It may look as if this is a long promotion of Pride Month to help Netflix’s 2022 special, Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration, but in the Q&A that followed the successful opening night of Provincetown Film Festival, Page Hurwitz, the director answered all the questions and cleared up confusion on whether the event was inspired by pride. The chicken and egg question was resolved by Hurwitz during a post screening Q&A at Provincetown Film Festival’s opening-night audience, where she clarified that it was staged at Greek Theatre in Los Angeles as an effort to bring together twenty-two top queer comic performers for one show as part of making this documentary which is meant to look at history of LGBT comedians.
This is an essential primer, especially considering today’s increasing representation when one considers how there are now thriving scenes that have seen an emergence of young colorful comics from across the sexual orientation spectrum.
Even if nothing else, than just for reintroducing us to hilarious Robin Tyler, America’s first lesbian comedian who came out on national television in 1978, its value would still be insurmountable. ABC promptly canceled their deal when Tyler and her partner Pat Harrison (who performed as Harrison and Tyler comedy duo) took on homophobic crusader Anita Bryant with Tyler asking “I don’t mind them being born again but do they have to come back as themselves?”
There were many gay comics in American television shows such as Charles Nelson Reilly, Rip Taylor, and Paul Lynde who were not open about their sexuality because it would mean the end of careers.
Yet even Lily Tomlin a comedy legend who dropped no hints about her romantic relationship with Jane Wagner (her present wife), wouldn’t admit she was a lesbian back then. By the mid-eighties however; evidence of her evolution can be seen through Norman Seeff’s portrait showing her wearing a sleeveless T-shirt bearing the words “Evolve or Die.”
Tomlin is just one among many big names whose interviews and comedy clips help explain the obstacles that had to be met head-on, as well as various breakthrough means comics found. Gayness was always present in stand-up comedy whether openly or underneath in the form of closeted black vaudeville shows from the 1920s featuring such performers as “Moms” Mabley. Sandra Bernard, Margaret Cho, Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, Marsha Warfield, Eddie Izzard, Hannah Gadsby, and Bruce Vilanch are some of the other commentators who have provided interesting opinions.
One touching aspect about this piece is how it attempts to illustrate the continuity among mentors and young LGBT comedians after each first trailblazer enhances the legacy for those following him/her. Joel Kim Booster also acknowledges Tomlin’s influence over his career while both Bernhard and Cho cite her as their greatest inspiration.
Another recurring theme is how queer representation has often taken one step forward only to be followed by two steps backward in comedy. The 70s saw a backlash against every development each decade had made: Anita Bryant’s “Christian” offensive; Reagan-era conservative family values and AIDS hysteria as well as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell military policy during the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s.
One of the most exciting things is a clip of Bernhard doing a disco rendition of “Do You Wanna Funk?” that makes fun of Reagan, Jerry Falwell, and other highly conservative public figures while being very sexually charged.
For instance, several commentators make the point that through the end of the last century, as well as beyond it, unapologetically negative comedy towards gays remained largely acceptable whether it was Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar’s silly gay panic humor or Eddie Murphy’s homophobic stand-up specials. The other side shows up in Richard Pryor’s appearance at a 1977 Hollywood Bowl gay rights benefit where he speaks bluntly about his fondness for men but then excoriates the mainly white audience for not supporting Black civil rights.
According to Scott Thompson from the Canadian comedy group The Kids in the Hall, creating characters behind whom one can hide can be poignant. His acerbic bar fixture Buddy Cole was notable as “the first gay character who fucked.” In general terms, heteronormative sensibilities were more willing to take in homosexual jokes if these comedies did not address homosexuality explicitly.
In opposition to this silent rule, Cho actively worked against it with dirty confessional comedy. This flew directly in contrast to what would have been acceptable behavior on the part of queer comics such as making their material “palatable.”
The same reticence around any really explicit discussion of gay sex runs throughout many episodes on queer sexuality in American comedy. A noted case was Ellen DeGeneres’ guest appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show when she jokingly claimed she was ‘Lebanese’, and O’Donnell played along adding that she might be Lebanese too. It is important to note that while O’Donnell had hosted her popular daytime variety and talk show for six seasons (1996–2002) in syndication with an all-queer comic writing staff like Judy Gold, this was still during a time when coming out could be seen as professional suicide.
Many of the interviewees remember how they stopped being asked to perform after their homosexuality became public. One of the most emotional moments in which Todd Glass talks about his years as an extremely successful late-night comic who never even considered admitting his sexual orientation until he had a heart attack and was visited by his partner in hospital and gained the courage to do so. Sykes, on the other hand, simply lets it slip that she is married to a woman during a show.
Hurwitz, herself a former stand-up comic, has chosen some great material, meticulously sifted through decades of archives for clips that are still pretty laugh-out-loud hysterical today.
Predictably there are some big omissions Kate McKinnon, Bowen Yang, Cole Escola, John Early, and Jerrod Carmichael among others perhaps attributable partly to concentrating mainly on those comics who appeared at the Greek Theatre event and areas where more pressure could have been applied by doc. For instance, exposing homophobia that had gone unchallenged for too long in comedy would mean acknowledging Tracy Morgan’s infamous rant which stated among other things that if he had a gay son he would “pull out a knife and stab him.” Even Dave Chapelle’s inflammatory transphobic material gets only cursory coverage.
However, if there is a major problem with the doc, it is that in contextualizing queer comedy within the political landscape of The past, it does not talk much about the dangerous climate in respect to the LGBTQ+ rights rollback that has been ongoing. In any case, haven’t you heard anyone talking about what’s at stake in the upcoming election somewhere over this cutting room floor?
Nevertheless Outstanding makes a compelling argument for how queer comedy has changed alongside broader representational shifts while suggesting that young, aspiring LGBTQ+ comics may have something to learn from their predecessors.
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