StinkyLulu Answers 5 Questions from The Film Experience

StinkyLulu was just thrilled this week to receive another 5 Questions. From Nathaniel of The Film Experience. 'Twas both a delightful surprise and a welcome respite from the travails of finals week...

The Film Experience (L) asked StinkyLulu (R)...

1. We share an immense love of grilled cheese. I have never found a way to work this love into my movie blog --so I'm jealous of the flexibility of your blogging. Have you ever seen someone eat a grilled cheese sandwich in a movie? If not, who should? Should there be bacon or tomato on it? Or just straight up bread and cheese... Do tell.

Amazingly, I can't think of anyone eating a grilled cheese in a movie. (Hey lovely readers! Help StinkyLu out with this one in comments?!?) I mean, PeeWee talked about grilled cheese sammiches a lot on the teevee program, but not in the movies... Hmmm.

But if I ruled the world, I'd like to commission an annual photoshoot that would stage each year's roster of Best Actress nominees eating a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich. (Substitutions for the bacon would be allowed only for religious or serious ethical considerations; diets be damned.) Just think. 2007 would have brought us Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, Kate Winslet and Penelope Cruz all hopped up on grease and cheese.

Ya know? I think Best Actresses + Grilled Cheese/Bacon sandwiches might very well be the truest definition of good times...

2: We know about your love of actressing at the edges and I don't mean to be heretical but what about actoring? Are there any male actors you look forward to seeing in the same way (or nearly the same way) as the ladies... share their names.

With actors, StinkyLulu gets easily confused. Does my excitement about this or that actor get stoked because I think he's cute/hot/dear? Or am I actually enthralled by his actorly choices, his gifts, his presence? Indeed, 'tis discombobulating. That said, I do enjoy some actors very very much. My list of favorites includes a range of actors that, yes, I do find quite attractive but I've come to realize that I like them so much and 'forlongtime' because they're truly interesting, surprising, enthralling performers. To a one, they're always among the best things about their respective movies, making me want to watch a movie about their character - my true test for "the edges"... So what if they're all pretty f'n hot. (Ain't nothing sexier than real talent, eh?) So, I now introduce my current stable of currently working most favorite actors:

StinkyLulu's Boys

click any pic to enlarge

3: What are your three favorite books?

• My Most Favorite Book of the Last Few Years:
Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. I'm generally a sucker for all the This American Life-like essayists/memoirists: Sedaris, Rakoff, Burroughs, Lamott, Franzen... But my favorite is Vowell -- funny, accessible, unapologetically smart. And Assassination Vacation is the kind of book I aspire to write one day: a seemingly effortless blend of history, commentary, autobiography & fun. (Plus, the audiobook version is nifty, too.)

• The One Book I'd Take to a Deserted Island:
Tennessee Williams's Collected Stories. Yes, attentive readers already know I'm an unrepentant fan of Tennessee Williams. But this is probably my most favorite volume in his entire oeuvre. Glimpses of heaven and hell, enough drama to keep ya busy for weeks, months, maybe years. Wow.

• The Book That Made Me Who I Am Today:
The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People by Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace, David Wallechinsky & Sylvia Wallace. I can't even imagine how many times I read this 1981 bestseller from cover to cover. Even more, I'm sometimes pretty sure that I became a cultural historian because of this book. The very idea that history could be silly, sexy and strange? That gender, sexuality and perversion could be the subject of serious writerly attention. Well. I learned that here. I haven't picked it up in years (not even sure I have a copy anymore) and I'm sure I would be appalled -- politically, aesthetically, historically -- by the the literary stylings of the Wallace Family (!). But ya gotta give the credit where the credit is due...

4: Your homo heritage series sometimes unnerves me but I totally believe in preserving history. The Coming Out process and the AIDS epidemic have both been covered abundantly in gay film. What gay topic do you think deserves big screen treatment (not that movies are the best way to preserve history...)

For fans of Homo Heritage Fridays, it'll come as little surprise that the years just prior to the real onslaught of AIDS (basically 1977-1983) are absolutely fascinating to me. And, frankly, it's a period that has received scant cinematic attention beyond a few mournful, nostalgic shorts. If I had a gazilliatrillion dollars I'd love to commission Tony Kushner to develop Larry Kramer's 1978 novel, Faggots, for the screen. I'd also try to make him tweak the story so it could conclude in 1981 with shots of folks who became GMHC tabling on Fire Island. I'd have an underutilized lesbian director -- someone like Angela Robinson or Cheryl Dunye or Alice Wu -- film it with a cast of openly gay actors (T.R. Knight, Neil Patrick Harris, Mario Cantone, B.D. Wong, John Cameron Mitchell, Adam Rapp, Cheyenne Jackson, Robert Gant, etc) in their 20s, 30s and 40s -- the generation who've lived the legacies of this era. It'd be a rocking, sexy epic of faggotry... A Lu can dream.

Alternately, I'd love to see a biopic of Ramon Novarro's early career done in the style of Coppola's Marie Antoinette. A high style confection/meditation on the trials of celebrity in gay Hollywood's tawdry 1920s...

5. I'm stealing the final question from Gay Prof's 5 --- why do you worship and/or adore The Film Experience?

What I love about The Film Experience is that your sites are just so...you. See, I think you've got a touch of that Gemini genius for overdoing things. You're predisposed to grandiose crackpot schemes as well as simultaneous all-consuming obsessions while also possessing a preternatural capacity for encyclopedic detail. And I just adore that you've marshaled all that potential insanity into the creation and sustenance of your site/s. What's more, in doing so, you've become a beacon for freakish film obsessives the world over. We are as moths drawn to your flaming film freakery. And (with that parallel Gemini genius for generosity) you welcome us all... You've built an altar to film obsession on the virtual scale of a Mayan pyramid and you're a welcoming hostess besides. What's not to worship and/or adore?

Dang. I really do love answering questions like these.
Thanks, Nathaniel! 'Twas a delight.

NEXT!?!
Send your 5 Questions right along! StinkyLulu could go on doing this forever...