Sunday, October 18, 2015

"Cruising the Movies: A Sexual Guide to Oldies on TV" BY Boyd McDonald (Introduction by William E. Jones)

ISBN: 978-1584351719  Semiotext(e) Active Agents

Without a doubt, Boyd McDonald was the best film reviewer ever. The thing is he wrote for a gay mag, and mostly on films he watched on TV late at night. He also had a zine in the 1980s that focused on homosexual sex "Straight to Hell." The brilliance of McDonald is that on a physical level he's very much part of an underground "gay" world, when there used to be one. Now, everyone is getting married and becoming taxpayers - but alas, there was a life that was lived in the shadows, and McDonald, a superb writer, captures that series of shadows that were shown on TV - mostly films from the 1930s to the 50s. The beauty of his work is that he mostly focuses on the actor's cock size or butt. But that is just the platform or foundation of his serious observations - here he marks the queer world where females act out certain passions, while men react to them. Or is it the other way around? "Cruising the Movies" touches on a lot of fascinating subjects - the nature of old films being shown on TV, before the world of VHS recording - in a way it is almost a coded, often secret, transmission from Hollywood to a gay man's sensibility. William E. Jones wrote a beautiful and insightful introduction.

- Tosh Berman

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