Hollywood Pride: Queer Lives On The Silver Screen
DETAILS
In celebration of critic and author Alonso Duralde’s new book highlighting the queer films and artists who have existed within the fabric of Hollywood since the film industry’s inception, the Egyptian Theater is thrilled to present Hollywood Pride: Queer Lives on the Silver Screen. This series, co-programmed with Alonso, showcases films across nearly a century of Hollywood filmmaking, charting the progression of queer representation in movies from the oblique and coded to the out, loud, and proud.
Beginning with gay icon James Whale’s Universal horror classic THE OLD DARK HOUSE, long thought to be a prime influence on the THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, Hollywood Pride demonstrates how queerness was present onscreen in film’s earliest days, you just needed to be paying attention. Films like Joseph Mankiewicz’s Best Picture winner ALL ABOUT EVE, made within the repressive system of the Hays Code, sublimated the queerness of its main antagonists, but that couldn’t keep the film from earning legendary status among legions of queer fans over the years. Playwright Tennessee Williams often saw Hollywood’s adaptations of his work obscure its queer themes, but SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER - starring Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and gay actor Montgomery Clift - contains one of the era’s most overt acknowledgments of a character’s queerness. Superstar Rock Hudson famously had to keep his sexuality a secret from the public, making his turn in the delightful rom-com PILLOW TALK - in which he gets closer to Doris Day by feigning gayness - all the more surreal.
In the 90s, when the New Queer Cinema movement opened more doors for risk-taking, provocative films from out and proud filmmakers, the Wachowski’s steamy neo-noir BOUND (presented here from a new 4K restoration!) hit with the force of a lightning bolt in its unflinching depiction of intense Lesbian romance. Filmmakers from this era paved the way for independent productions to offer queer artists of color more opportunity to tell their own authentic stories, as exemplified by Andrew Ahn’s SPA NIGHT, set in Los Angeles’ Koreatown.
The series concludes with the Los Angeles theatrical premiere of OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION, in a free community screening with special guests from the film in attendance. From comic-turned-filmmaker Page Hurwitz, OUTSTANDING is an enlightening look at the careers of LGBTQ stand-up comics – the trailblazers who paved the way when being out and proud was neither safe nor popular, and the inspired voices who continue to push the art form to be a place where queer self-expression is celebrated. This incredibly moving documentary features dozens of comedy’s biggest names, including Margaret Cho, Bob the Drag Queen, Rosie O’Donnell, Joel Kim Booster, Wanda Sykes, and many more.
