Randal Kleiser Celebrates His “Party”

Randal Kleiser Celebrates His “Party”

By Tim Parks

An entire generation of gay men owes director Randal Kleiser a big thank you for informing our proclivities through his cinematic achievements. Whether, it was Leigh McCloskey playing a male prostitute in the TV movie, “Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway,” which co-starred Eve Plumb (Jan Brady of “The Brady Bunch”) as the titular runaway/teen prostitute. Or maybe it was more than a lingering glance at Christopher Atkins in a loincloth in “The Blue Lagoon,” the openly gay film auteur has never shied away from controversial subject matter.

 

However, it was a 1978 semi-innocent big screen movie that put him on the map; a little song-and-dance effort that starred John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John called “Grease,” which was Kleiser’s inaugural introduction to film audiences and another good way to check your own gaydar.

Years later, Kleiser took a painful experience of having his ex-lover Harry Stein throw his own farewell party into a love letter of that real-life event by turning it into the film, “It’s My Party,” a 1996 movie that starred Eric Roberts as a gay man seeking dignity before the ravages of AIDS overtake him. The movie also reunited the director with “Grease” star Olivia Newton-John, and featured Margaret Cho in one of her earliest film roles.

 

On Sunday, August 21 at 2:00 PM, FilmOut will be paying tribute to both Kleiser and his 15-year-old film with a screening at the North Park Birch Theatre. LGBT Weekly spoke with Kleiser about his impressive film resume and why he’s glad that “It’s My Party” will be recognized by FilmOut.

LGBT Weekly: How does it feel to have directed “Grease,” the number one movie musical of all-time?

 

Randal Kleiser: When we made it, we certainly didn’t know that it was in the cards at all. RSO Films and Robert Stigman was making two movies at the time, “Grease” and “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” with the Bee Gees, and they had for their cast party mounds of caviar and shrimp and crab meat; and ours was hot dogs and hamburgers for our wrap party (laughs). So they thought that was going to be the huge musical and that “Grease” was just some little teen thing that would disappear.

So, we were left alone pretty much, because no one thought it was going to go anywhere, and that was great because it was my first movie; I stumbled my way through it.

We just lost two of our cast members, Annette (Charles, who played Cha Cha DiGregorio) was a very close friend of mine; I took her out to various events because she’s just so smart and interesting – she was a professor of speech at Cal State Northridge, and she also worked with transgender youth to help them adjust.

 

LGBT Weekly: What is your favorite memory of making the film?

 

RK: Probably the night at the drive-in, that was when Olivia first came out of the trailer to show me her look for the end of the movie, the bad Sandy look. It was dark, I was setting up some shots, suddenly this blonde wild woman started coming through the backlit area, and everyone was just going gaga looking at her. She showed up and I didn’t recognize her and thought, “Who is this amazing looking girl?” She said hi and I realized it was Olivia, and it was just so cool to see the transformation that the makeup and wardrobe people had come up with. So everybody was excited that night.

LGBT Weekly: What has been a standout reaction that you have received about the movie?

RK: Most people say, “Oh wow, I looked at ‘Grease’ again and I didn’t realize it was so dirty! A lot of parents say, “Oh, my kids know all of the songs and sing the lyrics.” And, I think, “They do?” I’ve never seen a little kid sing “Greased Lighting,” but I sure would love to, because it would be so hysterically funny and campy.

 

LGBT Weekly: Some of your films, such as “Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway,” “The Blue Lagoon” and “Summer Lovers” were controversial efforts – why did you feel drawn to the material on those projects and their portrayals of sexuality?

 

RK: Well, I guess because I hadn’t seen stuff like that done, and I thought it would be fun to try it. “Blue Lagoon” was a book I read and it was just so wonderfully written, it was sort of like “Robinson Crusoe” written by an English writer in the 1870’s. It’s a very romantic kind of novel, and I just wanted to make a film that captured that innocence of children growing up on an island where they don’t know better, and they run around naked because why wear clothes if there’s no one around?

 

The sexual freedom of the ’70s was still in my head at the time, and I wanted to create a movie version that captured the feel of the novel, which I think we did.

 

But when it came out, all these right wing people said it was kiddie porn, and I thought, “What? Are you kidding me?” Today I couldn’t make “Blue Lagoon” the way I did, because SAG since that movie, and maybe because of it, made a new rule you cannot have underage actors doing sexual acts, or even portraying or faking sexual acts.

 

It was certainly a barometer of sexuality when people saw that movie, because you had your choice with column a or column b. A lot of people have told me that’s when they realized they were gay, because of Christopher Atkins in “Blue Lagoon.”

 

LGBT Weekly: “It’s My Party” was based on your experiences with your ex-lover Harry Stein – did that make it difficult at times during the shoot?

 

RK: I committed to doing it, and I really felt like it was important to do, so I went into it fully knowing all that. It was really a matter of trying to get the movie right; I wasn’t all uptight about it. I felt compelled to make it as real and honest as I could; actually, it was like psychotherapy to get through that.

 

Everybody who worked on it worked for scale, and they were all friends and everybody was really pushing to make it work. It was a great set because everybody was there not because of the money or the fame or any ulterior motives – they were just there to try to make the movie work, and it was really great to have all those people, like Olivia and Lee Grant and all these people working for scale; it was really terrific.

 

LGBT Weekly: How does it feel to have the film being honored at FilmOut?

 

RK: I think it’s great; you know I didn’t even realize that it was fifteen years since the movie was made and time has flown by. I think it’s great that finally somebody’s acknowledging it, because when it came out, it sort of came and went. It was during the time when it was all happening, and nobody really wanted to pay attention to something about someone dying; people were dying everywhere, so I think it was lost in the shuffle.

And some gay critics sort of attacked it and I’m not quite sure why. They said it was very Hollywood and fake and nobody would ever look that good if they had AIDS; and, of course, he did and that was the way it worked, he looked spectacular the day he died. A lot of these people, I don’t know who they were, they were very bitter and mean about it.

 

LGBT Weekly: The film also featured Margaret Cho in an early role – what do you think of her becoming a gay icon?

 

RK:I think it’s great, and I think that people come up to her and talk about the movie all the time, which is nice. I’m glad she’s an icon, because she’s part of the movie and it’s great to have her in there.

 

LGBT Weekly: How did you reach the decision to film this particular story?

 

RK: Right after the event, I went to Hawaii and my friend, Joel Thurm, who was the casting director on “Grease” and many of my films, flew to Hawaii to hang out with me. And he brought the photographs that were taken on the day of the party, and I looked at them and said, “This is a movie, I’ve got to do it.”

I started writing the script, and it was something that anybody whose been through it was nothing like it that they’ve ever experienced before; it was such a bizarre and emotional roller coaster ride to be at a party and realize that the guest of honor was not going to be there the next day.

He wanted to celebrate; he didn’t want it to be a sad affair, so everyone was acting like it was a celebration, but knowing that it wasn’t. The complex emotions that went through that day stuck in everybody’s minds, like a traumatic kind of experience. I just thought that it would be a very compelling film.

Looking back at it, it’s almost like a docudrama of a time in history, a period before there was any hope.A lot of people don’t realize that there was a time when getting HIV was a definite death sentence. So you either had to succumb to the various types of diseases that your body could get, or take the matter into your own hands and exit the way you wanted to exit.

 

For ticket information, log onto

www.filmoutsandiego.com, and for information about Randal Kleiser’s upcoming projects, log onto http://www.randalkleiser.com         

Random Thoughts:Made-For-TV Movies Edition

Why don’t they make made-for-TV movies anymore? I know that it most likely has something to do with the Lifetime Movie Network and their penchant for sticking Markie Post, Meredith Baxter and Valerie Bertinelli (or any number of yesteryear TV stars) in jep. Jep, what is that you may ask? Is it some sort of code for a disease, or did I simply misspell jeep. Well, that means their characters are considered to be a “woman in jeopardy,” for those of you not in the know. Shame on you for not being in the know, by the way! 😉

I can’t remember the last time that I even saw a TV movie, good, bad or indifferent…maybe the ‘9os? So, where are they at? For the most part as foggy, yet happy visages, as a vast majority of the ones I remember from their golden era (1970’s through the 1990’s) aren’t even available on DVD, at least for rental. 

Anyhoo, here is my Top Ten List of MFTM (Made-For-TV Movies, natch), spurned from that Random Thought. This list is based upon how they rate for me memory-wise…so don’t get your panties in a wad that some movies you may like aren’t on the list, k? If you don’t agree, start your own blog. Jeez!

#10   “Our Sons” starred two veterans of the Silver Screen, Julie Andrews and the incomparable Ann-Margrock (twitch, twitch) as polar opposite mothers that share something in common – their sons are gay, gay, gay. Talk about striking the motherload, as far as moms go, a gay guy could do a lot worse than having Maria from The Sound of Music or a Kitten with a Whip being maternal to them. 

Unfortunately, one of the men (Zeljko Ivanek) is dying from AIDS, and his partner (Hugh Grant) enlists the help of his socialite mother (Andrews) to travel to Arkansas to fetch LuAnne Barnes’ (Margrock) white-trash and homophobic ass to say goodbye to the child that she didn’t know was gay.

An excellent cast bolsters this moving telepic, and dealt with the subject matter as deftly as “An Early Frost” had done circa 1985.

#9 “Surviving” delved into the world of teen suicide in 1985 and centered on two teens played by Gremlins star Zach Galligan and teen queen Molly Ringwald. The latter hadn’t been on the small screen since her character of Molly (way to branch out there, gal) was cut from season two of ”The Facts of Life…” I bet Mrs. Garrett was kicking herself later that she let the Sixteen Candles  star out of her meaty clutches – she probably would have put her to work at “Edna’s Edibles” in a heartbeat, which always had a strange ring to it in my mind, and conjured up a nude Charlotte Rae. Shudder. Mrs. G. was like the Kathy Lee Gifford of her day, running what amounted to nothing more than a sweat shop for her teenaged wards. 

Ok, back to our regularly scheduled program…the movie also starred the late River Phoenix, and while it dealt with the before and after effects of teen suicide (don’t do it! If you’re a Heathers fan, you know what I’m talking ’bout, Willis), in a weird way it was almost like a how-to manual for contemplators of all ages.

#8 “Born Innocent” starred The Exorcist ‘s Linda Blair as a teen runaway who gets hauled off to a juvie hall/reform school hybrid to learn her some manners. More than likely her character of Christine Parker learned that showering in that setting is not the best of ideas, as she is viciously assaulted with a toilet brush handle by the lesbian leader (surprise) of an all-girl gang.

This film caused quite the stir upon its initial airing in 1974, and the controversial scene was removed from subsequent reruns, due in part to a real-life unfortunate case of life imitating art when a young girl was attacked in a similar fashion.

The only upswing here is that it prepped its lead actress for her later work in the super campy flick Chained Heat.  

#7 I am still not sure what the titular everything was in reference to in the title for The Girl, the Goldwatch & Everything, a 1980 movie starring Robert Hays (Airplane!) and Pam Dawber (“Mork & Mindy”).

Hays played a man named Kirby Winter, who inherits a gold pocket watch (at least that’s explained from the title – phew!) that can stop time. When he meets his dream girl (double phew!) Bonny Lee Beaumont, the time-stopping fun begins, even though thugs are after him for the magical timepiece.

Of note, I never knew Pam Dawber had such range as an actress. Kidding, for real real and not for play play. Is that a Texan, Georgian or Louisiana diphthong she is working with? With a name like Bonny Lee – it’s a safe bet it’s supposed to be from the southern region of these United States, but you are still left wondering. Maybe that was the titular Everything?

What I remember most about this movie was that it was filmed in my hometown of San Diego, with portions shot at the Hotel Del Coronado. Oh, they also made a sequel The Girl, The Goldwatch & Dynamite, which should have been called The Girl, The Goldwatch & A Bomb, because it sucked and not in a good way.

For starters there’s no Robert Hays or Pam Dawber (on second thought that might be a plus) and Phillip MacHale (love his work?) and Lee Purcell attempted to walk an acting mile in their predecessors’ footsteps. Surprisingly, given the last part of the title – it didn’t co-star Jimmie “J.J.” Walker.  

#6 You gotta give it up for Farrah Fawcett, even though the Academy of Arts and Sciences forgot to include the “Charlie’s Angels” star in the “In Memoriam” portion of the Oscar telecast in March. For shame on you, Academy, did neither Sunburn nor Saturn 3 merit a simple nod to the best tressed late actress?

Yes, I know she also did great work in 1986’s Extremities, and she got the career ball rolling again with her previous work in the 1984 offering The Burning Bed. Her raw acting as abused wife Francine Hughes shed her from the jiggly shackles of the aforementioned Aaron Spelling TV production, which launched her into the stratosphere.

Fawcett had dropped her married name (Farrah Fawcett-Majors) by this point in time, as she was divorced from The Six Million Dollar Man, and was having a Love Story with Ryan O’Neal. This movie, for which she received an Emmy nomination,  proved that she should have left her married name intact, post-divorce, as she was now considered a major(s) actress, and not just something pretty to look at. Girl, I can so relate to that.

#5 What Jackie Collins is to trashy, yet-so-good-you-can’t-put-them-down novels is…sorry, I froze for a minute as I thought I was taking my SAT test again.

Luckily, the ever clever (I should be a rapper with that rhyme – howz about Ice T-im?) Aaron Spelling produced a miniseries based on Collins’ best-selling novel ever, “Hollywood Wives.” And, the cast was worth the price of admission alone…oh wait; it was on TV and not in the movies – my bad! It was a virtual who’s who of Tinsel Town, or to be more apt, a virtual what the hell were they starring in this for production? That’s when you look at it from today’s eyes, and not through the lenses of yesterday.

There was a pre-“Murphy Brown” Candy Bergen and Sir Anthony Hopkins – that’s o.k. we’ll wait while you both kiss your Emmys and Oscar Awards, respectively. Watch the tongue there, Tony!

It also starred a post-“Three’s Company” Suzanne Somers, the gorgeous (That’s Mrs. H., she’s beautiful) Stefanie Powers, Roddy McDowell in a non-chimp role, the always delightful Joanna Cassidy, “Dallas’ “J.R. shooter Mary Crosby, Mommie Dearest co-star Steve Forrest and “The Untouchables” Robert Stack – wait a sec…you mean the last two aren’t the same person?

Angie Dickinson was Dressed To Kill as Sadie LaSalle (a very common name, if you happen to live in a Jackie Collins novel, as was Powers’ Montana Gray, for that matter). She happens upon a young man named Buddy Hudson (Andrew Stevens) and starts a campaign to let everyone in H-Wood know who he is, in the cutthroat world of wanna bes and has-beens. 

#4 “Which one of you bitches is my mother?” is probably the reason that most viewers remember the two-part miniseries “Lace.” The 1984 mini starred almost every teen boy’s at the time ideal of a dream girl, Phoebe Cates, two years after she bared her boobies in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I was more curious about what Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold) was doing in the bathroom than what he was fantasizing about. You say tomato, I say gaymato.

As film star Lili, Cates assembles together the three possible (and apparently bitchy) women who could be the one that gave her up for adoption as a baby. They include: Brooke Adams, Arielle Dombasle and the super annoying Bess Armstrong. I don’t know why I just can’t stomach her and wished the shark would have swallowed her up in Jaws 3-D.

I will not divulge which one ends up being mama beeyatch, but I can tell you that the very next year that Lili tried to find out who papa bastard is. Oh yeah, it was advertised with the tagline of “Which one of you bastards is my father?”

They should do a third one in which Lili gives up a child, conceived after a drunken night of debauchery, and gives said kid away only to seek it out -with two others summoned together, naturally – later to ask them, “Which one of you babies is my baby?” 

#3 It’s no surprise that ABC decided to dust off “V” and give it a makeover this season. I recently watched the original miniseries (both of them, including “The Final Battle,” which is not true, since they were still fighting the aliens in the subsequent TV series- that’s like the Friday the 13th series “ending” in 1984 and going onto infinitum status sequel and remake-wise ), and it has not stood the test of time. But, damn the cheestastic special effects, as I have an affinity for the show thusly.

It bonded me to my fellow classmates in high school, especially when Robin (Blair Tefkin) had her alien baby that was the sizzle lean, let me tell you. It probably got me started in my love of recanting TV events, and who wouldn’t love a show where the alien baddie (Jane Badler) swallowed whole rats! C’mon, that’s quality TV! Plus, there was hunky Marc Singer. However, the only downside to that was two years earlier he had starred as Dar, the loin clothed hero of The Beastmaster, and “V” in all of its incarnations featured him in waaay too many clothes for my taste.

Oh, by the way Independence Day writers Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich (who also directed), you should have put “based on an original idea by Kenneth Johnson” in the credits. The storyline with big alien spacecrafts hovering over major cities of the world first happened in 1983 on “V.” You’re welcome, Ken (we’re tight!)  

By the way, we have a tie for third here. I would be remiss as a child of the ’80s to not mention “The Day After,” as the threat of nuclear war was on our generation, faster than you can sing ‘Red Skies at Night’ by The Fixx! That there was some scary, scary shit to watch, and was the most watched TV movie ever with an audience 100 million strong to see what would happen if we were attacked by the Soviet Union, and they dropped a bomb on us faster than The Gap Band could. I wonder if star JoBeth Williams thought working on Poltergeist was a more frightening experience. The film also featured Jason Robards, John Lithgow and Steve “The Gutt” Guttenberg.

#2 Did you know that Grease director Randal Kleiser had previously worked with actor John Travolta? Flashback to 1976, two years before the duo was all lubed, I mean, greased up and you have “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.”

This movie probably caused more than a few people to become germaphobes after watching the true story of Tod Lubitch (watch yo mouth! I’m just talkin’ about “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble” Can you dig that?), a young man born with a deficient immune system and is forced to spend his life like a sandwich in a Ziploc bag. That is to say, he is hermetically sealed for freshness and safety in his room – so as not to let any viruses or bacteria into his domain. Umm, how do his parents (the late, great Robert Reed and the late/Travolta’s older woman lover friend Diana Hyland) punish him? “You go to your…ah, never mind!”

Tod’s life takes a turn for the better when Glynnis O’Connor’s Gina Biggs character kind of walks into his life – really, you can’t get into his bubble without risking his life. But love makes Tod want to take risks, and “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble” features Travolta in his Sweathog glory and in very tight and short ‘7os shorts. What? We all take away different things from a movie experience, ok? I was so happy when I found this movie in a bargain bin at Wal-Mart, best $5.99 I ever spent.

#1 Mr. Randal Kleiser also had his hands on Jan Brady. No, not like that, as he is a gay homosexual. What I mean to say is that he left an indelible fingerprint on my psyche with his 1976 directing job on “Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway,” which starred former “Bunch” er Eve Plumb.

Her portrayal of Dawn Wetherby wasn’t the stuff that Emmy nominations were made of (just watch the scene where she walks down the street, right after she hops off the bus from BumFuck, U.S.A. and takes in the “sights” that Hollywood Blvd. had to offer), but I applaud her for the choice to do this role and not partake in “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.”

The movie treads upon the same ground laid down by Linda Blair in “Born Innocent” and the previous year’s “Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic,” in that it was construed as controversial. Not for nothing, what was up with all these movie in the ’70s having to be a “portrait” of the main character? Maybe, to be in tune with the times, they could have subtitled at least one as “Polaroid of a fill-in-the-blank.” I’m just sayin’.

I used to watch this movie about a 15-year-old runaway/prostitute on KTLA 5 on my black and white Zenith TV (I had to change the channel without a remote, if my parents happened into my room…how gauche!) every time it was on, every single time.

That was due in large part to Leigh McCloskey’s portrayal of Dawn’s savior Alexander, and his blond feathered coif…sigh. Plus, he was a gay male hustler. Why was this movie controversial? Oh yeah, I guess I could see why…now. At the time, I couldn’t wait to see Dawn transform from naive young thang to a hooker with a heart of gold.

Very Julia Roberts of her, no? Not really, there was no Richard Gere to come along and take her away from all “this.” And, I think I have discovered my root of why I couldn’t watch Pretty Woman until last year, and it was under duress because I felt it glamorized being a whore.

Whereas, “Dawn” showed the nittier grittier side of having a pimp named Swan (Bo Hopkins) and seeing your street sister on a slab (Susie, played by David’s wife on “Eight Is Enough,” or she is also known as actress Joan Prather) or another one of your Pussy Posse (Marguerite DeLain as the spunky Frankie Lee…oh, she was spunky alright!) get knocked around by ole Swan. 

Also, it was one of my first glimpses of seeing a “real live homo-sex-y’all” on TV, and wouldn’t you know it? McCloskey reprised his role the next year in “Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn,” and showed me that not all gay guys were of the “fairy” variety that were starting to populate the television landscape during that time. Nope, Alexander found himself a gay football player for a “boyfriend,” not sure that’s the right term if someone is paying you for sex. Besides, how can you not love any movie spin-off that features in its credits Miss Francis Faye as herself? C’mon now, people, that is the stuff legends are made of!   

Ok, that was one long Random Thought, and if you made it this far, I’d like you to comment with what your Top 10, 5 or even #1 Favorite TV movie of all-time is. I know I am already kicking myself for excluding Stephen King’s magnum opus “The Stand.” Dammit!