Directed by George Cukor

Written by Dudley Nichols and Walter

Bernstein. Based on Louis L’Amour’s Heller

with a Gun

Starring: Sophia Loren, Anthony Quinn,

Steve Forrest and Margaret O’Brien

100 minutes

Available on Paramount Home Video

A throwaway line in The New York Times year-end DVD roundup set me thinking. Critic Dave Kehr, pleased to see that Paramount Home Video finally released George Cukor’s neglected Heller in Pink Tights, referred to it as “Hollywood’s first gay western.” Since it was a slow week at the movies (you already know what I think of Big Momma’s House 2 and Nanny McPhee), I decided to riff on Kehr’s insightful comment and direct my readers attention to this colorful footnote to the gay old West.

Sophia Loren (in a blonde wig) plays the beautiful headliner of a theatrical troupe that always manages to stay one hoof ahead of the sheriff and make it across the state line. Company manager/boyfriend/co-star Anthony Quinn is forced to take on notorious killer Steve Forrest (real-life brother of Dana Andrews) to help circumvent the savages between Cheyenne and Bonanza. Unbeknownst to Quinn, Forrest won Ms. Loren in a poker game, and he’s just accompanying them long enough to collect his property. Heller doesn’t offer much in the way of an original storyline, but we’re not in this one for its plot.

This is a triumphant example of style as (not over) subject. Hollywood mores being what they were would never have allowed implicit gay content, yet as director Todd Haynes notes: “Homosexuality, while behind-the-scenes, was indeed evident in the making of the films…. While thematically restricted, a gay or ‘feminine’ aesthetic was free to pervade the profuse visual style: the clothes, the colors, the lavish decor.”

Eons ago, I attended a screening of a vintage three-strip Technicolor print, and if I blink hard enough, the vibrant colors come back in a form reminiscent of an acid flashback. Even on television, the shot of Loren greeting the townsfolk by raising a black dress (with lavender piping) and lilac petticoat to expose her high-button shoes and horizontally-striped purple stockings is a textured Technicolor extravaganza. Later on, the Indians ransack the ensemble’s two wagons, transforming their campground into an orgy of iridescent fabrics set flapping against a goose-down snowstorm.

I briefly met Mr. Cukor at the 1977 Chicago International Film Festival. Favorite moment: In a flash of blinding ignorance, emcee Roger Ebert dared to utter the words Star Wars in the presence of The Master. When asked what he thought of the film, Cukor grumbled: “Star Wars? What the hell do I care about Star Wars?” I told you the guy had impeccable taste! Too bad Heller suffered a near-similar verdict. When it was over, I walked up to Mr. Cukor and asked if he would be gracious enough to sign my Heller one-sheet. “Where the hell did you get this thing?” He found a blank spot on the 30 x 40 poster and signed his name as if he were endorsing a check. “Terrible movie,” he said. “It was a mistake. Did you know that Hoyningen-Huene worked on it? I’ll be goddamned if you’ll find a picture with better color!”

Written and directed by Ol Parker

Starring: Piper Perabo, Lena Headey,

Matthew Goode and Darren Boyd

94 minutes in CinemaScope

After decades of movies stereotyping homosexual men as poodle-carrying interior decorators and lesbians as diesel dykes vocally channeling Herman Munster, we all hankered for a time when cinegays could be depicted as nothing more than three-dimensional characters woven into a well-told story. Imagine Me and You liberally demonstrates that all sexual orientations are entitled to sappy romantic comedies.

If there is a niche for Piper Perabo to fill, she’s yet to find it. The actress has taken the indie route (Whiteboyz, Slap Her… She’s French) and been afforded the full-blown Hollywood treatment. In case the multiplex screen-wraps Coyote Ugly, Rocky & Bullwinkle or Cheaper by the Dozen(s) escaped your gaze, suffice it to say that she displays a tremendous degree of onscreen talent and appeal in all three. Taste must enter into it eventually, and her choice of projects could eventually land her a one-way ticket to Parker Posey-land.

Ms. Perabo is no stranger to Sapphic cinema. Check out her strong work – and steamy boarding-school love scenes with Jessica Pare (while roommate Mischa Barton looks on) – in Lost and Delirious. This time around, she affects a convincing British accent as Rachel, a woman the press notes describe as “a sort of anti-Bridget Jones.” After five years of togetherness, Rachel and her best friend, Heck (Matthew Goode), decide to go normal and get married. Rachel is in her late 20s, devoted to her groom-to-be, and we are led to believe that she never so much as thought about another woman until meeting Luce (Lena Headey), the floral arranger at her wedding. As for Mr. Goode, this is the second time in almost as many weeks the poor bloke drew the Ralph Bellamy card. (Scarlett Johansson leapfrogs over him to get to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in Match Point.)

At the ceremony, florist Luce is given the red-carpet treatment. Since when do the hired help at a ritzy shindig drink and mingle, let alone dance, with invitees? In an even more flagrant display of bad taste, Luce and Rachel are assigned a sickly sweet meet-cute. While grabbing for the ladle, Rachel’s unaccustomed wedding ring falls in the punchbowl and superwoman Luce saves the day by fishing it out. A further attempt to transform Luce into a dark, mysterious heroine (she walks away from the ceremony artfully framed in distant silhouette) adds nothing more than a pretty transition scene.

Most of the film’s secondary male characters are overdrawn, sex-crazed jerks. As Heck’s boss Gordon, Rick Warden’s lascivious post-nuptial advances on Luce would rankle Abel Ferrara, and I’m not talking strictly about their visual presentation. His slave-to-his-dick best friend, Coop (Darren Boyd), boasts, “They teach the birds and bees about me.” The cocksman later avenges his chum’s betrayal by calling Luce a “dumb slut” to her face. Even a customer at Luce’s shop, in search of the perfect romantic bouquet, leaves happily clutching a phallic cactus.

The script does achieve an occasional degree of verbal wit that makes the rest of it look even more tired by comparison. There’s the delightfully annoying little sister played by class valedictorian for the Virginia Weidler Academy for Smart Ass Child Actors, Boo Jackson. Her unstoppable mission to resolve such unanswerable questions as, “Why is the alphabet in that order?” and, “Do penguins have knees?” makes for an amusing running gag. And not since Spencer Tracy has an actor brought such anticipatory emptiness to that hoary staple of wedding comedies, the father of the bride. Darren Boyd’s hilariously underplayed asides are the only reason to see this film.

Openly straight filmmaker Ol Parker (the press notes immediately leak that he “fell in love with [his] wife at first sight”) wants desperately to fashion a “bells, whistles and fireworks” kind of romance. While the script does provide more than a few bright exchanges, Parker seems to have watched (and not seen through) too many ol’ movies. In time, the greenhorn writer/director makes obvious his inability to steer clear of formulaic reefs.

It is a long hour and a half before the inevitable unveiling of The Turtles’ “Happy Together.” Whatever feelings stir inside the viewer at the conclusion derive from faded memories suddenly restored by the golden oldie. It certainly wasn’t the film’s routine race-to-the-airport-in-order-to-prevent-my-lover’s-departure resolution. Imagine seeing Imagine Me and You, and leave it at that.

1/2