Reel Thoughts Interview: Million Dollar Beauty

The Broadway hit Million Dollar Quartet tells the story of one fateful day, December 4, 1956, when four giants of the music industry came together at the famed Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, and proceeded to record together for the first and last time. Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash were joined by a youthful Elvis Presley, along with a girlfriend named Dyanne, and although the real event comprised mostly gospel songs, the Broadway show imagines the event as an all-star concert of the stars’ biggest hits.

San Diego-born actress Alyssa Marie is excited to be on tour with the show understudying the role of Dyanne, even if she is the only gay member of the cast. The beautiful blonde has formed a bond with Kelly Lamont, who she understudies in the role, although Marie considers all of the talented men in the cast to be family.

The show has a light plot about recording pioneer Sam Phillips struggling to keep his independent label open, along with subplots about the musicians and their struggles, but the real reason for the show is all of the good time music you get to hear, performed by a hot young cast (including Grease: You're the One That I Want  hunk Derek Keeling as Cash) who really embody the icons they play. If you are lucky enough to see Marie perform, she counts the song “I Hear You Knocking” as her favorite part of the show, although audiences will enjoy seeing her rendition of Peggy Lee’s “Fever” as well.

“I’ve always been a big fan of Elvis and Johnny Cash and I’ve gotten to learn a lot more about Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins doing this. It’s just such great music. It’s hard to get sick of it. We all like the music so much, we keep it fresh and have fun with it every night. It’s just a fun show. You leave feeling upbeat and you feel like you learned a little bit about that history and that moment in time.”

Marie has enjoyed performing in the world premieres of two musicals at the La Jolla Playhouse, Limelight, a Broadway-bound show about Charlie Chaplin, and Little Miss Sunshine, based on the 2006 hit film. Her most challenging role was as the female lead in All Shook Up, the Elvis-infused musical where she had to play a tomboy who is mistaken for a real boy by the sexy male lead, and who spends the show trying to figure out how to “come out” as a girl.

I spoke with the talented actress while she enjoyed a day in San Francisco, a benefit of playing in nearby San Jose. President Obama’s support of gay marriage had just been announced, so I asked Marie how she felt. “I think we all rejoiced. I’m actually engaged right now and it’s one of those things... we’re planning this wedding and this ceremony and there’s a part of me that’s worried that when we have this wedding, will it all just be for show and not have the legal ramifications that we deserve. (President Obama’s statement) gave me and my fiancée hope and made us very happy for the day. Actions speak louder than words, so hopefully, he keeps representing us all in a positive way and fighting for our rights.”

Before California’s Prop. 8 outlawed same-sex marriage, Marie was happy for the couples who got married when they could, and she said that if the court rulings make gay marriage legal in California again, she would definitely get a quickie marriage and then plan the grandiose ceremony of their dreams later. “Crystal and I are going to move to New York once the tour is over, but we want to be legally married in California where we both grew up. It’s our home, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.”

“It’s been interesting being on this tour and being exposed to different areas’ views on it. I don’t look like the quote-unquote stereotypical lesbian, so no one ever assumes I’m gay, which was so hard when I was trying to date,” she said laughing. “But because of that, whenever Crystal has been able to visit on tour, it’s been a lot of mixed responses from people to us just holding hands. It’s opened my eyes to how liberal and wonderful California is. In Los Angeles, we can walk around everywhere holding hands and we rarely get a dirty look, whereas in some of these cities, like when Crystal visited me in Charlotte, North Carolina, people looked at us like we were the scum of the earth for just holding hands. It’s been an eye-opening experience of how far we still need to go, that I wasn’t even really aware of, coming from San Diego.”

Overall, she has enjoyed seeing the country, especially Memphis and Dallas, and the audiences have taken to the show everywhere they’ve played. If you like songs like “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Who Do You Love?”, “Hound Dog” and “Great Balls of Fire”, you won’t mind paying a few bucks to see this Million Dollar Quartet... plus one.

Interview by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reverend's Report: Having Delusions at Dances With Films 2012

Striving to become a successful filmmaker while working, raising two kids and maintaining a happy marriage is starting to pay off for Iris Almaraz. The East LA-based writer-director's first feature following several well-received shorts, Delusions of Grandeur, wowed the sold-out audience (which included yours truly) at its Hollywood premiere on June 1st as part of the independent film festival Dances With Films. Now in its 15th year, DWF encourages aspiring auteurs and the indie spirit with the mantra "Dream BIG or go home!"

The no-budget, endearing Delusions of Grandeur is the odyssey of Lulu, a rebellious young woman struggling to come to terms with her long-absent mother's mental illness and her own resultant clinical depression. Lulu's home life has grown stifling despite the presence of her gay kid brother, so she rents a room from the transgender Illusion in San Francisco. It is there that the disparate parts of her life as well as her yearning for love begin to find completion. Delusions of Grandeur boasts an equally hilarious and sensitive screenplay by Almaraz and her guest director/production designer Gustavo Ramos, excellent performances by Leana Chavez as Lulu and Salvador Benavides as Illusion (full disclosure: Reverend's partner, James Jaeger, also has a brief but poignant role in the film), a catchy song score, and some fun, psychedelic visual touches.

Prior to the DWF premiere, Almaraz and the openly gay Ramos chatted with me over banana cream pie martinis at Reverend's rectory about the five-year effort to get their labor of love to the big screen. The pair met while attending college in San Francisco and they first and foremost consider Delusions of Grandeur "a love letter" to the City by the Bay.

"We wrote (the film) to all our friends there, to all the people who touched our lives and opened their hearts to us," Ramos says. "It's also a modern-day coming of age story, from a female point of view."

"For me," Almaraz shared, "the film is about falling in love with yourself. I feel like each character needs to learn to love him- or herself, and I think to fall in love with yourself is what makes you fall in love with someone else."

The character of Lulu and her plight are based to some degree on Almaraz's own experience as a child raised by a schizophrenic mother. Almaraz lived in motels, missed years of school and was forced to participate in her mother's shoplifting ring. She was subsequently in and out of juvenile hall and, as a young adult, worked as a phone sex operator. Almaraz today believes that "making films and telling stories about people living on the fringe of society is not an option; it's a calling." To this end, Almaraz, Ramos and producer Joey Mendez have established a production company, Jezebel Pantry.

"I never say no, that's my problem," Almaraz laughingly states when talking about some of her prior productions, which include a documentary about dominatrixes. "When I got there, I thought it was just the process of a dominatrix getting dressed and then they said, 'Oh, later on we're gonna do some piercing, do you wanna film that too?' and I said, 'Hell, yeah!"

Ramos, who was raised in Mexico but went to school simultaneously in both Mexico and the US, has a similar passion for society's outsiders. In particular, he contributed personal insight into the transgender community, gained primarily through a romantic relationship Ramos had with a trans woman, to Delusions of Grandeur. "I had a lover that was transgender, a male-to-female transgender," Ramos revealed. "Her name was Barbara, and a lot of the character Illusion comes from her story. Comparing my journey as an artist and as a gay man to their journey, their journey was much more difficult and they had so many more obstacles."

"I love transgenders," Almaraz concurred. "I first lived in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and to me their plight was so much more than my own and I was like 'Who am I to bitch and complain?' These women were doing it with style and grace and 'f--- you' to anyone else who has a problem with it. I was like, 'Oh, I want to be f--- you too!' Style and grace, I already had that (laughs)."

Although Ramos is today in a 9-year+ relationship with another man, he admits: "I always kind of wrestled with my own masculinity as a gay man. Being with other men, sometimes you succumb to one (extreme) more than the other and I always felt kind of insecure about my masculinity. With Barbara, it was solidified within me that I was a man."

One of the artistic and moral strengths of Delusions of Grandeur is the respect with which it treats its sexually-diverse characters, another of whom is a straight, married transvestite. Almaraz, Ramos and all involved are to be commended for this, especially when their film is compared with another being shown at DWF, the woeful Blissestrasse. Set in Berlin, this English-language satire by Paul Donovan documents the travails of a group of evangelical Christian missionaries being led by a Bible-thumping, closeted gay pastor. Though the film is nicely shot, few if any of its characters and their motives have any credibility, and its graphic sex and Pastor William's overripe dialogue will also put some off.

Other GLBT-interest films being screened at DWF before the fest's June 7th conclusion are The Olivia Experiment, Face 2 Face and a retro sci-fi melodrama musical, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X. For more information about all of these offerings, visit the Dances With Films website.

Reverend's Ratings:
Delusions of Grandeur: B+
Blissestrasse: D+

By Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Rage Monthly Magazine.

Monthly Wallpaper - June 2012: Queer Cinema

In celebration of Gay Pride month, Movie Dearest once again offers up a special calendar wallpaper for June paying tribute to some of the best in queer cinema.

The 2012 edition features such classic faves as Victor/Victoria, Ma Vie en Rose and In & Out alongside more recent Dearie Award-winners as The Kids Are All Right and Weekend (available August 21 on DVD and Blu-rayfrom the Criterion Collection).

All you have to do is click on the picture above to enlarge it, then simply right click your mouse and select "Set as Background". (You can also save it to your computer and set it up from there if you prefer.) The size is 1024 x 768, but you can modify it if needed in your own photo-editing program.

Reel Thoughts: There's an App for That

A big hit from the Desperado Film Festival, the funny romantic comedy eCupid (now on DVDfrom TLA Releasing) is about a gay couple in the doldrums who suffer the effects of a seemingly unstoppable online dating service. Marshall (handsome blond Houston Rhines) is an ad executive who is burned out and under-appreciated by his boss (All My Children’s John Callahan). He’s about to turn thirty and his home life with his gorgeous boyfriend Gabe (cute dark-haired Noah Schuffman) is strictly on auto-pilot when he discovers an app that will give him everything he wants but nothing that he needs.

After seven years, Marshall and Gabe aren’t really connecting emotionally or sexually, so Marshall gives in to the “Seven Year Itch” and downloads the app, called eCupid, whose Siri-like voice sounds remarkably like Morgan Fairchild. Soon, Gabe, a struggling coffee house owner, is receiving “Dear John” texts via eCupid and as soon as he moves out in a huff, all kinds of hot (and not-so-hot) young men start showing up at Marshall’s door. “Dawson”, a “horny frat boy” hustler, appears and doesn’t want to take no for an answer, followed by a party planner and a pick-up who looks nothing like his online picture. “I see that you’re good with Photoshop,” Marshall later tells him. Then there is Keith, played by the gorgeous Matt Lewis, an intern at Marshall’s work who has a lot more than work on his mind.

Writer/director J.C. Calciano keeps the action and comedy moving, while exploring questions of gay fidelity and relationships that will strike a chord with many people. The internet has made meeting people much easier while oftentimes leaving people feeling lonelier than ever. Calciano is smart enough to fill his film with lots of eye candy while he delivers his message about remembering what is important in your life. Rhines, Schuffman and Lewis make a triangle few men would resist joining, and despite the low budget, all of the actors give funny, polished performances.

There is a thread of magic running through the film as well, as eCupid manages to sabotage Marshall’s life at every turn. By the time he meets a diner waitress who actually is Morgan Fairchild, you’ll believe that true love can conquer all... if you ignore all the online noise and distractions that get in the way.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.