cover image FABULOUS! A Loving, Luscious, and Lighthearted Look at Film from the Gay Perspective

FABULOUS! A Loving, Luscious, and Lighthearted Look at Film from the Gay Perspective

Donald F. Reuter, . . Broadway, $16.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-7679-1600-4

Reuter's arch and breezy treatise on what makes a film a queer favorite runs the gamut of the gay de rigueur, from superb classics like Judy Garland's The Wizard of Oz and Liza Minnelli's Cabaret to the camp car wrecks Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Valley of the Dolls . Reuter (Gaydar ) explains what makes one film "homo-centric" and another hopelessly hetero (e.g., Double Indemnity gets the gay thumbs up, but Casablanca doesn't pass the litmus); actors, dialogue and plot all create homo or hetero tensions. He also amusingly delineates guidelines for decoding gay sensibility encoded in otherwise straight films such as Dr. Zhivago and The Way We Were . Themes of isolation and feeling different—which, for Reuter, define a gay-friendly film—are imbedded in nearly all of the 75 movies described here (there are another 25 suggested as queerish also-rans). Reuter elucidates the connections straight women and gay men find with so-called "chick flicks" of many eras (including Now Voyager , Thelma and Louise and Chicago ), but as he reveals, a film can be homoerotic but utterly indecipherably so to a straight audience. Reuter's book isn't meant to be read as a film textbook, but as film context, and although the cutesy presentation can get tiresome if one reads from cover to cover, it's thoroughly successful for dipping into. With camp-classic quotes, lists of films to explore, short shticks on musicals and film themes, a trivia section, tips on planning an Oscar party and terrific photos throughout, Fabulous is definitely fabulous. B&w photos. (Feb.)

Forecast: There's a ready market for this highly accessible text among gay and other film buffs, and it's just the thing for Oscar parties or simply a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy marathon.