“You know when you get a cinder from a barbecue right on the end of your nose,” Christopher Guest says as Corky St. Clair in Waiting For Guffman, explaining his choice to send burning newspapers through a small-town theater’s ventilation system to enhance his live production of Backdraft. He flinches, he winces, he minces. “You kind of make that face,” and then he makes that face, a face of surprise and discomfort, “you know, that’s not a good thing.” Waiting For Guffman turns 25 this year. It’s a brilliant work of semi-improvised comedy, a classic, a stand-by, a movie I love and quote and laugh at every single time, and one that increasingly makes me kind of make that face.
In ways I have tried to make peace with for a long time now, it’s an eighty-four minute gay joke. And you know, that’s not a good thing either.
Guffman, for those who haven’t seen it, is the story of a small Missouri town called Blaine as it celebrates its 150th anniversary with a misbegotten musical revue called “Red, White and Blaine.” Local drama teacher Corky St. Clair writes and directs the show, casts a game but talent-deficient group of locals, and in his eagerness to return to the New York theater scene that rejected him, invites some Broadway producers. When one potential buyer, the titular Mort Guffman, promises to attend, the stakes get higher and the downward punches get harder.
Guest had been playing this kind of character for a while. He had an unnamed character in Season 10 of Saturday Night Live in the ’80s, where I would imagine the seed for Corky St. Clair was planted. Like Corky, the synchronized swimming choreographer on SNL has a wounded weariness about a failed theater career, a patient enthusiasm for working with amateurs, and the gay accent. When I say “the gay accent,” you know what I’m talking about. It’s a sharpness in the S sound, a front-of-mouth sibilance, and while not all gay men have it, all gay men have been haunted by it. It is the easiest way for a bully to make a gay joke, because if he does the voice just right, he doesn’t actually have to make a joke at all; the punchline is that gay people exist.
You monitor your walk and your tone and your gestures when you’re a young gay boy—as I was in 1984 when that SNL short film aired—and if you want to fit in and stay safe, you have to straighten out that S. And as you try, there are gay characters like this to laugh at and learn from. “I’m gonna, you know, kill myself with a Veg-O-Matic,” we laughed that Monday at school, that few of us who watched it closely. We laughed maybe a little too hard.
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Either Corky is a different person altogether or this guy bought a wig and moved to Blaine, but the funny part is still the same: he’s effeminate. That’s not his only quality; he’s also flamboyant, dramatic, fussy, and about twenty other adjectives that you put in a character breakdown when you don’t want to say the word “gay.” He’s unaware of his own lack of talent, too convinced of his own intelligence, not great with recalling a Zen riddle. He’s a buffoon, as are nearly all of the characters in Waiting For Guffman. He’s someone to be laughed at, which, fine, so were Spinal Tap. But it’s what we’re laughing at that increasingly bothers me.
It’s not just that Corky is married to an offscreen and out of town “Bonnie,” who may or may not exist but whose pantsuits he definitely buys. It’s not even the Judy Tenuta t-shirt. It’s that when he is casting “Red, White and Blaine,” he reaches out to Blaine bad boy Johnny Savage. Savage has no discernible talent or interest in theater, but he is played by ‘90s indie dreamboat Matt Keeslar, so he is therefore hot. Corky woos Savage for the show and maybe something more. “Oh, you get off at 5,” Corky says in the garage where Savage works. “That’s a long day,” he flirts, as Savage’s father watches in horror. Later, at a cast gathering, Corky gives Savage his private number and tells him not to share it with anyone. He goes for it, whether out of horniness or the bone-deep despair of being a gay man in a small Missouri town before Grindr. Corky is audibly gay, he has pursued the stereotypical gay career path of “drama teacher,” but when it comes to the actual sex part of homosexuality, he is either in deep denial or he’s low-key predatory, and his fumbling for love and human contact is the joke. Look, the gay guy thinks he’s people.
It bothers me, and it bothers me that it didn’t bother me in 1996. I was 25 then, in New York City and fresh out of the closet. I still thought I had to convince myself and my family and the world that I wasn’t one of those kinds of gay guys who would draw attention, still felt a need to convince my straight male friends I wouldn’t harass them. Guilty as a creep or a clown until proven innocent, is how I felt. That’s what happens when all your gay characters are creeps and clowns. It’s a lot of work.
I don’t remember the way I felt when I first saw Waiting For Guffman. I laughed, of course, because it’s brilliant. The level of white-wine sweat on Catherine O’Hara in the Chinese restaurant, Parker Posey’s desire to meet Italian men in Manhattan and watch TV with them, every single moment of Fred Willard. I see Corky now as a little bit offensive, but I didn’t then, because I couldn’t then, the way a fish doesn’t know he’s in water. A lot has happened in the last 25 years (Matt Keeslar is a urologist in Oregon right now, for example, no, really). But the idea that popular culture can do anything for gay audiences other than make them hate themselves is about forty-five minutes old. I’m glad we made the shift, and I wonder what the kids who’ve grown up on the other side of it will make of this movie.
I’d still recommend they see it. They may not love that the movie makes you laugh at the characters’ lack of talent. They may be too evolved to laugh at Parker Posey fanning away at a single chicken wing on a filthy grill like we did. They may groan when Corky, denied the massive funding he’s asked for, tells the town council he’s going to “go home and bite [his] pillow,” the way I do now. But somehow I think they’ll still love it. It’s the most quotable movie of all time, Caddyshack for theater people. There is an essential kindness way down deep beneath the punching down; everybody gets some version of a happy ending. And the performances, good lord. There are more layers and levels in the way Catherine O’Hara says “Yes, I see it” in this deleted scene than in most entire movies.
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There also might be a bit of wisdom I didn’t catch until recently. Near the end, after the show’s premiere, the town pharmacist, played by Michael Hitchcock, goes to congratulate Corky. He’s been dazzled by Corky throughout the movie, and he might have been in “Red, White and Blaine” himself if auditions hadn’t been held during business hours. On the way out, the pharmacist gives Corky a sly, lustful look. A full up-and-down. Elevator eyes. On first viewing, it registered as one last gay joke, but now I see it as something more. The pharmacist likes Corky, he sees him fully and is attracted to him, but Corky doesn’t notice. Whether out of self-loathing or obliviousness or both, Corky throws himself at the hot straight boy and misses the perfectly good man right in front of him. It’s a smart, silent little comment on what a lifetime of shame will do to a person. A moment of real empathy.
Or maybe it’s just one last gay joke. It’s hard to say. I’ll think about it more the next time I watch it.
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