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#QueerQuote: W.H. Auden


#FirstLook: Chilling New Documentary Exposes the Anti-Muslim, Buddhist Hate-Monk (Who LOVES Trump) Watch

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A chilling new documentary by Barbet Schroeder explores the anti-Muslim hate-monk Ashin Wirathu, and sheds light on the genocide of Rohingya Muslims.

A campaign of ethnic cleansing in Burma is being carried out by a “Buddhist” monk who spreads lies about Muslims, inciting nationalist violence.

Schroeder went into the jungle with a handheld camera and two assistants to record this profile of Wirathu who has spent years preaching to crowds that the county’s small Muslim minority are “snakes” and “dogs.” He has compared them to the African catfish —an invasive species that outbreeds and outgrows their rivals, and ultimately destroys their ecosystem. He says in The Venerable W., Schroeder’s documentary that,

Muslims are exactly like these fish.

According to The Daily Beast,

More than half a million Rohingya Muslims are believed to have fled Burma in the last two months as their homes are burnt to the ground amid reports of arbitrary arrest, rape, and torture. Desperate to reach the relative safety of refugee camps over the border in Bangladesh, many are risking their lives to flee. Ten children died when an overcrowded boat capsized during a river crossing on Sunday.

A 2013 cover story on Ashin Wirathu’s terror campaign

Schroeder, who directed Single White Female and Barfly, says he had been willing to risk his own safety to film Burma’s radical Buddhists in order to capture this movement.

I was just desperately trying to understand how Buddhism could take that form—because for me Buddhism is one of the treasures of humanity. So, how could that happen? The answer is that I went to the end of the world to find out about Buddhism, and very soon I realized I was not seeing something special to Burma but something happening all over the planet —the rise of Facebook, the rise of nationalism, and the rise of populism.

He is a showman. Like Trump, he became a leader out of his manipulation and brilliance in knowing how to find the right words —formulas that stun the public.”

Wirathu has been preaching the his message of anti-Islamic hate for more than a decade, but in the years since Burma has undergone an internet revolution and he’s now able to spread his messages of hate to tens of thousands of people at a time. The doc shows him posting a message on Facebook in July of 2014 about the rape of a woman by Muslim men and two people are killed in a subsequent riot. But it becomes clear that no such rape ever took place.

Wirathu says that he simply wants to protect his people from the threat of Muslim predators but the reality is very different. In Burma, it is the Rohyinga Muslims who have been subjected to widespread rape and torture at the hands of Buddhists and Army personnel.

And guess who Wirathu’s hero is? Trump. Schroeder’s interviews happened during the presidential campaign last year. Wirathu says,

In the USA, if people want to maintain peace and stability they have to choose Donald Trump.

Schroeder set out to make a movie, not journalistic investigation. He no idea how quickly the country would turn so brutal. He said,

I was resisting the political news of the movie, but, of course, now there’s a point when you’re looking at a genocide —so you can’t resist anymore to use the political news for a movie that can save people or can save something.

I’m very pessimistic but if this movie can help people understand what is happening, I’m happy.”

Here’s the trailer for The Venerable W. which showed at New York Film Festival this Friday.

Watch.

(Photo, Unifrance Films; via The Daily Beast)

The post #FirstLook: Chilling New Documentary Exposes the Anti-Muslim, Buddhist Hate-Monk (Who LOVES Trump) Watch appeared first on The WOW Report.

#ArtDept: The Works of Charles Sprague Pearce

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“Labor” (1900), photograph by Carol Highsmith, who explicitly placed the photograph in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons, Great Hall, Library Of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building

 

Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914)

During the 19th century, before the USA had established its own artistic originality, American artists were seduced by the art scene in Paris. An important group of American artists moved to that city, including Mary Cassatt, James Abbot MacNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent, among many others. Charles Sprague Pearce may not be as famous, but his presence in Paris was important for the propagation and appreciation of American artwork in Europe.

Pearce was born into a wealthy Bostonian family. As a youth, he worked in his father’s Asian Art importing business and he fell in love with all things “Oriental”.  He began his painting career in 1872, doing mainly portraiture, religious subjects and Oriental genre scenes. Pearce’s first public exhibition was at the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia. His work is sentimental, rather detailed and sensuous with textures. He was one of the most inquisitive and ambitious of the expatriate American painters in Europe during his era, at various times experimenting with Realism, Greek and Roman Classicism, Biblical scenes, Plein-Air Naturalism, Orientalism, Impressionism, and even Pointillism.

Pearce’s blend of the exotic and the popular made him a much in demand artist in Europe and America. Sad that he is mostly ignored today.

“Portrait Of Paul Wayland Bartlett” (1890), National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

 

“The Arab Jeweler” (1882), Metropolitan Museum Of Art

In 1873, Pearce and his boyfriend, American painter Frederic Arthur Bridgman, traveled to Egypt and spent three months traveling down the Nile, making drawings and immersing themselves in the exotic culture. The next year, the couple traveled to Algeria for the winter months absorbing the life and culture of another foreign country, further adding to his repertoire of exotic themes.

Back in Paris, he painted Egyptian and Algerian scenes, portraits by commission, and decorative work, including the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library Of Congress in Washington DC. He received medals at the Paris Salon and was made Chevalier of the French Legion Of Honor, among many honors and awards.

Pearce, photograph by L. Baschet, 1895, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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#BornThisDay: Gay Icon, Oscar Wilde

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Photograph by Napoleon Sarony, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

October 16, 1854Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde:

“Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth.”

Do we need a #BornThisDay post about the Gay Icon, Oscar Wilde? Is there anything that I could share with all of you that has not gleaned from the life and works of the world’s most famous homosexual?

Over 117 years after his death, Wilde remains the quintessential gay man. As famous for his lust for a certain peaches and cream young man, as he was for his literary works, his decipherable portrait is the most widely recognized LGBTQ symbol after the Rainbow Flag.

He became obsessed with beauty from an early age, which became a major theme in most of his works. The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1890) is fundamentally an ode to the beauty of men, written in an age where being queer was a crime punishable with hard labor and imprisonment. It was a brave step on Wilde’s part to write such a novel. Although no actual act of sodomy is mentioned, Dorian Gray is simply dripping with homoeroticism and innuendo. Reviewers were critical of the novel’s decadence and gay allusions. One London newspaper called it: “Unclean, poisonous, and heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction”. Wilde responded:

“If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly will see its moral lesson.”

Yet, he did revise it extensively for a new edition in 1891: six new chapters were added, some of the more decadent passages and homoeroticism were removed, and a preface was included consisting of 22 epigrams, including: “Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

His short story The Happy Prince (1888) is a story for children and so it lacks the vulgarity hinted at in Dorian Gray, but it still stands as a story with a metaphor for the vanity of gay culture.

His play, The Importance Of Being Earnest (1895) is, for me, the most perfect stage comedy of all time. This play does not have a wasted piece of dialogue or a false moment.

You know the sad tale:

Wilde was brought to trial in 1895 and sentenced to two years hard labor for the crime of “Gross Indecency”.

“We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.”

At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance Of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The Marquess left his calling card at Wilde’s gentlemen’s club, The Albemarle, inscribed: “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite”. That nutty Marquess and his creative spelling. Wilde, with the encouragement of Douglas and against the advice of his friends, charged Queensberry with libel, since the note was basically a public accusation that Wilde had committed the crime of sodomy.

The libel trial was a sensation as salacious details of Wilde’s private life with Douglas and other young men began to appear in the press. A team of private detectives had directed Queensberry’s lawyers to the world of the Victorian gay underground. Wilde’s experiences with rent boys, cross-dressers and gay brothels was recorded. The men involved were interviewed and coerced into appearing as witnesses since they also were guilty of the crime to which Wilde was accused.

The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges against his lover’s father and led to his own arrest. After two trials he was convicted and sentenced to the maximum penalty. He was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his time in prison, he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, in dark opposition to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.

On May 19th, 1897, Wilde was released from Reading Gaol Prison, outside of London. His health had suffered greatly, but he had a feeling of spiritual renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society Of Jesus (The Jesuits, responsible for my college education, by the way) requesting a six month spiritual retreat. When the request was denied, Wilde wept.

Wilde left England the next day for France, to spend his last three years in penniless exile. He adopted the name Sebastian Melmoth, after Saint Sebastian. Wilde wrote two long letters to the editor of the London Daily Chronicle, describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating prison reform.

Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

 

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol is his epic poem written while in exile. It was published by under the name “C.3.3.”, which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3. This ensured that Wilde’s name, now notorious, did not appear on the poem’s front cover. It was not commonly known, until the seventh printing in June 1899, that C.3.3. was actually Wilde.

Wilde had sought publication of the poem hoping for some sort of income. Fortunately, the poem sold very well and very quickly, assuring Wilde a bit of income. Wilde died less than three years after the The Ballad Of Reading Gaol first appeared.

For a dandy like Wilde, prison had not been an easy way of life and he died a broken man, destitute and debased. He is now at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, in Paris. His tomb was commissioned by Robert Ross (1869-1918) a Canadian journalist, art critic and art dealer, who was Wilde’s most devoted friend, lover and literary executor. Ross also suffered greatly for his gayness. He was with Wilde at the end. In 1950, on the 50th anniversary of Wilde’s death, Ross’s ashes were placed in Wilde’s tomb.

A relief of an angel on the modernist stone tomb was originally complete with male genitalia, which were vandalized and stolen in 1961 and never recovered. In 2000, Leon Johnson, a multimedia artist, installed a silver prosthesis to replace them. Today, tens of thousands of people visit it every year. There was a long tradition developed of the visitors leaving lipstick kisses on the tomb, but in 2011 the kissed were scrubbed free and a glass barrier installed.

Wilde’s epitaph is a verse from The Ballad Of Reading Gaol:

And alien tears will fill for him

Pity’s long-broken urn,

For his mourners will be outcast men,

And outcasts always mourn.

This year, Wilde was among the more than 50,000 British men who were pardoned for the crime being gay.

Wilde’s legacy still lives on and history has been quite kind to him. He remains the role model for intellectual and witty gay men. It is important that we remember how times have changed since the era of Wilde and his kind who frequented the boy brothels of London, an era when being gay would lead to a graceless life. We owe Wilde a debt of gratitude for the bravery that it took to live his life. We need to consider him as POTUS, Pence and Sessions and their gang of Right Wing Christian terrorists plan ways to make our lives ready for an American Reading Gaol. Don’t consider returning to the closet; be brave, be witty, be gay.

I have a gorgeous leather bound seven volume set of Oscar Wilde’s Works, number 10 in a limited series of 250 copies, published in 1908 by David B. Nickerson & Co. Publishers of Boston. They were a gift from someone I loved very much. I am told they are worth a bunch of money, but I would never give them up. They sit at my writing table with a tiny portrait of Wilde in a silver frame, a gift from my husband for no reason at all.

I hereby nominate Oscar Wilde for the Number One Gay Icon Of All Time. His birthday should be an international holiday. Don’t you agree? Let’s celebrate with some of his best witticisms:

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

 

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”

 

“I can resist everything except temptation.”

 

“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

 

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

 

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

 

“True friends stab you in the front.”

 

“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”

 

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

 

The post #BornThisDay: Gay Icon, Oscar Wilde appeared first on The WOW Report.

October 16th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!

#QueerQuote: Angela Davis

A New Episode of Tina Fey’s “Great News” Sums Up Sexual Harassment in Hollywood Perfectly. Watch

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A new episode of season 2 of the hit show Great News, tackles sexual harassment in the workplace only days after allegations of similar behavior from Harvey Weinstein surfaced.

Sound familiar? The episode entitled Honeypot, has a high-powered female executive, played by Great News exec producer Tina Fey, found to be sexually harassing her male employees. Fey’s Diana St. Tropez uses her status to try to pressure subordinates into engaging in questionable behavior. (Wink, wink, Harvey.)

Coincidentally, Thursday’s episode of Great News was also co-written by Fey who also wrote a 2012 episode of 30 Rock that fun of Weinstein’s aggressive behavior toward women. On the show, Jenna Maroney (played by Jane Krakowski) says,

I’m not afraid of anyone in show business. I turned down intercourse with Harvey Weinstein on no less than three occasions … out of five.

On another 30 Rock episode Jenna says,

I know how former lovers can have a hold over you long after they’re gone. In some ways, I’m still pinned under a passed-out Harvey Weinstein and it’s Thanksgiving.

Great News airs Thursdays at 9:30 PM on NBC.

(Photo, NBC, via THR)

The post A New Episode of Tina Fey’s “Great News” Sums Up Sexual Harassment in Hollywood Perfectly. Watch appeared first on The WOW Report.

#SNL: Kellyanne Conway Promises CNN Crazy Quotes as the Scary Clown From “It.” Watch

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Last night SNL featured Kellyanne Conway as the scary clown from Stephen King‘s rebooted film It.

CNN‘s Anderson Cooper (Alex Moffat) stumbles upon Conway (Kate McKinnon) in full Pennywise makeup in a sewer on a stormy night. In exchange for getting booked, she promises Cooper crazy quotes —

Puerto Rico actually was worse before Hurricane Maria, and the hurricane did actually blow some buildings back together.

Cooper asks,

What’d you do to your makeup?

She replies,

I toned it down.

The joke really comes at the expense of Cooper and cable news for its reliance on covering the ridiculous things that come from the mouths of Team Trump. Her tricks even work on liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

Watch.

(Photo, YouTube; via The Washington Post)

The post #SNL: Kellyanne Conway Promises CNN Crazy Quotes as the Scary Clown From “It.” Watch appeared first on The WOW Report.


Robot Jewelry Crawling All Over Your Body: Fab or Creepy?

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Self-moving jewelry. Yep, it’s coming. MIT Media Lab Ph.d student Cindy Sin-Liu Kao has created tiny Kino robots htat are controlled by a magnetic wheel on the inside of your clothing. According to CO Design:

They scuttle across the surface of the fabric, performing tasks or acting purely as decoration. They can drag the strings of a hoody closed, move in patterns dictated by the wearer, or act like a smartphone-connected speaker and microphone, moving up closer to the user’s mouth and ear if they receive a phone call. They’re part jewelry, part interactive clothing.

Watch below.

It’s unlikely these robots will be hitting the runways or the streets anytime soon. Instead, Kao sees her prototypes as exercises in imagining what the future of clothing might look like. Her vision? One day they’d be tiny enough to integrate more seamlessly into clothing. Technology remains a barrier to making that happen right now, and those hardware hurdles have real implications for wearers–in fact, Kao believes the size was part of the reason why people found them so creepy in the first place.
“As technology becomes further miniaturized, there is potential for the things we wear to become much more dynamic and active,” she says. “However, going beyond traditional modalities of displays and LEDs, we introduce mobility as a new vocabulary for on body design.”

via MIT Media Lab:

This work explores a dynamic future in which the accessories we wear are no longer static, but are instead mobile, living objects on the body. Engineered with the functionality of miniaturized robotics, this “living” jewelry roams on unmodified clothing, changing location and reconfiguring appearance according to social context and enabling multiple presentations of self. With the addition of sensor devices, they can actively respond to environmental conditions. They can also be paired with existing mobile devices to become personalized on-body assistants to help complete tasks. Attached to garments, they generate shape-changing clothing and kinetic pattern designs—creating a new, dynamic fashion.

It is our vision that in the future, these robots will be miniaturized to the extent that they can be seamlessly integrated into existing practices of body ornamentation. With the addition of kinetic capabilities, traditionally static jewelry and accessories will start displaying life-like qualities, learning, shifting, and reconfiguring to the needs and preferences of the wearer, also assisting in fluid presentation of self. With wearables that possess hybrid qualities of the living and the crafted, we explore a new on-body ecology for human-wearable symbiosis.

LOVE IT. And it seems the applications for it are endless.

The post Robot Jewelry Crawling All Over Your Body: Fab or Creepy? appeared first on The WOW Report.

Must Watch Video of the Day: “Valentina” (Alaska’s “Despicito” Parody)

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Alaska drags Valentina (and the RuPaul’s Drag Race elimination that will live in infamy) in this parody dis track of “Despicito.” Wearing Valentina’s signature looks (the beret, the cowboy hat, and of course THE MASK). she sings:

I saw an angel on my TV
Could I be dreaming? Someone pinch me, ow
She had me at “Hello, it’s me!”
You know who you are
Your smile could light up my darkest day
How many challenges you could have slayed
But they made you turn and walk away!

The rest of the track is in Spanish, which I don’t speak, but I’ve been told she goes in on Valentina for her disastrous lipsync, Aja’s epic rant, and Nina Bo’Nina Brown.

Watch below

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#BornThisDay: Actor, Montgomery Clift

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From “The Young Lions” (1958) trailer, public domain

October 17, 1920– Montgomery Clift:

“The closer we come to the negative, to death, the more we blossom.”

He made his Broadway debut at 13-years-old in something titled Fly Away Home (it was a hit comedy starring Mary Wickes). By the time he was 18-years-old, he had appeared in a dozen plays on Broadway. He had worked with Alfred LuntLynn Fontaine and Tallulah Bankhead. He earned excellent reviews and recived a lot of offers from Hollywood. While working in the Theatre world in the early 1940s, he met 38-year-old jazz singer and heiress to the Reynolds Tobacco fortune, Libby Holman. She developed an obsession with the 21-year-old actor, financing a play for him. His relationship with the bisexual Holman caused him to anguish over his gayness.

The first of many serious illnesses, dysentery contracted on a Mexican vacation, prevented Clift from active service during WW II. Instead, he spent the war playing soldiers on Broadway. In 1945, he got his first starring Broadway role as a fighter discharged from an Army hospital for mental problems in Foxhole In The Parlor (and all this time, I thought “Foxhole In The Parlor” was a term for a sex position).

He was friends with and an inspiration to James Dean and Marlon Brando. They formed this trio of brooding, intense young performers that were trying out a new style of naturalistic acting personified by The Actors Studio in NYC.

Clift went to Hollywood, but felt he was under-valued as an actor. Yet, he was, in fact, extremely accomplished at his craft and very well-regarded by critics and his fellow actors. He received four Academy Award nominations, the first one for his second film, The Search (1948).

Clift was an isolated, tortured, closeted gay man. The characters he played were also often lost, confused souls. Although he was gay, he had his closest relationships with several female actors. The closest of all was Elizabeth Taylor.

Taylor and Clift were both passionate and vulnerable young people who felt a bond the moment they met. Taylor claimed that he took her breath away the first time that she ever laid eyed on him. They worked together on several films, beginning with George Stevens‘ A Place In The Sun (1951), bringing him a second Oscar nomination. From what I have read, Taylor and Clift were basically lovers minus the sex part. Has there ever been anything onscreen as beautiful as Taylor and Clift kissing? They remained BFFs until the end of his life.

“I love men in bed, but I really love women!”

He did have an affair with Taylor’s very good friend, actor Roddy McDowall, who attempted suicide after their breakup.

In an attempt to keep his encounters with guys discreet, Clift would travel to popular gay resorts like Ogunquit, Maine and Fire Island. He seems to have gone in for rough sex, but who among us has not? In 1949, he was arrested on 42nd Street in NYC for soliciting, but his film studio found a way to have charges dropped without the press noticing.

Usually popular on the set, Clift was teased, bullied and ridiculed for being gay by Frank Sinatra while making From Here To Eternity (1953), which gave him his third Academy Award nomination. Clift made a pass at a guy at a the premier party for the film and Sinatra had his bodyguards throw him out on the street and he never spoke to him again.

On May 12, 1956, after leaving a party at Taylor’s place on top of one of those winding Los Angeles canyons, Clift drove his car into a telephone pole (8 months after his pal James Dean died in a similar accident). When he was cleared from the wreckage his body was found to be mostly unharmed but his beautiful face was swollen twice its size, he had a severe concussion, his jaw was broken in four places, his nose in two, his cheekbones were cracked and his front teeth were missing. Doctors wired his jaws together. He took amphetamines, downers, and alcohol to dull the pain.

The next year he played opposite Brando in The Young Lions. During the shoot Brando lived on amphetamines. Clift always had his handy flask containing a mixture of whiskey, crushed Demerol and fruit juice. Even Brando was concerned and told him:

“In a way I hate you. I always hated you because I want to be better than you, but you’re better than me. You’re my touchstone, my challenge, and I want you and me to go on challenging each other… and I thought you would until you started this foolishness.”

Yet, Clift continued to act and he gave some of his most memorable performances after the accident: Stanley Kramer’s Judgment At Nuremberg (1961), with his fourth Oscar nomination (this one for a seven minute role) and John Huston’s The Misfits (1961). His The Misfits costar Marilyn Monroe found in Clift a kindred spirit. By this time, Monroe was so addicted to pills she could hardly function, but she could still say of Clift:

“He’s the only person I know who’s in worse shape than I am.”

In 1962, director John Huston persuaded Clift to star in Freud, a disastrous and destructive film with Clift playing the famous founder of psychoanalysis. It destroyed Clift. The original screenplay was by Jean Paul Sartre, but Huston cut out most of the sexual references, ignoring that this formed the very basis of Freudian Psychology. Clift and Huston were at war during shooting. The director pushed and taxed Clift physically. While filming, Clift was hit accidentally in the eyes. In constant pain, suffering from severe fatigue and disturbing depression, he finished the film only to find himself embroiled in a lawsuit with Universal Studios, who blamed him for the picture going over-budget.

After this shattering experience, he couldn’t find a job. He was uninsurable, sick and desperate. Clift, one of the greatest screen actors of all time, was reduced to eating nothing but canned baby food and painkillers.

His expressive acting, beautiful face and his personal life were never the same after that car crash. Clift made 16 films before the crash and 16 films after.

In the early 1960s, in pain from his injuries, and in physical and emotional despair, Clift plunged deeply into drugs and alcohol, along with alarming behavior, including a particularly volatile affair with director/choreographer Jerome Robbins. He began causing scenes in public and was in constant need of attention. In restaurants he would throw food and mock the waiters. His friends Arthur MillerNorman Mailer and Truman Capote stood by him with sadness.

By the time his last lover, Lorenzo James, found him naked and dead of a heart attack at their home in Greenwich Village, on July 23, 1966, Clift was unemployable, broken and broke. When he took his final curtain call, Clift was just 45-years-old.

His 15 minute funeral was at attended by 150 mourners, including Lauren Bacall and Sinatra. Clift is buried in the Quaker Cemetery in Prospect ParkBrooklyn. I have visited him there.

If he had lived, Clift would have celebrated his 97th birthday today. I like to think that he would have continued to work in film, maybe even enjoying a triumphant return to Broadway. In the 21st century he might have found a new audience on television, starring with Betty White in series adaptation of On Golden Pond for Netflix.

Out actor Matt Bomer had signed to play Clift in an upcoming biopic for HBO. That project seems to be in turnaround. Bomer, who shares a striking resemblance to Clift, has stated that he immediately felt as though his connection to the great Gay Icon was more than skin-deep. Bomer:

“He was one of those really early screen icons for me to start with. Then once I learned the circumstances of his life, I realized how he was someone who did not want to be relegated to the times he lived in and was so progressive in so many ways.”

Hedda Hopper, that powerful Hollywood columnist, once asked Clift: “In one sentence, what is the story of your life?”

Clift’s reply:

“I’ve been knifed.”

 

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October 17th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!

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Women Take On The Hollywood Patriarchy, 1944: Olivia de Havilland

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Warner Bros. Original trailer for “Captain Blood” (1935), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The great actor and film historian Louise Brooks (1906-1985) wrote that the movie industry began because a bunch of rich men thought it would be just terrific fun to own beautiful young women. Women like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Olivia de Havilland pushed back against that ownership: the studio contract system.

In 1941, while under contract at Warner Bros. de Havilland was discouraged to find herself cast in the same sort of undistinguished roles as second-fiddle to the men. She decided to take suspensions without pay to avoid the parts she regarded as unacceptable. Loaned out to Paramount Pictures for Hold Back The Dawn, de Havilland received another Academy Award nomination (her first was for Gone With The Wind in 1939), and she began to count down the months until her contract with Warner Bros. expired.

But, under California’s studio-friendly labor laws, employers could hold actors to personal services contracts for up to seven years. De Havilland’s contract ended in July 1943. But when the day came, she was shocked to find out that she wasn’t free at all. The months of suspension without pay that she had accumulated were tacked on to the end of her original contract period. De Havilland owed the studio seven years of active labor, however long it might take.

The enforceability of the “tack on” terms had never been addressed by the courts and no actor had dared to make a legal challenge, although powerful stars like Hepburn and Davis were able to negotiate modifications in their contracts. De Havilland, at just 27-years-old, decided to fight back. She hired an attorney to seek a judicial declaration that the “tack on” provision of the suspension clause was invalid under California state law. Even with the very real possibility of ruining her career by taking on the studio system, never the less, she persevered. In late 1944, the California Appellate Court gave de Havilland, and the rest of the studios contract players, freedom from the Hollywood version of indentured servitude.

Her victory cost her $13,000 (or $200,000 in 2017 money) in legal fees. But, she also won the respect and admiration of her actor colleagues, including her own sister, Joan Fontaine, who said: “Hollywood owes Olivia a great deal…”, and then they went back to feuding. Warner Bros. sent letters to other studios who put de Havilland on a blacklist. She did not work for two years.

De Havilland finally proved the worth of her artistic freedom by securing the sort of roles she wanted to play, starting with three truly great films: To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948) and The Heiress (1949). Her work brought her three more Oscar nominations with two wins and a New York Film Critics Circle Award.

Her court victory is still known today as The De Havilland Law instead of the more formal California Labor Code Section 2855. In legalese, it prevents any court from enforcing an exclusive personal services contract beyond the term of seven calendar years from the commencement of service.

This summer, de Havilland was appointed a Dame as Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire. At 101-years-old, she is the oldest woman ever to receive the honor.

De Havilland was a very good friend of Bette Davis. This year in the otherwise intriguing Feud: Bette And Joan, she was oddly portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones. On June 30, a day before her 101st birthday, de Havilland filed a lawsuit against FX and writer/producer Ryan Murphy for inaccurately portraying her and using her image without permission. Don’t mess with Miss de Havilland!

De Havilland’s legal victory in 1944 reduced the power of the studios and brought greater creative freedom to performers. It also gave women a little bit more clout. The decision was one of the most significant and far-reaching legal rulings in Hollywood history and a female made it happen.

The post Women Take On The Hollywood Patriarchy, 1944: Olivia de Havilland appeared first on The WOW Report.

#LGBTQ: When Asked About Gay Rights, Trump Says of Pence, “Don’t Ask That Guy—He Wants to Hang Them All!”

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Buried in a new feature in The New Yorker about the dangers posed to progressive ideals by a possible President Pence if, and hopefully WHEN, Trump is removed from office.

“[A]ccording to a longtime associate, Trump also likes to

let Pence know who’s boss.

A staff member from Trump’s campaign recalls him mocking Pence’s religiosity. He said that, when people met with Trump after stopping by Pence’s office, Trump would ask them,

Did Mike make you pray?

Two sources also recalled Trump needling Pence about his views on abortion and homosexuality. During a meeting with a legal scholar, Trump belittled Pence’s determination to overturn Roe v. Wade. The legal scholar had said that, if the Supreme Court did so, many states would likely legalize abortion on their own.

You see?” Trump asked Pence. “You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.

When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked,

Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!

Pence has reportedly been the impetus behind efforts to curb LGBTQ rights on a national level. As governor of Indiana, he signed a religious freedom law that proved so unpopular he was forced to backpedal.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently issued religious freedom memos, satisfying the demands right-wingers had been making, the latest in a continued attack on the LGBTQ community.

The Trump administration is so the LGBTQ community that it went so far as to pull support from a ceremony at the Stonewall National Monument, and to ensure that a pride flag would NOT go up on federal land.

One thing is pretty clear. you can even ask Caitlyn Jenner. Trump or a Pence in the Oval Office is disaster for the LGBTQ community.

(Photo, youTube; via LGBTQ Nation)

The post #LGBTQ: When Asked About Gay Rights, Trump Says of Pence, “Don’t Ask That Guy—He Wants to Hang Them All!” appeared first on The WOW Report.

What’s THE Worst Idea for a Kid’s Halloween Costume? How About Anne Frank?

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What was the creative team at HalloweenCostumes.com, smoking? As you might guess, the website has been blasted for for featuring the “Anne Frank Costume for Girls” along with copy that goes with it,

We can always learn from the struggles of history! Now, your child can play the role of a World War II hero with this girls World War II costume.

A you might imagine, Twitter has chimed in on this sad business venture. A PR spokesperson spoke up,

Thank you for reaching out. We sell costumes not only for Halloween, but for many uses outside of the Halloween season, such as school projects and plays. We offer several times of historically accurate costumes — from prominent figures to political figures, to television characters.

Surprise! The costume has now been removed from the website, but as Entertainment Weekly points out, you can still piss off strangers with “Chinese Gentleman,” “Snake Charmer,” or “Mexican Serape”. (Uh, sorry, that’s sold out.)

So, how about “Arab Terrorist“…?

(via Queerty)

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#LGBTQ: Orlando Unveils a Rainbow Crosswalk Near Pulse Nightclub

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Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed the crosswalk, that over 2,700 people signed the petition to request it in memory of the victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre, was unveiled. According to the Orlando Sentinal, the crosswalk is also part of an interim memorial plan to make the nightclub more welcoming to visitors.

Other upgrades include lighted benches, a fence with murals and a walking area around the nightclub which still remains closed to the public since the shooting in June of 2016, where 49 people were murdered (and another 53 injured) in what was then considered the worst shooting in U.S. history. The Vegas shooting sadly surpassed that with 58 victims and over 500 injured.

And meanwhile, Congress does nothing about gun control, so a rainbow in the street is all we get.

#GunControlNow

(Photo, Twitter; via Attitude)

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#OnThisDay: 1967, The Musical “Hair” Opens Off-Broadway

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October 17, 1967Hair opens Off-Broadway

1967 was a time of tremendous social and cultural upheaval in the USA. But, not so much in the theatre world. The biggest hit on Broadway was the musical Mame with Angela Lansbury. Gay Icon Judy Garland’s At Home At The Palace had just closed after a month of performances, and the divine Marlene Dietrich was performing her one-woman show at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

Clive Barnes, the NY Times theatre critic, wrote a review of a new Off-Broadway musical:

“You probably don’t have to be a supporter of Eugene McCarthy to love it, but I wouldn’t give it much chance among the adherents of Governor Ronald Reagan.”

The show was titled Hair: The Tribal Love-Rock Musical and it had an infectious Rock infused score that introduced that era-defining song, Aquarius. It also provided theatergoers to a full-frontal preview of the late 1960s counterculture.

Hair opened on October 17, 1967 in the East Village, the very first production of Joseph Papp’s new Public Theater. It received mixed reviews, but audiences found it to be groovy. Hair proved to be a big enough hit during its initial six-week run at the Public that Papp could find financial backing for a proposed move to Broadway. While this kind of move is now common, it was exceedingly rare for a musical in that era, and it was an especially bold move for a musical with a nontraditional score. And it wasn’t just the music that was way out there, the show sang odes to sex and drugs, and it featured a much-talked-about Act One finale where the cast appeared completely naked on the dimly lit stage.

All these shocking breaks from the traditions of the Broadway musical didn’t prove to be a turn-off for audiences. Hair a smash-hit show that ran for four years and became a bona fide cultural phenomenon with a three million-selling Original Cast Recording and a Number One song on the pop charts.

When Hair was revived on Broadway in 2009, Charles Isherwood, of the NY Times, wrote:

“For darker, knottier and more richly textured sonic experiences of the times, you turn to The Doors or Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. Or all of them. For an escapist dose of the sweet sound of youth brimming with hope that the world is going to change tomorrow, you listen to Hair and let the sunshine in.”

Hair was conceived by two gay actors who were lovers, James Rado and Gerome Ragni. They wrote the book and lyrics and also played the lead roles. Their characters were autobiographical, with Rado’s Claude being a shy romantic and Ragni’s Berger being bold and bodacious.

Rado wrote that the inspiration for Hair was:

“…a combination of some characters we met in the streets, people we knew and our own imaginations. We knew this group of kids in the East Village who were dropping out and dodging the draft, and there were also lots of articles in the press about how kids were being kicked out of school for growing their hair long There was so much excitement in the streets and the parks and the hippie areas, and we thought if we could transmit this excitement to the stage it would be wonderful…. We hung out with them and went to their Be-Ins and let our hair grow.”

Many of the cast were recruited right off the street. Rado:

“It was very important historically, and if we hadn’t written it, there’d not be any examples. You could read about it and see film clips, but you’d never experience it. We thought, ‘This is happening in the streets,’ and we wanted to bring it to the stage “

They pitched the show to many producers and received many rejections. Eventually Papp, who ran the New York Shakespeare Festival, decided on Hair to open the new Public Theater. Hair was Papp’s first non-Shakespeare production. Rehearsals were rough and the show itself was incomprehensible to many of the theater’s staff.

Hair wasn’t just revolutionary because of the Rock score, drugs, sex, and nudity. The Playbill used the term “Tribe” instead of “Cast”. It also featured the rare fully racially integrated company. One-third of the cast were African-American. Except in some satirical scenes, the black characters were portrayed as equal to the whites. Ebony Magazine declared the show as the biggest outlet for black actors in the history of the American Theatre.

Songs and scenes took on racial issues. Colored Spade, which introduces the character Hud, a militant black male, is simply a list of racial slurs like “jungle bunny, little black sambo” climaxing with the declaration that Hud is the “President of the United States of Love”. Dead End, sung by the black tribe members, is a list of street signs that symbolize black frustration and alienation. One of the tribe’s protest chants is “What do we think is really great? To bomb, lynch and segregate?!”.  The terrifically tuneful “Black Boys/White Boys” is an exuberant acknowledgement of the U.S. Supreme Court having struck down laws forbidding miscegenation in 1967. Another of the tribe’s protest chants is “Black, white, yellow, red. Copulate in a king-sized bed.”

Hair also references Native Americans, including the use of the term “Tribe”, Pacifism, Environmentalism, Consumerism, and Spirituality.

The controversial, notorious nude scene was not gratuitous. Nudity was a big part of the Hippie culture, a rejection of sexual repression and a statement about naturalism, honesty, openness, and freedom.

Hair glorifies sexual freedom. In the song Sodomy, the character Woof beseeches everyone to: “Join the holy orgy Kama Sutra”. Woof admits to a crush on Mick Jagger, and a three-way embrace between the three main characters of Claude, Berger and Sheila turns into a Claude–Berger lingering kiss.

Hair opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on April 29, 1968. Touring companies of Hair were met with protests, bomb threats and court orders to have productions closed down. When the Boston company of Hair was arrested, their case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered that the show be allowed to reopen. Times have changed; now Hair is a favorite choice for high schools and community theatres. Hair has been performed in almost every country of the world. The many productions of Hair continue to bring in a million dollars every month.

Royalties from the 300 different recordings of the show’s songs make it the most successful score in history and the most performed score ever. Songs from Hair have been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Sarah Brightman, Petula Clark, Liza Minnelli, The Lemonheads, and Sérgio Mendes.

The 5th Dimension released Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In in 1969, winning the Grammy Award for Record Of The Year in 1970 and topped the charts for six weeks. The Cowsills’ recording of the title song Hair went to Number Two on the Billboard Charts while Oliver’s version of Good Morning Starshine reached Number Three, and Three Dog Night’s version of Easy to Be Hard went to Number Four. Nina Simone’s 1968 medley of Ain’t Got No / I Got Life was Number Five on the Pop and Jazz Charts. In 1970, Aquarius was the more frequently played song on U.S. radio and television.

The Hair tribe alumni includes Meat Loaf, Jennifer Warnes, Bert Sommer, Donna Summer, Melba Moore, Elaine Paige, Tim Curry, Shelley Plimpton, Paul Jabara, Diane Keaton, Ben Vereen, Keith Carradine, Heather MacRae, Vicki Sue Robinson, Joe Mantegna, André DeShields, Jonathan Groff, Gavin Creel, Annaleigh Ashford, and John Barrowman.

The 1979 film version is one of my favorite films of all time. It was directed by Miloš Forman and the tribe includes Treat Williams, John Savage, Beverly D’Angelo, Annie Golden, Nell Carter, and Charlotte Rae. The amazing choreography is by Twyla Tharp.

My favorite bit of Hair trivia is that it lost the Tony Award in 1969 to the musical 1776.

Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions

Mystic crystal revelation

And the mind’s true liberation

Aquarius

Aquarius

 

 

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#TransformationTuesday: QWERRRKOUT feat. Muffy Meow

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Transformation Tuesday just got a whole lot QTer…New queers featured every week! Tag us, take a pic of us and follow us on Instagram at QWERRRKOUT, and you too could be the next QT! YOU BETTA QWERRRK! (Mx Qwerrrk pic by Santiago Felipe)

Muffy Meow

Age: 21

Location:  New York, New York

About:

“I represent a, perhaps, lesser known division of queens. I reference mostly club kid culture and high fashion to establish my looks, as I use my body as a personal muse. I try to look different every time that I put on a face; monotony bores me, and I am a sucker for informality. Being pretty is overrated, and being ugly is underrated. The truth is that the true beauty of the world has not yet been found, and I think it is our responsibility as human beings to try to not only discover, but create it. At the same time, I am a fashion idiot running around New York nights as a living doll/mannequin/poodle. Find me hosting for Ladyfag or around the city, and always at a Taco Bell after.”

 

Instagram: itsmuffyqueen

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QwerrrkOut is where LGBTQQIA kiddies and their friends can have photos of themselves featured on the QwerrkOut page on IG, by tagging or taking a photo of QwerrrkOut on their pages. The pics should capture them queering out and being their authentic selves on the street, in the club, in the boudoir; wherever and however they feel cutest! QwerrrkOut offers gays, lesbians and other queer identified individuals a unique platform to make the world GASP by boldly displaying Gay Anarchy and Sex Positivity (Thanks, Kate Bornstein!!!).

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#BOO: Billy Corgan Tells Howard Stern of Creepy Encounter with a Demonic Shapeshifter

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Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan (who now goes by William Patrick Corgan these days, thankyouverymuch) was promoting his new album Ogilala, and making the rounds, doing interviews and appearances, and found himself on Howard Stern describing a paranormal experience he had with an extraterrestrial or maybe some kinda of shapeshifter. Whaaaaaa?

“Let’s just say I was with somebody once and I saw a transformation I can’t explain,” he told Stern.

“The person transformed into something other than human?” Stern asks.

“Yes,” replies Corgan, “I saw it,”

“Were you on drugs at the time?” asks Robin Quivers.

“I was totally sober”

Howard: “You were talking to someone. You were having a conversation like we are now. And the person suddenly… not in a hallucination… said ‘Look something’s gong to happen here. I’m going to morph into something else. And you’re like this is ridiculous…”

Billy: “That’s not what happened. ”

“Please.. tell me what happened.

Says Billy: “Imagine you’re doing something and you turn around and there’s somebody else standing there…”

“A different human?”

“Sorta. It’s hard to explain without going into detail. I’d rather not go into detail.”

Howard: “Did you say to the person ‘What did you just do here?'”

Billy: “Yes and they acknowledged it. ”

“What did they say they were? From another planet?”

“They wouldn’t explain. ”

Why not?

“Again, without telling the whole story – it’s a really messed up story –”

“Was it a famous person?”

“No.”

After a little light banter, Robin asked: “Are you saying someONE else or someTHING else?”

“I’m being vague on purpose. … It’s up there with one of the most intense things I’ve ever been through…”

Yep. Sounds pretty intense! Listen below.

(Photos: Pacific Coast News)

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Florida Governor Worried Over Nazi Scumbag Richard Spencer’s Upcoming University of Florida Visit

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Yesterday, Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for the county where the University of Florida resides, as local authorities prepare for possible mayhem caused by alt-right Nazi Richard Spencer when he gives a speech to university students there.

“I find that the threat of a potential emergency is imminent,” Scott said in the order, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

According to Politico, Spencer’s white nationalist think tank, the National Policy Institute, paid $10,564 to rent space at UF’s Phillips Center for the Performing Arts for his address.

via MIC:

Spencer, the “Hail Trump!” shouting, alt-right figure who made racist tiki-torch rallies a thing, was in the crowd in Charlottesville when suspected white nationalist James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car through a crowd of progressive protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

UF students who oppose Spencer being allowed to come to campus made their voices heard at a university rally Monday, shouting, “Lock out Nazis, not students!”

“We don’t want Spencer here because he is a white nationalist [who] calls for ethnic cleansing and genocide in the pursuit of a white ethno-state,” an activist with the group No Nazis at UF said via Facebook Messenger on Monday. “His ideology is inherently violent and puts marginalized students and community members in danger.”

As of this writing, at least 895 people have expressed interest in participating in a scheduled counterprotest against Spencer’s visit on Thursday.

Spencer didn’t say much on Twitter about Scott’s emergency declaration Monday. Instead, he let others do the talking for him, retweeting a post from fellow white nationalist James Allsup.

Spencer also plans to speak at the University of Cincinnati in the near future, according to the Cincinnati Inquirer. The southwest Ohio university’s school administrators announced Friday they would allow Spencer to come to campus.

You might also recall Spencer from this now-infamous meme:

HA! Never gets old.

Featured image via NPI Facebook page

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