introducing Myona Phetish as Sweet Lady Mary
(or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Electric Banana)
"Mary sort of, came alive, at night."
director: Tom DeSimone (1971)
Stars: Larry Danser as The Groupie; D C Micheals as Steve; Ruffin Tumble as Jeff; Sky Kinque as Frank (the last 3 make up the group Electric Banana); introducing Myona Phetish as Sweet Lady Mary; and The Beautiful People as..... The Beautiful People!
Last week at NOWHERE BAR's Double-Headed Disco, another clip from this movie was playing in the "Red Room." Several of us were watching this sort of tripped-out dance number to a George Harrison tune as some twinky queen pushes past us tsk-ing "THAT'S not porn!" in a big huff. I had tried to put some fun stuff between the gaysex, and fortunately, that dude was in the minority - many others watched and enjoyed the selections. But it does point out something very real about porno films - most people have only ever watched them with a remote control in hand, fast-forward button under the thumb. So once these films were only for home consumption, the cool tidbits of non-sex gay stuff is barely ever seen, and rarely ever included anymore. Too bad. Anyhoo, all that is background to the fact that the above CLIP is the one I almost included, but figured since it was just a girl, a big naked girl, there might've been a whole lot more disappointed little twinky queens ...like I care... oops!
I love this film. Tom DeSimone did a fantastic job of doing a gay movie that just happened to have gaysex in it. Back in the early 70's, outside some arthouse Andy Warhol thing, you couldn't make a gay movie and have it shown; but you could make a porno movie that was gay and have it shown. What I like about this character, Sweet Lady Mary, is that she is not what she seems - a fag hag. Yes, her best buddy is a slim gay boy, and yes, she's a big big girl; but he's the one attracted to and fascinated by her; and he learns about life, and love, and sex, from her. This little "pre-music-video music video" is a great celebration of what some of us queers fight for - folks being who they are, liking who they are, feeling sexy about themselves, and doing their own thing.
Click one of the pics to view the movie trailer (you know that if you view the clip in the browser, you can "right click" and view it FULL SCREEN, right?), or here if you want to download and save for later. Mac users: To download the clip you have to hold down the option key and then click on the download. To view it from the web page you have to copy and past the URL of the page with the video on it into the address bar of the video viewer (rather than watch it from the page).