Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Can't Stop the Music - 1980

CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC 1980 lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2013/11/cant-stop-music-1980.html

In this essay seeing out October and welcoming in November, I present for your edification a movie which qualifies as both a Halloween horror and an overstuffed Thanksgiving turkey. Said turkey being Allan Carr’s notorious Can’t Stop the Music, a longtime guilty-pleasure favorite that, unlike most camp films in my “favorites” cannon, grows increasingly less fun to watch as time goes by.

A highly fictionalized account (and I stress fictionalized) of the creation of the gay-themed disco singing group Village People, Can’t Stop the Music, released in the summer of 1980, hit theaters at the worst possible time and under the worst possible circumstances. If Xanadu—that other 1980 summer musical release that tanked at the boxoffice—suffered from too much '80s faddism (roller skates, spandex, and leg warmers), Can’t Stop the Music looked and sounded exactly like a disco relic that had been gathering dust on the shelf since 1978. So significantly had the music and cultural landscape shifted from the time of its August 1979 start date to its June 1980 release, Can’t Stop the Music opened at theaters a literal, antiquated period-piece.

Thankfully, someone saw the writing on the wall early enough to jettison the film’s original title mid-production (Discoland: Where the Music Never Ends), but not early enough to tone down its already anachronistic glitter & amyl nitrate fueled “shake your booty!” overzealousness.

Valerie Perrine as Samantha Simpson

Steve Guttenberg as Jack Morell

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Village People

Bad timing also reared its head in that the release of Can’t Stop the Music—a self-professed family musical with a closeted, “don’t ask, don’t tell” gay sensibility—coincided with an emerging cultural conservatism (aka: The Reagan Era) that was anti-gay, anti-sex, and anti-drugs (the naive "Just Say No!" campaign started in the '80s). Can't Stop the Music came out, so to speak, during the early days of the AIDS epidemic (with the attendant groundswell of public anxiety associating it with the '70s sexual revolution and the drugs & sex lifestyle disco culture glamorized and marketed).

It also hit theaters in the wake of the earlier release of two controversial 1980 films with gay themes: Gordon Willis' Windows, about a homicidal lesbian; and William Friedkin's Cruising, a movie about a gay serial killer. Given the paucity of positive portrayals of gays in films, activist groups were wise to protest two films released within months of each other depicting homosexuals as homicidal maniacs.

Into this atmosphere of what appeared to be media-sanctioned homophobia came Can't Stop the Music, a gay film that came across as being duplicitously coy about that very fact.

CSTM's predominantly white male supporting cast of eye-candy hunklets, himbos, and twinks remains pretty much in line with how the gay community still tends to depict itself in the media.

Had Can’t Stop the Music been made with even a shred of the strength of its flimsy convictions, I’m sure its leering, “cocaine and Crisco,” homogenized ode to homosexual hedonism would have come under attack as well; but at least then the film's "out and proud" dialogue: "I don't judge people. I accept them" - and anthems like Liberation would have made a little sense.

But as it stood, Can't Stop the Music failed to take any kind of stand whatsoever, for producer Allan Carr knew that much more money could be made from within the closet than outside of it.

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Good, Clean, Wholesome Fun

With scenes like the above in a PG-rated "family" musical, Alan Carr sought to attract "knowing" gay audiences while simultaneously banking on mainstream viewers remaining clueless to the film's so-obvious-even-a-blind-mancan-see-it gay subtext. And why not? It certainly worked for the Village People themselves, who, even as recently as 2012 in the documentary The Secret Disco Revolution, made such eye-rolling statements as: "Our songs were never gay, we were just a party band!" and the absolutely mental "There was not one double-entendre in our music.

'In the Navy' was just about enlisting." Right...and Dinah Washington's " Long John Blues" is just about dental hygiene.

At a time when it would have made a powerful statement to have a really out, “We’re here, we’re queer” mainstream movie in the theaters (along the lines of The Ritz or The Rocky Horror Picture Show ) to counter the wave of homophobia that arose in the wake of the “gay cancer” scare of AIDS in the early '80s, Allan Carr, one of the most high-profile and powerful gay men in Hollywood (especially after Grease), instead gave the world a movie so selfnegating, so deeply in the closet and in denial about itself, Liberace could have been its technical advisor.

We know, James...we know

Although it didn't hit me as strongly in 1980 as it does now, Can’t Stop the Music, to an almost contemptible degree, suffers from a distasteful undercurrent of homophobic self-loathing and ideological selling-out running through it. In an effort to keep its many corporate sponsors happy (Dr. Pepper, Baskin-Robbins, Famous Amos Cookies, American Dairy Association) and to court the mainstream boxoffice that made Grease into such a mega-hit, Can’t Stop the Music systematically and schizophrenically undercuts every bit of the film’s laid-on-with-a-trowel gay subtext with an unpersuasive overlay of bland heterosexuality. Honestly, in spite of Can’t Stop the Music being about a gay-themed singing group formed in New York’s Greenwich Village featuring numerous coy allusions; acres of male flesh on display; and a multitude of homoerotic double and triple entendres - I don’t think the word “gay” is uttered even once in the whole film.

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Olympic Gold Medalist Bruce Jenner, making his film debut, here achieves the impossible by actually managing to look more ridiculous than the Village People

To paraphrase one of my favorite Judge Judy-isms, Can’t Stop the Music is a movie that doesn't know whether it’s afoot or horseback. It courts gay dollars with its setting, its music, its "Auntie Mame syndrome" supporting cast of flamboyant elderly actresses, and its virtual non-stop parade of beefcake. Yet it doesn't want the polarizing effect (at the boxoffice) of actually being what it is...a big budget, big ol' gay musical. Instead, it operates in a sex-neutral (Guttenberg’s character swears off sex until he becomes a success…how convenient), heterosexual-insistent (just WHO are those nondescript, lost-looking women clinging to the Village People during the “Magic Night” number?) limbo that makes no sense. As I mentioned earlier, at one point in the film, the Village People sing a song titled “Liberation,” but in the "Ain't nobody here but us straights!" context of the movie, what the hell kind of liberation are these guys even singing about?

Male starlet Victor Davis showing Steve Guttenberg and Bruce Jenner just how "not gay" Can't Stop the Music is.

In trying to be the all-things-to-all-people crowd-pleaser its sizable budget demanded, Can’t Stop the Music turned out to be not much of anything to anybody.

1970s gay/straight porn "star" George Payne jogs by (twice!) in the excruciating Guttenberg on roller skates credits sequence

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A must-read for behind-the-scenes details on the making of this rainbow-colored fiasco is Robert Hofler's 2010 Allan Carr biography Party Animals. Wherein we learn that Carr's desire to bring back the glamour of old Hollywood extended to reviving the casting couch. In an attempt to put a male spin on the old MGM "Goldwyn Girls" tradition of featuring beautiful girls as extras and bit players throughout the film; Allan Carr made ample use of a coterie of male dancers, models, hustlers, starlets, and party boys ("Cash or career?" was purportedly Carr's standard come on when meeting a handsome young man). We also learn that director Nancy Walker and Valerie Perrine hated one another, that sizable chunks of the film were actually directed by cinematographer Bill Butler (Grease, Jaws) and choreographer Arlene Phillips, and that Allan Carr harbored a near-Hitchcockian obsession with his heterosexual protegee, Steve Guttenberg.

I took this picture in the summer of 1980 not long after this billboard for Can't Stop the Music was unveiled on Hollywood's Sunset Strip during a red carpet ceremony on what LA's mayor declared to be "Can't Stop the Music Day." The Village People were granted the key to the city (or maybe it was to a bathhouse, I'm not exactly sure)

Because at the time all else for me was eclipsed by the end-of-summer release of Xanadu, I tend to forget that the summer of 1980 saw the debut of several musicals that have become lasting favorites. First and foremost was the splendiferous Xanadu, but I also fell in love with Alan Parker’s Fame and I adored the use of iconic R & B artists in The Blues Brothers. The heavily-hyped Can’t Stop the Music wasn’t very high on my list of must-see summer films mostly due to my general antipathy towards Grease (I know it’s considered a classic and all, but I just find it clunky) and my lack of fondness for the Village People (their anthem-like songs always sounded like Romper Room marching music to me, and, having grown up in San Francisco, their costumes suggested nothing more daring than your average ride on the Market St. F streetcar).

However, being the devoted disco maven I was (and remain), just the idea of a multi-million-dollar disco musical was too tantalizing a prospect to dismiss. Which brings me to the reason I was most excited to see Can’t Stop the Music: choreographer Arlene Phillips.

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Choreographer Arlene Phillips (Annie, The Fan) first came to my attention through her work in a series of fantastic TV commercials for Dr. Pepper. The top photos are from the 1975 Sugar Free Dr. Pepper commercial, "Penthouse" (see storyboard here), which bears a strong resemblance to Can't Stop the Music's "Milkshake" number. Even down to sharing the same set designer, Stephen Hendrickson.

We may not know whether he's gay, straight, or bi, but we know he's a Pepper!

Can't Stop the Music came under fire for its crass and blatant product placement

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM While my enjoyment of Can’t Stop the Music’s non-musical sequences has diminished significantly over the years, my affection for Arlene Phillips’ deliciously awful/wonderful musical numbers has increased, tenfold. I absolutely love them. Her cheesy “Las Vegas showroom by way of aerobics class” choreography fairly oozes with late-'70s sleaze, and her “What WAS she thinking?” staging has the staggering, jaw-dropping lunacy of Busby Berkeley at his most ingeniously demented. That these musical numbers are also monumentally tacky, done with a great deal of wit, and, like the film itself, possess an almost surreal lack of self-awareness, only adds to their appeal. Each time I have a chance to revisit the industrial glitter factory of “I Love You to Death” or that wholesomely raunchy paean to homoerotic health & fitness “YMCA,” my heart soars and a smile comes to my face. Well, maybe it’s more like a giggle and a smile. OK, let’s say it’s a kind of a chuckle and a grin. Oh, let’s face it, I’m usually laughing my ass off.

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Given how so many of Arlene Phillips' dance tableaus resemble photo shoots from Eyes of Laura Mars, it comes as little surprise that the late Theoni V. Aldredge, the designer of all those slit-skirt ensembles for Faye Dunaway, also contributed the costumes (with Jane Greenwood) to the musical numbers in Can't Stop the Music

Seriously, if it sounds as though I'm putting these musical numbers down, nothing could be further from the truth.

They're a delight and just happen to appeal to all my aesthetics, which more than one person has assured me runs to the cheesy and grandiose. They're more than worth the price of admission on their own.

PERFORMANCES Where to begin? What can be said about performances in a film where the amateurism of the neophytes and professionals is evenly matched? I like Valerie Perrine a great deal and she seems like an awfully sweet woman, but her (and there’s no other word for it) fag-hag role here requires a personality, not an actress. Ms. Perrine splits the difference by being neither.

No, that's not Tim Curry's Dr. Frank-N-Furter making a cameo appearance.

That's actress Marilyn Sokol attempting to channel Bette Midler's bawdy, "Bathhouse Betty" persona, but mostly just succeeding in embarrassing herself

And then there's Steve Guttenberg. Prior to this I'd always considered Todd Susman's underground newspaper

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journalist in 1971s The Star Spangled Girl to be the most annoying performance ever committed to film. Guttenberg wins by a landslide.

Striving for boyish exuberance, he gives a performance of such overarching hyperactivity that a mere lack of talent can't be the only answer (its like he's on crack). Never speaking when he can shout, always moving, eyes popping like Eddie Cantor, cords in his neck bulging, forming his words and using facial muscles as if to make himself understood by lip-readers on Mars...Guttenberg appears perpetually on the brink of popping a blood vessel.

Personal fave Jack Weston shows up briefly as disco proprietor, Benny Murray

The Village People do all their acting with their costumes. There being far too many of them for the screenplay to grant even the kind of interchangeable individuality afforded bands like The Dave Clark Five or Herman's Hermits in their respective film debuts, Village People often come off as visiting guests in their own movie. Which, in hindsight, comes off as pretty cagey. Their inability to project much in the way of personality makes it harder to affix blame.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY These days, when I watch Can't Stop the Music, it's with my remote close at hand, finger poised over the FFWD button, moving swiftly from one delightfully garish musical number to the next. They are totally awful, but I swear, I love them to pieces.

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YMCA Taking four days to shoot and featuring 250 dancers, athletes, and sundry bleached-blonde himbos, the YMCA number - a tribute to the gym sequence in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - was Allan Carr's most hands-on sequence (if you get my cruder meaning). Allegedly there exists an x-rated cut of the nude shower sequence which Carr commissioned for his private collection.

I Love You to Death The number that perhaps most resembles Arlene Phillips' work with her dance troupe Hot Gossip. A staple of the '70s UK TV program The Kenny Everett Video Show, you can see a slew of Hot Gossip videos on YouTube. Not surprisingly, they all look like outtakes from Can't Stop the Music.

Valerie Perrine Brings All The Boys To The Yard The Busby Berkeley-inspired "Milkshake" number really does a body good.

Choreographed for the camera in a kinetic series of barely-moving cutaways, close-ups, and inserts, it has to be seen to be believed. it's totally insane, completely over the top, full-tilt queer, and my absolute favorite 3 1/2 minutes in the film. Center blonde dancer (amongst so many) is Blane Savage, who portrayed Don in the equally ill-fated film version of A Chorus Line (1985)

THE STUFF OF DREAMS Can’t Stop the Music is kind of a strange movie to include in a collection of films I love, because, in many ways, I find the film to be rather cowardly and reprehensible. I want to just enjoy the movie on a Showgirls level…just escapist, mindless, campy fun…but as a gay man, I find myself unable to get past the fact that Can’t Stop the Music is (to me) such a colossal sellout. A bunch of rich gay men make a movie full of gay people, gay references, and gay

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music, and yet it spends all its time trying to avoid the issue. Or worse, covering it up. This movie is emblematic of every behind-the-scenes closet-case working in the film business.

Paul Sand, the Davis Schwimmer of the '70s, plays record executive Steve Waits

I watch this movie sometimes and all I can see, at worst: gay self-hatred; at best: the kind of fence-straddling, middle-market project that remains willfully clueless of the far-reaching cultural ramifications of perpetuating gay "invisibility" under the guise of broad audience appeal.

And as an ostensibly “family-oriented” entertainment that thinks it’s being racy by slipping in coy and winking gay references at every opportunity, Can’t Stop the Music is a homophobe’s dream (nightmare) of the subversive cult of a “gay agenda” being secretly foisted upon unsuspecting straights. Look, a red bandana! Look, men playing innocent grab-ass in the shower! Hey, we're shoehorning in subtle-as-a-sledgehammer quips like, “Anybody who can swallow two Sno-Balls and a Ding Dong shouldn't have any trouble with pride!”

Joining Jenner and Perrine in this shot are Broadway star Tammy Grimes (who sang a song in 45-Minutes from Broadway whose name "So Long, Mary," could well serve as this film's subtitle), and Altovise Davis (Mrs. Sammy Davis Jr), last seen shooting a spider off of her hand with a revolver in Kingdom of the Spiders.

The only reason I still rank Can’t Stop the Music among my enduring favorites is because, as I review my career as a dancer, I have to admit that my biggest influences have been choreographers Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, David Winters (growing up, I was a big fan of Hullabaloo), and Arlene Phillips. Which should give you a pretty good idea of how scary (and fun) my dance career has been.

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Can't Stop the Music is so bad it's difficult to imagine it would have been much of a hit even at the height of the disco craze; but there exists the possibility that it could have grown into an affectionately-remembered, cult hit among gays (like Rocky Horror), had it at least acknowledged the community which both created the Village People and was responsible for its initial success.

In the terrific Christopher Guest Hollywood satire, For Your Consideration..., there is a scene in which the makers of the film "Home for Purim" - a movie about the distinctly Jewish holiday, are told to "Tone down the Jewishness" in order to appeal to a broader market. Clearly poking fun at Hollywood's legendary lack of backbone, I laugh, but how satiric is it, really? One can easily imagine a similar gay-centric scene being played out during the formative stages of bringing Can't Stop the Music to the screen. This perspective severely undercuts my ability to wholly abandon myself to film's campy sense of fun. And as it stands now, Can't Stop the Music has become for me a little like one of those off-color jokes you initially laugh at, only to regret it later.

Can't Stop the Music Addendum: 11/11/13 Yay! After I first posted this essay critiquing Can't Stop the Music on its closeted gay, mainstream agenda and total lack of a single (acknowledged) gay person in the film; my eagle-eyed sweetheart spotted what may be the film's sole gay couple!

Although their presence is used as a kind of "We're not in Kansas anymore" sight-gag for Bruce Jenner's straightlaced character to react to as he walks the streets of Greenwich Village, there is nevertheless a prominently featured gay couple shown with their arms across each other's shoulders in a PG movie. I love it! And I'm thoroughly amazed that I hadn't seen them before. Perhaps I was just too distracted by Jenner's "nice box" to notice.

Copyright Š Ken Anderson

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