Fierstein on Getty

Harvey Fierstein pays tribute to his Torch Song Trilogy co-star and longtime friend Estelle Getty.

Texting? Hold Up

Picture it: you are sitting enraptured in the latest big screen exploit of Batman, Harry Potter or Carrie Bradshaw when you see it, glaringly, out of the corner of your eye: a little blue square of light. Attached to that little blue square of light is a hunched-over figure rapidly keying in nonsensical drivel with ossified stumps that once were thumbs, obviously not watching -- or caring about -- what they paid a ticket price to see. Even worse, they are obliviously encroaching upon your enjoyment of what you paid a ticket price to see. Such is the newest cinematic annoyance rearing its ugly head in movie theaters everywhere: text messaging.

The widespread popularity of this yet-another-way to stay connected in this yet-ever-more-disconnected society we now live in baffles me. Wouldn't it be easier to just, you know, talk to each other? And who, really, seriously, needs to be that connected to every single person they know all the time?

As for those who text at the movies, can't they take a break from this high tech foolishness for the running time of your average movie, if not for their rapidly failing eyesight and arthritic fingers, then at least for the sake of their fellow filmgoers? Or has common courtesy gone the way of rotary phones and hand-written correspondence?

And it is not just in movie theaters either. As Playbill.com recently noted, it is happening in Broadway theaters as well. Moreover, with ticket prices on the Great White Way ten times (at least) as much as at your local multiplex, the question remains: what are these people thinking?

Hilariously, triumphantly, Playbill's own Seth Rudetsky recounts in his latest column how Patti LuPone -- Miss Patti LuPone, the Tony Award winning Broadway legend, supreme diva and star of the current revival of Gypsy -- refused to go on for the second act of the show unless the fingering philistine sitting in the front row (the front row!) who had been texting non-stop through the whole first act was ejected from the theater in shame. As Seth himself would say, "Brava, diva, brava!"

Text messaging is rapidly equaling the long-standing bane of any true movie fans' film going existence, the ringing cell phone. I remember the first time a cell phone rang while I was watching a movie (the jerk actually answered it ... and proceeded to have a conversation). The movie in question? Driving Miss Daisy ... in 1989. Yup, we have been putting up with one form of distracting, irritating, rude in-theater behavior for almost twenty years, and now we have to deal with another one?

In closing, I direct any and all offenders of this, or any other felonious phone faux pas, to take heed of the fact that July is "National Cell Phone Courtesy Month". So watch out: we're on to you and, like Miss Patti LuPone, we're not going to take it anymore.

Lost Crawford Footage Found!

In the very same Argentinean museum where the original Metropolis footage was recently discovered, another bit of cinematic history was recovered from the abyss of time: the lost Joan Crawford Batman episode.

It is not widely known*, that Crawford, like all great stars of the time, was asked to appear as a nemesis of the Dynamic Duo on the campy Batman television series of the 1960's. In fact, she was to play a new villainess, named Mildred Fierce, in the third season finale of the program, with a young Stephen Spielberg (making his directorial debut) at the helm of the episode.

Unfortunately, after very little was shot, both Crawford and Spielberg were fired by 20th Century Fox, the show's studio, due to budgetary concerns; trade papers of the day blamed Crawford's exorbitant salary demands and Spielberg's insistence of constructing an elaborate set for a single scene set in Gotham City's Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

The episode was retooled for Zsa Zsa Gabor and, ironically, ended up being the last show of the series, as it was cancelled soon after. (Crawford, nevertheless impressed with the moxie of the young Spielberg, would work with him again the following year on the pilot episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery.)

The lone scene shot, which set up the character of Mildred Fierce as she escaped from Arkham, has never been seen by the general public ... until now. Film historians have widely assumed that all prints were destroyed in a mysterious fire in the Fox studio archives in the mid-1970s; how one copy not only survived, but also made its way to Argentina, is unknown.

But now it has been lovingly restored, under the guidance of Spielberg himself, and is now available exclusively for Movie Dearest readers to view online. I know you are all very excited to see this extremely rare footage, so click here and enjoy!

* In fact, it may be entirely made up.

Awards Watch: The Brokeback Factor, Part 2

In last week's part 1 of "The Brokeback Factor", I speculated that a posthumous Oscar win for Heath Ledger for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight may partly be due to his overlooked performance in Brokeback Mountain. But there is another Academy Award hopeful this year that may benefit even more from the infamous Oscar snub of Ang Lee's landmark modern classic. That film is Milk.

The story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official anywhere, already has a history with the little gold man: Rob Epstein's The Times of Harvey Milk won the documentary prize back in 1984. This new Milk is a dramatic retelling of his life, with Academy Award winning actor Sean Penn in the title role and Oscar nominated director Gus Van Sant at the helm. In other words, Milk will certainly be on the radar of most Oscar watchers based on its pedigree alone.

In addition to Penn and Van Sant, other potential Milk nominees include screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and a slew of possible Best Supporting Actor nominees (who would, ironically, compete against Ledger), including James Franco (as Milk's lover Scott Smith), Emile Hirsch (as Milk ally and friend Cleve Jones) and Josh Brolin (as Milk's assassin Dan White). And then of course, there's the big one: Best Picture.

If Milk lives up to expectations at the film festivals, among critics and with such precursor awards as the Golden Globes, and if it is nominated for Best Picture, it may give the Academy a chance to overcome those nasty rumors of Hollywood homophobia that have been swirling around Tinseltown since that notorious Oscar night over two years ago. You recall that dark night when the over-rated mess of a movie Crash defied all predictions and won instead of the favored Brokeback, which was still the most honored movie of the year among every other major awards group. Certain pundits tried to insist that it wasn't due to Brokeback's gay content, that the Los Angeles-based Academy simply thought Crash was better (uh, have you seen it?) and/or that they wanted to honor a home-grown product (Brokeback was filmed mostly in Canada). Hogwash.

As the public statements of such moronic members as Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine attested to, some Academy members didn't even bother to watch Brokeback Mountain, proving that, despite its liberal reputation, homophobia still reigns in Hollywood (just ask all those actors and actresses cringing in the closet). In addition, the constant belittling of Brokeback by late night talk show hosts (mainly that idiot Jay Leno) and on the internet didn't help the film's chances, as some just viewed the whole thing as one big "gay cowboy" joke instead of just, you know, viewing the movie and judging it on its own merits.

Nevertheless, with its frank and honest portrayal of two men in love, Brokeback may have been too much for some people in the Academy, but it did pave the way for a possible victory for Milk. First off, Milk isn't primarily a romance (thereby not making all those straight guys in the Academy feel all funny inside), but a biopic, and the Academy loves biopics, especially about martyrs (see: Gandhi). Also, they especially love honoring actors when they play real people (the list begins with third Best Actor winner George Arliss as Disraeli and ends with last year's Best Actress Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose), so Penn could be looking at Oscar #2. And if Van Sant were to win, he would be the first out director to win for a gay-themed movie (and no, John Schlesinger for Midnight Cowboy and George Cukor for My Fair Lady don't count).

Of course, the jury is literally still out on this one until Milk is actually seen; it is scheduled to open December 5.

Awards Watch: The Brokeback Factor, Part 1

As Variety recently noted, 2008 is now more then half over and, save for a few below the marquee categories, the Oscar race is wide open. Of the films released so far this year, only Richard Jenkins' stand out performance in the indie drama The Visitor has garnered any acting buzz, and certainly no Best Picture contenders have bowed yet.

Longtime awards-watchers know that this is hardly anything new, as studios have always (at least since this all became a big expensive game) back-loaded their annual schedules with their Oscar bait pictures, hoping that the Academy's perceived short attention span will pay off in gold on Hollywood's night of nights. Naturally, things will start heating up once the fall film festivals begin screening their wares, followed by the annual prestige picture traffic jam known as December.

However, the big question of the year will soon be answered (in part at least) with the debut next week of The Dark Knight. And that question is: could the late Heath Ledger be nominated for an Academy Award for playing the Joker?

Prior to his accidental death in January, Ledger's performance was already gaining attention (for example, back in November, Kristopher Tapley at Variety's Red Carpet District called early online marketing for the film the start of the longest "For Your Consideration" campaign in Academy history); tragically or not, his death has served to increase that attention. By all accounts, Ledger's performance as the Clown Prince of Crime is both fearless and fearsome; could it overcome genre bias and get a nomination? After all, this is a comic book movie.

Well, one only needs to look back at the 1990 Oscars to see that it would not be without precedent. That year, Al Pacino was nominated not for playing Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III, but for his hammy, over-the-top turn as another gangster, Big Boy Caprice, in Dick Tracy, based on the classic comic strip. He was even favored to win by some (Joe Pesci eventually won, for playing yet another gangster, in GoodFellas).

Furthermore, if Ledger is nominated posthumously (the last actor to be so recognized was Il Postino's Massimo Troisi in 1995), could he win? (Peter Finch remains the only actor to win after his death, for Network in 1976.) Obviously, only time will tell and, admittedly, most everyone has yet to see the actual movie in question (advance word, to say the least, is good). Of course, it is his performance that should be judged solely for the honor, but we all know emotions will play into Academy voters' decisions (as they always do, regardless of what is said otherwise). Surely the fact that this will be the last chance to recognize Ledger's talent will play into member's decisions once it comes time for them to mark their final ballots.

Another factor may play into this scenario as well ... call it the "Brokeback factor". As Daniel Day-Lewis so eloquently expressed it in his Screen Actors Guild Award acceptance speech earlier this year, many were moved by Ledger's heartbreaking performance as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, and still are; his death has elevated it to iconic status, much like (another actor gone before his time) James Dean's Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause.

Academy history is riddled with instances of actors winning "make up" Oscars for previously snubbed performances, from Bette Davis (Dangerous instead of Of Human Bondage) and James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) to Cher (Moonstruck instead of Mask) and Russell Crowe (Gladiator for The Insider). So it is not that big a stretch to think that, in this instance, it could happen again.

Alas, the question remains: could an Oscar for Dark Knight, given in part for Brokeback memories, be Hollywood's final tribute to Heath Ledger?

Next week in part 2: Looking at the big picture, how the infamous Academy snub of Brokeback Mountain could help another eagerly awaited film's chances of scoring Best Picture glory.

UPDATE: Part 2 is now available.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

Dale Peck writes:

"Where in the hell do you start with a movie like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? With Tim Burton in his feature debut, displaying a B-movie zeal so old school it looks brand new? Or Danny Elfman in his star turn, delighting listeners with an irresistible fusion of Carl Stalling and carnival jingles and video game bleeps and whoops? And let’s not forget co-writer Phil Hartman, muse of the Groundlings and SNL before he became a great deadpan actor in his own right -- one of the few men who can play both halves of a double entendre for a laugh.

Or Elizabeth Daily as Dottie or Diane Salinger as Simone or -- Oh! My! God! -- Jan Hooks as the saccharine Alamo tour guide, whose two minutes of screen time are pants-wettingly hilarious.

But even with all this talent and energy and, let’s face it, good luck going for it (I mean, Burton and Elfman and Hartman, all on a $6 million budget), Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is still pretty much all about -- um, duh -- Pee-wee Herman, a.k.a. Paul Reubens, who, like his friend Cassandra Peterson (blink and you’ll miss her boobs in the biker scene), wound up more or less subsumed by his most famous creation."

Click here to continue reading Dale Peck's article "Scary Fun" at Out.com.

Boys Will Be Boys: When Men Dance With Men on Film

This post is part of the Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon, now underway at FerdyOnFilms.com.

A man approaches a couple on a tightly-packed dance floor and asks to cut in; the lady agrees, but when she steps aside, the man joins her partner instead for a little man-on-man waltz action. Observing the situation, bandleader Al Jolson quips, "Boys will be boys!"

The scene is from the 1934 musical melodrama Wonder Bar (most likely you remember it from the seminal documentary on gay representation in film, The Celluloid Closet). But that was far from the first time two men danced together on the silver screen; in the famous Dickson experimental sound film from 1894 (which some scholars credit as the first ever motion picture with sound), two men unironically hold each other close as a violinist plays in the background.

And thus the image of -- and approach to -- men dancing together on film was (unintentionally) established with these two early examples, one comic, the other (pardon the pun) straightforward. And the boys have been doing it one way or the other ever since.

When one first thinks of men dancing with men in the movies, most likely the first thoughts are of such widescreen production numbers as those seen in West Side Story and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, wherein macho gang members and farm hands prove their manliness by way of elaborately choreographed ballets. On the flip side is the homoerotically charged "Y.M.C.A" dance routine in the camptastic Can't Stop the Music; the jocks on display here display their manhood in quite different ways than their predecessors, but the gist is still the same: "our testosterone levels are about to burst, so there is only one thing left to do ... gotta dance!"

Another instance of men dancing together is when they just want to entertain ... call them the "lets put on a show!" moments. Rooted in burlesque, it is no wonder that most of these tend toward the bawdy side, from drag queens (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) to strippers (The Full Monty), but if you want seriousness, then there is always the cat-walkers of Paris is Burning. They take their voguing very seriously.

Then of course, there is the instances of men not so much dancing with men as men dancing with men. Beginning in the 70's, out and out "gay films" became more common, and naturally, they often showed the guys getting their groove on (this being the 70's and all), whether in joyous group dances (The Boys in the Band) or popper-fueled bacchanals (Cruising). And even though disco died, the need to cut loose didn't, with similar scenes appearing in more recent gay-themed films, such as Edge of Seventeen and Trick.

But not all man on man dancing has to be on a crowded disco floor; more intimate, one-on-on pas de deux range from the sublimely comedic (Joe E. Brown and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot) to the bittersweet (Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas in Philadelphia) to the achingly romantic (Glen Berry and Scott Neal in Beautiful Thing).

In closing, there is perhaps no better ode to the "men dancing with men" sub-sub-genre than Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall, the Oscar-winning short film whose title says it all; a delightfully droll comedy of manners ... and you can dance to it.

For more of the Invitation to Dance Movie Blogathon, visit FerdyOnFilms.com.

Toon Talk: Summer Nights

Since Jaws and Star Wars and the dawn of the "Summer Movie" just over thirty years ago, film studios know that when the sun is high and the kids are out of school, all they want is something to do; if they are entertained in the process, all the better. And what better way to have fun then to sit in an air conditioned theater and watch the latest blockbuster with all your friends.

Which explains the steady stream of superheroes, sequels and superhero sequels that strike when the summer season surfaces, see? Si.

Click here to continue reading Kirby's Toon Talk preview of this summer's new movies at LaughingPlace.com.