mattbaume posts
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Sewers of Paris: Fairies and Mortals Can't Get Married (Ep 546 - The Wizard of Oz/Dee)
To mark the recent release of the second Wicked film, for this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris we’re revisiting my 2020 interview with Dee Michel, author of the book Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love the Wizard of Oz. Dee’s book is an in-depth examination of queer Oz fand...
Bonus! Which witches are actually queer?
Are the witches of Wicked queer? How about the witches in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz? There's a lot of rumors and speculation about the actors in both films, with some sources claiming Glinda actress Billie Burke and Wicked Witch actress Margaret Hamilton were both friends of Dorothy. So let...
Sewers of Paris: Give Yourself a Little Pleasure (Ep 545 - Christmas film noir/Alonso Duralde)
I am delighted to welcome back a friend of the Sewers, film critic and holiday aficionado, Linoleum Knife’s Alonso Duralde. His book, Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, is now out in a revised and updated edition, gathering even more expert recommendations for holiday films to enjoy this seas...
Bonus video! Did these Hollywood-types really eat spaghetti with their hands?
Did director Joe Pasternak and actor Anthony Perkins REALLY eat spaghetti with their hands? In this week's bonus video, we're tackling an extremely bizarre Hollywood mystery. In a documentary about MGM, Esther Williams (the synchronized swimming lady) tosses an off-hand comment about Pastern...
It Makes Every Gay Bone in my Body Vibrate (Ep 544 - Broadway/Stephen Oremus)
The second of the Wicked films comes out later this month, and so for this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris podcast we’re jumping into the archives to hear my 2017 chat with Tony winner Stephen Oremus, who was the music director for Wicked on Broadway and conducted the orchestras for the tw...
Bonus! Meet the fairies who made MGM musicals so gay
MGM musicals are known for being big, brassy, sassy musical humdingers. They're big and bold and bright and colorful and cheerful and ... very, very, very gay. Why is that, though? Well, it's thanks to a group of folks known within the industry as "Freed's Fairies."Backup link to...
Janky and Dark: (Ep 543 - Maurice Sendak/Trung)
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris podcast is Trung Le Nguyen, author of the new graphic novel Angelica and the Bear Prince. Trung’s books emerge from his lifelong love of fairy tales, some of them quite dark, and also his fascination with people figuring out how to take care of each other....
Bonus! Comparing Young Frankenstein vs Old Frankenstein
Hello there! I wanted to get the bonus video out a few days early this week so you can join us for a very special two-day livestream on Twitch this weekend. This Saturday and Sunday, we'll be watching scenes from Young Frankenstein and comparing them to the screenplay -- looking at what was on t...
Sewers of Paris: I Was Born This Way (Ep 542 - Bewitched/Wellington)
My guest this week has been giving a lot of thought lately to what he was born to do. Wellington Love is one of the producers of the new documentary I Was Born This Way, which tells the story of Archbishop Carl Bean. That might not be a household name, but you’re certainly familiar with his work a...
Sewers of Paris: It Scared the Sh*t out of Me (Ep 541 - Halloween/Jim)
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is Jim Farmer, festival director of Atlanta’s Out on Film fest. Jim’s a longtime arts reporter in Atlanta, though he got his start in journalism doing just-the-facts newsgathering — a beat that bored him to tears, until he decided to take the reins and...
Bonus! Prince Charming's affair with the Bride of Frankenstein's bisexual husband
Some very fun gossip in this week's bonus video: Back in the 1940s, the actor who voiced Disney's Prince Charming had a not-very-secret affair with the actor married to The Bride of Frankenstein. Bill Phipps was the man behind Cinderella's Prince Charming, and he met a fellow actor named...
Sewers of Paris: Swept Away by Dracula (Ep 540 - Frankenhooker/Jeffrey)
Now that we’re in October already, it’s a fine time to reflect on the uncanny grasp that horror has in the hearts of so many queer people. So for this week’s episode, we’re heading into the Sewers archives for a chat with director Jeffrey Schwarz, for whom horror is just one small slice of t...
Bonus! Andy Warhol's Frankenstein is not what it claims to be
The film Andy Warhol's Frankenstein is not actually, as the name might suggest, the work of Andy Warhol. (Aside from one visit to the set and his attendance at an after party.) So how did his name wind up on this weird piece of ... let's be polite and call it "art"? And is the star o...
Sewers of Paris: It Was Really Dark and Kind of Scary (Ep 539 - The Neverending Story/Mark Waddell)
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris podcast is writer Mark Waddell. His novel, Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World, comes out next week on October 7 — a queer story about an office worker whose career advancement involves world-ending consequences. There’s an autobiographical edge to t...
Sewers of Paris: Demons & Ghosts (Ep 538 - The Addams Family/Hamish Steele)
As you may have seen, I have a new video premiering this weekend about the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman, which features an iconic performance from a then-obscure actor named Raul Julia. Thanks to my research into Raul’s career, I’ve had another of his iconic roles on my mind lately — tha...
Bonus! How J. Lo became Spider Woman (and invented Google Image Search)
Jennifer Lopez has been waiting her whole life to be in a great big MGM-style musical... and now she is! In this week's bonus video, we're taking a look at some fun stories about how she wound up in the new Kiss of the Spider Woman, which looks shockingly good despite being a mid-budget indi...
Sewers of Paris: I Bluffed (Ep 537 - David/Winter Kept us Warm)
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is David Secter. As a student in the 1960s, David bluffed his way into getting equipment, money, and crew to make a groundbreaking queer film called Winter Kept us Warm. And despite the fact that he went in with zero filmmaking experience, the movie wound up...
Bonus! Before he was Gomez Addams, Raul Julia mastered Shakespeare & cyberpunk
Of course we love Raul Julia for his Gomez Addams. But there's so much more to his career: Making Shakespeare Puerto Rican, dabbling in a sort of pre-The-Matrix cyberpunk movie, a recurring role on Sesame Street ... and of course, his later role in Street Fighter. So for this week's bonus vi...
The Lure of London (Ep 536 - Dr Who/Lee and David)
I’m chatting with two guests on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week: TV producer David Moor and historian Dr. Lee Arnott of the delightful podcast The Problematic Gaze — that’s “gaze” as in an intent stare, though they’re the other kind of gays as well. David and Lee both grew up in sm...
Bonus! The "Lost" Marvel X-Men film that never was
Back in the 1980s, the guys who wrote Conan the Destroyer wrote an X-Men film that was supposed to be the launch of a Marvel movie universe ... but then the studio fell on hard times, the script was shelved, and the project was lost to the sands of time. But not completely lost, because I dug up an ...
Feeding the Hungry & Getting Close to the Naked (Ep 535 - Next to Normal/Joseph)
My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is the Reverend Joseph Peters Matthews, the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick Episcopal Church in Lynnwood Washington. Joseph’s path to the clergy took him from the small-town South to New York City, along the way developing a love for musical theater that he...
What makes X-Men so Queer? (Ep 534 - JP Karliak & Anthony Oliveira)
I have two guests on this week’s Sewers of Paris, both of them connected to a secret society of mutants. JP Karliak is the voice of Morph on X-Men ‘97, among many other roles; and Anthony Oliveira is a writer of many Marvel comics, among many other books. I spoke to them both about why the X-Men...
Bonus! How Marvel executives were bullied into having the first gay superhero
Sometimes, you can get your way through polite negotiation. And other times, you just have to be a real jerk about it. That's what happened with Northstar, the first openly gay superhero at Marvel: Top executives went "ballistic" at the idea, back in 1992, but some brave writers and edit...
Sewers of Paris: Thirst Trap Daddies (Ep 533 - Star Trek/David)
My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is David Duffield, who simultaneously lives in the past, the present, and the future. David’s work as a historian excavates queer histories that had previously been withheld from public view. It’s a project that gives those of us alive today a connection...
Bonus! How Wolverine became Hugh Jackman (or the other way around)
It's hard to imagine anyone other than Hugh Jackman in the role of Wolverine, and yet ... it very nearly wasn't. And it's even harder to imagine anyone other than Ian McKellen playing Magneto (successfully) ... and yet it nearly wasn't him, either. Who do we have to thank for these t...
It was a Rock Concert (Ep 532 - A Star is Born/Jon Kinnally)
My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is Jon Kinnally, author of the new memoir I'm Prancing As Fast As I Can: My Journey From a Self-Loathing Closet Case to a Successful TV Writer With Some Self-Esteem. Jon knew from an early age that he wanted to entertain people, and he got his shot in th...
Bonus! Why stealing movies is good, actually
There are two different versions of But I'm a Cheerleader -- one that looks great, and another that looks absolutely terrible. And of course, the terrible version was the only one you could get for many years, because the studio that produced it threw out all of the original elements. But there ...
Sewers of Paris: Old Enough to be a Geek (Ep 531 - Star Trek/Seán)
My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is from the future. Sean’s the host of the TrekCulture podcast, an expert on all things Star Trek, and his name is even the inspiration for a Star Trek character in one of the novelizations. That’s fitting, because it was a novel that helped po...
Bonus! What's really behind those BONKERS ex-gay "cures"
There are a lot of "ex-gay" "therapists" who say they can "cure" homosexuality. But they more you hear about their supposed treatments, it's hard not to notice that a lot of them seem really really really gay. So in this week's bonus video we're taking a look at s...
Sewers of Paris: Your Secret Would be Out (Ep 530 - Planet of the Apes/Bill)
You are almost certainly acquainted with my guest on this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris podcast — through the episodes he wrote of Will & Grace, Cybil, Frasier, and the show he helped create, The Chris Isaak Show. Bill was a theater guy who get his foot in the door of TV thanks to a few ...
