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#Oscars: My Trip To The Academy Awards, A Remembrance

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On a spring day in 1974, I was visiting at a friend’s house in Beverly Hills whose parents were famous musicians. I was a big fan of their work and I was acting cool and collected, holding back from gushing, when their neighbors dropped by to talk about what to wear to the Academy Awards the following week. This handsome couple were nominated for an Oscar for Best Song that year, for a little number that they called The Way We Were sung by their good friend Barbra Streisand who was also nominated for Best Actress. I was just a little star struck, but I was still managed to tell Marilyn and Alan Bergman that I would be seeing them at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion the following Monday (the awards were held on Mondays then, the day that theatres were traditionally dark, I guess so actors in Broadway shows could attend the ceremony).

A close school chum from the Theatre program at my university had offered me a ticket. Her father was Secretary of the Academy that year. He was a seven-time nominee (he soon became an Oscar winner, for Best Sound for All The Presidents Men in 1976). They were not attending the awards and she had a single ticket up for grabs.

I wore my costume tux from Private Lives which was in production at school. I was frantic about getting the makeup stains off the white dinner jacket. I got myself to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, parking a few miles away. I was seated a row away from Paul and Linda McCartney. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (who was nominated) were across the aisle.

The nominees that year:

Best Picture:

THE STING, American Graffiti, Cries And Whispers, The Exorcist, A Touch Of Class

Actor:

JACK LEMMON in Save The Tiger, Marlon Brando in Last Tango In Paris, Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail, Al Pacino in Serpico, Robert Redford in The Sting

Actress:

GLENDA JACKSON in A Touch Of Class, Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist, Marsha Mason in Cinderella Liberty, Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were, Joanne Woodward in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

Supporting Actor:

JOHN HOUSEMAN in The Paper Chase, Vincent Gardenia in Bang The Drum Slowly, Jack Gilford in Save The Tiger, Jason Miller in The Exorcist, Randy Quaid in The Last Detail

Supporting Actress:

TATUM O’NEAL in Paper Moon, Linda Blair in The Exorcist, Candy Clark in American Graffiti, Madeline Kahn in Paper Moon, Sylvia Sidney in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

Director:

GEORGE ROY HILL for The Sting, Ingmar Bergman for Cries And Whispers, Bernardo Bertolucci for Last Tango In Paris, William Friedkin for The Exorcist, George Lucas for American Graffiti

Alan and Marilyn Bergman with Marvin Hamlisch

My new friends, The Bergmans, actually did win that night. I deeply wanted Streisand to win. She lost to Glenda Jackson in a stunning upset. It was a cool year to have been at The Academy Awards: A streaker ran across the stage, a moment which showed David Niven’s unflappable aplomb as he quickly quipped about the man’s “shortcomings”, Katharine Hepburn made her only appearance on an Oscar stage, little Tatum O’ Neal became the youngest winner in Oscar History, and I sat close enough to gawk at three of Eddie Fisher’s former wives. As usual, not a single African-American was nominated. Some of the speeches were very political.

Tatum O’Neal

I still have my ticket/pass to the ceremony.

The Bergmans, now in their 90s, continue to work. Streisand might still be trying to get her Gypsy project off the ground. Glenda Jackson is returning to acting after decades serving in Parliament. Newman is gone, joining Lemmon, Brando and Kahn at the Craft Services in the Great Beyond.

David Niven and The Streaker

This evening will be my 58th year of viewing of the Academy Awards. I have watched the Oscar Ceremony on television since I was five-years old. When I was a kid, I used to hold up a big brass candlestick as my statue and practice my acceptance speech in the bathroom mirror:

“I thank no one for this award. I did it all myself, with own talent and moxie, plus a little sex…”

The post #Oscars: My Trip To The Academy Awards, A Remembrance appeared first on The WOW Report.


#OscarShocker: Faye Dunaway Announces “La La Land” as Best Picture – But “Moonlight” Really Won!?

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La La Land won 6 of it’s 14 Oscar nominations and even though Warren Beatty, with presenter Faye Dunaway, announced it was the winner for Best Picture. Moonlight actually won!

Just like the Super Bowl this year, is was down to the wire with a surprise last-minute upset that will be the only headline tomorrow. After all of the awards and great acceptance speeches and funny bits by host Jimmy Kimmel, all anyone will EVER remember from the 89th Academy Awards is that the wrong movie accepted Best Picture and then had to give it up to another film.

Beatty said he looked at the envelope and it said,

Emma Stone, La La Land.’ That’s why I took such a long look at Faye…I wasn’t trying to be funny.

We’ll sort it all out in the AM but it sure made for an exciting finish and a well-deserved Best Picture winner.

The post #OscarShocker: Faye Dunaway Announces “La La Land” as Best Picture – But “Moonlight” Really Won!? appeared first on The WOW Report.

February 27th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!

#BornThisDay: Elizabeth Taylor

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February 27, 1932Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky:

“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”

She came into my focus when my mother sat me down at the kitchen table when I was 5-years old and explained to me the entire Elizabeth Taylor + Eddie FisherDebbie Reynolds = Scandal equation. I got it. She remains my mother’s favorite film star; they were born in the same year and in same month. She is also a favorite of mine and of The Husband. We watched Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) last weekend and we remarked that she was probably the most beautiful woman of all time. I love her deeply.

Taylor was always a trusted friend to gay people and gay people loved her right back. She was a very close friend and confidant of a coterie of gay men: Roddy McDowell, Rock Hudson, George Cukor, Noël Coward, James Dean, and most significantly, Montgomery Clift. She was even known to hang out at gay bars. My sources spotted her at The Abbey in West Hollywood only a decade ago.

During the Ronald Reagan presidency, Taylor was the first and most prominent movie star to lend her money, energy, time and name to HIV/AIDS fundraising. Her considerable star wattage turned Taylor from someone who empathized with both the fragility and duality of gay men’s political place in the USA to a commanding force for change. In 1985, Taylor, along with Dr. Mathilde Krim, plus small group of physicians and scientists formed the American Foundation For AIDS Research (amfAR). In 1991, she started her own organization, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, to support direct services for those infected and complement the research, education, and advocacy programs of amfAR.

At the eighth International AIDS Conference in 1991, she said of President Bush The First:

“I’m not even sure if he knows how to spell AIDS.”

Her public pronouncements on the subject were passionate, profound and poignant. She raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

For the last 25 years of her life, the fight against HIV/AIDS became a full-time avocation for Taylor:

“I hope with all of my heart that in some way I have made a difference in the lives of people with AIDS. I want that to be my legacy. Better that than for the mole on my cheek.”

Taylor’s relationship with gay men provided a more modern template for the status of Gay Icon. Gays used to embrace a woman who carried the burden of empathy, the kind of strung out glamorous tragedy that Judy Garland epitomized. Taylor had that, for sure, but she also made herself useful. She planted the seeds for the pioneering place in the gay orbit for Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, and Lady Gaga. Taylor’s embrace of gay people was not an affectation or marketing device, but something innate and intuitive. Aside from the husbands, the martinis, and the diamonds, she had a heart that many gay men unequivocally adored, and with plenty of reason.

But, for me, Taylor was a bit of a conundrum: truly classy, but perfectly campy; deeply kind, but shamelessly embarrassing; perennially lonely, yet serially monogamous. Pills, coke, booze, men, the commercials, the mascara, Studio 54, the guest appearances on television soap operas… Taylor and I got through those 1970s together.

She gave audacious performances in film adaptations of plays by gay playwrights like Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer (1959), Boom! (1968) and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof; Edna Ferber’s Giant (1956) and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

I met Taylor once. For realz. It was at the MGM 50th Anniversary Ball in 1974. I was thrillingly treated to a seven-minute conversation with her. Amazingly, she didn’t want to talk about herself, and instead, she asked about me. I explained that I was a Theatre Major at Loyola Marymount University. Taylor quizzed me on the curriculum and my stage roles. I told her that I was quite the admirer of her work. She touched my arm and looked at me with those famous violet eyes, and she whispered (I could feel her breath on my ear):

“I always thought that I was a fine actress, but I spent a lifetime feeling that I was held back because I have such a dreadful speaking voice. The coaches at MGM attempted to help me and I did improve, but I will never shake the fact my ghastly small voice was what stopped me from being truly great…”

Taylor was only in her early 40s when I met her that evening. She was wearing a stunning canary yellow mini-dress with yellow flowers in her hair. She was smoking a cigarette with an elegant ivory holder. She was faultlessly beautiful. I nearly fainted.

I always appreciated that, like me, she had a taste for expensive pharmaceuticals, rich fabrics and rich men. I tremble at the thought of her eight tumultuous marriages and her public denunciation by the Vatican as a home wrecker. I love her for her dramatic tracheotomy scar, of which she was never ashamed, giving me strength to show off my own brain surgery scar. I appreciate her love affair with jewelry, which inspired her to write a book simply titled, My Love Affair With Jewelry (2001). It would look handsome on the shelf with my own memoir, My Love Affair With Sleeping (2017). I admire her unswerving devotion to her friends, to Gay people, for Equal Rights activism, and her attention to fundraising and awareness for HIV/AIDS research and a search for a cure when no one else cared.

My devotions were simpatico with Taylor’s. We both lived with incidents replete with slurred speech, jokes about weight gain, and inelegant gestures of elegance, plus displays of dignity in the face of devastation.

I wish she could have seen HIV become the manageable condition it is today, and to have witnessed Marriage Equality, but mostly I wish that Elizabeth Taylor was with us today, celebrating her 85th birthday.

 “I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.”

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#Oscars: “Moonlight” Beats Out “La La Land” For Best Picture! (+ a Rundown of the Night & Full List of Winners)

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Yes, La La Land, came in last night as a favorite and left with almost half of the 14 Academy Awards it was up for; production design, cinematography, best original score, best original song (City Of Stars) best actress (Emma Stone), and best director. All but Best Actor (which went to Casey Affleck in Manchester By the Sea.) La La‘s win for best picture was looking kinda inevitable. So, when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty took the stage it seemed like a done deal.

But when Beatty looked at the card and paused, and then paused more, he handed it to Dunaway, and she read the card;

La La Land

Th film’s producer Justin Horowitz, gave his heartfelt thanks but returned to the mic and announced that there had been a mistake. Moonlight had actually won! Beatty tried to explain the confusion, surrounded by shocked producers and actors.

Turns out that Dunaway and Beatty, were given the wrong category envelope. When the cameras cut to the cast and crew of La La Land hugging, you could hear Beatty saying,

It says Emma Stone.” Dunaway said, “What?

Well, someone got yelled at/ fired. The night started off with Justin Timberlake getting the star-studded crowd on it’s well-heeled feet with Can’t Stop the Feeling, which was nominated for Best Song. Host Jimmy Kimmel‘s monologue was peppered with politics as you’d expect. (You can watch the whole thing, below.) It it thanked President Donald Trump and said,

Remember when it seemed like the Oscars were racist?

Last year, the Oscar’s WERE pretty racist, but this year seemed to make up for it with Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician Taraji P. Henson played in Hidden Figures, joining the actresses from the film on stage to present the award for best documentary feature to Ezra Edelman for O.J. Made In America. Viola Davis won best supporting actress for Fences and said in a moving speech,

August Wilson, who exhumed and exalted the ordinary people.

Mahershala Ali won best supporting actor for his performance in Moonlight and gave an emotional speech too and was, btw, the first Muslim actor, as far as anyone knows, to win an Oscar.

Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi won best foreign language film for The Salesman, but he was not present out of respect for Iranians and those from the other six countries included in the travel ban issued in late January.

Kimmel tweeted directly to Trump at one point, asking him “u up?” and adding #merylsayshi in a nod to Trump’s displeased reaction to Meryl Streep‘s speech at the Golden Globes.

In another bit, Kimmel brought in tourists from a bus who weren’t aware they were getting a front row visit.

Overall, a pretty exciting night I’d say, for the billion folks watching. It seems some wish that a few other things went like the Oscars too.

No word from Trump as of this writing.

Here’s a full list of winners:

Best Picture
Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Hidden Figures
La La Land
Manchester by the Sea
Lion
Moonlight

Best Actress
Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie
Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

Best Supporting Actress
Viola Davis, Fences
Naomie Harris, Moonlight
Nicole Kidman, Lion
Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures
Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

Best Actor
Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington, Fences

Best Supporting Actor
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea
Dev Patel, Lion
Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals

Cinematography
Arrival
La La Land
Lion
Moonlight

Documentary Feature
Fire at Sea
I Am Not Your Negro
Life Animated
OJ: Made in America
13th

Best Documentary Short Subject
Extremis
4.1 Miles
Joe’s Violin
Watani: My Homeland
The White Helmets

Foreign Language Film
Land of Mine
A Man Called Ove
The Salesman
Tanna
Toni Erdmann

Live-Action Short
Ennemis Interieurs
La Femme et le TGV
Silent Nights
Sing
Timecode

Sound Editing
Arrival
Deepwater Horizon
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land
Sully

Sound Mixing
Arrival
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

Production Design
Arrival
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Hail, Caesar!
La La Land
Passengers

Visual Effects
Deepwater Horizon
Doctor Strange
The Jungle Book
Kubo and the Two Strings
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Costume Design
Allied
Colleen Atwood, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Florence Foster Jenkins
Jackie
La La Land

Makeup and Hairstyling
A Man Called Ove
Star Trek Beyond
Suicide Squad

Best Original Score
Jackie
Justin Hurwitz – La La Land
Lion
Moonlight
Passengers

Original Song
Audition: The Fools Who DreamLa La Land
Can’t Stop the FeelingTrolls
City of StarsLa La Land
The Empty ChairJim: The James Foley Story
How Far I’ll GoMoana

Best Original Screenplay
Hell or High Water
La La Land
The Lobster
Kenneth Longeran – Manchester by the Sea
20th Century Women

Best Adapted Screenplay
Arrival
Fences
Hidden Figures
Lion
Moonlight

Best Animated Feature
Kubo and the Two Strings
Moana
My Life as a Zucchini
The Red Turtle
Zootopia

Best Animated Short
Blind Vaysha
Borrowed Time
Pear Cider and Cigarettes
Pearl
Piper

Best Director
Denis Villeneuve, Arrival
Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge
Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

The post #Oscars: “Moonlight” Beats Out “La La Land” For Best Picture! (+ a Rundown of the Night & Full List of Winners) appeared first on The WOW Report.

#OscarFlashback: Wrong Envelope, Flub Number One

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At the 36th annual Academy Awards on April 13, 1964 (yes, the Oscars used to be held in April), Sammy Davis Jr. presented the award for Best Music Score, but he had been given the wrong envelope.

Davis Jr. read the list of nominees: Irma La Douce, Bye Bye Birdie, A New Kind of Love, Sundays And Cybele and The Sword In The Stone. But, then he announced the winner: “John Addison for Tom Jones, who wasn’t a nominee in the category.

After confusion among the people in the audience members, Davis Jr. figured out that he had been given the wrong envelope, and quipped:

“Wait till the NAACP hears about this!”

He was then handed the correct envelope, and putting on his glasses, and joked:

“I ain’t gonna make no mistake this time, baby.”

Davis Jr. then announced the real winner: Andre Previn for Irma La Douce.

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Patricia Arquette Speaks Out About Sister Alexis’ Omission from the Oscar “In Memoriam” Segment

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Oscar winner Patricia Arquette spoke to Vanity Fair about her sister’s omission from the “In Memoriam” segment, saying she thought the moment would have provided a powerful message for transgender children.

“I’m really bummed. For the in memoriam, they left out our sister Alexis, and she was trans,” she told Vanity Fair. “We’re living in a time right now where trans kids can’t even go to the bathroom in schools and they’re diminished in society. It’s really unfortunate that the Oscars decided they couldn’t show a trans person who was such an important person in this community. Because ― trans kids ― it could have meant a lot to them.”

Even odder, there has been a precedent for trans inclusion – last year, Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn was included.

Alexis Arquette, 47, passed away in September. She had 70 acting credits to her name, including major blockbusters like The Wedding Singer, Pulp Fiction, and Bride of Chucky. (via HuffPo)

 

The post Patricia Arquette Speaks Out About Sister Alexis’ Omission from the Oscar “In Memoriam” Segment appeared first on The WOW Report.

Watch: London’s BFI Flare LGBT Film Festival Releases a Line-Up Trailer

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Last night Moonlight’s Best Picture Oscar win changed the landscape of queer media and how the “majority” ingests film. Coincidentally BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival dropped a compilation trailer of this year’s film lineup this morning, which includes Moonlight, Torrey Pines, The Handmaiden, Handsome Devil, After Louie, Different For Girls and even World of Wonder‘s Out of Iraq!

Watch the breathtaking trailer below!

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Nadia Lee Cohen’s New Short “A Guide To Indulgence” Satires Feminine Beauty Ideals

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A quick glimpse at British filmmaker and photographer Nadia Lee Cohen’s Instagram will illustrate the artist’s colorful and vibrant imagination brought to life through photography, fashion, and her own feminine discourse and ideology. Her latest project “A Guide To Indulgence” satires feminine beauty ideals through the lens of seven cartoonish femmes in various “housewife” scenarios.

Check it out:


Donned in elaborate gowns and an immaculate set, the three minute masterpiece will not only have you craving monochromatic ensembles, but will have you questioning what you thought of previous beauty standards and norms. Co-produced by WOW’s very own Alex Liley-Roth, the short film pushes the audience’s and spectacle of feminine beauty and purpose.

Take a watch (and become obsessed):

Cohen on the piece:

“I wanted to create a satirical world in which the female inhabitants have pushed their appearances into cartoonish, extreme representations of femininity”

Read more here.

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Lorde Teases New Sound In New Zealand Commercial

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Our Lorde and savior is back! Well, almost. It’s been FOUR long years since her widely successful Pure Heroine album and from a new (thirteen second) teaser, Lorde is offering us a tidbit of what to expect from her next sonic project. And the best part is we got a date: March 2nd, 2017. That’s. So. Soon.

Check it out:

Even Lorde chimed in on her personal Twitter:

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Casey Affleck Was “Appalled” to Learn His Production Company Donated to the Trump Campaign

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Problematic Oscar winner Casey Affleck recently discovered his film and television production company, The Affleck/Middleton Project, donated $5,000 to Donald Trump’s presidential transition efforts. He tells BuzzFeed News, however, that he is “in dismay” and “was not aware of the donation.”

“I am appalled that a donation may have been made in my company’s name by someone I work with,” Affleck told BuzzFeed. “I had no knowledge of it, was never asked, and never would have authorized it. I will get to the bottom of it. The policies of the Trump administration, and the values they represent, are antithetical to everything I believe in.”

He is a vocal opponent of Trump and his administration, telling the Independent Spirit Awards crowd just this weekend:

“The policies of this administration are abhorrent and they won’t last. They’re really un-American,” the actor said.

The mixup came from his Affleck/Middleton partner producer John Powers Middleton.

Via IndieWire:

While Affleck opposes the president’s policies, his business partner is a known supporter of the Republican Party who reportedly donated $220,000 to a pro-Trump super-PAC.

Seems… like it would be strained relationship to me. Might want to rethink that going forward…

(Photo: Pacific Coast News)

 

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Mark Clennon’s Powerful New Video “Find You” Will Make You Cry

How To Makeup: A Frosted Highlight with Gia Gunn

Chance The Rapper Buys “Get Out” Screening & Offers Fans To Watch For Free

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Chance The Rapper is loving Get Out as much as well, everyone, really. But the incredibly talented rapper saw the movie and liked it so much that he bought out an entire screening at the Chatham Theater in Chicago and offered his fans to go enjoy a free screening.

Check it out:

Awww…that’s incredible!

His fans did not go without thanking him either:

Read our review here and GET OUT and go see, GET OUT!

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February 28th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!

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#BornThisDay: Filmmaker, Vincente Minnelli

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Vincente-Minnelli

February 28, 1903Vincente Minnelli:

“I always have coffee without sugar, you know. Just cream.”

The life of Vincente Minnelli, the director of classic MGM musicals likes Meet Me In St. Louis (1944), Gigi (1958), and An American In Paris (1951) was as peculiar as the surreal dream ballets that became his film trademark. Born Lester Anthony Minnelli, he grew up as the only child in a family of traveling performers in the Midwest. His mother, Mina MaryLaLouche LeBeau, played ingénue roles in stock melodramas, while his father, Vincent, conducted the Minnelli Brothers Tent Theater Orchestra.

As a teenager, shy, stammering Minnelli had a penchant for trying on his mother’s clothes. He read a biography of the flamboyant painter James McNeill Whistler and decided to reinvent himself in the role of the worldly aesthete. He found work as a window dresser in Chicago before making his name as the designer of lavish theatrical sets and costumes for Broadway shows. It was there that he became “Vincente.”

MGM’s Head of Musical production Arthur Freed discovered Minnelli on Broadway and brought him to Hollywood to design dance numbers for the studio’s musical films.

As much as it was possible in his era, Minnelli had lived as an openly gay man in NYC prior to his arrival in Hollywood. He hung out with the Algonquin Round Table Circle and the Gershwin Brothers, and no one cared that he was a big ol’ homo. Hollywood was different, and Minnelli felt the necessity of a life in the closet to work in the film industry. He made a decision to deal with his homosexuality by living as a supposed bisexual.

Minnelli did design work and staged musical numbers in MGM films, including Strike Up The Band (1940) and Babes On Broadway (1941) starring Garland and Mickey Rooney, before being allowed to direct his own movies. His first film as director was the stylish, innovative All-Black musical Cabin In The Sky (1943).

His masterpiece is Meet Me in St. Louis. It is a musical tour de force and a milestone in American filmmaking. Meet Me In St. Louis is a textured, rich look at a turn-of-the-century America nostalgically longed for by a USA in the middle of WW II. It is also a showcase for Minnelli’s flamboyant camera techniques and his powerful use of color. The film also gave Garland her first real adult role. It also led to Garland’s marriage to her director and the birth of their daughter Liza.

While directing The Pirate (1948), his wife, Judy Garland, accused Minnelli of being in love with her co-star Gene Kelly, and favoring the best shots for him over her. Garland threatened suicide when she caught him having affairs with men. Although, during their marriage, Garland had assignations of her own. Monogamy was not the foundation of their union.

In Minnelli’s film version of Robert Anderson’s stage play about masculinity and homophobia, Tea And Sympathy (1956), he circumnavigated around the restrictions of the Motion Picture Association Of America production code to recreate the play’s ambiguities without ever using the word “homosexual”. It’s the story of a sensitive 17-year old boy with disinterest in sports and girls who is called a “sister-boy” at the college he is attending. The head-master’s wife sees the student’s suffering at the hands of his classmates and her husband and attempts to “cure” him. John Kerr, the young actor who played the student in both the stage production, for which he won a Tony Award, and film version of this play, also played the shirtless Lt. Cable in the film version of South Pacific (1958), which has nothing to do with this story, except that it was directed by Joshua Logan, also a closet case.

Minnelli received an Academy Award nomination as Best Director for An American In Paris  and later won the Best Director Oscar for Gigi. The Minnelli family is rather unique, with father, mother and daughter all winning Academy Awards. Who else did that? The Huston family, Grandfather Walter, son John and daughter Anjelica, all have Oscars. Also, the Coppola family: grandfather Carmine, son Francis Ford, and daughter Sofia, all had Academy Award statues. Can you think of others?

Minnelli had a reputation as a fearsome perfectionist, despite his passive, retiring personality. His attention to artistic detail was acute, often including a specific shade of yellow on his sets that required special mixing; the MGM scenic painters nicknamed it “Minnelli Yellow”.

He had real range as a director: Musicals, Family Dramas, Melodramas,  Film Noir, fanciful Comedies, he handled all sorts of stories with sensitivity and scope, directing an impressive number of classics. Among my favorites: The Bad And The Beautiful (1952), The Bandwagon (1953), Some Came Running (1958), Home From The Hill (1960), The Clock (1945), Father Of The Bride (1950) and the even better sequel Father’s Little Dividend (1951), Lust For Life (1956), Bells Are Ringing (1960), The Courtship Of Eddie’s Father (1963), and the supremely demented and suitably surreal On A Clear Day YouCan See Forever (1970), with Barbra Streisand, a project with a targeted gay audience. He directed seven actors to Oscar wins: including Spencer Tracy, Gloria Grahame, Kirk Douglas and Shirley MacLaine.

He was the ideal director for the traditional studio system, equally at ease with all kinds of genres, made with dependable expertise and a dash of stylish pretension. Minnelli made some of the most purely entertaining films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, along with a handful of real stinkers; A Matter Of Time (1976), Yolanda And The Thief (1945), and Dood It (1943).

A gay guy, with a penchant for chorus boys and hustlers, Minnelli had been known to sport “light makeup”. Still, he married four times, most famously to Garland, who married gay men twice more, and he fathered two daughters, including the perpetually self-reinventing, always fabulous Liza, who also married a couple of gay men herself.

Minnelli’s final credits rolled in 1986, taken by Alzheimer’s at 83 years old.

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#GayHeroes: Remembering Pedro Zamora

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Pedro Zamora:

“As gay young people, we are marginalized. As young people who are HIV-positive and have AIDS, we are totally written off.”

I was still in my 30s when the The Real World (1992-2013) premiered on MTV in 1992. I smartly stopped watching The Real World, or for that matter, MTV, when I turned 40-years olf. The Real World, which was inspired by the PBS documentary series An American Family (1973), was the longest-running program in MTV history and one of the longest-running reality series. It is credited with launching the modern reality show genre on television. Seven young people were chosen to temporarily live together in a new city in one residence while being filmed non-stop. Now, such a set-up seems old hat, but in the early 1990s, it made for riveting television viewing.

The series depicted issues such as sex, prejudice, religion, abortion, illness, sexuality, AIDS, death, politics, and substance abuse, but it was also the standard for reality television shows: Rednecks, Party Girls, Virgin Christians, Substance Abusers, Goody-Two-Shoes, Fags, Douchey Dudes; allowing them all to fight their tiny culture wars on television.

But, through the 30 seasons, Zamora of The Real World: San Francisco in 1994, its third season, continues to make an impression. Zamora and his six cast-mates: Mohammed Bilal, Rachel Campos, Pam Ling, Cory Murphy, Puck Rainey, and Judd Winick moved into the house at 953 Lombard Street on Russian Hill on February 12, 1994, and filming commenced.

Zamora was a Cuban-American gay man who died from complications from HIV the day after The Real World: San Francisco season finale aired. He was diagnosed with HIV in his junior year of high school, and by the time he was 19-years old, he was fully involved in a career as an AIDS educator. When the opportunity arose to audition for a spot on The Real World, Zamora saw a chance to further his message of AIDS awareness.

He brought a scrapbook of his education work to show his The Real World cast-mates, immediately lectured them on HIV transmission, and took them along on his speaking gigs. He and his boyfriend, Sean Sasser, had a tear-jerking commitment ceremony before the television cameras. Anyone who saw that season’s The Real World can never get Zamora’s story out of their minds.

Once The Real World: San Francisco season ended filming, Zamora fell fatally ill. Zamora had no medical insurance and MTV set up a trust fund to pay for his medical bills. Pre-Obama Care, Zamora received Medicaid, but could not, due to his AIDS diagnosis, qualify for an insurance policy.

Cast members Ling and Winick rushed to be by his side at a hospital in Miami. Their friendship deepened and together they embraced their friend’s cause. A year after they moved out of the spotlight, they moved in together. Ling became an M.D. specializing in HIV Health, Judd writes for DC Comics. They are now married and living in San Francisco. Tales Of The City author Armistead Maupin spoke at their wedding ceremony.

Winick’s graphic novel, Pedro And Me: Friendship, Loss, And What I Learned, was published in 2000. It was awarded six American Library Association awards, and Winick won his first GLAAD Award.

Pedro (2009) is a very moving biopic produced by MTV and written by Dustin Lance Black the cutie pie who won an Academy Award for the screenplay of Milk (2008), and the creator of When We Rise, the LGBTQ Rights miniseries which began airing last night on ABC.

Pedro includes a reenactment of the phone call of appreciation to Zamora and his family from President Bill Clinton, who thanks him for his work, and who facilitates, along with Attorney General Janet Reno, Secretary Of Health And Human Services Donna Shalala, a reunion of Zamora’s older brothers and sisters, who have been allowed to leave Cuba to join the family in Miami. The real Clinton also introduces the film. The Zamora family did not accept Sasser, however, and Zamora was too ill to explicitly communicate to them the importance of Sasser in his life. This led to confrontations between Sasser and the Zamoras, who told him that: “Pedro did not need to have a lover anymore”. Sasser was not allowed to see Zamora during his final days.

In his short life, Zamora did much to advance awareness and understanding of HIV, as well as to change his generation’s acceptance of gay people. When Sasser married Zamora in a commitment ceremony at The Real World house, audiences were not horrified, as they might have been just a decade earlier, instead they were charmed. Their romance was voted “Favorite Love Story” out 30 seasons of Real World of cast members dating and falling in love.

A Leap Year baby, Zamora would have been 13-years old last or 45 years-old today, or tomorrow; I don’t know how Leap Year babies celebrate. No matter how you count it, it would be a better world if he was still with us.

The post #GayHeroes: Remembering Pedro Zamora appeared first on The WOW Report.

#LGBTQ: Court Rules That Trans Sister of Jackie Evancho Can Use Gender-Appropriate Bathroom

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Jackie Evancho and sister Juliet, left

A federal district court has ruled that a school district must allow transgender students use a bathroom matching their gender identity. A motion for preliminary injunction had been filed by Lambda Legal on behalf of the students.

The court ruled that the Pine-Richlands High School and its district must allow three trans students use a gender-appropriate bathroom.

Judge Mark R Hornak on Monday wrote,

The Plaintiffs appear to the Court to be young people seeking to do what young people try to do every day-go to school, obtain an education, and interact as equals with their peers. …[T]he Plaintiffs have shown a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the District’s enforcement of Resolution 2 as to their use of common school restrooms does not afford them equal protection of the law as guaranteed to them by the Fourteenth Amendment.

A student at the school, Elissa Ridenour, said the ruling was a huge victory,

This is wonderful news and a tremendous relief that we can now use the bathroom without feeling isolated and humiliated. The past months have been incredibly stressful, and this was all so unnecessary. There was no problem before, and we are confident there will be no problem now.

The ruling applies to Juliet Evancho, whose sister Jackie performed at the Trump inauguration, and a minor student named A.S. Lambda Legal Staff Attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan says,

Not-with-standing the Trump Administration’s misguided and cruel actions last week, the court today found that the school’s policy barring transgender students from the restroom that matches who they are violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution…such policies are not only wrong, they are illegal. The rescission of a guidance by the Trump administration cannot change that.

Teenage reality star Jackie Evancho, who defied a celebrity boycott to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration, wants with the President after she complained that he targeted her trans sister’s rights.

Jackie Evancho singing at Trump’s inauguration

(via Pink News)

The post #LGBTQ: Court Rules That Trans Sister of Jackie Evancho Can Use Gender-Appropriate Bathroom appeared first on The WOW Report.

This Pic of Kellyanne Conway Is Driving the Internet INSANE!

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Kellyanne Conway was photographed sitting with her feet on an Oval Office couch and the Internet is losing it’s shit.

The counselor to the president had her shoes on when she was apparently perching on the furniture Monday to snap a photo of Trump with leaders of the nation’s historically black universities and colleges.

The pic of Conway sparked debate on social media — with some asserting that Conway’s causal posture was disrespectful to the executive mansion and all it stands for. Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens wrote on Twitter.

If Rice or Jarrett had sat like this in Oval Office conservatives would have screamed themselves hoarse for weeks.

And Twitter had thoughts and memes too. Gotta laugh to keep from crying…

(via Washington Post)

The post This Pic of Kellyanne Conway Is Driving the Internet INSANE! appeared first on The WOW Report.

#LGBTQ: Disney Channel’s “Star vs The Forces of Evil” Featured a Gay Kiss & It Was NBD. Watch

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Star vs. The Forces of Evil, on the Disney Channel just featured a gay kiss. And not so much as a boycott was felt –so far.

Star is the main character and she’s attending a boy band concert with her main love interest and another girl. While the band sings their song Just Friends, Star looks at happy couples kissing and one duo is two men. One guy features facial hair just to make sure we know they are both men.

No big deal, but something like this would’t have happened ten years ago without causing a big stir. The kiss is at 1:26.

Watch.

(via LGBTQ Nation)

The post #LGBTQ: Disney Channel’s “Star vs The Forces of Evil” Featured a Gay Kiss & It Was NBD. Watch appeared first on The WOW Report.

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