die
Speaker 1: Die Books.
Speaker 2: So y'all really know your queer horror.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to have you both on to talk about, Yeah,
Speaker 1: some movies that you enjoy, just like just get us
Speaker 1: in the mood for Halloween. And so I always say,
Speaker 1: you know, how did I identify? That's kind of my catchphrase,
Speaker 1: b J. The last time you were on this is
Speaker 1: like two and a half years ago, we talked about
Speaker 1: you were using the word lesbian, but we talked about
Speaker 1: your kind of storied history with lesbian and like, how yeah,
Speaker 1: so is that does that still feel true for you
Speaker 1: as an identifier?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, it definitely still is an identifier. If anything,
Speaker 4: I've only gotten more aggressive about it because as the
Speaker 4: unfortunate reality of transphobia just you know, getting a little
Speaker 4: kickstart thanks to the political discourse, I've gotten more aggressive
Speaker 4: about affirming that I am a lesbian and if anyone
Speaker 4: has a problem with that, they can uh suck it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so you heard that here, problem that suck
Speaker 1: at Yeah, it's true, even though it's like margin of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two doesn't sound like that long ago, but
Speaker 1: it's like, oh yeah, things have gotten worse since then,
Speaker 1: just in general.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, cool, glad, we're moving in a positive reaction.
Speaker 1: You also mentioned self described as a green haired swamp
Speaker 1: queen goddess.
Speaker 2: Does this still feel true? Hair is still green?
Speaker 4: Okay to chest, still swampy, still a goddess, and so harmony.
Speaker 1: Your hair is not green, but it is a different color,
Speaker 1: not found in nature.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but blue is found in nature. It's just I
Speaker 5: think the rarest color found in nature, and certainly it
Speaker 5: is not a hair color. I'm the kind of blue
Speaker 5: hair that makes in cells tend to stereotype people be like,
Speaker 5: h those blue haired libs.
Speaker 2: That is so true.
Speaker 1: That has become the like catch all phrase they do
Speaker 1: say blue hair.
Speaker 2: Look at that. I love that.
Speaker 5: Confront them, hat on, I did it before it was cool.
Speaker 1: Reclaim it well, harmony, Other other than blue hair, how
Speaker 1: do you identify Since we didn't get to hear that
Speaker 1: back in March of twenty two.
Speaker 5: I'm a trans woman. Bisexuality is a like to fuck
Speaker 5: my wife. And that's about it. We keep it vague.
Speaker 2: There's nothing to add to that.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful, perfect, okay, okay, so we are going to
Speaker 1: jump right into this episode, and it's sort of going
Speaker 1: to be like very free flowy format wise, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I emailed Bjay to be like, do you both want
Speaker 1: to come on and talk queer horror? Because I can't,
Speaker 1: and so I'd love for you just to tell me
Speaker 1: about yeah, like specific movies or your or what drew
Speaker 1: you both to it, your relationship to it, just like
Speaker 1: any horror stuff. What does someone like me, a queer
Speaker 1: person who is very entrenched in like queer culture but
Speaker 1: not at all entrenched in queer horror, Like, where do
Speaker 1: I start?
Speaker 2: What do I need to know?
Speaker 1: What do I do for this current Halloween that is approaching?
Speaker 5: I mean, quite frankly, I think there's no better time
Speaker 5: to get into queer horror than now, because there's never
Speaker 5: been more of it than this.
Speaker 1: Why I have felt that so strongly lately, And it's
Speaker 1: like I never used to feel that sort of on
Speaker 1: the outside. It was like, yeah, I'd never seen Jennifer's body,
Speaker 1: which was like every time I say that, people are like, ooh,
Speaker 1: of you never And I'm like, I've watched the kissing
Speaker 1: scene on YouTube, like I've seen the important part, but
Speaker 1: in the most like I don't know even just past
Speaker 1: five years, there has suddenly been so much. And I
Speaker 1: think around the time of Body's Body's Bodies was when
Speaker 1: I started to really feel like.
Speaker 2: Kind of left out of this whole thing.
Speaker 1: And then I saw the TV glow most recently, I was.
Speaker 2: Like, I'm really I'm missing.
Speaker 1: Out on discourse like so, so yeah, it feels.
Speaker 5: Like discourse there was with that one.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, I read a Wikipedia synopsis of that movie,
Speaker 1: which is what I sometimes do with horror movies. I'll
Speaker 1: read the full Wikipedia entry to try to yeah, because
Speaker 1: I can't watch them, but I want to know what
Speaker 1: people are talking about.
Speaker 2: So that's for that one.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I would saying I think the basics that
Speaker 4: you need to know when it comes to queer horror is,
Speaker 4: like I said on my first go round, the absolute
Speaker 4: building blocks and foundational texts of the genre are either
Speaker 4: made by queer people or they are queer stories. We
Speaker 4: sort of talked about like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley,
Speaker 4: all of these like old Gothic writers, but we didn't
Speaker 4: talk as much about how when you look at like
Speaker 4: the very very early films, usually that's the universal monster movies.
Speaker 4: That's sort of where every horror film branches off from
Speaker 4: like you can trace every horror movie, doesn't matter how weird,
Speaker 4: how interesting, how creative and artistic it's coming out today,
Speaker 4: you can trace all of them back to one of
Speaker 4: the universal monster movies in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 4: And a lot of those movies were directed by people
Speaker 4: who either were openly gay, but the Hayes Code was
Speaker 4: going on, so they couldn't actually tell gay stories, so
Speaker 4: instead they would hide gay stories in monster texts. And
Speaker 4: the Hayes Code also required that if there was like
Speaker 4: a monster or you know, something that was taboo, that
Speaker 4: they had to be punished for it, because we love censorship.
Speaker 4: But that meant that a lot of these directors got
Speaker 4: very very creative in how they were coding things, how
Speaker 4: they were slipping things in subtextually. So the history of
Speaker 4: queerness and horror is often the history of queerness as
Speaker 4: the monstrous and people embracing the monstrous as well. If
Speaker 4: society's gonna see me in this way, then I'm gonna
Speaker 4: embrace it, and I'm gonna ruin all of your lives.
Speaker 4: And there's something very delicious and fun about that that is,
Speaker 4: you know, very exciting. Like I think I talked about
Speaker 4: on the last one like you look like lesbian vampire
Speaker 4: movies from the nineteen seventies, and everyone's like in a
Speaker 4: castle with gorgeous cloria, they're sexy, and two right, like,
Speaker 4: how am I supposed to see myself as the villain here?
Speaker 4: This is aspirational as far as I'm concerned. Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: but the influence of queer creators and horror has never
Speaker 4: gone away. It has been consistent, even if it's not
Speaker 4: always on Front Street. The easiest people to point to,
Speaker 4: I think now for like contemporary horror is there's two
Speaker 4: like main main figures here, the first one being Kevin Williamson,
Speaker 4: who you're if you're a scaredy cat. He created Dawson's Creek,
Speaker 4: You're welcome. But he's also the writer of movies like
Speaker 4: The Faculty and Teaching Missus Tingle and I Know What
Speaker 4: You Did Last Summer and most importantly Scream. And he
Speaker 4: is an out gay man, has been an out gay
Speaker 4: man forever. So you look at like the nineties horor cycle,
Speaker 4: everything was either emulating or in response to movies Kevin
Speaker 4: Williamson made, so like this gay man is controlling the
Speaker 4: entire genre. And then the other really big one here
Speaker 4: is Don Mancini. Dun uh daddy, daddy do.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of those, so.
Speaker 5: You have heard of his work because Don's known for
Speaker 5: one thing.
Speaker 4: So most slasher franchises will have like a really great
Speaker 4: outing at first, and then the subsequent sequels will turn
Speaker 4: into a hot ass mess. And it's usually because new.
Speaker 5: Writer, single one of them is written to be the
Speaker 5: last one, and then a new writer has to come
Speaker 5: along and a new director comes along and they go
Speaker 5: fuck like, they blew him up? How do I bring
Speaker 5: him back?
Speaker 2: Oh? Gotcha? Okay, okay, cool cool cool? Yes. So it's
Speaker 2: like the Jason and.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, Jason, Michael Myers all of this. So it'll
Speaker 4: be a new writer, a new director, new cast, and
Speaker 4: it's just they become a mess. They're delightful messes, but
Speaker 4: they become a mess. There's one major of like the
Speaker 4: major major horror franchises where that doesn't happen, and it's
Speaker 4: Child's Play or the Chucky franchise, which has which has
Speaker 4: had Don Mancini a part of it since the very beginning.
Speaker 4: So all seven Chucky movies were excluding the remake that's
Speaker 4: not that's its own thing, but all seven of the
Speaker 4: Chucky movies and all three seasons of the Chucky series
Speaker 4: are written or show run by Don Mancini, so he
Speaker 4: has had a control of this narrative the entire time,
Speaker 4: and as time has gone on, Don Mancini has made
Speaker 4: the series gayer and gayer and gayer. Yeah, like Eat
Speaker 4: of Chucky, it has a non binary character.
Speaker 5: So like, that's cool. In the TV show, he does
Speaker 5: a boundary union with the cast. It gets like, Chucky
Speaker 5: is a guy who's just like, I've got a non
Speaker 5: binary kid. I'm not a monster. I love my kid.
Speaker 5: And it's like, Chucky, You're a piece of shit. Charles
Speaker 5: Lee raised an asshole and yet he still loves his kid.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that reminds me of when I watched the
Speaker 1: movie Vice and Dick Cheney has the scene and I.
Speaker 2: Was like, god, damn it.
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney was a good father to his lesson and daughter. Wait,
Speaker 1: so and Jennifer Tilly, Wait is it Jennifer or Meg?
Speaker 2: It's Jennifer?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, Meg in the show.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm glad she's working.
Speaker 2: You never seen.
Speaker 5: Universe is wide and bountiful.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Tilly's been in since the beginning, Is that right?
Speaker 2: Is she old school Chucky.
Speaker 5: She's been here since Bride of Chucky, where she is
Speaker 5: the titular ride of Chucky. She is she plays Tiffany.
Speaker 1: And so did and Gina Gershan like came on the
Speaker 1: show as Sean Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah joey pants. And is the guy what is his name?
Speaker 2: Don don vancy? Is he queer?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What's okay?
Speaker 2: Okay? So he okay?
Speaker 1: So he's in the grand tradition of And that's really
Speaker 1: interesting because so when did the Chucky franchise start?
Speaker 2: Is it early two thousands?
Speaker 4: Is a late nineties?
Speaker 2: Like eight Holy crap? So this guy has lived through watching.
Speaker 1: Queerness like become like even trendy unpopular, Like, so what
Speaker 1: a cool opportunity for an hour queer man to get to.
Speaker 2: Like do stuff in his movie? Was it?
Speaker 1: So it's like it used to be subverted maybe in
Speaker 1: the movies and now is like at the fourth it
Speaker 1: was a little bit.
Speaker 4: More subtle in the in the early film. So, like,
Speaker 4: the Chucky franchise is sort of in like four categories.
Speaker 4: There's the first three movies, which are kind of like
Speaker 4: traditional slasher movies, uh, you know, from the eighties and
Speaker 4: early nineties. Then you have Bride and Seed, which is
Speaker 4: where they get really campy and like the queerness definitely
Speaker 4: gets put on front street. Like there's a gay character
Speaker 4: in Bride of Chucky that was kind of unheard of.
Speaker 4: Alexis Arquette is in Bride of Chucky, then you bless
Speaker 4: her rip. Then you get to Seed of Chucky, where
Speaker 4: you're introduced to Chucky and Tiffany's child, who in that
Speaker 4: movie is going by Glenn and Glenda, but it's they them.
Speaker 4: Then you get to the Curse and Cult of Chucky movies,
Speaker 4: which is sort of like a return to form in
Speaker 4: the late twentys early twenty tens. And then you get
Speaker 4: the sci fi series, which is putting together all three
Speaker 4: of those eras of Chucky into one thing and to
Speaker 4: your point where you're like, it's really cool that this
Speaker 4: out gay man has gotten to see, you know, queerness
Speaker 4: become trendy by the time we get to the series.
Speaker 4: The lead character in it is an out gay teenager
Speaker 4: who comes across the Chucky doll and so the whole
Speaker 4: series is centered around a gay teenager. So he went
Speaker 4: from having to like sneak in his little queerness, you know,
Speaker 4: subtextually at the early part of the franchise to now
Speaker 4: this is the lead role, like the lead romance in
Speaker 4: the series are two young gay boys.
Speaker 2: My god, and that's over like decades.
Speaker 1: That's really cool because like I didn't know, like what
Speaker 1: you were saying about how most of these franchises that
Speaker 1: exist for so long, it's like a full different you know, writer,
Speaker 1: director team like et cetera, et cetera. But so for
Speaker 1: one person to get to go on that journey, that's like,
Speaker 1: good for this guy. I just found out this person exists,
Speaker 1: and now I'm like, oh, good for done. That's really
Speaker 1: a love boy.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, well that is something I'd love to ask
Speaker 1: about because it's like.
Speaker 2: This transition from queer.
Speaker 1: Characters in Horror being the I feel like first they
Speaker 1: were like the straight up, like aligned villains, like they
Speaker 1: are bad, and then they start to become the cooler,
Speaker 1: sexy villains, which is like when.
Speaker 2: You were talking about with the lesbian vampires and stuff.
Speaker 1: But like, so now we've moved into like queer people
Speaker 1: being like the protagonists, like the heroes.
Speaker 2: So what's that what been like?
Speaker 1: Because it's like our our queer characters still are like
Speaker 1: straight people the villains now or is everybody queer? Like
Speaker 1: what how did that transition from like villain a protagonist?
Speaker 5: Like, well, it's always been like it's been a reflection
Speaker 5: of like how society views queer people over time. Time
Speaker 5: you get to the seventies with the you know, disillusion
Speaker 5: of the Hayes code, that's when stuff got Like seventies
Speaker 5: directors were just on something and it was usually cocaine,
Speaker 5: and they just went balls to the wall with every
Speaker 5: choice they ever made. Everything became the most of everything,
Speaker 5: and it's maybe the most dynamic and interesting decade for cinema.
Speaker 5: But that's where you started to get like the less
Speaker 5: in vampire movies of the seventies. That's where you started
Speaker 5: to get like the Hammer horror films, where like vampires
Speaker 5: were coming back after being kind of sidelined for a
Speaker 5: long time. You know, you had your Abbitt and Castello
Speaker 5: met the universal monsters, and then Hammer brought back all
Speaker 5: of the monsters in new violent, neon blood sexy ways.
Speaker 5: But by the time you get to the eighties, things
Speaker 5: have to kind of go underground again because of the
Speaker 5: AIDS epidemic, So then stuff becomes coded again, and then
Speaker 5: the nineties is kind of the runoff of that, it's
Speaker 5: very homophobic, and then by the time you start to
Speaker 5: get out of the two thousands, you get to see
Speaker 5: more consistent queer characters getting to be the heroes, because
Speaker 5: that's where we have finally come full circle. And normally
Speaker 5: you get the response of like the nineties and the
Speaker 5: two thousands being extremely homophobic in the mainstream, and horror
Speaker 5: has never really been the mainstream, but it does tend
Speaker 5: to be appreciated in select instances by the mainstream. I
Speaker 5: don't think you're gonna get to the point where we're
Speaker 5: ever going to cycle back to movies being as blatantly
Speaker 5: homophobic as they were during that era, despite being what
Speaker 5: it is now. So yeah, I mean probably maybe the
Speaker 5: next big change will be we'll go back to getting
Speaker 5: more gay monsters, which I'd be fine with as long
Speaker 5: as you're doing something right.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm wondering, because it's like, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: like it's so great that we have queer protagonists, but
Speaker 1: on the other end, we talked PJ in your first
Speaker 1: episode about how like villains are always like coolers.
Speaker 2: What you kind of don't want to lose that ass totally.
Speaker 5: Oh there was the period of like the model Minority,
Speaker 5: where gay people weren't allowed to be interesting characters and
Speaker 5: the queer monsters the best. And it's also like the
Speaker 5: best tool for telling queer stories, I think, because queerness
Speaker 5: exists in a hetero world and therefore you're an outsider,
Speaker 5: and in many cases that would make you monstrous. So
Speaker 5: that is a far more compelling story than just being
Speaker 5: like everyone gets along, there's no monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, god it is.
Speaker 6: It's so complicated, and like with the Scream franchise, because
Speaker 6: this is one where i've actually I mean I saw
Speaker 6: all the originals like that I could handle for whatever reason,
Speaker 6: because it was like.
Speaker 1: Funny and silly and I don't know if campy is
Speaker 1: the right word, but like I did see all the
Speaker 1: original what was it like four or something, but I
Speaker 1: haven't seen any of the new ones, and my memory
Speaker 1: of the original Scream movies, I don't remember any overt clearness.
Speaker 1: And then I just not pick up my stuff about one. Okay,
Speaker 1: sure's you neither revisit that one. Yeah, that's like a
Speaker 1: subtle like these guys are really good friends kind of
Speaker 1: vibe this, Okay.
Speaker 4: It is very much that sort of relationship. There's actually
Speaker 4: a very famous scene in Scream After you know, spoiler
Speaker 4: alert for a very old movie that where you know,
Speaker 4: Billy and st so Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich are
Speaker 4: like tormenting Nev Campbell's Sydney and you have Matthew Lillard
Speaker 4: like hanging on the shoulder of Skeet Ulrich. That image
Speaker 4: gets used a lot as like, oh, look at they're
Speaker 4: just boys. They're just friends. They're just guys being friends.
Speaker 4: And it is almost identical to a shot in my
Speaker 4: favorite movie of all time, nineteen eighty five's Fright Night,
Speaker 4: which is a super gay vampire movie with Chris Randan,
Speaker 4: where there is a like, again almost an identical scene
Speaker 4: where Chris Irannon is hanging over the shoulder of his
Speaker 4: quote unquote Renfield type is familiar Billy, and you're just like, oh,
Speaker 4: I see this, I see what happened here.
Speaker 1: That's like a direct homage.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Like it's exactly the same thing. And like
Speaker 4: there's also something very inherently gay just about Dracula and
Speaker 4: Renfield in general, because Downfield is his you know, his
Speaker 4: his little.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's call it what it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Okay, right, okay, And so a lot of those
Speaker 4: things are just like trickled in throughout the genre. And
Speaker 4: there's something I want to say, and this is a
Speaker 4: very controversial take, but got to hear me on this.
Speaker 4: So I assume you've heard of the barrier gaye trope
Speaker 4: or like you know that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, the barrier gaze.
Speaker 1: Can you really briefly like give an elevator not a pitch?
Speaker 2: We don't description for those who familiar, right.
Speaker 4: Right, So the barrier gaye trope is basically a trend
Speaker 4: in film and television where gay people die, usually to
Speaker 4: push forward the narrative of either another gay person. We
Speaker 4: have to torture one gay person by killing their lover,
Speaker 4: or it's going to pay forward, yes I e. Buffy,
Speaker 4: that's the like the most egregious example, or it's going
Speaker 4: to push forth the narrative of like the well meaning
Speaker 4: straight ally of like oh no, my gay friend is
Speaker 4: dead and now I have to act a certain way.
Speaker 4: That trope is very real. It is very problematic. However,
Speaker 4: Comma it does not apply to the horror genre because
Speaker 4: death is the point in this genre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, And that's a great point that I had
Speaker 1: not thought of.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So like Blind Manner, for example, that is one that
Speaker 4: people point to all the time and they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: I love this series, but I hate that it fulfills
Speaker 4: the barrier gaze trope, and it's like, this is a
Speaker 4: movie about like, this is a series why people dying
Speaker 4: and becoming ghosts. That's everyone is going to die and
Speaker 4: become ghosts. That's the whole point. It doesn't become barrier
Speaker 4: gaze just because these characters happen to be gay. When
Speaker 4: everyone's gonna die and become ghosts's like that's the point.
Speaker 4: So that is where like queer horror discourse gets very frustrating.
Speaker 4: This is where it gets into kind of like the
Speaker 4: model minority situation of people getting upset when gay characters
Speaker 4: die in horror movies, where it's like, Okay, I see
Speaker 4: what you're saying. I get it. It does suck, however,
Speaker 4: everyone dies.
Speaker 5: Except like, I just want people to have a fighting chance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe let's not have them be the very first
Speaker 1: person who like, let's know a little more about them
Speaker 1: before they.
Speaker 2: That's exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's such a good point because we did have
Speaker 1: a really good discussion in your first episode Bay about
Speaker 1: context and how we have lost almost all of that incurrent,
Speaker 1: like especially online. So that's a really good point for
Speaker 1: the context of herr. It's like, we have to be
Speaker 1: a little more lenient because, yeah, the landscape is death,
Speaker 1: so let's not freak out one queer characters exist in
Speaker 1: that landscape.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a really good point.
Speaker 4: And like so there have been attempts to sort of,
Speaker 4: you know, course correct what people view as like a
Speaker 4: very problematic history, which I understand. But the one of
Speaker 4: the examples I like to bring up to people is
Speaker 4: a few years ago there was the slasher movie They
Speaker 4: Slash Them, which is an almost exclusively queer cast written
Speaker 4: directed by John Logan, who is, you know, an Academy
Speaker 4: Award winning openly gay screenwriter, and he very much approached
Speaker 4: this as like, I wanted to make a horror movie for,
Speaker 4: you know, the kids that I was hanging out with
Speaker 4: when I was young, like the young queer kids who
Speaker 4: get to be heroes, get to be champions. And it's
Speaker 4: like that is such a great idea. But there feels
Speaker 4: like there are no stakes in that movie because I
Speaker 4: never actually believe any of these characters are in trouble
Speaker 4: because I don't think this movie is going to kill
Speaker 4: any of the gay characters, and therefore I don't like
Speaker 4: the threat. Then suddenly doesn't exist anymore. Like you can
Speaker 4: care about characters, but you also need to care about
Speaker 4: whether or not they live or die. And if I
Speaker 4: don't feel like there's a threat here, then it's harder
Speaker 4: to connect.
Speaker 5: I mean, in staid, there isn't in that movie, but yes,
Speaker 5: there literally isn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so's tough threat.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So that's a movie that I like to point to
Speaker 4: in that Like when people say like, oh, I just
Speaker 4: hate it when they all die or I hate this,
Speaker 4: I hate that, it's like, okay, well here's a movie
Speaker 4: where they don't die. And everyone hated this movie, and
Speaker 4: like a lot of people bash the hell out of
Speaker 4: that movie. And it's like, well, they gave you what
Speaker 4: people have been asking for in the discourse minds uh,
Speaker 4: he punched your car outs. They gave you what you
Speaker 4: asked for, and this is why you don't like it.
Speaker 4: You need to have those stakes, You need to have
Speaker 4: that investment in these characters. You need to be able
Speaker 4: to to mourn these characters. There's there's a quote that
Speaker 4: Roger Ebert said an interview that gets used a lot,
Speaker 4: which is that movies are machines that generate empathy. If
Speaker 4: you do not give people a reason to like invest
Speaker 4: in these characters and care about them, then you're not
Speaker 4: going to be able to generate empathy for them. And
Speaker 4: so horror, I think, is one of the great mediums
Speaker 4: we have to teach people one how to empathize and
Speaker 4: invest in the suffering of other people and want to
Speaker 4: see them survive. But it also gives you a playground, essentially,
Speaker 4: to learn to navigate your own negative emotions because a
Speaker 4: lot of people. You know, I'm not saying that everybody
Speaker 4: needs to watch horror, of course not, but I do
Speaker 4: think that because horror is such a wide genre, there
Speaker 4: are movies for everyone. You just have to, you know,
Speaker 4: have somebody curate for you. Take some baby steps. Don't
Speaker 4: throw yourself into the deep end and be like, well,
Speaker 4: I don't like horror, but let's see what hell rasor
Speaker 4: is all about, Like, don't do that to yourself.
Speaker 3: But but but it's so gooy and sexy and fun.
Speaker 4: And based on gay sn m clubs.
Speaker 1: Yes really, rather the one where he has pins in
Speaker 1: his face?
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, okay, and.
Speaker 5: Like, oh yeah, it's done by Clive Barker. Clive Barker
Speaker 5: also did Night Breed. If you're gonna watch it, yeah,
Speaker 5: you need to watch the director's cut because it's fire
Speaker 5: superior version, arguably one of the best directs cuts ever made.
Speaker 5: He did Midnight Meat Train. He you know, is responsible
Speaker 5: as Hell's Midnight Meat Train.
Speaker 4: It's Midnight b Train where Bradley Cooper becomes obsessed with
Speaker 4: a man named after a piece of wood y.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Clive Barker just does whatever he wants. He's a
Speaker 5: maniac queer.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh yeah, super sick.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything, but this is so.
Speaker 1: I know the name Clive Barker, but I did not.
Speaker 2: I had no This is really I am mister.
Speaker 5: There's also the new Hell Raiser, which stars Jamie Clayton
Speaker 5: as the Priest aka Pinhead, which means you get now
Speaker 5: trans cenobites and they kind of never had a gender.
Speaker 5: That was the point. But like that's an extra layer
Speaker 5: of queerness. It's like you've put three hats on this hat.
Speaker 1: It's great, Okay, this is wild. I had no idea
Speaker 1: Hell Raiser was queer. I just knew about the pin
Speaker 1: The pin person with Pinhead is the.
Speaker 2: Night of that character.
Speaker 5: That's what everyone calls it.
Speaker 4: That makes free pihead whatever you want to call it. Okay,
Speaker 4: But yeah, the aesthetics of the Cenobites, which are these
Speaker 4: you know, demons where pain and pleasure are one and
Speaker 4: the same, they are definitely modeled after the gay sn
Speaker 4: M clubs that Clive Barker used to go to. They're
Speaker 4: all wearing leather and chains and you know, terrorizing each
Speaker 4: other for the funzies. It's super super.
Speaker 1: Good, Okay, L I had no idea. Oh and wait,
Speaker 1: what I was going to ask earlier is the modern Scream.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they're not reboots. I guess because
Speaker 2: they're I mean, it's in there.
Speaker 1: Can the sequels there were just like kids, we call
Speaker 1: them like sequels.
Speaker 2: Oh, I like that, but.
Speaker 1: There was like a big gap right in between, like yeah,
Speaker 1: and so are the new ones like overtly overtly queer
Speaker 1: like queer characters or like what's he doing with those
Speaker 1: new ones now that he can in a way that
Speaker 1: he couldn't, And like, you.
Speaker 4: Know what's fascinating is the new ones. Suscream five and
Speaker 4: six come from the film collect known as Radio silence.
Speaker 4: They also made an incredible movie called Ready or Not
Speaker 4: that people love because it's Samorrow Weaving covered in blood
Speaker 4: in a wedding dress and screaming.
Speaker 5: It's funny.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very funny. So you've seen that image. You've
Speaker 4: seen that. They also did Abigail this year, the Valleria
Speaker 4: Vampire movie. But in Scream five and six they introduce
Speaker 4: the character of Mindy Meeks. She has a second last
Speaker 4: name I can never remember, but she's related to Jamie
Speaker 4: Kennedy's character, Randy Meeks. That's that's their uncle because their
Speaker 4: mom is Heather Modarazzo's character from Scream two, So you
Speaker 4: know Heather Madarazzo lesbian icon. Incredible, yes, but the kids,
Speaker 4: the kids are twins and one of them is played
Speaker 4: by Jasmine Savoy Brown and in Scream six has a girlfriend.
Speaker 4: So it's very, very very openly queer. And then in
Speaker 4: the next movie for Scream seven, which we don't know what,
Speaker 4: there's been a lot of chaos behind the scenes. His
Speaker 4: own I have read about can of Worms. Yeah, shout out,
Speaker 4: Melissa Brera, You're a real one. But Kevin Williamson is
Speaker 4: now taking over to direct Scream seven rather than just
Speaker 4: you know, be the guy who wrote the original screenplay
Speaker 4: and created this world. He's now directing Scream seven, okay,
Speaker 4: and so I'm very curious to see like what he's
Speaker 4: going to do with this world, if there's going to
Speaker 4: be a new queer character, what we're gonna see, like
Speaker 4: we just we just don't know yet, okay.
Speaker 1: Ooh that's cool.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of I mean, I want y'all
Speaker 1: to talk about whichever movies.
Speaker 2: You want to talk about.
Speaker 1: I know I'd mentioned in my email the ones that
Speaker 1: were really in my face on social media were Bodies,
Speaker 1: Body's Bodies, and I saw the TV glow like with
Speaker 1: those any thoughts feelings like those. That was when I
Speaker 1: felt like everyone was talking about movies not necessary, like
Speaker 1: it seeped out of queer Twitter for me, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is like everywhere, these movies are
Speaker 1: like making us splash or whatever the kids.
Speaker 4: I'll talk that, I'll talk Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, and that
Speaker 4: that one was so fun because the queerness is so casual.
Speaker 4: It's not part of you know, the plot, like it
Speaker 4: is part of the plot in the sense that like
Speaker 4: it's a couple and you're, you know, watching this couple
Speaker 4: that have, you know, not the easiest relationship going on,
Speaker 4: and for that to just be right, for that to
Speaker 4: be treated as just like normal matter of fact. I
Speaker 4: was like, Oh, that's really nice. That's like a nice
Speaker 4: little addition here. And the fact is like their love
Speaker 4: and their relationship is part of it, but it's not
Speaker 4: about it, which I And then as far as I
Speaker 4: saw the TV glow is concerned, I guess that's more
Speaker 4: of a harmony wheelhouse.
Speaker 5: But harmony is an eagle on merit.
Speaker 4: Harmony is a very unpopular opinion about I saw the.
Speaker 2: Tea well, I'd love to hear.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear an unpopular opinion, if you
Speaker 1: I know, like I know, giving an unpopular opinion is
Speaker 1: like opening yourself up.
Speaker 2: To very angry fans.
Speaker 5: But yeah, no, yes, I mean I watched that. I'd
Speaker 5: been I'd been dreading that movie because the previous film
Speaker 5: by Jane Shoon bra We're All Going to the World's Fair,
Speaker 5: was toploitely say, not my cup of tea, And I
Speaker 5: was not a terrible fan, but I do kind of
Speaker 5: respect the scrappiness of that movie, which is fair. I
Speaker 5: was not looking forward to I saw the TV glow.
Speaker 5: I was dreading it when it was doing festival circuits
Speaker 5: because if I like it, that's fine. If I'm mediocre
Speaker 5: on it, that won't end well. If I hate it,
Speaker 5: that's very bad. Sure, sure, this is a matter of
Speaker 5: I think it's bad. It's a matter of that means
Speaker 5: either I say nothing, or I say or I heard
Speaker 5: a lot of people's feelings.
Speaker 1: Well, this is the curse of like being a queer
Speaker 1: person talking about I was gonna say queer media, but
Speaker 1: kind of like anything queer that exists is like you
Speaker 1: have to figure out. Sometimes you're like, I really don't
Speaker 1: like this, but for the for the community, Like I
Speaker 1: guess I'll keep my opinions to myself because it's like
Speaker 1: good that it's getting out there. But it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: when what's the tipping point? At what point do we
Speaker 1: have enough stuff out there that we're allowed to be
Speaker 1: honest about our opinions the way like straight white people
Speaker 1: could be honest about anything so much?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, because that's.
Speaker 4: The trap that we all fall into, as anybody who
Speaker 4: is marginalized writing about art that is coming from marginalized voices,
Speaker 4: is that, on one hand, This is my very like
Speaker 4: diplomatic assessment of I saw the TV Glow, which is
Speaker 4: not about the movie itself. It's about like kind of
Speaker 4: the culture that has surrounded it, because I think that
Speaker 4: is more interesting to talk about than the actual movie.
Speaker 4: Like people are going to feel about that movie, how
Speaker 4: they feel about it. The culture surrounding that movie is
Speaker 4: what I think is more interesting is that a lot
Speaker 4: of people came out in twenty twenty, either sexuality, gender,
Speaker 4: what have you, because a lot of people had a
Speaker 4: lot of time to sit in with their internal thoughts
Speaker 4: and come to some conclusions. And I think that that
Speaker 4: is beautiful and I think that is incredible. But it
Speaker 4: also means that a lot of people were coming out
Speaker 4: and discovering things about themselves while they were inside and
Speaker 4: they were not outside in having to deal with large Oh.
Speaker 4: So people became like very fixated on trying to find
Speaker 4: what I like to call like the myth of the
Speaker 4: universal experience, which is when people post like their cute
Speaker 4: little memes or whatever of like the trans girl starter
Speaker 4: kit or like the lesbian starter kit, and it's like,
Speaker 4: you know, whatever, whatever, and to some extent, like that's
Speaker 4: very cute. It's a way to find community. But also
Speaker 4: it is we've invented a new way to other people
Speaker 4: by doing that. Yes, there are so many queer and
Speaker 4: trans people I know who will not say anything negative
Speaker 4: about I saw the TV Glow because they know this
Speaker 4: movie has been very vital for a lot of people.
Speaker 4: It has helped a lot of people come to terms
Speaker 4: with their own feelings about their gender or their sexuality.
Speaker 4: Or there's even somebody who used their letterboxed review to
Speaker 4: come out as trans. That is a very big deal,
Speaker 4: and no one else in the community wants to like
Speaker 4: shit on that by being hey, I don't like this movie.
Speaker 4: Because because we've become such like indoor kids, people are
Speaker 4: now treating media as an extension of their personality. So
Speaker 4: if you say I don't like this movie, they're not
Speaker 4: hearing I don't like this movie. They're hearing I don't
Speaker 4: like you.
Speaker 2: It's a stand culture. It's too much.
Speaker 1: I need to use that term because it's so embarrassing.
Speaker 1: But that is what Yeah, and the parasocial relationship and
Speaker 1: all this stuff that we're talking about online, like this
Speaker 1: is the the I was going to say the negative
Speaker 1: side of it, but it's like it's kind of all
Speaker 1: negative side, like those things. I hope we move away
Speaker 1: from them, but yeah, it becomes so personal and so
Speaker 1: like intrinsic to someone's identity that then you can't criticize
Speaker 1: it or even kind of like talk about it as
Speaker 1: it's just a movie, like you're not allowed to do
Speaker 1: that because it was not. It's codependency, and yes it's codependency.
Speaker 5: It's a problem, and people don't recognize it as codependency
Speaker 5: because it's been normalized so much, especially on online circles.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess my my large thoughts about I
Speaker 5: Saw the TV Glow are that On our podcast oftentimes,
Speaker 5: you know, we talked about teen girl movies, we talked
Speaker 5: about coming of age movies. I'm in my thirties now,
Speaker 5: maybe you know a Cinderella story is not that bad.
Speaker 5: But I tell you what, when you're like of when
Speaker 5: you're past a certain age, that is a nothing burger
Speaker 5: of a I'm like, maybe I'm just a little too
Speaker 5: old to watch I Saw the TV Glow. Maybe it's
Speaker 5: been a long fifteen years of not being an indoor
Speaker 5: kid for me. That makes this movie just interesting in
Speaker 5: a way that I appreciate. So I lost days of
Speaker 5: sleep after that movie came out, because I was like,
Speaker 5: oh god, I'm staring down the barrel of a yeah,
Speaker 5: a movie I don't like.
Speaker 1: Oh totally this is and I really appreciate you talking
Speaker 1: about it because I so know that that is.
Speaker 2: Like I've absolutely had that.
Speaker 1: Feeling where it's like I don't like the queer thing
Speaker 1: that everybody likes.
Speaker 5: And like this is common for me. I often don't
Speaker 5: like the queer things everyone likes.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I love Bejing. What you said about people.
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone who listens to this podcast knows how
Speaker 1: many people came out in twenty twenty because so many
Speaker 1: people that's been their story. And it's not just the
Speaker 1: insideness that I think made a lot of it very
Speaker 1: shall we say self folks, which makes sense, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're you're inside with yourself, you're gonna be self focused.
Speaker 1: But it's also a lot of baby clears. It's also
Speaker 1: like a lot of really new and harmony. You're someone
Speaker 1: who I mean, Bja, you mentioned your episode Harmony. You
Speaker 1: transitioned like many many, many many years ago, so you're
Speaker 1: like so far ahead, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean by.
Speaker 5: The time this comes out, it'll be about fifteen years
Speaker 5: on the dot.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, okay, So and for anyone who for I
Speaker 1: feel like if I'm familiar with the idea at least
Speaker 1: of I saw the Tuva glam like everybody must be
Speaker 1: right because I don't even watch her. But is it
Speaker 1: is it a I've seen some discourse quote unquote, is
Speaker 1: it oh, directly overtly like this is a trans story
Speaker 1: or is it more subtle?
Speaker 5: Because I have seen it is not subtle. So here's funny,
Speaker 5: though there are cis people who completely miss that.
Speaker 2: It's okay, it's just about the safety.
Speaker 7: Of nostalgia and comfort in nostalgia. That's the storytelling device
Speaker 7: to get you there. But like, this is one of
Speaker 7: those things where if you know even remotely what you're
Speaker 7: looking for, it is like a flashing red light in
Speaker 7: front of your face.
Speaker 5: It is zed.
Speaker 1: But then I have heard some people be like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if and I'm like, wait, now I'm confused
Speaker 1: to someone who hasn't seen it, because reading the synopsis
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia, I'm like, this is just this is what
Speaker 1: it's about.
Speaker 5: The main character played by Justice Smith literally wears a
Speaker 5: dress in this movie and then goes, no, I don't
Speaker 5: like this. I'm scared and then runs back into the
Speaker 5: closet like this movie's really fucking obvious about what it's about. Right.
Speaker 4: I did make a TikTok about this because every once
Speaker 4: in a while I wade into the discourse. Mind's always
Speaker 4: a mistake. I don't know why, yeah, especially on that end.
Speaker 4: But I made a video because people were like, I
Speaker 4: don't understand how many ciscritics are like not seeing this,
Speaker 4: And so the explanation that I gave people is that
Speaker 4: when you are marginalized in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 4: the way I like to compare it is it's like
Speaker 4: being able to speak another language. Like if you are
Speaker 4: somebody who can speak English and Spanish, there is a
Speaker 4: high probability that you will be probably okay in trying
Speaker 4: to understand something similar like Italian. You're not going to
Speaker 4: know the language inside it out. Yeah, you're not going
Speaker 4: to understand the language like perfectly, but you're going to
Speaker 4: be able to infer that grazi is probably similar to
Speaker 4: grassius and it does mean the same thing. And so
Speaker 4: a lot of like cis straight critics are not able
Speaker 4: to speak the inherent language that like a lot of
Speaker 4: queer people can speak. So they're not seeing it in
Speaker 4: this movie, whereas when we watch it, we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is speaking my language, like that's what's happening. That's
Speaker 4: why they're missing it because they don't know how to
Speaker 4: speak this language. But for us, we're all fluent, so
Speaker 4: we're like, what do you mean you don't understand what's happening?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, because my understanding until I read a
Speaker 1: couple of like tweets or poll coats or whatever, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, wow, this is like a trans horror movie.
Speaker 1: And then I would see some people being like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like over and I was like, now I'm confused.
Speaker 2: So it's good to know that it's just good old
Speaker 2: fashioned over the head.
Speaker 1: Yeah for some people, and har harmony was your kind
Speaker 1: of main issue or not, whatever was what you did
Speaker 1: not enjoy about it? Was it that it felt kind
Speaker 1: of like rudimentary or like hitting it over the head,
Speaker 1: or like, what was your take on it that it
Speaker 1: didn't really Yes, yeah, yes to all of that.
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean, okay, so I don't I don't
Speaker 5: know if this is it for everybody else, but I
Speaker 5: certainly don't think the right way to watch a movie
Speaker 5: is just to say yeah, I get it, with increasing
Speaker 5: volume and frustration for most of the movies run time
Speaker 5: of like yeah, I get it, it just doesn't work
Speaker 5: for me. Like I wrote over three thousand words about
Speaker 5: my feelings on this, especially because this is a period piece.
Speaker 5: It starts in the nineties and then moves up to
Speaker 5: you know, presumably the modern day. It's a little vague
Speaker 5: about it, but no, I mean I came out is
Speaker 5: trans in the two thousands. I know what it was like.
Speaker 5: I was there, and this is not exactly what it
Speaker 5: was like. But then again, this character doesn't actually ever
Speaker 5: come out spoilers, I guess for this scared straight story
Speaker 5: that's actually about trying to scare you gay. I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's so it is so on the nose, it is
Speaker 5: so I don't know. I'm trying to be nice about
Speaker 5: this because I don't I don't want to upset anyone.
Speaker 1: Will it be like people, you know, like, assuming the
Speaker 1: earth makes it another fifty or so years, will it
Speaker 1: be like, oh, this was kind of the first I
Speaker 1: don't know if mainstream is the right way, but like
Speaker 1: trans horror movie and like we can you know, enjoy
Speaker 1: it for what it was, but like, wow, it was
Speaker 1: very like isn't that kind of a thing where years
Speaker 1: will be like one.
Speaker 5: Of those things where it's like, oh my god, it's
Speaker 5: aged so badly, and I'm like, no, I think this
Speaker 5: is gonna age just fine. I think it's gonna be
Speaker 5: one of these things. Like the whole point of the
Speaker 5: movie that the seeing the TV glows and watching a
Speaker 5: Buffy the Vampire Slayer type show and just being like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, I saw something of myself in that.
Speaker 5: And then you get a little older and you try
Speaker 5: to rewatch it and you go, oh, this wasn't as
Speaker 5: bold and ambitious as I thought it was. This is
Speaker 5: kind of a baby show for babies. It's kind of
Speaker 5: like corny and bad, right, Like the ice cream Man
Speaker 5: is just a man in a mask, and he's not
Speaker 5: scary like I thought he was when I was a kid.
Speaker 5: I think that I should hope that people will go, yeah,
Speaker 5: I know this meant a lot to me at the time,
Speaker 5: but they will seek out other queer horror, they will
Speaker 5: seek out other queer media. They will grow beyond this story,
Speaker 5: is my hopes for it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's very much. That's very much how I operate,
Speaker 4: which you know, Harmony and I talk about coming of
Speaker 4: age stories all the time on our show because that's
Speaker 4: the whole point of it. And there are movies that
Speaker 4: I look back on that I loved as a teenager,
Speaker 4: like I loved Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis and
Speaker 4: Lindsay Lahman. I still do to this day, but you
Speaker 4: look back at it as an adult and you're like, wow,
Speaker 4: this movie is also like pretty racist against Asian people
Speaker 4: and treating like ancient Chinese magic as like a plot device.
Speaker 2: And I've never seen that interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's how they switch is it's through like
Speaker 4: magic fortune cookies, and it's like, okay, well that's something.
Speaker 4: But when you're thirteen, a lot of times you're not
Speaker 4: going to like process that. So you can look at
Speaker 4: it as adult and you can love something critically and go, okay,
Speaker 4: I love this movie, and it's also like kind of problematic.
Speaker 4: I think that this movie of I Saw the TV
Speaker 4: Glow is so important because of what it means to
Speaker 4: so many people right now, Like I think this is
Speaker 4: a perfect trans movie for the time here that we
Speaker 4: are in right now with this big boom. I mean,
Speaker 4: Jane Shoon Brun started writing this movie when they started transitioning,
Speaker 4: and I think it shows and I don't necessarily think
Speaker 4: that that is a bad thing. I don't think it's
Speaker 4: a bad thing at all. It's going to resonate with
Speaker 4: a lot of people.
Speaker 5: It's them processing it, so we have a similar journey,
Speaker 5: a similar starting point to where we are now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I also understand why this movie would then
Speaker 4: not resonate with somebody like harmony or like yeah, countless
Speaker 4: other people who were like, yeah, this is this has
Speaker 4: not been new for me for a very long time.
Speaker 4: All of these feelings that you're processing I processed a
Speaker 4: decade ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I get it so interesting. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was a filmmaker who was also a baby queer
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, Okay, that's really interesting. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: just like people, And that is what I'm seeing mostly
Speaker 1: at least on my timeline, is people having these like
Speaker 1: really sort of like beautiful in ten connections to it.
Speaker 1: But that makes sense if they're in the same place
Speaker 1: as the filmmaker. Like I wasn't aware. That's really interesting, Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I had people listening to this understand that
Speaker 4: like it again, it's not a criticism of them, Like
Speaker 4: if this movie speaks to you and like this was
Speaker 4: eye opening and magical, like that's incredible, that's your experience.
Speaker 4: Harmony's experience does not then negate your experience, like life
Speaker 4: is not a zero sum game. That's not how this works.
Speaker 4: And so like I think that's what then becomes frustrating
Speaker 4: because also like if we critique this movie publicly, one,
Speaker 4: it feels like we're critiquing our community, which is like
Speaker 4: never a fun experience. Two, it feels like, you know,
Speaker 4: critiquing art from you know, a filmmaker who was telling
Speaker 4: a story that like most studios are too afraid to
Speaker 4: tell because we know this, the studios never take the
Speaker 4: right message from anything. If people critique this movie, it
Speaker 4: doesn't become like, oh, maybe we should give money to
Speaker 4: trans people who've been out for a long time and
Speaker 4: hear their experience it because let's never let a transperson
Speaker 4: make a movie ever again. And it's like that's not
Speaker 4: what we're saying here.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, this is yeah, the horrors that I
Speaker 8: tend to appreciate the things that I find the most
Speaker 8: upsetting about this world that we live in, and what
Speaker 8: I like to see in my dramas and horrors and
Speaker 8: all of my sad miserable things like British teleplays from
Speaker 8: the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5: I like stuff that's tangible, and the horror of I
Speaker 5: saw the TV glow is so entirely internal. It's just
Speaker 5: it's all internal struggle. You are your own worst enemy. Eventually,
Speaker 5: your homophobic dad played by Fred Durst dies and he
Speaker 5: doesn't have any control over you anymore. But you're just
Speaker 5: you are your own worst enemy. You are preventing yourself
Speaker 5: from coming out. And that's just not the world that
Speaker 5: I live in. I think that that is so important
Speaker 5: as like a story for a lot of online spaces
Speaker 5: right now, but like, yeah, where's all of the people
Speaker 5: who have just been out there having to make it
Speaker 5: work in the walking world?
Speaker 2: I want? This is fascinating.
Speaker 5: I want more of that. I want something seasoned. I
Speaker 5: want something tangible. I want I feel like something that
Speaker 5: I appreciate about, particularly miserable films that I watch. I
Speaker 5: was watching Alan Clark's Scum last night, and it's a phenomenal, upsetting,
Speaker 5: nasty movie about a boy's prison basically, but there's something
Speaker 5: about certain misery that I see that I go Okay, cool,
Speaker 5: I'm not crazy, right, because the misery we're talking about
Speaker 5: with I saw the TV glows like a general sense
Speaker 5: of horrors, like oh, it filled me with existential dread.
Speaker 5: I feel these feelings, and I don't feel any of
Speaker 5: the feelings that everyone is describing because so much so
Speaker 5: beyond that, I don't even know if there's a point
Speaker 5: in my life where this ever would have been the
Speaker 5: exact right movie for me, because I've just never been
Speaker 5: a terribly like online child. I've never been one person
Speaker 5: to be consumed by like a television show. Personally.
Speaker 1: It came out before online was a NonStop presence in
Speaker 1: our Like everything we're saying, make so much of mine
Speaker 1: was a.
Speaker 5: Place that you was at your house and then you
Speaker 5: get up, and then you go somewhere and the online
Speaker 5: stays there. So I feel like I.
Speaker 2: Was still I agree.
Speaker 5: I would love that. I just feel like what I
Speaker 5: want to see and what I like to see in
Speaker 5: my horrors, queer textually or queer subtextually is something that
Speaker 5: feels more like what I recognize as a as a
Speaker 5: as a form of suffering or horror or misery or
Speaker 5: pain that I look at it and go Okay, I'm
Speaker 5: not the only one feeling this. I don't feel crazy.
Speaker 4: Something that Harmony said this would have been probably like
Speaker 4: four years ago at this point that I think about
Speaker 4: all the time is Harmony and I were talking heads
Speaker 4: for a Shutter docuseries. So it's on the streaming up
Speaker 4: Shutter or I think you can also get it through
Speaker 4: like AMC plus. It's called Queer for Fear. It was
Speaker 4: originally supposed to be longer. We only got like four episodes,
Speaker 4: which was a bummer. So there's like a ton of
Speaker 4: like really great material that I know wasn't used. But
Speaker 4: one of the questions they asked all of us is like,
Speaker 4: when did you see yourself in a horror movie for
Speaker 4: the first time? My answer was Elvira, because I very
Speaker 4: much love Cassandra Peterson, who plays Alvira, is under She
Speaker 4: perpetuates the character as an androgynous character. And the reason
Speaker 4: she' views it, yeah, she says Alvira is androgynist because
Speaker 4: Alvira is the inverse of these like very famous androgynoist
Speaker 4: people we look to, like David Bowie or Mick Jagger,
Speaker 4: who are very clearly men, but there's something very soft
Speaker 4: about them, where She's like, Elvira is very clearly like
Speaker 4: fem woman, but there's something very hard about her, and
Speaker 4: so that ru Yeah, I really opened up my eyes
Speaker 4: about like, yes, Elvira is my gender. So I talk
Speaker 4: about that, and then they asked Harmony the same question.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to answer for you, but what
Speaker 4: was your answer? Because I think about it NonStop.
Speaker 5: It was twenty eight days later starting Killing Killian Murphy
Speaker 5: twenty eight days Later is one of the best zombie
Speaker 5: movies ever made. It's one of my favorite horror movies
Speaker 5: ever made. So it's a movie that's it's British. It
Speaker 5: starts with Killian Murphy waking up. He'd been hooked up
Speaker 5: to like machines and life support for a long time
Speaker 5: in a hospital, but now he is like emaciated and
Speaker 5: the machines are off and he is in a world
Speaker 5: that he does understand. There is no one around. It
Speaker 5: is a desolate London. He's like, I'm confused. I just
Speaker 5: got out of the hospital. Where do I go. He
Speaker 5: goes to a church and it's full of dead bodies
Speaker 5: and a priest tries to kill him, and then he
Speaker 5: finds out that the whole world is infected by these
Speaker 5: running zombie rage monsters who bleed blood out of their
Speaker 5: eyes and are very violent, and the only safe haven
Speaker 5: that he can find is amongst a black woman, a daughter,
Speaker 5: and a loving father, and they have to fight the
Speaker 5: small armed forces of the British military who are trying
Speaker 5: to establish order. So it is about a guy who
Speaker 5: wakes up in a hospital who has this thin wayfish figure,
Speaker 5: is immediately attacked by the church and has to fend
Speaker 5: off the hyper masculinity of the government. And I basically
Speaker 5: emotionally prepared myself since a young age where I'm like, oh, yes,
Speaker 5: this is what I This are the threats that I experience.
Speaker 5: These are the threats that I fear in the world. Vampires,
Speaker 5: I'm not afraid of vampires. Vampires aren't real. Michael Myers,
Speaker 5: He's just a guy. I'm not afraid of, just a guy. Jaws.
Speaker 5: Sharks are kind of scary, but sharks are also cool.
Speaker 5: I don't go in the water, and you're fine, Like
Speaker 5: that's manageable, you know, it's all well, all of the
Speaker 5: threats and fears are either not real or perfectly manageable,
Speaker 5: Versus this one where it's like, oh no, this is
Speaker 5: extremely real. Maybe the rage monsters aren't, but who knows.
Speaker 5: Maybe someone just walking down the street will decide to
Speaker 5: try to murder me on a whim and I have
Speaker 5: to We'll have to hold them down and scream while
Speaker 5: I plunge my thumbs into their eyes, and that's either
Speaker 5: kill or be killed. And that's what the world feels
Speaker 5: like to me. Is this movie this wow?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: So no, no, no, no no, but this is making so
Speaker 1: much sense because you compare something like that to I
Speaker 1: saw the TV glow, And what it sounds like we're
Speaker 1: having is one of those good old fashioned generational divides,
Speaker 1: which is like the young ones even though they are
Speaker 1: not growing up in what I would at all call
Speaker 1: a benevolent world, but we've become so divided that there
Speaker 1: is a huge, thank god, faction of the world that
Speaker 1: is incredibly affirming and queer forward and all that soun
Speaker 1: it's online and you did not have that.
Speaker 2: So like if you, people are.
Speaker 1: Way more able, especially like you're saying, DJFA came out,
Speaker 1: you know, during lockdown and like a lot of this
Speaker 1: kind of self focus and isolation stuff. People are better
Speaker 1: able to insulate, especially if they're in well exclusively I
Speaker 1: guess if they're in a safe area, Like if your
Speaker 1: physical form is safe because you live in like a
Speaker 1: very blue city or whatever it is, you can create
Speaker 1: a nice little safe bubble of queerness, of transness.
Speaker 2: You did not have that growing up.
Speaker 1: So a movie that exists in that bubble from a
Speaker 1: filmmaker who wrote it as part of their coming up, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not going to relate to you at all, Like
Speaker 1: you're not gonna.
Speaker 5: Especially because you know, twenty eight Days Later comes out
Speaker 5: right before nine to eleven. I see it after nine
Speaker 5: to eleven. So then we have to deal with like
Speaker 5: the uh, jingoistic raw rah put a boot in your asset.
Speaker 5: It's the American way that we view the world. So
Speaker 5: the military is seen as like this extremely powerful school
Speaker 5: aspirational thing. You can't criticize the troops, and yet this
Speaker 5: movie is all like, no, the troops are evil people,
Speaker 5: like they want to assert order by force, and they
Speaker 5: hate women and only see them for breeding. And it's
Speaker 5: just it came out at the exact right time where
Speaker 5: I'm like, no, but this is this feels more like
Speaker 5: what I remember the two thousands being like I saw
Speaker 5: the TV blow. It takes place in the two thousands,
Speaker 5: but it's not the two thousands.
Speaker 1: That it's written by someone who was coming who is
Speaker 1: was coming out, is coming out, someone.
Speaker 5: Who would have been there, but they were not experiencing
Speaker 5: the two thousands. It was displayed in I saw the
Speaker 5: TV glow that I remember the two thous.
Speaker 1: They're writing their version of what they feel like now,
Speaker 1: but kind.
Speaker 2: Of placing it back when you were coming out. So
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, that's written, So it's discordant.
Speaker 1: God, that's so fucking fascinating, and I'm not getting any
Speaker 1: You're You'll be shocked to find out I'm not hearing
Speaker 1: any of that nuance online.
Speaker 5: Twitter is not a great place for that. It has
Speaker 5: a character limit. That's why I tend to not put
Speaker 5: my big thoughts on Twitter. I save them for like medium.
Speaker 5: On the rare occasion I feel like writing four thousand
Speaker 5: words on a topic because therapy is not big enough
Speaker 5: for the discussions I want to have.
Speaker 1: I'd love I have to go back and I'll have
Speaker 1: to reread the Wikipedia synopsis, and then I do want
Speaker 1: to look at your at your pieces that you wrote
Speaker 1: on this, because I am so curious about and I
Speaker 1: guess another question that I have so is so queerness
Speaker 1: primarily correct me if I'm wrong, But it feels like
Speaker 1: sexuality more than gender. Although then I think of something
Speaker 1: like Psycho and I'm like, is that kind of about gender? Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but queerness sexuality is now queerness in.
Speaker 2: Horror gonna be looking more.
Speaker 1: At gender and transness as opposed to site like, is
Speaker 1: that where horror is going?
Speaker 2: Is this the first one of that?
Speaker 5: Is this a dumb clas It is not a dumb question,
Speaker 5: that's an excellent question. So I think that gender so
Speaker 5: horror as a genre is not the kindest genre to gender.
Speaker 5: I would argue it's probably the meanest genre in terms
Speaker 5: of discussing transnis in general, and that includes sex comedies.
Speaker 5: Dating back to Alfred Hitchcock's Murder, there have been like
Speaker 5: the cross dressing killer type. It got much more famous
Speaker 5: with Psycho and a million Psycho knockoffs. You had Brian
Speaker 5: de Palmer essentially remaking Psycho in nineteen eighty with Dressed
Speaker 5: to Kill. You got Silence of the Lambs about a
Speaker 5: decade later, and that went into the Library of Congress
Speaker 5: and won like every Academy award. So it's seen as
Speaker 5: like culturally really really important, and it is all these
Speaker 5: films have queerness being processed through straight people. That's oftentimes
Speaker 5: where the trans or gender bending of a monster kinds
Speaker 5: of comes into play. It's almost exclusively straight syce men
Speaker 5: doing this. You know, well, we'll say, we'll put quotes
Speaker 5: on that, and maybe the case of Alfred Hitchcock, but
Speaker 5: you know it is what, you know, we'll leave that there.
Speaker 5: Right about now is when you're starting to see prominent
Speaker 5: examples of transn's displayed in horror as like a literal,
Speaker 5: tangible thing and it coming from queer voices. There there
Speaker 5: are outlier liars like Richard O'Brien wrote Rocky Horror Picture Show,
Speaker 5: and Richard O'Brien is, you know, a very old gay
Speaker 5: who has been on hormones and doing they are his
Speaker 5: own gender journey for a lot. And I love Richard
Speaker 5: O'Brien for all of this. Yeah, so there's been examples
Speaker 5: of this, but they are few and far between. I
Speaker 5: think that one of the reasons we're seeing it right
Speaker 5: now is that it's becoming much more normalized, but also
Speaker 5: because of the increasing hostility towards trans people, it is
Speaker 5: an exciting thing for people to have as a as
Speaker 5: a storytelling element, whether that be like Hunter Schaeffer in
Speaker 5: Cuckoo coming out this year, and that movie Hunter Shaffer
Speaker 5: does not play a trans character, but Hunter Schaeffer is trans,
Speaker 5: so therefore the film itself, yeah trans sheen to it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is that the Dan Stevens one, Yes, and he.
Speaker 5: Is such a little weirdo in it.
Speaker 2: I love Okay, Okay, cool cool cool.
Speaker 5: So you start to get stuff like that. You get
Speaker 5: Jamie Clayton in the Hell with Razor remake, you have
Speaker 5: Sam Levinson's Assassination Nation, which is kind of horror adjacent,
Speaker 5: but you get horror.
Speaker 2: Yes, I forgot about that one.
Speaker 5: Okay, is eventually a horror movie because it's basically the purge.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's also there's trans masculine characters in Talk to Me
Speaker 4: and Evils and Rise, like.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, Evil dece is so good.
Speaker 4: Evil Dress is very fun. So the thing though, too,
Speaker 4: is that with horror, especially especially when it comes to gender,
Speaker 4: if it wasn't like cross dressing killer tropes, which are
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, that's its own category to even discuss.
Speaker 4: But there is also so many trans reads that can
Speaker 4: be made to a lot of horror movies. A lot
Speaker 4: of body horror movies can be read as trans Werewolf
Speaker 4: movies are often read as trans Like Zoe Luna, who
Speaker 4: is a transactor. She was in like the Craft Legacy,
Speaker 4: She's been in a bunch of stuff. She has talked
Speaker 4: about how the werewolf movie Ginger Snaps, which a lot
Speaker 4: of people look at as like this is like a
Speaker 4: very feminist werewolf movie, which it is because it's about
Speaker 4: two sisters. But there's a scene in there where after
Speaker 4: the main girl is attacked by a werewolf, she starts
Speaker 4: growing a tale and yeah, and like body hair, and
Speaker 4: she and her sister are like trying to find ways
Speaker 4: to hide the tail and hide the hair that she's growing.
Speaker 4: And Zoe has talked about how like watching that scene,
Speaker 4: she's like, oh, yeah, that's what dysphoria feels like to me.
Speaker 4: And so there's all these really rich reads that can
Speaker 4: be found within a lot of the text. And I
Speaker 4: go back and forth on this because obviously, like canonical
Speaker 4: representation is very very important, but I also think that
Speaker 4: something is lost when we don't allow for like reads,
Speaker 4: because there are some like a movie like Jennifer's Body,
Speaker 4: for example, Jennifer's Body is very clearly like a bisexual movie.
Speaker 4: Jennifer is a bisexual. We know this, she goes both ways.
Speaker 4: We know this about her, but she never says out loud,
Speaker 4: I am bisexual. And I think that is a good thing,
Speaker 4: because then this character also then can be read as like, okay,
Speaker 4: but maybe she is just like a high fem lesbian
Speaker 4: who's experiencing a little bit of compet and that's why
Speaker 4: she's still fucking meant for fun, which is exactly what I.
Speaker 1: Did in Good Yeah, Oh my god, Oh this is
Speaker 1: fascinating and so.
Speaker 4: And so when you don't have somebody say like, hi,
Speaker 4: my name is you know, Jordan, and I am a
Speaker 4: non binary, DEMI, bisexual or whatever, then that allows people
Speaker 4: who identify outside of those labels to also see themselves
Speaker 4: in these characters, because the more specific you get, the
Speaker 4: more isolating these characters become. Which is, you know, Harmony
Speaker 4: and I wrote a book, uh, Sleepwoy Camp Fordidi Books,
Speaker 4: and sleep Away Camp is considered to be like the
Speaker 4: you know, kind of the grandmother of a lot of
Speaker 4: trans horror because Angela Baker spoiler alert for a forty
Speaker 4: year old movie, but the end of Sleepway Camp reveals
Speaker 4: that Angela Baker, Oh my god, she's a boy, and
Speaker 4: you see full frontal nudity. And so because they never
Speaker 4: say until the second and third movies, then Angela does
Speaker 4: canonically become a trans woman and transitions fully. But in
Speaker 4: this first movie, because they never say Angela is a
Speaker 4: trans character, there are so many people who are able
Speaker 4: to interpret, like, I think this character is non binary.
Speaker 4: It's somebody who is dealing with, like, you know, multiple
Speaker 4: experiences of gender or a lack of gender completely. The
Speaker 4: trans woman read is obviously way more obvious. But then
Speaker 4: I've also even seen people say, like, I think that
Speaker 4: this is a trans masque story because it's about a
Speaker 4: boy in the you know what, in a body that
Speaker 4: is perceived as a woman by everybody else, fighting to
Speaker 4: get out, and all of those reads POQ will wait
Speaker 4: because the movie never gives you a definitive answer. And
Speaker 4: so that's one of the things we write about in
Speaker 4: our book is how like all of the reads and
Speaker 4: interpretations people have of this story, they're all kind of right,
Speaker 4: because a read is just an interpretation. It's not the
Speaker 4: definitive answer of like, what is happening in this movie?
Speaker 4: And so I think it's like such a juicy movie
Speaker 4: to talk about because of that, because it means so
Speaker 4: much to so many different people, and I wish that
Speaker 4: we had more of that in Horror, but because everybody's like,
Speaker 4: you need to define exactly what this character is otherwise
Speaker 4: it's weird.
Speaker 2: Baiting, like the period of Drenched.
Speaker 1: This is so interesting because what it is is, this
Speaker 1: is what society, our queer culture is really going through
Speaker 1: right now, is the push and pull of the importance
Speaker 1: and validation of like when people say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: when that character said in episode five out loud, like
Speaker 1: I'm a lesbian.
Speaker 2: That was so incredibly meaningful to me, like she named it,
Speaker 2: she said it.
Speaker 1: So we have that side of things, and then we
Speaker 1: have the side of things you're talking about, and those
Speaker 1: two things they.
Speaker 9: Don't have to necessarily be at odds, but right now,
Speaker 9: at least online, they're so at odds, like they feel
Speaker 9: like two like warring, like West Side story style, and
Speaker 9: it's like they don't have to, like there's room for both,
Speaker 9: but everyone's very entrenched in their own opinions right now, shockingly,
Speaker 9: So that's really interesting to hear that. It's like your
Speaker 9: preference for leaving it open versus some people who so
Speaker 9: want to hear the word that they they want to
Speaker 9: hear their micro label, not you the inside of micro label,
Speaker 9: but they want to hear their micro label set out loud.
Speaker 2: It's God, that's a really.
Speaker 1: Interesting like tension going on right now in general.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think part of it is that, like we
Speaker 5: have a wealth of spoils right now, Like there are
Speaker 5: so many queer things that are so clearly defined as
Speaker 5: queer things, whereas back in you know, you know, the nineties,
Speaker 5: two thousands, when we were growing up, there were so
Speaker 5: many things that weren't and you kind of had to
Speaker 5: get clever about it, or or.
Speaker 2: Wait till Sweeps Week.
Speaker 1: It was two weeks of sweets Week and the girls
Speaker 1: kissed in the hot tub and you were like, that's
Speaker 1: it for the year, yep.
Speaker 5: Or you would get something where it's like okay, people
Speaker 5: were like, oh my god, that genderbent episode of Johnny
Speaker 5: test and I'm like, well, that's a generational divide. I
Speaker 5: remember watching the video for the Fertelli's Chelsea Dagger, and
Speaker 5: this is part where it flashes between the singer of
Speaker 5: the band and this hot burlesque lady and they're wearing
Speaker 5: the same outfit and it's like, huh, that's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's kind of it.
Speaker 1: That was the extent. Oh my god, yeah yeah, Wed,
Speaker 1: this really does. It makes me feel like a crotchety
Speaker 1: elder queer, which I feel like often or honestly most
Speaker 1: of the time nowadays. So this is validating from my identity,
Speaker 1: my micro label of.
Speaker 2: A quat the elder queer.
Speaker 1: Yo.
Speaker 2: I'm keeping an eye on the time.
Speaker 1: So before we wrap up, I want to, obviously I
Speaker 1: want you both to plug your podcast your book and
Speaker 1: say where you can individually be followed. But is there
Speaker 1: anything we didn't cover that you want to like, any
Speaker 1: movies you want to shout out that we didn't get
Speaker 1: to or something, or just like any yeah, any queer
Speaker 1: horror stuff that we didn't sort of touch on before
Speaker 1: before we go.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's so so many things I'm bad at
Speaker 5: recalling movies just on a whim like that. Let's just
Speaker 5: say Angel, Angel's the best movie you ever made. And
Speaker 5: that's probably not true, but I say it, and I'm
Speaker 5: not going to stop saying it. Angel's best movie you
Speaker 5: ever made.
Speaker 4: And I've never heard of it.
Speaker 5: It's from nineteen eighty three, It's about a teenage girl
Speaker 5: who works the streets. The tagline for the movie is
Speaker 5: on a role student by day, Hollywood hooker by night,
Speaker 5: and she ends up being befriended. It's something. She gets
Speaker 5: befriended by an old drag queen and or transsex worker
Speaker 5: named May who's modeled after May West, and you never
Speaker 5: say explicitly what she is, because again we go with
Speaker 5: loose definition, and they're best friends, surrogate family with like
Speaker 5: a senile old cowboy who does like signings and tricks
Speaker 5: on the Hollywood strip named Kit Carson. You have an
Speaker 5: old landlord who's a lesbian with two sets of eyebrows
Speaker 5: that smokes and yells at May, and they bicker like
Speaker 5: an old married couple despite the fact that they're both
Speaker 5: clearly gay and just best friends. And also there's a
Speaker 5: serial killer who's trying to kill sex workers, and that's
Speaker 5: kind of what the horror of the movie it is.
Speaker 2: That's what the eighties was in general.
Speaker 1: I feel like like there's always a serial killer trying
Speaker 1: to kill sex workers.
Speaker 4: Unfortunate about how but.
Speaker 5: It's about friendship and it's looking out for each other.
Speaker 5: People of the Knights looking out for each other, protecting
Speaker 5: each other that you don't need. You know, cops don't
Speaker 5: have any feelings because they're just damn dirty cops. And like,
Speaker 5: this movie's marvelous. Is the best movies, every very cool,
Speaker 5: super tight script. And also queer people get the chance
Speaker 5: to actually fight for their lives and stand a chance.
Speaker 5: And I just appreciate that, even if it doesn't always
Speaker 5: work out. Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that, Okay, and shall all right? Thank you.
Speaker 4: Then the movie that I'm going to recommend because the
Speaker 4: last time I was on here I talked about bit
Speaker 4: Yeah everyone has since scene. But a movie that I
Speaker 4: highly recommend everyone check out is actually a documentary and
Speaker 4: it is called Scream Comma Queen. So Scream Queen and
Speaker 4: the documentary, Yeah, the posters behind Harmony's said, but it
Speaker 4: is a documentary about the actor Mark Patton, who plays
Speaker 4: Jesse Walsh in a Nightmare and Elm Street Part two
Speaker 4: Freddy's Revenge namer An Elm Street Part two. Freddy's Revenge
Speaker 4: is very much a gay movie. Freddy is essentially an
Speaker 4: allegory for gay feelings and keeping them closeted.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: We gotta do a whole other episode.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, Freddy is also a drag character. If people
Speaker 4: don't know that, Freddy Krueger is Robert England's drag character,
Speaker 4: the same way that Elvira is Cassandra Peterson's drag character.
Speaker 2: But okay, this is wild.
Speaker 4: But Nightmare Part two is equal parts a gay movie
Speaker 4: and an extremely homophobic movie. And they and they cast
Speaker 4: Mark Patten in this role, who was gay and was
Speaker 4: not out at the time, and the documentary is about
Speaker 4: how playing this role has been both the best and
Speaker 4: worst thing that ever happened to him, because it was
Speaker 4: great in that it helped a lot of other people
Speaker 4: like see themselves and come out and whatever. But also
Speaker 4: this movie kind of ruined his career because then everybody
Speaker 4: was like, oh, you're that gay guy from that gay movie.
Speaker 5: In the eighties.
Speaker 4: In the eighties, and Mark Patten, luckily is still with
Speaker 4: us to this day. He is, you know, living with aids,
Speaker 4: but live in his best life, you know, the best
Speaker 4: of his ability, which is you know, very interesting. But
Speaker 4: the documentary is fantastic and I highly recommend it, and
Speaker 4: it's a great piece of learning about queer horror history.
Speaker 1: Oh god, these are great recommendations. Thank you so much. Okay,
Speaker 1: and where can people find you both individually and listen
Speaker 1: to your podcast?
Speaker 2: And yeah, and the book that we mentioned.
Speaker 4: Sure, So I write every day at slash Film. I
Speaker 4: also have an article in the most recent issue of
Speaker 4: Thangoriam magazine. It's the one with art the clown just
Speaker 4: like Santa on the cover if you find it on
Speaker 4: your newsstands, which is exciting and fun. But This Ends
Speaker 4: Up Prom is the show that Harmony and I do
Speaker 4: where we talk about coming of age stories about or
Speaker 4: marketed towards teen girl audiences. You can find it where're
Speaker 4: you get your podcasts. We have a Patreon, Patreon dot com,
Speaker 4: backslash This endp prom all forms of social media at
Speaker 4: This Ends Up Prom, and I'm on all forms of
Speaker 4: social media at my name BJ Colangelo.
Speaker 5: BJ is so good at plugging stuff I write occasionally,
Speaker 5: but in the event that you see it, you'll see
Speaker 5: it on social media. It's not it doesn't have a
Speaker 5: home like slash film, but I'm around at Instagram and Twitter,
Speaker 5: at Veloca, trapter on places. BJ does mostly the online stuff,
Speaker 5: as if you've not learned from this episode, online as.
Speaker 4: Harmony is chronically offline that is, which is God's the
Speaker 4: better of us for the.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would rather have solitude than the internet yelling.
Speaker 1: That is such a wise, wise choice that I have
Speaker 1: not made.
Speaker 4: Our book is available at Die Die Books or you
Speaker 4: can get the e reader version at Amazon for the kindle.
Speaker 4: But sleep Away Camp is in a very fun academic
Speaker 4: text is the way that I'll put it, Like, you're
Speaker 4: going to learn something about history.
Speaker 5: You're going to learn deep in this movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, about how this movie has been you know, reclaimed
Speaker 4: and you know rejected across you know, depending on whatever's
Speaker 4: going on politically. That seems to be how people feel
Speaker 4: about this movie. And there well, there are also the
Speaker 4: two final chapters in this book are purely written by harmony,
Speaker 4: and I think that that is worth the cost of
Speaker 4: the book itself talking about because I believe it and
Speaker 4: it's about you know, transness in horror and also how
Speaker 4: people in horror treat transcritics and trans voices. So yeah,
Speaker 4: Ddie books dot com is where you can get it.
Speaker 2: Very cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, oh my gosh, and I as you know at
Speaker 1: Lauren Flans on Twitter and Blue Sky Lauren underscar Plans
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Uh. The pod is at Coming Up pot everywhere. Hey,
Speaker 1: you can write a review on iTunes or I think Spotify.
Speaker 2: Lets you write reviews.
Speaker 1: Now. You can certainly look at that we are evolving.
Speaker 1: You can certainly given five stars. That's even easier. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody a very happy and.
Speaker 2: Very queer Halloween.
Speaker 1: Thank you Bost so much. This was an absolute blast.
Speaker 1: Anti y'all listening, I will yeah, I'll see you the next.
Speaker 2: Time I see you.
Speaker 1: I want to do a post election episode. So that
Speaker 1: is that is the current plan for whatever happens. I
Speaker 1: would like to talk about it on the podcast. All right, y'all, Happy, happy,
Speaker 1: spooky Halloween, and see you next time. Bye.