Reclaiming Power (Ep 296 - Death Becomes Her/Tom Zohar)

July 30, 2020 Matthew Baume

My guest this week is Tom Zohar, whose love for stories about powerful women led him to movies like Death Becomes Her and The Joy Luck Club, and whose hippie parents brought him to musicals like Hair. A common thread through a lot of Tom’s favorite media is characters who are completely and totally un-repressed, but self-repression was an issue he had to deal with as a teenager when he re-closeted himself and became increasingly shy about his accent. Theater is what helped him reclaim his voice, but not after the family fled the country to prevent his being conscripted in the Israeli Army.

And speaking of videos, check out my YouTube series Culture Cruise, where I do a deep dive into LGBTQ milestones in entertainment that changed the world. I just posted a new video that combines footage from fifty years of documentaries to reconstruct the history of New York’s ballroom, voguing, and drag ball scene. You can find it by searching YouTube for Culture Cruise.

And I hope you’ll join me for our next fun friendly livestream on August 1st at 11am Pacific. It’s a nice relaxing time to just hang out and chat. There’s a link at the top of the Sewers of Paris twitter feed.

Also if you’re looking for more queer podcasts, check out my narrative comedy shows Queens of Adventure and Queens of Adventure Legends for an escape into a world of fantasy, with drag queens playing Dungeons & Dragons. You can subscribe to both shows at QueensOfAdventure.com, or search your favorite podcast app.

Demons & Ghosts (Ep 295 - Dr. Who/Hamish Steele)

July 23, 2020 Matthew Baume

Hello and welcome to The Sewers of Paris. My guest this week is Hamish Steele, whose graphic novel Deadendia is being adapted into an animated series at Netflix. The show will feature a gay trans man as the lead character, and it’s inspired both by Hamish’s friends and his love of shows like Dr Who and movies like The Addams Family Values, which feature queer-ish if not explicitly queer ensembles. Hamish is also running a Kickstarter right now for a comic book called Croc and Roll, that promises to be TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA meets JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS meets SCOTT PILGRIM meets... big gay alligator tears. I am super excited to chat with him about his inspirations and his controversial opinions about the difference between films with queer people in them versus films that queer people actually like.

We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First, a reminder that The Sewers of Paris is on Twitter and Facebook, where I post clips of the stuff that we talk about on each episode. This week you can look forward to clips from The Addams Family, Dr. Who, and from Hamish’s own animation projects.

And speaking of videos, check out my YouTube series Culture Cruise, where I do a deep dive into LGBTQ milestones in entertainment that changed the world. Last month’s video was all about the documentary Paris is Burning, and you can find that by searching YouTube for Culture Cruise.

Somewhere That's Green (Little Shop of Horrors/Brad Cerenzia)

July 16, 2020 Matthew Baume

You might have seen that Disney is about to release a new documentary called Howard, all about the legacy of the great Howard Ashman whose music gave live to stories like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and many more. For this week’s episode, we’re diving into the Sewers of Paris archive to revisit my 2015 conversation about another of Howard Ashman’s projects: the musical Little Shop of Horrors, a film that transformed the life of my guest Brad Cerenzia.

From an early age, Brad knew he wasn't destined to be farm boy the rest of his life. His inspiration came from theater, musicals, drama. He needed a ticket off of the farm where he grew up, but it was hard for him to picture how that adventure would start. As it turned out, what he needed was a key change.

We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First, a reminder that The Sewers of Paris is on Twitter and Facebook, where I post clips of the stuff that we talk about on each episode. This week you can look forward to some of my favorite clips from musicals I discussed with Brad, from Little Shop to The Drowsy Chaperone, and also a clip or two from the movie Mannequin.

And I hope you’ll join me for our next fun friendly livestream on July 18th at 11am Pacific. It’s a nice relaxing time to just hang out and chat. There’s a link at the top of the Sewers of Paris twitter feed.

It Was a Mindf**k (Ep 294 - Carol Channing/Terry LaBolt)

July 9, 2020 Matthew Baume

Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. This week’s guest, Terry LaBolt, was suggested to me by a Sewers of Paris listener, and I’m so glad that they did. Terry has an absolutely amazing collection of stories from across his career, starting as a young kid transfixed by musical theater, then later as Carol Channing’s music director, and now as a teacher sharing his wisdom with the next generation of showbiz stars. From touring with Carol, to finding himself, to enduring the dark days of the HIV epidemic, Terry’s got a fascinating perspective on life and I’m so honored to bring it to you this week.

We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First, a reminder that The Sewers of Paris is on Twitter and Facebook, where I post clips of the stuff that we talk about on each episode, including in the coming week some very fun clips of Carol Channing.

And hey speaking of videos, if you haven’t yet check out my YouTube series Culture Cruise, where I do a deep dive into LGBTQ milestones in entertainment that changed the world. Last month’s video was all about the documentary Paris is Burning — its hidden history, what happened to the people in the film, and how Madonna lifted more than just voguing from the gays. You can find that by searching YouTube for Culture Cruise.

The Manic Fervor of a Tennessee Williams Heroine (Ep 293 - Sunset Blvd/Dashiell M. Silva)

July 2, 2020 Matthew Baume

My guest this week is illustrator and film obsessive Dashiell Silva, who you might know from his excellent Oscar guides and also as an artist on the just announced Netflix series Deadendia, which looks, by the way, amazing. Dashiell grew up in the West of Ireland where nobody understood his taste in film that was, in hindsight, extremely queer. His devotion to Sunset Blvd and Mommie Dearest made him feel like some kind of weird anomaly in his little town, until he started creating art and discovering what his talents were capable of.

We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First, a reminder that The Sewers of Paris is on Twitter and Facebook — I post clips of the stuff that we talk about on each episode.

And I hope you’ll join me for our next fun friendly livestream on July 4th at 11am Pacific. It’s a nice relaxing time to just hang out and chat. There’s a link at the top of the Sewers of Paris twitter feed.

Also check out my YouTube channel for my latest Culture Cruise video, where I do a deep dive on LGBTQ milestones from TV and film. This month’s video is all about the documentary Paris is Burning — its hidden history going back to the 1800s, and how Madonna lifted more than just voguing from queer culture.

And if you’re looking for more queer podcasts, check out my narrative comedy shows Queens of Adventure and Queens of Adventure Legends for an escape into a world of fantasy, with drag queens playing Dungeons & Dragons. You can subscribe to both shows at QueensOfAdventure.com, or search your favorite podcast app.

Legendary Slumber Parties (Ep 292 - Greenwich Village/Robert Patrick)

June 25, 2020 Matthew Baume

As we reach the conclusion of a particularly busy Pride month, I wanted to dive back into the Sewers of Paris archives for a conversation with someone who knew Greenwich Village in the years before Stonewall.

The Village is the gay enclave that was the model for many of the enclaves we know today, a place where people went to reject the mainstream after the mainstream had rejected them. Playwright Robert Patrick wandered into the Village as an unsuspecting young gay man in the 1960s. He was only supposed to be there for a day, but he wound up staying for years, witnessing -- and participating in -- one of the most important periods in American theater history.