hey, guess who's a lesbian. and i'm not talking about michelle from america's next top model, who just came out to her mom with the cowardly classic "i'm not certain that i'm straight". i'm talking heather matarazzo of welcome to the dollhouse fame. sure she came out in 2004 but i just found out here. it's her impressions that are one of the highlights of fabulous! the story of queer cinema (and by queer cinema, they mean l, g, not really any b, and a little t). did you know that the moment in the movie where her outcast character gets called lesbo in the lunchroom was the first time heather was confronted with that word and right then realized she was one? so she was in a queer movie being called lesbo and she was lesbonic in real life. now that's seeing your life reflected in the movies.
but this dvd goes beyond just gushing and tracking queer representation. it looks into how the marketplace and the movement have influenced and been influenced by queer cinema. it's fast-paced, mostly due to drastic skips in the first third which jump from kenneth anger to andy warhol to john waters to barbara hammer (who i once sat behind at a lecture) without much else until the '80s. but hey, they could get more talking heads for more recent times, so why not. it is insightful, most especially thanks to critic b. ruby rich and some of the directors (with the exception of ang lee, who is dull as a post).
there is a lamentation of how much of queer cinema now often plays in theaters only briefly and as a loss leader, then goes directly to dvd, so there is a loss of community that had been generated by people looking around the movie theater and knowing they were with their kind. the last time i felt that was when i went to see trekkies, so i do think it has value, but i sure as hell didn't talk to anyone else in the theater, all six of them. the only way a queer movie is going to get a longer wide theatrical release is if it has a substantial non-queer audience, like brokeback mountain. so i have no problem with things going direct to dvd if it means the creators haven't had to sacrifice their vision just to be popular at the mall. this is a well edited, thought provoking, entertaining dvd, and it will give you some ideas of flicks you missed the first go round. plus that lesbian from best in show is in it and she's a lesbian in real life. love it. just wondering if the word fabulous is more so a g word than lgbt, so possibly the title is slightly misleading, as there is pretty equal representation genderwise here, as well as racewise. screw it, i say everyone can be fabulous.
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