Fabulous! The Story Of Queer Cinema DVD Review

Fabulous examines general stages in “queer cinema” which can be a bit too general, but this is mostly due to the short running time of the IFC original documentary. The choice to have interviews throughout the documentary instead of having a traditional narration is interesting, but the interviews are often inconsistent. While there are benefits to having the filmmakers give commentary on their own films, most of Fabulous is just gay and lesbian actors and filmmakers giving their opinions about films that they relate to. The opinion of any random celebrity shouldn’t have any substantial bearing, and it might have been a wiser choice to have more film historians commenting as well. It might not be as entertaining as hearing what certain sex scene appealed to specific actors, but it has more credibility.

The one direction that the documentary examines which feels fresh is the portrayal of gays in film as flawed humans. Once it was becoming more common in filmmaking there were a series of film, including The Living End, which portrayed angry and often cruel gay characters, which upset some people. There was a push to have all gay characters be good people on screen, in a politically correct attempt to gloss over the reality; that gay people were just people, both good as well as bad. In truth we are all flawed humans and these films took a bold stance in showing this. It is obviously a thin line though, because quickly after the independents with these themes are examined, there are studio films shown and protested for having killer homosexuals.

There seems to be some skewed opinions on the documentary because of the intensely passionate beliefs by many commenting. There are many giving comments that are angry that there weren’t any gay characters in film for so long, but they move right into staying angry by the fact that once they are on film they are usually played by straight actors, which is somewhat of an absurd statement to make. There are no backlashes for actors that play other roles even though they don’t share the same lifestyle as the character. Then once there are homosexual role models, such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, “I would certainly like to see a show where heterosexuals give us pedicures,” is a comment which comes from Marga Gomez, as if there will never be any portrayal that is perfect unless it shows homosexuals being treated like kings by heterosexuals. While not all of the views in Fabulous are this extreme, it seems to be the fact that the opinion of actors and celebrities is relied on which gives a slightly less intelligent feel to Fabulous than a documentary like The Celluloid Closet.

The DVD has extra interview footage with the celebrities in the documentary. They discuss their coming out stories, favorite sex scenes and other related topics.