September 1996 | Issue 17
Articles
Jonny Held
Who'd have dreamed that the 1960s were as dumb as the 1990s? And that Shirley MacLaine was the transitional figure between the serious 1950s and the brainless decade that followed?
Gary Morris
Every religion needs a church, and camp followers have worshipped regularly at San Francisco's Castro Theatre for two decades
Gary Morris
Harlow, Bankhead, yes, even patrician, cross-eyed Norma Shearer “strayed” before the Hays Code ended their fun.
Gary Morris
Nobody “did” the Depression, or sexual excess, or populist uprisings, better than the Brothers Warner.
Movies
Stefan Mattessich
After seeing this film that features everything from body and mind modifications to cryogenics to the fresh hell of cyberspace, you may want to go eat some dirt.
Gary Morris
The bully — the U.S., of course, not Castro — will eventually come to its senses and leave this little island and its vital citizens alone.
Gary Morris
This grimy, exciting artifact from the '60s shows how important beauty contests were to the queens who ruthlessly — and kind of sadly — mimicked their straight counterparts.
Gary Morris
Barbara Hammer continues the groundbreaking investigations into gender that started with Nitrate Kisses — this time using autobiography to tell her truths.
Gary Morris
John Waters, Zsa Zsa Gabor, The Bad Seed, Supermarionation — the late Doris Fish trawled through the lowest depths of culture for her homemade camp fairy tale.
Gary Morris
See Val Kilmer feed psychedelic mushrooms to the crazed beast-people! See Aissa's forbidden jungle dance! See the terrible white monster who lumbers across the sets in pancake makeup and Bea Arthur's old caftans!
Gary Morris
Jackie's almost eclipsed — almost — by the great Michelle Khan. Watch out for that building!
Gary Morris
This epic set in the 16th century deals with war, honor, courage, and yes, that homo subtext ever present in male bonding movies — punctuated by Toshiro Mifune's enthralling butt-baring performance!
Stars
Romano Giachett & Trans. A. K. Bierman
Chaplin's most famous "creation" was his little tramp — but Stan Laurel did it first, as Chaplin knew all too well.
Gian Piero Brunetta & Trans. A. K. Bierman
Laurel's mask — the goofy, sweet-natured grown-up child — had its roots in the classic commedia dell'arte.
Osvaldo Soriano & Trans. A. K. Bierman
Ollie does the impossible for his pal
Directors
Gary Morris
Junkies, queens, washed-up B-movie hags — these are the scintillating “family values” advocates that campmeister and right-wing Republican Morrissey serves up.
Gary Morris
Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, all the "pansies and poseurs of Hollywood" — no one was safe from the cruel barbs of the Great Auteur!
Recent Posts

Margaret Lockwood in The Man in GreyOne of the great Gainsborough melodramas, in the longer UK cut, on the always accommodating (if sometimes only temporarily) YouTube. Margaret Lockwood is as "wicked" here as she is in Wicked Lady. Watch it before the copyright police come a-callin'!

Watch on Youtube »

Gordon Thomas, and other BL staff, check out the eye- popping pleasures of Blu-Ray.

» Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair)
» The General (Keaton)
» Sunrise (Murnau)
» 8-1/2 (Fellini)
» Playtime (Tati)
» Winstanley (Brownlow & Mollo)
» Permissive (Shonteff)
» Lola Montes (Ophuls)
» My Childhood, My Ain Folk ... (Bill Douglas)
» In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima)
» Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney)
» Repulsion (Polanski)
» Institute Benjamenta (Brothers Quay)
» Everlasting Moments (Troell)

BL Associate Editor Alan Vanneman and others watch (and review) television shows so you don't have to. Click if you dare.

» 30 Rock
» The American President
» Archer
» Batman: The Animated Series
» The Big Bang Theory
» Broadway Theatre Archive
» Car 54, Where Are You?
» Charlie’s Angels
» Cowboy Bebop
» Death of a Salesman
» Dollhouse
» Freaks and Geeks
» Have Gun Will Travel
» Mad Men
» Magnum P.I.
» Monk
» Pamela Anderson Roast
» PBS
» Renegade
» Sex and the City
» Sports Night
» Star Trek

I'm sick of movies, Mr. Webmaster. Take me away!

» Archive.org
Gazillions of free books, audio, and video. Grab 'em before the copyright police come knocking!

» Glenn Greenwald
The indomitable civil liberties champion takes exception to American exceptionalism. You will too when you read his blistering analyses.

» Project Gutenberg
See Archive.org.

» Creative Commons
"All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially."

» The Ivy Compton-Burnett home page
A Bright Lights side project created by George Brown devoted to the greatest novelist of the 20th century. There, we said it.

» Raw Vision
The leading online site (and print publication) devoted to those zany untrained artists who channel personality quirks, neuroses, idées fixes, and downright craziness into Art.

» Siklink.com
An endlessly fascinating clearinghouse for "the greatest hand-picked collection of bizarre, strange and unusual websites on the internet today." Highlights include the enchanting "Prison Bitch Name Generator" and "Life Gem" – how to "turn your deceased loved one into a diamond."

» Clark Ashton Smith
The premier fantasy poet and short-story writer (and sculptor and artist) gets a detailed blog that's a model for intelligent fan-ism. Watch out for falling curmudgeons in the forum.

» Classic Arcade Games
Miss Asteroids? Centipede? Frogger? Miss that you missed them? Here's your chance to enjoy the state of the art circa 1980s.

» Jack Vance
Wikipedia's gateway to our favorite writer in and of science fiction and fantasy. A national treasure.

» Electronic Frontier Foundation
"EFF fights for freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits even when that means taking on the US government or large corporations." Go EFF!

» The Canonical List of Weird Band Names: The Peculiar and the Profane
Another Bright Lights side project from the inimitable George Brown. You probably know the Meat Puppets but how about Lyin' Bitch and the Restraining Orders?

» James Purdy
A good introduction to a criminally neglected postwar literary master. Be 21 or be gone for his gorgeous, harrowing works, kids.

» The Radical Ant Farm
This page answers that nagging question: "What's up with the Russian criminal tattoos?" The rest of the site offers further fun.

» Spectro-Pop
Monumental site devoted to '60s pop music – you know, that stuff playing in the background during the orgy.

» The Left Business Observer
Doug Henwood's long-running economics newsletter, called "invaluable" by Noam Chomsky. Need we say more?

» Jane Bowles
Go to Wikipedia and improve this "stub" on the writer Tennessee Williams looked up to and James Purdy called "the eagle-woman of American letters."

» WFMU
The best online radio station for our money. A deep archive and no-music-turned-away policy will keep you rollin' and tumblin' till the apocalypse.

» Henry Green
Must we create a detailed tribute page to this extraordinary British novelist championed by Auden, Updike, and Terry Southern? Or will you do it? Start with Concluding (1948).

» Women of Surrealism
They weren't all "muses" and maids – these women equaled or surpassed their more celebrated male counterparts in vision and technique.

» Ronald Firbank
He called the president of Haiti "a perfect dear" and was known to eat a single pea at dinner. Oh, and he ranks with Joyce and Woolf (see Edmund Wilson) as a groundbreaking literary modernist.

» Essential Vermeer
Everything you need to know about the Dutch master of light and mysterious figures.

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