Change Your Image
chrisslavinec
Reviews
Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2017)
I Came Away Conflicted
If I come away with mixed feelings, generally I feel like a documentarian has done a good job if his initial intention was to create a "fly-on-the-wall" style documentary. Following the titular character, Scott Bowens, the documentary recalls his experiences as Hollywood's premiere male madame for over three decades.
On one hand, it really captured the queer and sexual underground of Hollywood's golden age: under the razor thin veneer of everyman relatability and conventional conservative morality that the Hollywood Studio system tried to project, there was lasciviousness, opulence and hedonism. On one hand, the materialist in you thinks "damn, did he get to live the life." On the other, just with simple questions and strategically-framed shots, you get the feeling that this is an incredibly damaged man that has never dealt with his trauma. Particularly, his downplaying of child molestation almost to the point of non-existence, candidness about bestiality, apparent PTSD from the war/losing his brother and becoming a male prostitute almost immediately thereafter, Scotty might be the poster boy for escapism and denialism through excess. While some might say that focus on his compulsive hoarding seems like filler, I disagree. If one understands the psychology behind habitual hoarding, especially in the way he does it--actively collecting used toilets on the side of the road, for example--it does visually make you feel like he's clinging onto something he's lost and never reconciled because he can no longer live the gregarious escapist life he used to.
Without doubt the man is still charming in his 90s, and seems genuinely honest, totally disinterested in embellishment. At the very least that makes for an interesting story. I feel like the documentary could have been more fleshed out though. Specifically, I don't think it set the exuberant, hopeful tone of booming post-war America as much as it could have, nor the moral puritanism. McCarthyism, the vice squads and Red/Pink Scare made it truly dangerous to even be gay or smoke weed in the 50s, and that environment of fear and mistrust that set the stage for Bowens success was not adequately expounded upon. It also would have been nice to see how his role changed through the 60s and 70s, considering both the sexual revolution and the fact that Scotty apparently sold the gas station and become a party bartender.
Pray Away (2021)
Interesting Look at the History of Conversion Therapy and Some Key Players
If you're looking for 2+ hours of politically-charged, tear-inducing trauma porn with an outspoken moral message, this isn't the documentary for you. While it takes an obvious stance against the highly damaging quackery that is conversion therapy, it is more a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the lives of people directly involved in conversion therapy. There are many other documentaries if you would like to flog a dead horse as many reviews here seem to suggest: religion and conversion therapy bad, LGBTQ+ are victims and we need political action now.
Instead the documentary focuses on several people, all of whom were involved (save one) in some capacity with Exodus International (hereafter EI), the oldest and largest institution advocating conversion therapy in the world during its time. The main subject is a lesbian about to get married to her partner, and through the film we learn about her experiences as both a participant in the program and later being groomed to be a spokesperson/executive for the quackshack. Her foil in the film is, uh, how do I explain this....? A man, who first came out as gay, then as transgender, transitioned (partially?) to becoming a trans woman, then transitioned back and is now the leader of the "Freedom March," an ex-gay event and associated organization.
Other subjects include the founder of Exodus, as well as two "high-ranking" players. The documentary explores the roots of conversion therapy, how EI leveraged pop psychology of the time to appear more credible and various other political strategies they employed, described through the eyes of those closeted gay people who lived and propagated it.
Again, if you're looking for bloodlust and this documentary didn't satisfy you, you probably missed the point. Seemingly all of the subjects were queer, and it's a salient look into the manifestations of homophobia of decades past through today, and the far-reaching and harmful consequences it has. If as a viewer you require moralizing ethical statements, this is probably not the doco for you. It's more subtle in its inferences.
The documentary ends with sombre music and telling looks from the "ex-trans" person, as the gay former leader of EI says: "as long as homophobia exists in this world, some form of Exodus will emerge. Because it's not the organization and it's not even the methods that they use; it's the underlying belief that there is something intrinsically disordered and change-worthy about being gay. As long as that continues to exist, there will be some form of this."