Just the names alone make it worthwhile but the NY Times’ report on Texas women’s Roller Derby (8/1) delves deeper: ‘They’re 21 to 45, married, single, gay, straight, moms, teachers, every walk of life, tatooed and not.’ These are ‘Girls in leather and fishnet stockings beating the hell out of each other.’ Some team names: Hotrod Honeys, Hustlers, Hell Marys, Putas del Fuego, and the Holy Rollers. Some individual’s rink names: Whiskey L’Amour, Misty Meaner, Melicious, Vendetta von Dutch and Mau-Mau. (Taking some tips from Chicago’s She-Devils?)
The Chicago Tribune (7/10) had a series on the people of the Loop and high-lighted street preacher Samuel Chambers who uses his microphone 6 to 7 days a week in that area. He has no income and reports people are sometimes hostile. What neither he nor the writer mention is that he is a frothing-at-the-mouth homophobe.
Some might say this next item ought to be in the ‘Reaching Far’ file but we have supplementary evidence. The new movie Collateral has, as far as one can tell from reviews, no homosexual overtones but you should see the print ads: (aptly named) Tom Cruise staring intently and gorgeously all the way across two pages at Jamie Fox who looks nervously back. A headnote reads, ‘It started like any other night.’ Seven out of eight people asked about this (in an unscientific survey) assumed the two men were going to end up in the sack. And a number of columns such as Glare in the Chicago Sun-Times (8/4) quote the Cruiser as saying, ‘I will never be down with love. Ever. I’m the guy who loves relationships.’ (In journalistic honesty he was talking about women. Still …)
The NY Times Book Review(8/1) looks at Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance by Deborah Jowitt. Robbins, who was Jewish and gay, was conflicted about both all his life. He did manage when he needed to: declared 4F (disqualified) for the army in 1942 when asked if he’d had a homosexual experience. Yes, he answered. Last time, they asked. ‘Last night’ he answered. He was never able to finish a dance called ‘The Poppa Piece’ which combined lockerroom homoeroticism, the Holocaust, matzo ball soup, and the HUAC. (Possibly a good thing.)
Public Enemies by Bryan Burroughs is reviewed in the same issue as above. The book details the birth of the FBI under the ‘… lonely, brilliant, tormented and closeted…’ J. Edgar Hoover who sent ‘… creepily flirtatious intergovernmental memorandums’ to his agent Melvin Purvis.
You might check out the revamped 1927 silent movie Sunrise as reviewed in the Chicago Trib (7/31). Its director, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, who also directed the first vampire movie, Nosferatu, was openly gay.