DAMN YOU, UNCLE LEWIS - A Conversation with RICHERT EASLEY from "Outrageous!"

Oh, hello. Come in, come in, come in. Do come in out of the terrible weather. Oh, welcome. Welcome to my Very Curious Curio Shop.Although I hate to inform you the shop is closed for tonight because there's a. Well, it's a rather special evening. It's a monthly meeting of sorts. So unless you're here for the meeting, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.The nature of the meeting, you ask. Let me put it to you this way. Sometimes Uncle Lewis does dreadful things.Welcome to Damn you, Uncle Lewis, the Friday the 13th the series retrospective podcast. Hello again, everybody, and welcome back for another episode of Damn you, Uncle Lewis, the Friday the 13th the series retrospective podcast.My name is Patrick Walsh and I'm your host here at the Very Curious Curio Shop. And you've arrived on a very special episode. This is part two of our special focus on the movie Outrageous and the works of RichertBenner.But before we get to our special guest, I want to introduce you to my co hosts, Trae Dean and Maya Murphy.

Hello.

Hey, Patrick. Hey, Maya. How y' all doing?

I'm very excited because, listeners, we don't normally do guests on this show. As you know, this is new territory for all of us.But I could not let this one pass by because our guest today, turns out he was in the movie Outrageous. But also, I did summer stock with him last millennium.Once upon a time, in the summer of 1999, I was an intern at Allenberry Playhouse in beautiful Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, where I was an Equity membership candidate. I spent a year there earning points to get my Equity card to join the union.And during the summer months, I was able to do three shows with this fine gentleman, the musical version of Some like it Hot, which he played Osgood Fielding. Well, nobody's perfect. We did Joseph and the Amazing Technic Dream Coat where he was Papa Jacob.And finally, we did the infamous Amish musicals, Plain and Fancy, the one where I learned all the world right, Learned all that information that I brought to the Quilt of Hawthor episode where we're dealing with fake Amish people.And our esteemed guest today played our beloved but stern patriarchal leader, the man who taught us all the vegetables that grow in Pennsylvania in alphabetical order, how to end our sentences with random words. And that you raise a barn with nails and wood. Nails and wood and schmits and good. He is a star of stage and screen.He plays Perry in the movie Outrageous. And he'll always be my fake Amish daddy. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please welcome to the microphone, Mr. Richert Easley.

Hello, Patrick and everyone.

Hello. It's so nice to see you again, Richert.

Nice to see you too. And I'm.I'm kind of always anxious to talk about, or happy I should say to talk about Outrageous because since Richertpassed away, I've been afraid it would going to just slip into oblivion. Oblivion. But every now and then there's someone new who discovers it.And that's always a good thing because I think it was an important movie at the time it was released and still is 100%.

As I, as I said to you in my email when I was telling you about, we know RichertBrenner. We were introduced to RichertBrenner because of.He wrote an episode of Friday the 13th of series and it is one of the best ones that we had this season. It was a Perfect Storm episode. We had the right director, the right cast, the right villain, everything. Click, click, click, click, click.And when I saw Outrageous in that IBM, I said, wait a minute, that movie is familiar. And as I wrote my email, I said, I can't tell you the last time I heard anybody even mention that movie.And you know, I had, back in the day, I had, you know, two older gay men who adopted me, who were like mentored me, like who taught me gay culture and gay history, gay and all this. They never showed me this movie. So I was shocked about it. So when I sat there, watched the movie and who pops up but you?I said, well, it just seems like, well, I have to ask him once we can get all the inside story. I could not let this opportunity pass me by. It was like the universe saying, hey, call Richert.Before we get into that, let's just talk a little bit about you, Richert. Maya, you had a question for Richert.

I did. So like I said, I stalked you a little. I looked at your IMDb, but I also saw some of your stage credits. I have to ask you about Oh, Calcutta!. Oh.I got a question wrong at Gay Trivia and I foolishly said naked boys singing. And the answer was, oh, Calcutta. And then I had to go look up the. The history of the show. What was it like working on that?

It was incredibly fun. At the time that I got it. I luckily didn't have to audition for it because it's actually Patrick.I was performing in Allenberry and with Norman Duckweiler. I don't know if you know that name or not, but he eventually owned and worked at. Well, actually was a producer and owned Forestberg Playhouse.But Norman and I met at Allenberry and At the time, his current lover, who was Ron Nash, came to see a couple of shows there. And Ron was the stage manager of Oh calcutta and thought that I would be perfect for the Bill Macy track in it.But by that time, I was doing a summer stock in Ohio and I got a call from Ron saying, would you like to do O Calcutta? And I said, I've never seen it. I don't know.And he said, we'll fly you to New York, you can see the show, but you have to tell me right away if you're going to do it or not. And so I had a manager at the time, and we went to see O Calcutta for the first time.And the whole time I'm sitting there, I'm going, well, I guess I could do that. I guess I could do that. Well, that doesn't seem too. Oh, my God, I don't know if I could say that. And that's the way.And then I thought, well, you know what? It's a Broadway show. Good Lord, what am I thinking? You know, I don't care. Sure, I'll do it. And so I went backstage, he said to meet him.And he said, well, come backstage and meet the cast. And so I went back and they were all naked. So I thought, oh, boy, this is going to be an adventure.I had five days rehearsal, went into it, and did it for a year, and I believe seven months, and it was a blast. I. There were so many shenanigans that went back on during. Remember it was the 70s.

Yeah, yeah.

And we would come to the theater. Before half hour and everybody would just sit around the dressing room naked. Then we got dressed to go on.And then the first thing we did was take our clothes off. So on stage. So it really was a blast. I did not put it on my resume for a couple of years because it was a period of time in which you had.If you were appearing naked on the stage somewhere, it was suspicious, you know, especially for commercials. So I kept it off my resume after I. I had done it for a number of years, but then I put it back on, said, the hell with it, I don't care.I had a blast doing it.

Fantastic. Just. Just because this is not a Broadway podcast. Richert. What is O Calcutta? And why are we so interested in it? Why did we pick that show out of all the others to talk to you about?

Oh, Calcutta was a. And it kind of an experiment. I think it started in 1969 or 70, off Broadway.An idea done by Kenneth Tynan, who is a very prominent British literary person, he decided, given everything that was going on, it would be interesting to have a series of sketches about sex. Both maybe comic and serious. And so he, he rounded up a bunch of people who didn't know the first thing about sketch writing really.And they all wrote sketches. It's been a while since I've talked about this, but there was a whole series of sketches in the show written by famous people, some playwrights.Right now, I just, I haven't thought about this in a long time. And they put it on stage and they said, we're going to do. We're going to show that there is no embarrassment to nudity.And so they picked some very good looking people and some very character people, including the. The track that I did, Bill Macy was the first person and the first character that I did. And it was a scandalous success.And it ran and ran and ran off Broadway and then it moved to the Edison Theater and produced by Norman. Can'T think of his last name right now. And it ran for years there. At one point, it was the longest running Broadway show.We always said we were the black sheep of Broadway because they didn't like to acknowledge that a show about nudity and had sketches about sex was the longest show of running on Broadway. I think they. I think the Broadway League was very relieved when Fiddle on the Roof passed it. So. But that's basically what it was.And by the time I was doing it, it was a pretty much a tourist attraction.People had read about it, they wanted to see it, and we had a program printed in seven languages and they wouldn't sell the front row until the last minute. So that the.Because there was always a demand to sit on front row if people thought there was going to be nudity, you know, well, it was an adventure, truly.

It sounds like it. I have to say, I never got to see it when it was running. We always talked about going because it was running well, until I was in college.And I always talked about going, but I could not get over my Catholic school guilt. Like someone, I don't understand. My mother's gonna find out. She'll find the program and I'll never be allowed back in my house again.

Okay, I just want to say one thing that it was when I had friends who came and see it, the most peculiar thing was that the people that I thought would be horrified that I was doing it, thought it was great fun. And some of the people who were so liberal and thought, oh, you're doing okay. Came and were horrified by it.I never knew how people were going to react to it.

Well, well, okay.So, Richert, the question on my mind is how did you and Richard Bemmer, two nice Southern boys, How did you wind up in Canada, you know, making a drag movie in Canada? How did that happen? That's a big trip.

Well, I met Richard when I was in graduate school at University of California at Santa Barbara. And we became great friends then, both of us closeted at the time. And Dick was. Dick was. I did one of his plays at ucsb.He had a workshop there that we would do, workshop things that he was working on. And then. When he left, he had come to graduate school from working with.

A.

Playwright and screenwriter named Wolf Mankiewicz in Britain. So he had had some film experience, and he wound up teaching in Calgary, teaching at the university in Canada.He became a landed immigrant there and then wound up back in Toronto, writing, doing film work, trying to get screenplays done. He wrote Outrageous while he was in Toronto. He used to come back and forth from New York to Toronto. He had a double residence. He was.He had a residence here in the 70s and also in Toronto. And he managed to get.The Canadian Film Corporation of what it is co produced with the man who actually started the Toronto International Film Festival. Bill Marshall. Decided to produce Outrageous. And I cannot explain to you, Dick wrote the part for me. He absolutely wrote Perry for me.There are a couple of my own lines in it. And then when he wanted me to come and do it, I couldn't because I was an American. I'm the only American in the cast. And so they pulled some strings.I can't say what they did, but I was able to do the. Do the movie, although I was never able to get residuals as a result of it. However, Dick, in this great generosity.A few years after it opened, gave me a sizable bonus for appearing in it. So he did. He was very nice about that.

One of the things I found great about this movie, one of the many, many things I love that it's the little gay movie that could. That it was this. Such. This independent. Not even. Not even independent. That's the other word I'm looking for. It's practically guerrilla made film.It's so low budget, and you could see that. You could see all the strings there. But yet it winds up being this huge hit at Con and this huge critical success. What was that like?

It was stunning. It was truly my 15 minutes of fame, I have to say. But when we were making the film, it was $165,000 budget. It was so it was made on nothing.I, I was in Toronto for a week of shooting and then I was back in New York. And I just assumed the whole time, even though I thought the script was fine, nobody was doing anything like this at the time.And I thought, oh, maybe we'll see it at the Waverly and midnights, you know, if we're lucky. But as it turned out it at. At can they got a distributor and then it opened on the east side in a very first class. Movie theater. And it caught on.And even though the there were. Most of the reviews were good, the New York Times sort of dismissed it. But repeatedly people kept going and going and going. And then.I was constantly recognized on the street. I had people coming up and tell me this movie changed my life. Because of what it said. Really.It was at one point the longest running movie at Cambridge Cinema out in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was a, A big thing. And then Craig was working as he.During the whole time that a lot of the time that the show was running on the east side, Craig did his own one man show there. So it was getting even more publicity. Do, do you remember Ted Hooks backstage? Did you ever know of that place? No. Ted Hooks?

No. Before my time

Ted Hooks Backstage was a. A club, actually a restaurant, but a club that people.A lot of Broadway people, most Broadway people went to afterward and we were like special guests there. The cast of Outrageous, Craig and myself and Dick. It was, it was very heady period at that point.

Because that's funny because that's actually how I remember Outrageous. I don't. I was too young to know, not too young.But I mean I wouldn't have noted about in its original run, but I could have sworn I was saying that both of these guys that. I could have sworn that this was part of the midnight film circuit that was going on for years. Like every Friday, Saturday night.It could be Rocky Horror or, or Eraserhead or Dawn of the Dead or this. That's how I remember the ads. And then all of a sudden it was just gone. Exactly. Have a question, Trae? You had a question about the drag scene?

Yes, because I love the movie and thanks for coming on to talk about it. It was a really almost like a documentary with the low budget act. It felt very real and also is a moment of time of gay culture back then. And it.Especially with you've got the drag queens, you've got drag performers and then you've got female impersonators. So what? Exactly.Especially for people now what is the difference between the three and how were they viewed as being different within the gay community?

You mean then?

Yeah, yeah, then. So, so you had a drag queen, then you had a drag performer. Was there a real difference between the two?

Definitely. I mean a lot of what was interesting is at the time in New York. The drag stuff was kind of not underground, but they would.It wasn't as prominent actually in New York as it was in other areas of the U.S. i. I grew up in the south and. In the south the gay bars had all always had drag contests and special drag nights and stuff. But that.That was not so prominent in New York when I in the 70s anyway. But Richert. For some reason, Richertloved drag and he had, he had.He was a real fan of female impersonators at the time, as opposed to just drag queens. There were several rather famous ones and he just. There was something about it that he just loved and. And felt it was something very special.They were braver than a lot of gay people. They weren't caught up in the whole macho thing. If you'll notice in the scenes and outrageous where there group people.There was that it was the same. It was the era as the. Of the very kind of masculine look. Either leather jackets or. Or jean jackets and plaid shirts.And it was very much be a masculine gay person. So I don't even. In the movie he feels. He expresses. Craig expresses the thing they look at me and they see drag queen or queen.So there was definitely a prejudice there, which is sort of what the movie is about too. Different prejudices. But. Wasn'T. It wasn't mainstream at all, I think. I don't know. I think that answers your question. I'm not sure.

So I guess maybe so like a drag queen would be someone who sort of dabbles in it. But maybe a drag performer is someone who takes it more seriously and is more about the. The illusion.

An entertainer. Yes. And at the time that Dick met Craig, he was in fact an entertainer. Not. Not widely known. But.In the performer circuit he was starting to get known.

And so we have also heard a female impersonator. Is that a whole different area?

Well, impersonator. I always say think of a female impersonator as somebody who does impersonations of famous people. And there. I'm trying to think of the other. There's.If you go on YouTube there. There was one famous guy from San Francisco and I can't think of his name right now who, who was sort of the most well known at the time.And he, you know, they always did Bette Davis, Judy Garland. Craig was unique in that. He wrote a lot of his own material, and he was both good at impersonating and also somewhat of a satirist.Also, he was satiring the whole genre, the famous film ladies. At the same time, he was impersonating them. That was, I think, a particular gift of his.

See, for me, how I interpreted that, not to answer your question, but like, for me, like, female impersonator was almost something that was more socially acceptable. Because that was something you could do on tv.

Yes. Because you were an entertainer.

Right, right. Because, like, I, like in this movie, Craig, Robin, I should say, always uses his man's name, not a drag name. So there was always that separation.Anyway, enough about him. Let's talk about Perry.

Perry.

Perry. Richert, when that door opened and you're in your Karen Black outfit, I don't think I've ever been so happy in my life. What an absolute joy.Was that your idea?

No.

Oh, okay.

It was in the script. It was in the script. I will tell you one thing, though. That. About Craig. In that scene where. Craig's.Where he comes back out in one of Liza's dresses and all made up.

Yes.

The. The wardrobe people and the people on the set put the costume in or the wig in, did the makeup, and Craig said, oh, my God, this is.This is all wrong. And he went and did my makeup for that. The second part of the scene. And so it's his makeup on me, not the costume people.

Craig knows best

He knew what he was doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I tell you a secret, Richert? Sometime between the first time I saw Outrageous, a few.Like, sometime last year, and the time when I started rewatching it for this session that we're doing right now, I hallucinated an entire scene with you that doesn't exist. I could have sworn, sitting down the second time that there was a scene that you got to perform as Karen Black, but your dress was the plane.I don't know where that came from. And I.

That must. That must have been a takeoff that somebody did, because that wasn't me.

Outrageous 3, the sequel! the third part's coming!

But there is a sequel to Outrageous.

Yes, I know. I know you're not in it, but we. I watched it as well. I have a question about that, though. I know you're not in it, but now it makes more sense.There's that scene at the beginning where Drag Queen's like, hey, we're going to a party. There's Going to be entertainment people. It's going to be this producer and that producer and the director of Allenberry Playhouse.

You must come to our party. It's going to be a veritable entertainment enclave. You must come. The casting director of East River, Patrick Troll, is coming.And the director and producer of that new off Broadway drag queen hit,

Hags on Ice.

Whatever.

And the director of Allenberry Playhouse over there.

I almost fell out of my chair because that's where we worked. That's where. I know.

It's a weird thing about Too Outrageous. There were a lot of problems with Craig at the time and, but before that, Dick had asked me to be in it.And I don't, I think he always, I mean, we, we were good friends all the way through, but I think he, he, he, there was a little spot in his heart that he didn't forgive me for, for not accepting it, for not doing it. And I, I didn't do it at the time because I felt like I, I had done that and I wanted a broader, wider career.And I was already finding that when I went to see agents and casting directors, they didn't know what to do with me because all they knew was that. And so I turned it down. And he, he wasn't happy about that. And then. The movie actually did want. That movie wound up playing Midnights and it was.How did you see it?

It's on YouTube.

Is it on YouTube?

As is happy Birthday, Gemini, which I also watched.

Yes.

Happy Birthday. I knew that was on YouTube, but I thought that. I'm sure that the.What's on YouTube is probably maybe an illegal copy of it, but it does because it wound up in all kinds of who owned it Problem.

Oh, okay, okay.

After he died. So, But I, but you saw it. I, I, I have trouble watching. I can't get through it.

There's problems with it. I enjoyed it for what it was, but you can see that there's something strange.There's a fight going on in the movie that I didn't know what it was. Like, you can feel tension behind the scenes and things were being presented that weren't quite clicking in the way that the first one did.But the heart of it was still there, so I still enjoyed it.

But if I could just tell you one other thing about Outrageous. In talking about the.

Yes, please, please, please, by all means, yes.

The outreach of it, Dick and, and Bill Marshall had a rather adversarial. Relationship. Bill is, Bill is very strong in what he wanted and not wanted.And there was a scene and outrageous at the, in the, in the part that takes place in Canada where this guy comes in and it's an actor who later became well known for doing villain parts. A Canadian actor whose name I can't remember.

Michael Ironside.

Michael Ironside.

Maya loves Michael Ironsides.

Michael Ironside comes in and strikes, making anti gay remarks and heckling the people. And Craig starts.Having a dialogue with him and sort of making fun of him and satirizing him and making the other people in the bar laugh and he storms out. And Bill. Dick wanted that scene to show that, that it's prejudice that existed at the time.And he wanted, he wanted the, the film audience to hear the slurs and stuff like that after they had gotten to know this fun person. And Bill said, you have to cut that. And he said. And Dick didn't want to cut it. And Bill said, you have to cut it because.Nothing in this movie is threatening to an audience seeing it. You bring this in and you're gonna. People are gonna take sides, they're gonna be angry. You're. It's.It's gonna disrupt the whole up feeling of this journey that you're seeing. And he just kept insisting that he cut it and cut it and cut it and he did. So Dick wound up and cut it. And I believe that that was the best choice.

We were trying to figure out why we couldn't find him in the movie because I saw his name in the credits and he's in a bunch of violent sci fi stuff I like. And I'm like, I would have recognized him. I recognized him when he was younger. And if his big scene was cut, clears a mystery up for us.

It was cut.

I have to call a quick timeout because I'm being mauled by a cat. I'm sorry. Talking about yourselves for a moment. My apologies.

I got mauled by my cat yesterday. So my schedule is clear now.

I. I would love a cat. I love cats. I grew up with cats. But I live in a very, very small apartment and my two dearest people are allergic to cats. So it would just. And I'm.Especially when I was working, I couldn't. It was constant problem of trying to find someone to take a. Take care of a cat. So I just gave up on it. But I love cats. I'm a, I'm a cat person.

Oh well, I can, I can share you pictures. I have a big fluffy orange one who's dumb as a box of rocks. And then I have a little gray tuxedo that we got from the alley in back of our apartment.Now she's just the most spoiled thing.

I watch cat videos all the time. I, I always wanted an orange cat when I was growing up. We never had an orange cat.We had an all black cat once and we had, we had what you call tuxedo cat. The last cat we had was a tuxedo type cat. But I, I, I see, I watch them wishing I had one, but I.

Just, oh, he gets stuck in ajar doors. He's just, it's as bad as the, the jokes and the stereotypes. He's just not a bright boy, very emotional, very, very loving.

Okay, now we're back, we're back. All right, now we all love the movie and I, I think, I think it's a gorgeous look. Not even just a look back. I think it's a fascinating look at.

How like.

What drag was like before it became an industry, this global industry, this billion dollar industry. And I love these humble origins of things and, and, and the heart of it.But to a youth of today who hasn't seen it, why would you say they need to watch outrage to a young gay right now? Why would you recommend this movie?

I, that's a tough question because I've been fooled by watching the movie a couple of times. The, I did it, my swan song at Allenberry, like about 10 years ago, maybe longer.And there was a, I showed it to a bunch of people there and they reacted to it nicely. They were mostly young, but there were things in it they just didn't get because they didn't have the social references for it.And I thought at the time the movie was, I said, well, it's significant because it shows a period of time and, and what it's about is good. It's be yourself, you know, don't be afraid to, to be who you are. But it's dated.And then you know the performer, Lipsinka, of course, yes, he's always been a fan of Outrageous. And I think it was three summers ago they had a thing at the IFC.Where drag queens pick their well known drag Queensland pick movies that had the most influence on them. And Lipsynca picked Outrageous.And there was a thing afterwards with people on, on stage and he invited me to be a guest at the time and I had not seen the film with, it was a packed house, the IFC was full. I had not seen the film with an audience in, since its beginning and they went nuts over it.And a lot of them said they didn't know the movie, they hadn't heard it, heard of it. And every time it pops up somewhere, people I, I see comments, you know, that say, I, I just heard about this.I just discovered this movie, or I had no idea. And I believe that the movie is relevant for young people because it does show a period of time when things were not as out there as they are today.It gives them a little bit of history. But I believe the message of the film is still important, and that is it. You have to.You have to be who you are, you know, and, and you can't be afraid. The line that still gets applause. It got applause that day. At the end of the movie, you're not sick, you're alive, and no, you're not dead.You're alive and sick and living in New York City like 8 billion other people. It always gets applause and cheers and, you know, so I, I think the movie's still relevant. I, I'm not sure.If you're a young person and you come across the movie and you watch it, I'm not sure you're going to get the importance of it or the references, you know, like, they don't know who Marlene Dietrich is. And that's as short as it is. It's so clever what he does with her that, you know, I saw Molina Dietrich in her live performance at the LA in la.And she was stuffed into that gown. And she commended the audience totally.But when she took a bow after every song, she had her hands on that cook so that she could get back up, you know, she was. She was stunning, really. But that's what Craig is doing. When he crosses his legs and hits them so that they bob. The legs bob up and down.And then he turns his head like that, just because he's. That's the only way she can do it. And then he says, smash his camera. And when I saw, when I saw her in la, Dick did get that for me.But when I saw her performance in la, there was a flash that went off and she stopped and looked out at the crowd and. An usher came down and got the camera she did not want. You know, that was a no no at the time. Probably now it wouldn't matter, but it's just.That's just. It's another example of how good Craig was.

We'll be wrapping up soon, but I wanted to address a little bit about Happy birthday, Gemini. Trae, you had a question about Happy birthday, Gemini?

Yes, because you worked with Madeline Kahn.

Now then, Mrs. O' Donnell has brought charges that you attacked her and broke her arm. Is that true?

No. She attacked me. Went like this. I am lying there minding my own business.She walks in, she drops her groceries, screams and throws herself on top of me.

She walked into your house and did that?

It don't matter whose house or whose bed or what. A person has a right to simply be treated with a certain man of common kind courtesy. And her husband was of no help whatsoever.He just says, oh, Mary, and rolls over.

So did you break Mrs. Odonnell's arm?

Maybe I did break her arm. I. I did not mean to. It was in self defense. But my God. Gee, the, the. The hollering, the yelling, the swearing.

I never swore.

Not once.

You cow.

Cow.

So I shook her stupid husband. I said, get the hell up. I just broke your goddamn wife's arm.

The amazing Madeleine Khan. What is that like?

I was on. I went there for one day and it was a very long shoot day because. Rita Moreno had just finished her scenes and.And this was a big scene of the play and Madelin Kahn was totally prepared for it. There's a long story behind my interaction with her, but I don't know if you want to take time for it, but.She was delightful and. She really. Richard had very little direction for her in it. I think we shot it maybe three takes and that was. Out of those three takes.There was a problem with the. With the father in. Was like this extremely methody guy. I think he thought he was bigger than he was. And.In that scene, since I'm the judge, I had to interact with him when he. And he. I never knew when he was finished talking. He didn't follow the script.

Oh, fun. Oh no.

And. And a couple of times I just said, well, when? Where's your cue? I'm not hearing your cue. And Madeline was still on the stand too.So that was taking more time because he was such a jerk. He really was a jerk. But we wound up with what you see. There was a general problem about that movie to begin with, which was Albert Inurado.The play had been a long running success. By the time I saw. Was probably a shadow of what it had been. The acting was so far. Over the top, it was an audience pleaser. But it was a real.It had grown to outsized proportions including the person who played Bunny. Dick. Dick did not want to do this movie, but he was pressured into it because Outrageous had been such a big success. They kept pushing.You've got to do something. You got to do something. You got to do something. So he did. He decided to do that.And he wanted to bring more realism to it than the cartoon quality it had become. And ultimately, I guess the movie doesn't work, really. It's the pace at that.I saw a rough cut of it and thought, I think this film is in trouble to begin with because it was. Because the pacing was so off. There was something missing from it. And I can't. It's hard for me to watch it now. I don't.I. I haven't watched it in a long time. But it was also at a time where Heaven's Gate was going on. You know the movie Heaven's Gate?

Huge flop. Yeah.

Stephen Bach, who was the United Artist head guy at the time, was dealing with that runaway production at the time. He was trying to usher. Happy Birthday, Gemini into a theater and that Heaven's Gate was about to bankrupt United Artists. So when.Happy Birthday, Gemini opened and got creamed in the reviews. It lasted in New York for two weeks and then disappeared now. And that pretty much. That pretty much killed Dick's career as a filmmaker.

I felt that, oddly enough. I can see where a lot of the story of Too Outrageous pulls from this because he got forced into doing something that just wasn't him.Just like Robin does in the other movie. But what I have to say about Happy Birthday, Gemini, your scene? that scene with Madeline that you do is outrageous.Your mustache, the glasses, your help. The second you show up like, you're adorable. Look at him. But. You could tell there's something off. It never feels like it wasn't a play.

Say that again.

It never feels like it wasn't a play. It feels. It never feels like a film. Like. It still feels like a play. It's fighting itself. But I didn't know that story about your lead man there.But I felt that. I felt all of that. I mentioned it to these two guys the other day.I said, there's something like he's trying to be Danny Aiello, but he's not Danny Aiello. And there's some discord going there.

However, he was just a real jerk. And I don't know what happened to him. He disappeared.

However, I still wound up crying. The movie made me cry. The scene where Madeline plays the piano and sings Moon river, I wept like a baby.So there's still something in the movie that's worth watching. Richert, I think we've done this. Been so much fun. Do you, either of you have any more questions?

I just want to thank you for coming to talk to us. You've been so lovely. Thank you. For this, this insight about your experience. I really appreciate it.

It's my pleasure. And I, I, I'm always willing to talk about Outrageous because I don't want it to be forgotten or left on the shelf.

So I won't call myself a current youth because I am not. But what I'm, I'm 39. They're not marketing things to me anymore.But Outrageous helped me see its influence in a bunch of queer films I do know really well. So I could like reverse engineer it and go, oh, that's where that costume in Hedwig and the Angry Inch is from.Oh, here's this dialogue I see referenced other places. It helps me. See the patterns historically, gives me that puzzle piece. And I, and also the movie's just so lovely.

Well, I appreciate that and I think that's great. I hope other people do the same.

To me, it really reminded me of the concept of found family, especially of Tales of the City, the series book series by Arid Malpin. This seemed like almost like a proto version of that.And the one thing I liked about it is it wasn't just the gay community, but with Liza, you know, being with the mental health community.And Robin was the only one to accept her and to fight her, you know, to let her fight her issues her way with like a pressing down of the, of the ceiling. And at the end she finds, you know, the people who accept the way she.

And just as a side note, it would never happen today, but Channel 13 showed this film on TV.

Nice.

Wow.

Cool.

All right, thank you so much for joining us, Richert. This has been an absolute pleasure. With you again.All right, guys, I think we'll take like a five minute break and come back and finish the rest of the show. Great. Thank you, Richert. Thank you so much. It'll probably be out in about two weeks.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Richert.

All right, that was fabulous. Yay. Thank you again to RichertEasy for coming and talking to us about Outrageous. Wasn't that cool, guys?

That was really cool.

He is a sweetheart.

He was a sweetheart.

Oh, I forgot to do my. I forgot to speak always to him because they end all their sentences with anyway, anyhow, Anyhow, Anyhow. Anyway. Or ain't yet.

And plain too.

And plain dead plain too. Thank you. Nobody cares.

You know what?

That was such a stupid thing to say that I. We're going to have to give myself the bucket hat of shame because I can do this again now. I can do these fun things.Anyway, ding dong Patrick from the future here if you're Wondering what just went on. That's a visual joke. A joke I used to play during our live streams, which we'll be doing again really soon.But you'll be able to find out when the video of this session airs sometime in the next month or so. Dig Dong back to the show. Before we wrap things up, I feel like we need to readjust our final. We had final thoughts about the movie yesterday.But now that we've talked to Richert, have your thoughts about the movie change? Do we have any new insight?

Well, I picked up something so clear that I missed on my first watch. I didn't realize it's bookended with the same song. The song that we see a lip syncing drag queen do this song and it's fine.

Can I get a little professionalismn in here?

Immediately smacks the audience member in the dick with his own keys.

Yeah.

And then at the end of the movie we see Robin sing it himself and it's fabulous. And it's this life affirming anthem and love letter to Liza. And I don't.I don't know how I missed something that clear the first time, but it was just so lovely. I just put this little bow on it and.

And we had the mystery solved! that. Where was Michael Ironside?

He's gone.

And it dawned on me Scanners hadn't happened yet. Michael Ironside hadn't happened yet. This is like before he was a thing.

IMDb says it's his film debut. But is it his debut if he's not?

Well, he said he got the IMDb so. And I say yes. I say yes. I can feel. I can feel him. It's like I'm being scanned from just off camera. Trae, got anything?What's your final thoughts on this movie?

The one thing I was thinking about it is because I was looking it up. It came out a year before the book tells the City and it's. I don't know if.And it really does remind me of just the idea of found family and people coming together of all different types just to support each other. And especially in the 70s. That's always potent with any community, especially queer community. But it's just kind of. It was nice to see that words.These people are allowed to be messy and they just support each other instead of trying to fix each other.

Yes.

Excellent.

I had a couple of thoughts that hit me. One of them is something I wanted to talk about and then chickened out about.And this is something I've talked about on ScreamQueenz all the time and I never been shy about it. So I don't know why I got all shy about it now.One of the things that the Liza story resonates with me is that the fact that she just jumps out of the hospital is like, you know what I'm doing to do things my way. Fuck what everybody else says. This is. This is how I'm going to live.I had to do the same thing when I was ill. Like, if you don't know if you're new to the show. I'm not just HIV positive. I was diagnosed with full blown AIDS in 2003. I shouldn't be here anymore.I had a very, very, very rough time in the hospital. I was diagnosed with dementia and progressive multi focal leukoencephalopathy, which is the I. It's your party disease.Your brain just eats itself and you eventually go blind and you just stop breathing. It was a shock to everyone when I started to get better. Like every doctor is saying, he can't be getting better.Whatever this is is a fluke because it's progressive multi focal leukantepathopathy. Progressive means you don't get better. It only goes in one direction.Once you start the ball rolling, you're going, plus, he's hit the dementia stage. Even if he survives, he's going to be a vegetable. Well, here I am.

A fruit.

Here I am. So once I got out of the hospital and I had to move back in with my parents, they treated me like I was going to die at any minute.Had I stayed in that house, I am convinced I would be dead because I had doctors telling me, he's got a year, tops. Don't just be prepared for that other shoe to drop. So I spent a long time waiting for that other shoe to drop, and it wasn't dropping.And I kept getting better and stronger and more healthy. And I said, you all need to just back off. I cannot live in my bedroom for the rest of my life. I can't not see people for the rest of my life.You can't. You can't hide me away because I am going to die if I do. So I had to just flee. So all of a sudden I realized that's why I love Liza so much.I get her. I get her. I wasn't fortunate enough to find somebody like a Robin, but I did it on my own. God damn it.The other final thought about the movie that I had was something that to jump off of, something that Maya said in the first episode. She was saying, like, the movie's called Outrageous, yet there's Nothing outrageous about what they're doing.The outrageous thing is the fact that these people are in this relationship, that they're able to live this life. And I'm gonna back up. I'm gonna say yes. And also there's more to it than that. Because it's 1977. This movie would have been outrageous.I made you watch the trailer for this movie. Again. What's unusual about the trailer for the movie about outrageous for those who listen to it but didn't see it?

There's no scenes from the movie in the trailer at all. It's just the title and the voiceover.

If totally a voiceover giving it reviews. The print ad was the same thing. It's just the title of the movie because they didn't think it was going to sell. They were.They thought they were going to get shunned out of movie theaters and whatever. They had to trick people into coming see the movie. So I think, yeah. Did a movie about drag in which I just did. A queer movie in general.A queer movie where self loathing was not the point yet. These people are. Not the happiest to begin with, but they'll fight against it the whole movie. Rather like a boys in the band that leans into it.That was what was in for the queer movie of the 1970s. Wanted that self loathing or they were clowns. Particularly anyone. A man in a dress was going to be a clown. And we don't get that here.

I was so worried we were going to get suffering porn. And I have no taste for that. And I think what I was trying to say that what you launched off of is that society finds them outrageous.They shouldn't be outrageous. They don't do anything inherently outrageous.

The existence of the movie itself is outrageous.The fact that they made a movie about a man in a dress who's standing on stage, who's not being ridiculed and he's not being made to feel ashamed of himself. Who doesn't die at the end of the movie. He's not punished for what he is. That's outrageous. He got a happy. That everybody got a happy ending.That's outrageous. And I say bravo. Bravo. I think we're done.

Trae, what were you just gonna add?

Oh, no, I was just gonna say is that we were never laughing at the characters we never made. We're never mocking them.

No. Except for Helen Shaver in that dress.

Yeah.

We're out now.

On the second watch. That circus tent Raggedy Ann thing. I was so caught up in the plot the first time. I watched it and being able to keep an eye out for that dress.

Good, go.

So next time, we're going to do another one of these. Minisodes. These focus on the people behind the scenes of Friday the 13th, the series. And we are going to be focusing on Armand Mastriani.He did the one with the syringe, Better Off Dead and a couple of other ones. But he did it. You know, he's reloading. We're gonna be talking about his movies the Killing Hour and the Supernaturals.So, yes, that's gonna be super fun. Just to let you guys know that I'm not sure this is just to keep the Patreon subscribers in the loop of what's going on.Everything is still going forward with going public. Things are going a little bit slower than I would like to because I've run into a huge mic issue. I'm using a crappy mic right now because I.For some reason, my old mic just doesn't connect to my computer anymore. We're trying to figure out the problem. It's taking longer than I thought. So maybe the October public thing is not going to happen.Maybe we have November, December. I'm not sure yet. But just let you know we're still moving forward. We're not. We're not bailing out on you. The show still in things.So just be patient with us and we'll be patient with you. Because, you know, you're kind of jerk sometimes, too. I got nothing. I don't know why I said that. Why? Did I say something? No, you're fabulous.We love you. You know what? I'm babbling, you guys. You know what that means? It means it's time to wrap things up for another episode of this crazy little show.So until next time, everybody, please continue to stay safe, stay healthy. But you know what? I'm forgetting something.You know, it's a Friday the 13th spectacular, and I forget the rules of the show because before we go, we got one thing left to say.

DAMN YOU

Uncle Lewis!

Fun with video.

Now they'll be able to see how shitty we are keeping time with each other.