Some Semi-Enlightened Enthusiasm for Pat Rocco

Even though his filmography includes over 35 titles, filmmaker and activist Pat Rocco often gets a short shrift as a pioneer in gay adult film. At best, he’s treated as a footnote, film historians giving him a brief nod as they rush ahead to discuss Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand or Fred Halsted’s L.A. Plays Itself. I don’t recall hearing about him until a few years ago, when I learned of his existence on the Ask Any Buddy podcast. Once upon a time, Rocco had a fan base so devoted to his work that it spawned a performing arts collective, the Society of Pat Rocco Enlightened Enthusiasts (SPREE), yet as of this writing, Rocco doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, though he is name-checked in Wikipedia’s gay pornography entry.

Pat Rocco introduces himself to gay porn stars Spencer Reed (left) and
 Jasper St. John ahead of the 2010 GAYVN Awards.

Rocco may not get his due, but he’s not entirely forgotten. Two movies, the 2021 documentary PAT ROCCO DARED and the 2024 Blu-ray of Rocco’s 1974 film DRIFTER, provide an ideal introduction to the director’s work and his legacy.

The title of director Morris Chapdelaine and Bob Christie’s documentary is a riff on the title of Rocco’s 1969 film Pat Rocco Dares, though I really wish Chapdelaine and Christie had titled the doc Cock Danglers, which is how gay activist and writer JimKepner labeled Rocco’s work. Rest assured, however, that you will see plenty of dangling cocks throughout the documentary.

Some of the cocks, like this one featured in Rocco’s
descriptively titled Reclining Cowboy, aren’t so dangly.

Rocco died in 2018 at age 84, but queer filmmaker and one-time star of Dante’s Cove Charlie David (who’s got a Wikipedia page, BTW) was fortunate to spend a few days with Rocco and his camera-shy partner David Ghee in 2017 at their memento-packed home in Hawaii. Though his health was failing, Rocco, dressed in a requisite Hawaiian shirt and sporting a toupee that just doesn’t want to stay glued to his head, is more than happy to let Chapdelaine, Christie and narrator David into his home to talk about his past. Rocco is less interested in discussing his present. When David asks Rocco about recent health problems (a heart attack, three strokes, failing vision), the director gently shuts down this line of questioning. “Oh, I don’t want to go into all of that. Let’s just talk about the good things.”

Filmmaker Charlie David (left) with Pat Rocco (right) and his partner
David Ghee (center) in 2017.

Talking about “the good things” means the documentary primarily focuses on Rocco’s films—the one’s he admits to making, at least. Pat Rocco Dared quickly gets through the filmmaker's biography: Brooklyn born Pasquale Vincent Serrapica, later raised in Los Angeles, initially pursued a singing career, performing on radio shows and musicals in the 1950s under the stage name Pat Rocco, and even spent three years performing on The Tennessee Earnie Ford Show. Rocco, who says he realized he was gay as early as 12 or 13 years old, is described as out during this time, though it’s clear there’s a distinction between being out and being open. Rocco talks of his first sexual experience as a teenager being with an older man giving him a ride, and that he had a boyfriend in high school, confessing to David that this documentary might be the first time he’s ever discussed either of these things.

It was in the late 1960s, when he answered an ad for a still photographer, that Rocco made the move into filmmaking. “I took along an 8mm movie camera with me, and I’d shoot a little 8mm film when I shot the stills,” Rocco says. He soon started a mail order business selling short films like Boy on the Run, which was made “just to use up film and use this guy who had one particular attribute that I knew the audience would like.”

The “particular attribute” featured in Boy on the Run, which Rocco
described as “fun nonsense—with a big dong.”

Rocco in the arms of Rev. Troy Perry in the 1970s.

Metropolitan Community Church founder Rev. Troy Perry recounts his first time seeing one of Rocco’s films in 1969. “It was the first time I’d ever seen frontal nudes. People [said to] me years later, ‘Oh, he made pornography.’ I said he never did. He made erotic movies under his name. Always, love was involved…. Even the bedroom scenes weren’t anything I couldn’t show my mother.” Rev. Perry’s mom was a lot more chill than mine was. 

Rocco’s brand of erotica, which has more in common with nudie cuties of the early 1960s, albeit a little more sexual and gay, seems rather quaint at a time when we have porn categories for CBT, gaping and fisting, but the director did dare to take artistic chances. In one of his movies (“A Breath of Love,” featured in Pat Rocco Dares), performer Brian Reynolds dances naked across an L.A. freeway, a stunt so outrageous that Rocco was asked to re-stage it for a local TV news station. Another movie, Discovery, a sweet story about two clean-cut young men who meet and fall for each other while at Disneyland, was filmed on location, most assuredly without permission. (“I broke every rule in the place,” Rocco says.) Though the nude scenes were filmed in the woods of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, this distinction was not enough to keep Disney off Rocco’s ass, the company also pissed that Rocco scored his film with Disney’s music (unlicensed, of course).

Ballet down the freeway: Brian Reynolds makes the morning a whole lot
more interesting for commuters in 1969.

“What eventually happened is they [Disney] didn’t want a bigger thing made out of it by giving great big publicity on this film,” Rocco explains. “So, they say, ‘You take that film out of circulation, never let it be seen again. You’re also banned for life from Disneyland.’” This documentary is likely the only time scenes from Discovery have been seen since the movie was made in 1969, though David makes a point of informing viewers that different music had to be used in the documentary to avoid getting slapped with a lawsuit from Disney.

In the Pat Rocco tradition: The Game (1970), a
 film made by members of SPREE.

The documentary only mentions SPREE in passing. Rocco said he merely gave his blessing to the fan who dreamt up the organization, un-named in the documentary; Dick Winters according to another source. While Rocco downplays his involvement in the group, alternate accounts and online scans of SPREE’s newsletters suggest the group did not operate entirely independent of Rocco during its 10 years of existence.

Rocco didn’t restrict his filmmaking to romantic, nudity-filled fantasies. He used his platform for activism as well, documenting protests, police raids and other events affecting L.A.’s gay community. His 1970 film, Signs of Protest, covers a protest that erupted in front of the West Hollywood restaurant Barney’s Beanery, infamous for its sign “Fagots [sic]–Stay Out!” displayed behind the bar (bigots never proofread). Rocco, acting as news reporter, interviews people participating in the protest (including author Joseph Hansen, a.k.a. James Colton) and patrons in the restaurant, even getting a comment from Barney’s daughter, who doesn’t seem to understand what the fuss is all about. The sign wasn’t taken down permanently until 1984, and then only when activists and the city council stormed the restaurant and removed it themselves.

Rocco documented the LAPD raid of a gay nightclub in his
film Meat Market Arrest (1970). From left: Nude dancer
Bob Philpot, attorney Walter Culpepper and Pat Rocco.

Rocco also filmed L.A.’s first gay Pride parade. “That really set us apart from New York,” Perry says. “New York’s was a march. Ours (Los Angeles’s) was a parade.” Rocco took an even more active role in the mid-1970s when he became president of the Christopher Street West Association, organizing the L.A. Pride parade and adding a carnival as part of the celebration.

An ‘Honest Look’ at a 35-Year-Old Hustler

Rocco didn’t direct many feature length films. Pat Rocco Dared highlights 1977’s Silent No More, about a man’s struggles to get his homophobic father to accept his homosexuality and his boyfriend, but it isn’t even included on the IMDb pages for either Rocco or the movie’s star Michael Kearns and forget finding a copy on Blu-ray. It’s like the movie is locked away with Discovery, with only the few scenes featured in Pat Rocco Dared seeing the light of day. Luckily, one of Rocco’s other feature-length efforts, Drifter (a.k.a. Two-Way Drift), was resurrected on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.

Drift sparkles like a teen vampire.

Shot for $50,000 in 1969 but not released until 1974 by porn studio Jaguar Productions after it was rejected by the major studios and indie outfits like American International Pictures (I’d love to see the executives’ faces during the screening), Drifter is Rocco’s take on Midnight Cowboy. The story centers on a bisexual hustler going by—what else?—Drift, who as played by Joed Adair, is at once a naïve dreamer, a cynical pro and/or a hapless victim of circumstance. It just depends on the scene. In the opening scene, however, Drift is shown to be kind of rapey as he tries to force himself onto Steve (David Russell, who may be wearing a wig), a young man who picked up Drift hitchhiking in Arizona. (An alternate read of this scene, and the one I think was intended, is Drift trying to initiate sex only to be violently rejected by a horrified Steve).

Gino (Joseph Caruso) has a proposition.

So, it’s back on the road for Drift, who, after a bite to eat at Roy & Lorene’s Diner, hitches a ride with Gino (Joseph Caruso, a.k.a. porn director Gorton Hall). Gino is more than happy to give Drift a lift to Los Angeles, provided the lanky hitchhiker understands it’s not a free ride. Drift spends the night at a motel with the portly Gino without protest or enthusiasm. As filmed, however, it looks like the two men literally just sleep together. Maybe the guys got the sex out of the way off camera earlier?

Once dropped off in L.A., Drift goes from one encounter to the next. Drifting, if you will. After a brief detour into an adult bookstore, Drift is chatted up by Wagner (Dean Shah-kee), who sort of resembles the late Julian MacMahon during his Charmed era. Wagner doesn’t waste time offering Drift a place to stay, at least for tonight. Wagner has a roommate but assures Drift it’s not a problem. The roommate works nights, while Wagner remains scarce during the day. Though Wagner is an upgrade from Gino—physically, at least—Drift is surprisingly reluctant to whore himself out for shelter. Then again, Drift’s resistance might have nothing to do with Wagner and more to do with the fact that Wagner’s apartment is a depressing shithole.

“C’mon Drift, join me. It’s more fun when there’s two.”: Drift about to
make his rent payment. Notice Dean Shah-kee’s shadow on the left.

Drift meets Wagner's roommate,
Klamath (Bambi Allen).

Other encounters include meeting Wagner’s roommate; having a meeting with Maxine (Ann Collins), a bitchy “agent” Drift was referred to by Gino; and meeting Karen (Inga-Marie Pinson), a pretty, young German woman he first encounters while on his way to Maxine’s office. They meet again at the bus stop and then spend the rest of the day together, planning to get together again after Karen is free from a mysterious work obligation.

Throughout the movie there are flashbacks to Drift’s past with Steven, scenes that further confuse the nature of their relationship. The character of Steven obviously has a crush on Drift, yet he is also totally oblivious to Drift’s sexual signals. I’m usually slow on the uptake, but if one of my friends got naked and initiated a tickle fight, I think I would suspect he had something other than platonic rough housing in mind. The intention may have been to portray Steven is a sheltered and inexperienced, but he often just comes across as having a mental disability.

Not what it looks like.

Perhaps Drift’s most startling encounter—and the movie’s most cringeworthy scene—is with Dana (Gerald Strickland, who would be right at home in a John Waters movie), on a date that was arranged by Maxine. “Do you find me…attractive?” Dana asks in a gravelly purr, not realizing that this isn’t a question you should ask if you’re not prepared for a negative answer. (“You’re OK,” is Drift’s tactful reply)

And then Dana changes clothes.

Drift’s response: “What the hell?”

As squirm-inducing as Strickland’s performance is, it’s ultimately heartbreaking when Dana reveals he plans to undergo gender reassignment surgery for reasons that seem only partially rooted in gender dysphoria. In an unsettling close-up, Dana laments: “In my world—the gay world—when you reach 50, love is not so easy to find. You’re pretty much washed up. Through those young years, when so many are willing to give, I kept myself hidden. I never let anyone know me. Well, I’ve stopped hiding now. So, come on Drift, help me say good-by as a man and make me feel like a woman.”

Who is Drift’s sex show partner? You
 get one guess.

The job that sends Drift over the edge, however, is near the movie’s end, when Gino hires him as entertainment for an all-male party. My first thought was Drift was being set-up as a bottom for a gangbang, but Gino had something more refined in mind: a live sex show. Drift is resigned to the job, until he sees his performance partner. It turns out Drift is more than just kind of rapey, after all.

I’ll admit I went into this one expecting to have a lot of fun at its expense, surprised to discover that Drifter was not so easy to ridicule. While it shares many similarities to The Light from the Second Story Window (also released by Jaguar), such as a cast of SPREE members and clumsily trying to milk pathos from its lurid story about a sex worker, Drifter is significantly less ridiculous. Rocco’s movie is rough around the edges, hindered by its low-low budget and a cast who, by and large, have calibrated their performances for the stage instead of the big screen, but the director’s technical and storytelling proficiency manage to make Drifter almost seem like a real movie.

Heterosexual mating rituals: Drift and Karen (Inga-Marie Pinson)
 have fun in the park.

Drifter’s biggest weakness is its star and writer, Joed Adair. Adair’s script, written under the name Edward Middleton, based on his (unpublished) novel, might be Oscar-worthy in comparison to David Allen’s Second Story Window, but it’s just as self-serious, with an over-reliance on melodramatic—and often self-pitying—monologues to sell us on the plight of its characters. As an actor, Adair isn’t bad, he’s just miscast as a character whom we’re supposed to believe is under 35. I couldn’t accept Drift as a young innocent reluctantly selling his body when Adair looks like he should be rattling off a menu of sexual services and prices to potential tricks, reminding them that cash is required up front.

The Parts Pat Rocco Dared Left Out

The cover for Kino Cult’s
 Blu-ray release of Drifter.

Making the Drifter Blu-ray an even greater value are its bonus features, which include four of Rocco’s “cock danglers,” the Adair-starring A Matter of Life among them. Those wanting to learn more about Rocco will appreciate the commentary track from film historian Finley Freibert, dry though it may be. While Pat Rocco Dared is a pleasant introduction to Rocco’s life and work, it’s too beholden to the narrative Rocco wants to tell (Rocco also produced the documentary), so it’s less a documentary and more a celebration of Pat Rocco. Among the parts Pat Rocco Dared leaves out:

• Before Rocco began taking photos and filming naked men, he ran a theater in Moorpark, Calif. Joed Adair was one of his employees at this time and the two men became close friends (possibly more), collaborating on theater productions. The two men ultimately had a falling out, though they later made up and made Drifter.

• Rocco later owned a coffeehouse/head shop called Bizarre Bazaar that also showed campy old movies like Johnny Guitar. The fact that Rocco didn’t bother licensing the movies he showed ultimately landed him in hot water, contributing to the closure of Bizarre Bazaar.

• Though Pat Rocco Dared leaves viewers with the impression that Pat Rocco never directed hardcore porn, he most certainly did. Under the name Brad Kingston, Rocco directed several movies for gay porn studio Jaguar Productions, including A Deep Compassion and A Dream of Body. He reportedly directed the sex scenes in The Light from the Second Story Window as well. Freibert explains these movies attracted the attention of law enforcement, and that Rocco’s home was raided several times because of them. He and his business partners were even charged with conspiracy to commit oral copulation and sodomy (the charges were later dropped). Rocco, not wanting to draw any more police or FBI attention, later downplayed his hardcore work.

Some random facts about Drifter and its cast:

• Joed Adair was born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas, where he showed promise as an actor and dancer. In addition to Drifter, he wrote scripts for the shorts A Matter of Life and Autumn Nocturne and the feature Someone. He died in 2001.

• In addition to his part in Drifter, Dean Shah-kee, who also went by the name Dean Chambers, worked as a crew member on Rocco’s movies. His resume includes stints as a model, a dance instructor and a cashier at a gay porn theater.

• Like Shah-kee, Gerald Strickland was in the porn peddling business, working as a cashier for Woody’s Adult Books, owned by Jaguar Films co-founder Woody Daniel (the store is featured in Drifter). He was later second in command at Jaguar. Strickland died the same year Drifter was released.

Product placement.

• SPREE member Bambi Allen, who plays Klamath, was also in Pat Rocco Dared. She had small parts in numerous grindhouse movies, including The Fabulous Bastard from Chicago, Terror at Orgy Castle and Hell’s Bloody Devils. She died of cancer before Drifter was released.

• Drifter was supposed to be Jaguar Films’ crossover into the mainstream (?), but the film, which barely counts as softcore, was only shown at gay porn theaters alongside decidedly hardcore movies like Fred Halsted’s Sextool. Gay porn theaters are not typically a gateway to mainstream success and consequently Drifter was a box office failure.

Short Takes: ‘Latin Blood: The Ballad of Ney Matogrosso’ (2025) ★★ ½

Watching Latin Blood: The Ballad of Ney Matogrosso (a.k.a. Homem com H) wasn’t the first time I wondered about the logistics of filming R-rated rim jobs (that would be when I watched the HBO series Looking), but it was the first time I was prompted to do some online research on the subject. And now I know that yes, there are modesty garments that cover actors’ buttholes, dashing any notions I had that Jesuíta Barbosa (as Ney Matogrosso) and Bruno Montaleone (as Marco, the tragic lover) were staring directly into each other’s naked assholes when filming their sex scene.

Sorry, I really shouldn’t begin a review obsessing about the particulars of filming simulated sex, but it was top of mind when I finished watching Latin Blood. The movie is not about actors tossing salad, however. It’s a biopic about queer Brazilian singer Ney Matogrosso, known as much for his outrageous costuming and androgynous appearance as for his voice.

That Matogrosso (né Ney de Souza Pereira) rose to such heights is a testament his determination as much as his talent, given that his father, portrayed in the film by Rômulo Braga, was a harsh, borderline abusive, disciplinarian who seemed determined to break the young Ney’s will at every turn. Then again, proving our parents wrong can be a powerful motivator. After brief stints in the military and performing in a Brasilia college choral group (and having an affair with an older man), Matogrosso moves to Rio de Janeiro in the late 1960s, where he ultimately joins the rock group Secos & Molhados (Dry Ones & Wet Ones), becoming its art director as well as its lead singer. The band is an immediate hit, yet while it owes much of its success to Matogrosso’s stage presence, the film suggests the Secos & Molhados’ founding members—both straight—want him to tone it down. Instead, Matogrosso goes solo, to even greater success.

Director Esmir Filho, who co-wrote the script with Laura Malin, has crafted an entertaining film, featuring some superb performances, especially from Barbosa, and a few questionable wigs. It’s not a very impactful film, however. The problem with biopics that go from cradle to grave—or cradle to present day, in this case—is they tend to play like highlight reels. Latin Blood rapidly cycles through Matogrosso’s life, from 1949 to present, barely allowing the audience time to get its bearings before jumping to the next decade, only slowing down for the 1970s. Characters appear with little introduction—perhaps, in the case of Cazuza (Jullio Reyes), because the filmmakers believe none is needed. But if you’re unfamiliar with Brazilian musicians of the ’70s and ’80s, you’ll think he’s just one of Matogrosso’s fuck buddies, until it’s revealed in another time jump that he was a famous singer in his own right, and an AIDS casualty a scene after that. There is no time for tears, however. Latin Blood quickly hops to another moment in Matogrosso’s life as it races to a finale concert by the real, present-day Matogrosso.

You may get more out of Latin Blood if you’re already a fan of Matogrosso’s music. If not, at least appreciate that, despite often playing out like a Wikipedia page with sex, nudity and a soundtrack album, it’s not some Bohemian Rhapsody PG-13 bullshit.

Best Bitches

There seem to be some unwritten rules when it comes to how movies portray friendship. In slasher movies, friends are indistinguishable from bullies, competing to see who’s the bigger asshole until they’re beheaded by a chainsaw-wielding maniac. Male friendships are usually situational, and usually action-adventure related: a grizzled cop assigned a rookie/loose cannon partner, or two partners in crime out to make one last score. In either case, they’re too busy blowing shit up to get hung up on how much they mean to each other because #NoHomo.

Kurt Russell never knew he was the wind beneath Sly’s wings.

In “chick flicks,” however, female friendships tend to go way back, sometimes as far back as elementary school, and last a lifetime, with no chainsaw-wielding maniac to put them out of their misery. The 1980s were (roughly) bookended by two such stories, 1981’s RICH AND FAMOUS and 1988’s BEACHES, both telling essentially the same story, though with significantly different results.

The friendship in Rich and Famous dates to the 1950s, when Liz Hamilton (Jacqueline Bisset), beautiful, studious and English, and Merry Noel Blake (Candice Bergen), beautiful, shallow and Southern, were roommates at Smith College. Merry elopes with Doug (David Selby), moving to California and becoming a well-off stay-at-home mom. Liz, on the other hand, becomes an Important Writer, her first novel garnering acclaim among the intelligentsia who clamor for a second book that Liz can’t seem to finish.

But Merry hasn’t been spending all her time cleaning her beachside house in Malibu and raising her daughter Debby. When she and Liz reconnect in 1969, Merry sheepishly reveals she’s written a roman à clef based on her famous neighbors, one of whom has “become far too familiar with drugs, some of which he puts up his nose!”

Doug finishes without Merry.

Merry then proceeds to read the manuscript to her. It’s clear Liz is not impressed, and a little angry that her friend—not a real writer—is encroaching on her territory (and possibly pissed she’s been kept up all night by Merry’s reading). However, though Liz makes a lot of oblique jabs, she refrains from explicitly criticizing Merry’s book, leaving Merry to believe she liked her novel. Merry urges Liz to show the manuscript to her publisher and though Liz resists at first, she ultimately does, assuming her publisher is too high-minded to even entertain buying it.

You pretty much know what happens next. By 1975, Merry has become a wildly successful—and very prolific—author of trash fiction in the tradition of Jacqueline Susann or Judith Krantz (though she has more in common with Jackie Collins as a talk show personality). This is also the point where Rich and Famous becomes two different films. Merry charges through the rest of the movie like a neurotic Prime Time soap villain, swaddled in fur coats, her hair perfectly coiffed, getting into arguments with whomever is in her path: with her husband, who leaves her; with her teenage daughter Debby (Meg Ryan in her film debut), who leaves her; and, crucially, with Liz.

Merry is impervious to Doug’s threats.

If Bergen acts as if she’s in Valley of the Dolls, or possibly 101 Dalmatians, Bisset, who co-produced (though only her production company Jacquet is credited), acts as if she’s in The Turning Point, giving a grounded performance as she glides gracefully through her scenes looking fabulous in silk blouses and pencil skirts, but also looking the same no matter what decade she’s supposed to be in (Bergen’s fashions may be outrageous, but at least they suggest the passage of time, whereas Bisset spends the entire movie stuck in 1978).

Liz joins the mile high club with widower Max (an uncredited Michael
Brandon). Spoiler: Max’s wife is very much alive.

Matt Lattanzi and Jacqueline Bisset audition
for their 1983 movies My Tutor and Class.

The movie also doesn’t quite know what to do with Liz, apparently finding her well-respected work as boring as the audience does. So, the movie instead focuses on Liz’s sex life. The movie teases a potential affair between Liz and Doug, but only Doug is interested in crossing that line. Liz instead joins the mile high club with a 30-something “widower” she meets on a flight to New York (“We hope your flight has been pleasurable,” a flight attendant intones over the cabin speakers as Liz is getting plowed in the airplane’s bathroom). Later, she’s seduced by an 18-year-old gigolo in nut-crunchingly tight jeans (Olivia Newton-John’s then future ex-husband Matt Lattanzi), before ultimately settling into a doomed romance with Chris (Hart Bochner), a 22-year-old Rolling Stone reporter.

I first thought the movie was trying to emphasize how Liz is a sexually liberated woman, in contrast to Merry who, despite writing a lot about sex, is a puritan at heart. In one of Liz and Merry’s many arguments, Liz asks Merry just how many men one must fuck to qualify as a slut. “Three!” Merry snaps. But ascribing a deeper meaning to Liz’s dalliances is giving Rich and Famous too much credit. Liz is down to fuck because how long are people going to sit for her discussing T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence with Hart Bochner?

Merry and Liz have yet another fight.

Rich and Famous is a remake of the 1943 film Old Acquaintance, starring Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, though George Ayres’ screenplay has more in common with a Sidney Sheldon novel than the original John Van Druten play. The movie is capably helmed by Golden Age Hollywood director George Cukor, but even he can’t elevate the film. Rich and Famous is just trash.

Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen toast
making it to the end of Rich and Famous.

But while being trash makes Rich and Famous an unfortunate final bow for Cukor, who died in 1983 at age 83, it’s for that very reason it’s worth checking out. Merry would be insufferable in real life, but Bergen’s portrayal of her livens up the film considerably. When I saw this movie in 1981, I’d only known Bergen as The Golden Turkey Awards’ nominee for the Lifetime Achievement Award – Worst Actress. The nomination was unfair, it turned out (Raquel Welch was the “winner,” which I also disagree with). I’ll concede that Bergen can be a bit wooden in dramatic roles, but fortunately the role of Merry allows Bergen to showcase her flair for comedy. While her Southern accent is better suited for an SNL sketch than a big screen drama, I can overlook that when Bergen’s delivering such lines as “We all have these little bits in our pants, that doesn’t mean we have to pick at them all the time,” and “If you get to thinking about boys too much, just get on the back of a horse.” You’ll never buy that these two women would still exchange Christmas cards two years after leaving college, let alone maintain a close friendship for more than two decades, but Bergen’s over-the-top performance makes Rich and Famous worth watching.

From Trash to Schmaltz

Rich and Famous was a commercial failure when it was released in 1981, but that didn’t stop Disney’s Touchstone Pictures from peddling the same story seven years later when it released Beaches in 1988.

Though the two films have the shared theme of an enduring friendship forged between opposites, they do have some key differences. The friends in Rich and Famous are on a level playing field, both being attractive, privileged women (Merry might be the rich one, but apparently there is considerable cash to be made writing magazine think pieces, judging by Liz’s a picturesque creekside farmhouse in Connecticut). In Beaches, the friendship is between the tough-talking, working-class C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler) and the conventionally attractive, wealthy WASP Hillary (Barbara Hershey). In Rich and Famous, Liz and Merry are in competition with each other in the world of publishing, whereas in Beaches C.C. is an entertainer and Hillary is an attorney. The biggest difference of all: Rich and Famous ends with a gay panic joke; Beaches ends with the death of one of its main characters. I would apologize for the spoiler, but the movie pretty much gives it away in the first 10 minutes, when C.C.’s concert rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl is interrupted with the news that Hillary is in the hospital. 

Before she was Blossom or annoying, Mayim Bialik
killed it as Lil’ C.C. in Beaches.

Beaches’ central friendship also begins in the late 1950s, when a lost 11-year-old Hillary, played by Marcie Leeds, vacationing in Atlantic City with her family, meets 11-year-old C.C., played by Miyam “Ask me about my Ph.D. in neuroscience!” Bialik (in fairness, while Bialik is kind of annoying today, she is pretty great in this early role). Hillary is fascinated by this brash girl she meets under the Boardwalk, and C.C. is eager to please her new fan. Even though the girls live on different coasts, they maintain their friendship through frequent letters (the Iris Rainer-Dart novel on which Beaches is based tells much of its story through the main characters’ letters).

Too bad he’s not a furry: John Pierce (John Heard) is more
 into Hillary at first meeting.

Their friendship is tested in adulthood, especially whenever the two women are in the same room together. They’re all squeals and hugs in the late 1960s, when they share a cramped New York walk-up, C.C. earning rent money singing in dive bars and delivering/performing singing telegrams while Hillary works for the ACLU. Their friendship becomes strained, however, when they fall for the same man, theater director John Pierce (the late John Heard).

She’ll cut a bitch.

Not pictured: Barbara Hershey and
Bette Midler

The film settles into a pattern: C.C. and Hillary reunite, resume their friendship, then fight/separate abruptly. Along the way the women marry—C.C. to John; Hillary to Michael Essex (James Read), a snooty attorney who is most definitely not a fan of his wife’s tacky friend—only to get divorced a few years later. C.C. finally achieves her dream of stardom, her bawdy musical revue making her the toast of Broadway in the early 1970s, but near the decade’s end she’s hoping recording a disco album will revive her flagging career (Beaches none too subtly mimics the ups and downs of Midler’s own career). Disco can wait, though, when C.C. decides to stick around in San Francisco to help Hillary through her pregnancy (a parting gift from Michael). Things take a ridiculous turn when C.C. begins dating Hillary’s OB/GYN (the late Spalding Gray), uncharacteristically considering abandoning show business to become his wife. That is, until she gets a call from her agent about a part in a play that’s perfect for her. She abruptly leaves for New York—and leaves Hillary to break the bad news to her doctor. “He’d take it coming from you,” C.C. says. “He’s your gynecologist!”

Hillary questions C.C.’s choices, but not that hair.

Hillary returns to practicing law, balancing her career and motherhood, much easier to do when you’re already rich. But then she’s diagnosed with viral cardiomyopathy, a condition that, though fatal, ensures Hillary will remain looking lovely on her way out. Cue “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

It’s titled Beaches for a reason.

The Divine Miss M adds one more ballad to
Beaches’ bestselling soundtrack.

Though novelist Rainer-Dart reportedly had Cher in mind when she conceived the character of C.C. (Cee Cee in the book), the role is tailor made for Midler, who co-produced. The role not only shows off Midler’s strengths as an entertainer, but it also provides her an opportunity to recycle re-introduce past material, as she does when C.C. performs the ditty “Otto Titsling,” originally featured on Midler’s 1985 comedy album Mud will be Flung Tonight. Hershey is good, too, counterbalancing Midler’s flamboyance with a relatively restrained performance, but really, the part of Hillary could just as well be credited as The Other One (Hershey got more publicity for getting collagen lip injections for the film than she did for her performance in it). This is Bette’s show.

Beaches was remade in 2017 as a Lifetime
 TV movie, starring Idina Menzel
 and Nia Long, retroactively making
the 1988 original look like Terms of
Endearment. Menzel and Long do all right
with what they’re given, and the script even
improves on the original slightly by
eliminating that romance between C.C.
 and Hillary’s gynecologist, but otherwise
 it’s about what you would expect.
Which is to say: don’t bother.

Beaches was a box office hit when it was released in 1988, solidifying Midler’s status as a movie star. Its soundtrack was an even bigger hit, reviving Midler’s then dormant singing career. I love Midler, so much that I saw Jinxed! during its theatrical run and liked it (c’mon, she’s done much, much worse). Yet even though it’s one of Midler’s better movies, Beaches is not a favorite. Director Garry Marshall adeptly balances the comedy and drama, but the laughs are mild—I laughed harder and more often watching Rich and Famous—and the drama hollow. Marshall’s roots in TV sit-coms are quite apparent, the result being that Beaches has more in common with A Very Special Episode than a big screen dramedy, with all the edges sanded down for a wide audience. This reputed weepie failed to jerk a single tear from my eyes, probably because I’m dead inside, but I also blame it on the fact that many of Beaches’ emotional beats feel manipulative. Rich and Famous may be trash, but Beaches is schmaltz.

Another reason I’m not a huge fan of Beaches has nothing to do with the movie itself, but what it represents. It’s a demarcation line in Midler’s career, when she went from being that raucous performer adored by your gay uncle to that sappy balladeer your mom likes (mitigating factor: by 1988, your gay uncle was probably dead). Midler, it seemed, was content with the gentler rebrand, spending the majority of her post-Beaches career making saccharine dramedies (Stella; For the Boys) and comedies of varying (some would say diminishing)  quality, the best of which being her 1996 hit The First Wives Club, though even that movie falls short of its potential, Olivia Goldsmith’s novel being transformed from dark revenge fantasy to frothy—and toothless—romp. The Divine Miss M persona Midler had crafted throughout the ’70s only got trotted out for unsuspecting moms during live performances. Consequently, millennials likely only know her as the singer of “Wind Beneath My Wings” and star of Hocus Pocus. For Gen Z, she’s just another boomer celebrity tweeting herself into hot water.

Beaches may be the more successful ’80s movie about female friendship, but it’s the ’70s-style trashiness of Rich and Famous that I always return to. Love the Beaches soundtrack, though.

Candice Bergen and Bette Midler have each starred in more recent movies about life-long
friendships among women, now a staple in the SCAPT subgenre. Book Club was enjoyable, but its sequel, Book Club: The Next Chapter, was fucking painful. Though not as terrible as The Next Chapter, The Fabulous Four had me wishing the four leads had instead agreed to appear in a Cologuard commercial. Shilling for an at-home shit test would certainly be more dignified,
and way more entertaining.

Short Takes: ‘Butterflies in Heat’ (1979) ★ ½

In 1986 Butterflies in Heat appeared
on video store shelves as Tropic of Desire
(no, not that one), masquerading
as a sexy romance.

I’ll give this much to Butterflies in Heat, the 1979 film adaptation of Darwin Porter’s 1976 novel: it’s got a hell of an opening shot. The first thing we see onscreen is a close-up of the lead actor’s crotch, his jeans adorned with an elaborate butterfly patch placed over the spot where the head of his dick rests. OK, I’m intrigued.

That lead actor is 1970s model Matt Collins, who plays Numie Chase, a hustler who’s come down to Key West, Florida, to put as many miles as possible between him and a potential murder charge in New York City. While there he meets Lola (the incomparable Eartha Kitt), a nightclub singer who loves white wigs, referring to herself in the third person, and pretty young men like Numie. However, she has no intention of paying for it (“People pay Lola,” she informs him). Numie then spots Anne (bland Roxanne Gregory), sitting alone in a corner of the same tawdry club, his interest in her strictly recreational. Anne resists his advances, but only because she is afraid of incurring the wrath of her domineering mother, Leonora (Barbara Baxley), supposedly a very rich and very famous fashion designer though her decaying mansion suggests the money and fame are disappearing fast. Numie instead settles for fucking (off-screen) Anne’s no-so-closeted husband (Numie says he doesn’t usually service dudes, but the watch he’s offered as payment is valued at $1,000). Rounding out the cast of characters is Leonora’s plus-sized housekeeper/assistant Tangerine (Pat Carroll), who is willing to pay for Numie’s body but settles for his friendship instead, and Sheriff Webb (Bert Williams), who appears periodically to rough up Numie and arrest him on spurious charges.

Butterflies in Heat—the book and the movie—sounds like the kind shit I’d love. It’s Tennessee Williams via glory hole or, at the very least, a queer 92 in the Shade. Instead, I found both to be tedious and frustrating. I bought a copy of Porter’s novel when it was re-released in the mid-1990s with a cover more befitting a gay porn video, my hopes high that I’d found some trash I could truly treasure. I barely made it through 75 pages before giving up. Porter, it turned out, was more interested in having his female (and female-presenting) characters deliver paragraphs of fanciful dialog than in Numie unleashing the monster caged within his butterfly-festooned jeans. Its gay sensibility was aimed not at bath house sluts, as its X-rated cover art suggested, but at drag cabaret queens.

I likely would have been just as disappointed if I bought
the 1976 paperback edition of Butterflies in Heat (left),
but at least that cover doesn't arouse expectations as high—
and as hard—as the raunchy cover for the 1997 edition.

Director Cash Baxter’s movie adaptation similarly let me down despite all it had going for it. Though the film’s budget is obviously meager, the production is fittingly seedy, and the cast of mostly TV veterans doubles its value. Kitt’s Lola—a drag queen in the book but more ambiguous here—is almost single-handedly worth the price of admission. Carroll, a character actor perhaps best-known today as the voice of Ursula in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, takes what could easily be described as The Shelley Winters Role and makes the character Tangerine her own. The least interesting performances are by Collins and Gregory, but then they are saddled with Butterflies’ least interesting characters. Though screenwriters Tony (Point of Terror) Crechales and George (The Killing Kind) Edwards reign in the book’s long-winded dialog, they also water down its gay appeal and any potential the movie had of becoming a camp classic. And forget any sexy fun. The movie’s one (one!) sex scene is fairly tepid, with only Gregory showing any skin. Despite everyone lusting after Numie, Collins, who sort of resembles Nathan Fillion in his Firefly days, seldom takes off his shirt, let alone his pants.

Butterflies in Heat was released on video in 1986 under the title Tropic of Desire—“not to be confused with the same-named porno movie,” the IMDb trivia page cheekily warns. Likely anyone renting the porn movie by mistake would’ve been less disappointed. At least that Tropic of Desire delivers what it promises; not so this cock tease of a movie.