Los Angeles Blade
Abbey launches new era with star-studded party
By Rob Salerno
June 21, 2024

It was a star-studded affair at the Abbey Nightclub Thursday night, as a veritable who’s who of West Hollywood showed up to kick off the gay club’s new era, including icons Cher, Ricky Martin, Jean Smart and Bianca Del Rio.

The Abbey was bought last year by Tristan Schukraft, the “CEO of Everything Gay” who’s behind the Mistr pharmacy, the Tryst Hotels and Circo nightclub in Puerto Rico, and who claims to own 75% of the commercial strip on Fire Island.

Schukraft says he plans to maintain the Abbey’s reputation as a home and flagship nightclub for the LGBTQ community in Los Angeles and beyond.

“I’m going to add my own personal touches to it. I’m going to bring in some new DJs, mix in some new talent, keep it fresh,” Schukraft says. “We’re going to do some new once-monthly events, a new night on Thursday nights at the chapel, expand the dance floor, but at its core, we’re going to keep the Abbey what it is, and that’s the most popular gay bar in the world.”

Revelers were treated to a surprise appearance by Cher, who told the crowd about her lifelong appreciation of the gay community, while servers passed out bowls of her Cher-lato gelato.

“The first gay guys I ever met, I was 9 years old … and I remember saying to my mom, ‘Where have you been hiding these guys? Who are these guys, and why aren’t the other guys as fun as these guys?’” Cher said. “I’ve had ups and downs in my career and you guys have never left me.”

The Abbey has been an important home for people across the LGBTQ spectrum, says actress and singer Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, best known as the star of the FX series “Pose.”

“I’ve always felt safe and comfortable here. That’s the reason it’s always felt special to me,” she says. “What would a world be if there wasn’t a place for us to congregate and have communal togetherness?”

Lance Bass, the former NSYNC popstar who now owns Rocco’s nightclub across the street from the Abbey, was also among the revelers Thursday night. Though the clubs are competitors, he says the Abbey is a special place to him and describes former owner David Cooley as one of his best friends.

“This is the place I came to when I wanted to come out. This has always been my safe space,” Bass says. “My favorite memory was years ago meeting Liz Taylor right there in front of the fireplace, and it was amazing.”

Other stars spotted at the party included recording artist and actor Ricky Martin, star of HBO’s “Hacks” Jean Smart, drag icons Bianca Del Rio and Manila Luzon, musician Saweetie, comedian Bruce Vilanch and “Glamorous” star Graham Parkhurst.

For Abbey founder David Cooley, the party was an opportunity to celebrate his 33 years of running the club and a handoff to a successor who will continue his legacy.

He had a few words of advice for Schukraft as he launches the Abbey’s new era.

“When people say no or you can’t make money, push forward. Follow your dreams,” Cooley says.

Schukraft, still in awe of his recent acquisition, reflects on the responsibility and opportunity ahead.

“I never thought in a million years I was going to own the Abbey. When you’re here, it’s still so surreal,” Schukraft says. “The Abbey is iconic and so important to the gay community, and Fire Island is deeply as such. These opportunities come about and you have to take advantage of them when they’re there.”

The post Bruce Vilanch Attends Star-Studded Abbey Relaunch Party first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

The Hollywood Reporter
‘Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution’ Review: Trailblazing Queer Comics Get Their Due in Entertaining Netflix Doc
BY DAVID ROONEY
June 15, 2024

In the opening section of Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution, you might be forgiven for thinking this is an extended Pride Month promo to breathe new life into Netflix’s 2022 special, Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration. But in a Q&A following the rousingly received opening-night screening at the Provincetown Film Festival, director Page Hurwitz clarified the chicken-and-the-egg situation, explaining that she produced the event at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, which assembled 22 prominent queer comics on the same bill, as a foundational building block for this documentary surveying the rich history of LGBTQ+ comedians.

At a time when a new generation of queer comics from across the sexual and gender identity spectrum has emerged into what appears to be a thriving scene, this is an invaluable primer on the many performers who kicked down resistant doors to make today’s greater representation possible.

Even if it only served as a vehicle for the rediscovery of the hilarious Robin Tyler, the first lesbian comic to come out on national television in 1978, the doc would be invaluable. When Tyler and her partner Pat Harrison, who performed as the comedy duo Harrison and Tyler, took on anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant — “I don’t mind them being born again, but do they have to come back as themselves?” Tyler asks — ABC promptly canceled their deal.

Gay comedians like Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Lynde and Rip Taylor were all over television in the 1970s, but they remained closeted; the thinking at the time was that coming out equaled certain career death.

Even a comedy titan like Laugh-In veteran Lily Tomlin, despite making no secret of her relationship with her longtime partner and now wife Jane Wagner, says that actually declaring herself a lesbian back then was unthinkable. But the fabulous Norman Seeff shot of Tomlin looking fierce in an “Evolve or Die” muscle T-shirt makes it clear that by the mid-‘80s, she was hiding nothing.

Tomlin is one of several heavy-hitters whose interviews and comedy clips provide insight into both the barriers in place and the subversive ways many comics got around them. Going back to the Black vaudeville circuit of the 1920s with performers like “Moms” Mabley, queerness has long been a factor in stand-up, whether implicit or explicit. Sandra Bernhard, Margaret Cho, Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, Marsha Warfield, Eddie Izzard, Hannah Gadsby and Bruce Vilanch are among those weighing in with illuminating commentary.

One of the most moving aspects of the film is how it highlights the mentor-mentee dynamic of queer comedy, with each trailblazer passing on an expanded legacy to the next up-and-comer. Both Bernhard and Cho talk of Tomlin as a major inspiration, while Joel Kim Booster acknowledges that queer women in comedy were his chief influence.

Another thread that emerges is the one-step-forward-two-steps-back factor of queer representation in comedy. The advances of each decade keep hitting a wall of backlash, whether it was Bryant’s “Christian” crusading in the ‘70s or AIDS hysteria and the family values push of the Ronald Reagan years or the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” mentality of the ‘90s, when Bill Clinton was in office.

One of the most exhilarating clips has Bernhard appropriating the disco classic “Do You Wanna Funk?” as a rallying cry for sexual freedom, provocatively skewering the stifling conservatism of public figures like Reagan and Jerry Falwell.

Several commentators make the point that unapologetically anti-gay comedy remained widely acceptable through the end of the last century and beyond, whether it was the goofy gay-panic humor of Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar or the outright homophobia of Eddie Murphy’s stand-up specials. The flip side is Richard Pryor’s appearance at a 1977 gay rights fundraiser at the Hollywood Bowl, where he talks frankly about the joys of sex with men before turning on the well-heeled, predominantly white audience for their absence from the Black rights struggle.

Input from Scott Thompson of Canadian comedy group The Kids in the Hall is especially poignant as he talks of having to create characters to hide his sexuality behind. His acerbic bar fixture Buddy Cole was notable as “the first gay character who fucked.” Elsewhere, tacit pressure made it clear that straight audiences could get on board with queer comedy so long as they didn’t have to think about actual gay sex.

Cho was another disruptive force against that unspoken rule, with a defiantly raunchy brand of personally revealing comedy. This was precisely what queer comics were told not to do, instead being encouraged to make their material “palatable.”

The prevailing coyness around the nitty-gritty of queer sexuality in comedy is echoed also in the famous guest appearance of Ellen DeGeneres on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, where she jokingly came out as “Lebanese” and O’Donnell played along, adding that she might be Lebanese too. It’s significant that while O’Donnell’s popular daytime variety and talk show ran for six seasons in syndication and had a writers’ room filled with queer comics like Judy Gold, the host still operated under the assumption that coming out was a career killer.

Many of the interviewees discuss the experience of being unable to land a booking after their sexuality became public knowledge. One of the more emotional moments features Todd Glass recalling his successful breakthrough years as a staple of late-night comedy, never even contemplating coming out, until a heart attack and a hospital visit from his partner gave him the courage to take that step. Sykes had a different means of arriving at that point, more or less accidentally coming out by mentioning her wife during a public appearance.

Hurwitz, a former comic herself, has a great eye for choice material, clearly having dug like a truffle hound through decades of archives to find clips that often remain eye-wateringly funny today.

Inevitably there are conspicuous absences — among them Kate McKinnon, Bowen Yang, Cole Escola, John Early and Jerrod Carmichael, perhaps partly justified by the choice to focus largely on comics who participated in the Greek Theatre event — and areas where the doc could have pushed harder. Any discussion of homophobia getting a pass for way too long in comedy should include the infamous Tracy Morgan rant, when he told a Nashville audience that he would “pull out a knife and stab” his son if he were gay. Even Dave Chapelle’s inflammatory transphobic material gets only cursory coverage.

If there’s a significant flaw in the doc it’s that for a film so willing to contextualize queer comedy in the political landscape of the past, it’s surprisingly reticent about the alarming climate of the present, with a concerted push well under way to roll back many of the gains of LGBTQ+ rights. Surely somewhere on the cutting room floor someone voiced an opinion about all that’s at stake in the upcoming election?

Even so, Outstanding makes a persuasive, highly entertaining case that the evolution of queer comedy is inextricably bound to broader developments in representation, and that emerging next-gen queer comics could learn a lot from their forebears.

The post ‘Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution’ Review first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

The Wrap
‘Outstanding’ Trailer Reveals Netflix Doc About the History of LGBTQ+ Standup Comedy | Video
By Kayla Cobb
June 3, 2024

The June special will feature Sandra Bernhard, Bruce Vilanch, Wanda Sykes, Hannah Gadsby, Tig Notaro, Bob The Drag Queen, and more.

Timed to Pride, Netflix has dropped the trailer for its first-of-its-kind documentary about the history of standup comedy in the LGBT+ community. “Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution” will premiere on the Streamer on June 18, following its Spotlight Premiere at the Tribeca Festival on Friday.

“All kinds of comedy are accepted now, which I never thought would be accepted in my lifetime,” Rosie O’Donnell says in this first trailer. “When I was a young comic, you had to be careful what you did, who you talked to, and who knew.”

“It wasn’t accepted to say you were gay onstage,” Lily Tomlin says in the video. Watch the full trailer above.

The documentary will follow how LGBT+ standup has driven social change over the past five decades. To do this, “Outstanding” will combine interviews, memorable standup performances, archival materials, and verité footage. “Ultimately, the film reveals that queer comedians — whether they intended to or not — helped change the world, one joke at a time,” a logline for the project reads.

In addition to O’Donnell and Tomlin, the documentary will spotlight Billy Eichner, Bob The Drag Queen, Bruce Vilanch, Fortune Feimster, Gina Yashere, Guy Branum, Hannah Gadsby, James Adomian, Jim David, Joel Kim Booster, Judy Gold, KJ Whitehead, Mae Martin, Margaret Cho, Marsha Warfield, Matteo Lane, Patti Harrison, River Butcher, Robin Tran, Robin Tyler, Roz Hernandez, Sandra Bernhard, Scott Thompson, Solomon Georgio, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Suzy Izzard, Tig Notaro, Todd Glass, Trixie Mattel and Wanda Sykes.

The post Vilanch, Bernhard, & More To Be Ft In Comedy Doc first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Clinton Herald
2023 Out100
Photo: Richard Shotwell
November 13, 2023

Bruce Vilanch by Richard Shotwell – invision, Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP Nov 10, 2023OUT

The 2023 OUT100 is an annual list that celebrates and honors the most impactful and influential individuals in the LGBTQ+ community. It recognizes the achievements and contributions of queer artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers. The Out100 list showcases the people who have made a significant impact on culture and society in the year 2023. It is a way to highlight and acknowledge the accomplishments of LGBTQ+ individuals and their positive influence on the world.

The post Bruce Vilanch arrives at 2023Out100 on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023, in Los Angeles. first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

With 31 features and 19 short film programs being screened—all of them Chicago premieres—the 36th edition of Reeling (the second-oldest LGBTQ film festival in the world) runs September 20-30 at a handful of theaters around the city, including an opening night presentation at the Davis Theater, with an afterparty at the adjoining Carbon Arc Bar. The festival’s final weekend (Sept. 28-30) will take place at the newly restored firehouse headquarters of Chicago Filmmakers, the presenting organization of Reeling while the bulk of screenings (Sept. 21-27) happen at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema.

Reeling Film Festival runs September 20-30 at locations around the city.

British actor/writer/director Rupert Everett (My Best Friend’s Wedding) will walk the red carpet on Thursday, Sept. 27 in support of Reeling’s Special Presentation of his directorial debut, The Happy Prince, in which he stars as Oscar Wilde in the sunset of his life, focusing specifically on writer in exile in Paris, after his conviction for “gross indecency,” and his release from prison in 1897. Estranged from his wife (Emily Watson) and sons, Wilde is haunted by ghosts of the past and supported by his remaining loyal friends, including Reggie (played by Oscar-winner Colin Firth).

In addition, Hong Kong-based director Scud (Voyage, Utopians, Amphetamine), renowned for his provocative, sexually infused films, will be on hand on Tuesday, Sept. 25 for the North American premiere of his seventh feature, Adonis, the story of a handsome young actor who descends into a world of hedonism after partaking in an infamous gay adult film. Filled with the mind-blowing visuals for which Scud is known, this may be the director’s most provocative work.

The festival’s Opening Night offering is Freelancers Anonymous, a lesbian screwball comedy filmed in Chicago, starring Lisa Cordileone and Chicago-area native Alexandra Billings (Transparent, Goliath). Cordileone is expected to attend the opening night festivities along with other cast members. On Friday, Sept. 21, Reeling will also present the Chicago premieres of the hotly anticipated biopic Mapplethorpe, starring Matt Smith (Dr. Who, The Crown) as the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, with Marianne Rendon (Imposters) portraying onetime-girlfriend Patti Smith.

“Hood by Air” fashion designer Leilah Weinraub’s incendiary documentary debut Shakedownalso screens on Sept. 21, with the festival’s Narrative Centerpiece, Wild Nights with Emily, starring Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson, showing on Sunday, Sept. 23. Studio 54, the history of the infamous 1970s-era nightclub from director Matt Tyrnauer (Valentino, Scotty Bowers and the Secret History of Hollywood) closes the fest on Sunday, Sept. 30, followed by an afterparty featuring disco music, dancing, and food catered by Goddess & Grocers.

The Miss Continental Pageant and the Baton Show Lounge—both Chicago institutions for decades—are profiled in Reeling’s Documentary Centerpiece selection, The Queens. Director Mark Saxenmeyer focuses on the 35-year-old pageant and explores the subculture of competitive female impersonation in all its glittery glory while delving into the rich history of The Baton Show Lounge, the Windy City’s historic female illusion showplace (now in its 49th year). Saxenmeyer and cast members will be present at the screening, which is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 24.

Other films reflecting on life in the 1970s and ’80s include Canary (Kanarie), set in apartheid-era South Africa, about a small-town boy who is drafted into the military and finds solace with other misfits in the military’s traveling choir; it will screen Friday, Sept. 21. In addition, there is Riot (Saturday, Sept. 22), a drama about Australia’s version of Stonewall, the Mardi Gras riot, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The impact of the AIDS crisis is revisited in the emotionally powerful new drama 1985 (Wednesday, Sept. 26 ), which stars Cory Michael Smith, Virginia Madsen and Michael Chiklis; as well as in a film that was created in 1985, Buddies (Monday, Sept. 24), the first American feature about AIDS, directed by Arthur Bressan, Jr. who later died of an AIDS-related illness. The film is showing at Reeling in a newly restored, digital print, 33 years after it was the Opening Night film of the 5th edition of the festival.

Adding to the international scope of the festival are two films about summer encounters that cross ethnic borders. In the Dutch film Just Friends (Saturday, Sept. 22 ), sparks fly between a Middle Eastern medical student and a young man he meets in a small Dutch city he visits over the summer. In A Moment in the Reeds (Tuesday, Sept. 25), the first independent LGBT film made in Finland, the relationship between a Syrian asylum seeker and the son of his Finnish employer erotically unfolds during an idyllic Finnish summer. The fraught relationship between two young men is under threat of crumbling when they go on holiday in the Greek film He Loves Me (Sunday, September 23); while the relationship between two women (Oona Chaplin, Game of Thrones, Black Mirror) and Kat (Natlia Tena) is tested when one of them wants to have a child and the other doesn’t in the Spanish film Anchor and Hope (Saturday, Sept. 22), which features Oona’s real-life mother Geraldine Chaplin as her mother in the film. The Brazilian film Christabel (Wednesday, Sept. 26), making its North American Premiere, takes us to the tropical savanna for a Gothic tale of supernatural romance inspired by the legendary Coleridge poem.

Comedies in the festival include the boisterous Italian film My Big, Gay Italian Wedding(Monday, Sept. 24), based on the long-running Off Broadway show, in which a gay couple’s road to the altar is paved with hijinks and hilarity; Still Waiting in the Wings (Saturday, Sept. 22), a frothy musical about young men pursuing their Broadway dreams, featuring cameos by a host of familiar faces (Chita Rivera, Ed Asner, Patricia Richardson, Cindy Williams, Lee Meriwether, Bruce Vilanch, Sally Struthers); and the German film Country Noise (Tuesday, Sept. 25), about a young pink-haired urbanite who returns home to her small German town and shakes things up when she reconnects with her trombone-playing childhood friend. Reeling also presents the World Premiere of Analysis Paralysis (Thursday, September 27), focusing on a man searching for love while struggling with his anxiety disorder.

American Indies are well-represented in Reeling, with Funny Story (Thursday, Sept. 27), about a father and daughter both involved with the daughter’s fiancée; Kill the Monsters(Wednesday, Sept. 26), a sexy road trip drama focused on a three-way relationship; the eye-popping, wildly offbeat tale of twisted love Daddy Issues (Saturday, Sept. 22), a lesbian dramedy that has been described as the lovechild of Wes Anderson and David Lynch; Alaska Is a Drag (Sunday, Sept. 23), which follows the dreams of a budding female impersonator working in a fish cannery by day (and featuring a hilarious cameo by Margaret Cho); Devil’s Path (Sunday, Sept. 23), a creepy thriller about a killer stalking men in a gay trysting spot in the forest; and the lesbian inter-generational drama Snapshots (Saturday, Sept. 22), starring Piper Laurie, Brooke Adams and Emily Baldoni.

Documentaries in the festival include: Call Her Ganda (Sunday, Sept. 23), the riveting and heartbreaking story of the murder of a trans woman in the Philippines; Conversations with Gay Elders: Kerby Lauder (Sunday, Sept. 23), a fascinating, in-depth examination of one man’s life conducted by queer history filmmaker David Weissman (We Were Here, The Cockettes); In My Room (Saturday, Sept. 22), an intimate look at six teenagers who post videos to YouTube; The Rest I Make Up (Monday, Sept. 24), a loving portrait of esteemed nine-time Obie Award winning playwright Maria Irene Fornes by her protégé, as the writer is struggling with dementia; and Leitis In Waiting (Saturday, Sept. 22), the story of an intrepid group of transgender women fighting intolerance in their South Pacific home of Tonga.

In addition to the feature lineup, Reeling will present 19 short film programs scattered throughout the programming, with the final weekend of the festival at Chicago Filmmakers focusing almost entirely on shorts, making this the most short films ever presented by the festival.

For the full schedule, in-depth descriptions of every film, and links to purchase advance tickets, go to the Reeling website.

The post Reeling 2018: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival – 31 Features But Only One With A Cameo By Bruce Vilanch first appeared on We Got Bruce!.