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PAGE 10 HIGH GEAR JULY 1980

ENTERTAINMENT

Media and the arts

Village People hate it too;

Bye Bob Green, hello career

By R. Woodward Among those expressing intense dislike for the Village People's movie Can't Stop the Music are members of the group

themselves.

In an article entitled "Circus on Celluloid" by Brant Mewborn. which appears in the July 1980 issue of After Dark, David Hodo,

how they are slighted by the script.

Hughes says that their movie deal was embarrassingly bad because the group's founder and producer Jacques Morali and his business manager Henri Beloli conned the group by acting as their agent in the negotiations and then becoming co-producer

flag-waving appeal." He quotes her long time agent Richard Shack, who broke with her over the gay rights issue, as saying that she is still a viable enter tainer and that he'd be interested in working with her again "provided she comes without the distractions and hangers-on."

"Can't Stop the Music"

Village eunuchs

By R. Woodward This year's most offensive exploitation of gays by a movie.. worse than Cruising or Windows--is Can't Stop the Music. It features the Village People in what will probably turn out to be their last starring appearance in a major movie

Being grim and violent movies openly hostile to gays. Cruising and Windows were like muggings Can't Stop the Music, which has a PG rating and makes

itself out to be a glossy and

wholesome entertainment, is like an antiseptic gas chamber.

As human beings the movie consigns gays to non-existence. It makes fun of them for two hours without ever using either the word "gay" or the word

"homosexual" and without show.

artificial mustache worn by somebody who has been

castrated,

The reviewer in Variety commented that their acting is so wooden that if prints of the movie

were pulped the world's paper shortage would be solved.

Fortunately for gays and their this movie involves no personal friends, completely boycotting sacrifice whatever. It contains little art and less entertainment.

Those excerpts from the movie

that have been showing up on TV to publicize it are not hits of what the movie contains in the way of effective material. They are all of what it contains in the way of effective material.

The movie, which its ads call "the musical event of the 80's," is supposed to be an amusing idealized account of how the group ing them as having any love, sex. Village People came to be. Valor social lives. The implied meserie Perrine plays their pushy sage is that having certain fag-hag agent. She keeps telling around can be lots of harmless and that the future is theirs. unnameable picturesque types everybody that they are great fun if you can make sure that they are totally emasculated.

Even the crowd scenes are a

rip-off. Several hundred gays are reported to have paid $15.00 each to appear in the film as dancing extras but the film is

is

Evidence to support her claims embarassingly absent.

unspeakably dull and are pres The film's new songs are ented with little imagination. Some of the film's editing is interesting and the photographer

Huddy says that it was Green carefully edited to make it all but has provided some bright, pretty the group's "construction of the film with Carr. Morali and (who gave up his career as a disc impossible to see any same sex colors, but for the 15 million dol-

worker," is quoted as saying. "When I first read the script, threw it across the room. I thought it was a piece of crap."

Glenn Hughes, who plays the group's hairy leather person, is described by Newborn as being "infuriated" as he tells how the group has been treated by the film's producers. "They are not

Beloli own the group. "lock. stock, and barrel," says Hughes. "It's constantly shoved down our throats that everything is out of our control. We're pushed around, told what to do, and put into embarrassing situations." An example of such a situation is a lavish banquet reception that Carr held last spring which cen-

jockey to become her full time agent) who decided to milk the gay rights issue--much to his wife's cscomfort. According to Ginger Burget, a former Bryant aide. Bryant was only interested in doing "her Christian duty" by speaking out about a local issue that she felt concerned her directly, and she didn't expect or

couples dancing nether

The Village Peupin come off as being the village eunuchs The group's basic artificiality, which might be considered acceptable on a live stage or seen in miniature on a home television screen. is pair fully glaring on a big movie

screen

As a alculated come-on to keep gays from noticing how lit.

lars that the movie is said to have 'cost, there is ridiculously little to hear or look at.

The "Can't Stop the Music". number meant to give the movie a smash finale is an utter bomb. with the group showing as much compelling rhythm as one would gel from an old wringer washing machine.

re-creating the Village People tered around the unveiling of a want any great continuing the hem. is giving them, the ing to call a gay person a Village

experience," he says. "Our popularity is being used as a commodity. I do mind that we spent so much time making the group work and none of it comes across in the script."

Allan Carr, the movie's hot shot producer and promoter. whom Mewborn's article centers around, is quoted as comment ing. "Nobody's interested in who the Village People really are." Referring to how the movie deliberately avoids, acknowledging the gay subculture of Greenwich Village where the group got started, Carr says. "The people who made the Vil-, lage People stars were not the gay audience. When they sold records, it was to teenage girls and younger kids. To hear sixyear old kids singing the lyrics to YMCA' and Fire Island' is hyster ical. They don't know what it's all about."

Leather person Hughes says that how the movie exploits the group has been wrecking its unity and sense of camaraderie, causing.'for example, Victor Willis (the group's original lead vocalist and lyricist) to leave the group before the filming began. Insisting that David Hodo be showcased in a solo number in the film was a typical divisive move from Carr, says Hughes. ****The group's six members are said to be even more angry about how they have been exploited financially than they are about

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Can't Stop the Music billboard and which gave flattering star treatment to media and industry guests. Carr pulled the Village People away from the food line. ordering them to wait until all of the guests were served--at which point the group discovered that no table had been reserved for them.

In addition to what the movie cost to film, Carr is said to be spending ten million dollars to promote it. Baskin-Robbins even has a flavor this month called "Can't Stop the Nuts."

Green vs. Anita's career John Huddy, in an article in the entertainmen: section of the May 29 issue of the Miami Herald, gives evider.ce that Anita Bryant's leaving her husband was partly precipitated by a very successful series of four concerts that she performed in the middle of May at Walt Disney World. The audience, consisting mostly of insurance agents. gave her long applause and a standing ovation. Huddy quotes a "Miami agent of the Bryant triumph" as saying, "they were cheering her skills as an entertainer, not her status as a religious zealot. And this time she didn't announce ahead of time all of her bomb threats and crank calls."

Bryant saysHuddy."still has it" and "can still manipulate an audience with a robust voice. plentiful energy, and plenty of

controversy.

Huddy quotes a "former continued on page 14

no potvr

film's many shots of their gynt and bulging bask's have all of the erotic impact of ..

This movie makes it as insultPerson as it would be to call a black person an Uncle Tom.

'Nijinsky post mortem.

By R. Woodward So far this year, the Rating Board's most stupid blunder is giving Nijinsky an R instead of a PG rating, thus helping to kill it at the box office by keeping it from its most likely audience.. precocious junior high school students who might have been enlightened by all of its talk about accepting oneself for what one is.

Lavishly mounted and gor geously photographed, the movie is almost ridiculously discreet in getting across the love relationship between Nijinsky. the great ballet dancer, and Diaghilev, his mentor. The film's major flaw, in fact, is the absence of credible love scenes. The only physical contact shown between the lovers is Nijinsky, who has a cold, giving Diaghilev, who is afraid of germs, a couple of brief kisses through a handkerchief:

a Faun" is no cause for an Rody the film could be att Paris audience by seeming to version of the Andrews Sisters. either. (Nijinsky outraged the 1 by some Russian masturbate at its conclusion), This an even used in the Can't the Rating Board tell the Advocate, a ontext of openness difference between showing about gay eers in which its something and suggesting it? fooksh closetness may very well

The mere fact that the movie have seemed like an insult to centers around a gay relationmany of the gay ticket. buyers ship seems to have paralyzed the who were most of its potential Rating Board's powers of audience. judgment.

Anybody with any interest. in Or is the picture being "pungetting the movie across, and ished" for being out and being with any guts, would have unapologetic about the nature of noticed that a very easy way to let the relationship?. everybody know exactly what the Even more inexcusable than movie is about would have been the rating is Paramount's public to quote in context one particular ity campaign--a combination of line from the picture: Diaghilev, ineptitude, cowardice, and perreferring to Nijinsky, says. " haps even deliberate sabotage. hired him because he's a genius. The ads and press releases for not because I sleep with him." Nijinsky show a steadfast refusal Nijinsky has done so poorly at on the part of somebody to tell the box office that Paramount anybody what the movie is basihas already withdrawn it from cally about--a gay love affair. national release. (Cleveland area A shot of Leslie Browne's bare Paramount's basic ad for the film goers had one week to see it breasts is as brief as a bare film shows the heads of Diagh at the World East and World West breasted shot in the PG rated ilev, Nijinsky, and the woman NijTheatres). It's a big, expensive Urban Cowboy.......tipsky marries beneath the words, movie and having kept it in the A sequence depicting the pressuposky, Animal, Man, Genios closet bosungSomebody sev miere of the ballet "Afternoon of God." For all this ad lens anyar mordoware