Take My Book—Please!

Posted by Michael Musto at 3:30 PM, April 23, 2008

Please buy my book, La Dolce Musto! It's a brand, spanking new collection of my greatest rants and ravings through the years! All right, it actually came out a year and a half ago, but it must still be available on Amazon, and it's probably just a quarter by now. I swear to Christ the book got rave reviews ("Rapier wit...Musto is masterful at cutting through thickets of hype to get at something true"—Chicago Tribune) and the publisher was actually all set to come out with a follow-up—they even printed promo cards that everyone at a Tony awards luncheon last year got in the gift bag (see above)—but then out of the blue, they fucking dissolved that particular label! And it was not at all because of me—blame Adrienne Barbeau's book first!

Anyway, Grand Central Publishing was interested in taking over publication of the sequel, but they must have also derailed or something because I never heard back from them. (Maybe they're mad that I declined to write a book they were desperate for me to do about the Mickey Mouse Club. True story.) And some time ago, the LGBT publisher Alyson Books told me they don't have good luck with compilations, so they took a pass and wished me lotsa luck. Thanks, gay community! So here I am, a celebrated international author with a lovely best seller all ready to go, but no contract. But why am I telling you all this? I should be saving it for my next book.

Closeted TV Star Raymond Burr Lived a Life of Lies!

Posted by Michael Musto at 8:45 AM, April 21, 2008

My emails are generally clogged with shit about erections and elections and constant updates on what amazing thing Ashlee Simpson just said on Ryan Seacrest's radio show. So I was thrilled to finally get something urgent and important--to me, anyway! It said there's a book coming out in May by New York Post TV writer Michael Seth Starr, all about the secret life of the weird and famous Raymond Burr! Who? Raymond Burr, silly! He was a mega TV star--picture Kiefer Sutherland, but with more gravitas--whose off-camera script was apparently even more elaborate than the ones he acted out on the tube. In fact, the guy's intricately detailed straight life was every bit as much of a sham as that of...oh, any number of people. Listen up to the release and learn it, kids:

"Hiding in Plain Sight is the first full biography of Raymond Burr, one of the most popular TV actors of all time. He was the lead actor on the top-rated TV shows Perry Mason and Ironside, which between them ran uninterrupted for 20 years—a feat that has never been equaled.

"What is largely unknown is that Burr was leading a secret gay life at a time when exposure would have been career suicide. So to deflect questions, he created an elaborate cover story for himself as a grieving husband and father. He claimed to have been twice widowed—he said his first wife died in a plane crash and his second marriage ended with his wife's tragic early death from cancer. And there was also a dead son—little 10-year-old Michael who lost his brave battle with leukemia. Neither of the wives nor Michael ever existed. But that didn't stop these lies from being perpetuated again and again, up to and including his obituary in the New York Times. Why Burr chose this tactic can never really be known, but Starr offers some compelling theories."

Gosh! Thank God we've come so far that today's stars can all live completely open, honest lives without any deception whatsoever. Right, wink wink?

Buttocks Over Broadway: Naked Book To Fight AIDS

Posted by Michael Musto at 12:34 PM, April 8, 2008

Unfortunately, they didn't have Broadway Bares back in the days of Ethel Merman. That might have turned me gay even sooner. But nowadays, the annual bash is a sweaty, writhing spectacle of hot bods that has long provided a welcome part of choreographer/director Jerry Mitchell's body of work, as it were—AND it's raised kazillions of dollars for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS in the process. And now, all that naked flesh has somehow morphed into a very heavy coffee table book. Backstage Pass (Rizzoli; June 22) is shaping up as a nipply, butt-cracky peek into all the clotheless magic that has long made Broadway stand up and explode. My favorite part of the book description: "It includes as little text as costumes worn in the show." Sounds like my kind of read! But if you're looking for those lost Merman nudes, look elsewhere--maybe in Ernest Borgnine's upcoming book?

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Broadway Bares

New Book Claims Dick Cheney Was Young Once!

Posted by Michael Musto at 9:00 AM, April 1, 2008

Everybody loves young Dick, especially Michael Jackson, so USA Today op-ed columnist Bruce Kluger and his writing partner David Slavin have done a book called Young Dick Cheney: Great American, a faux bio for faux children about a faux, I mean very real, American hero. Kluger tells me, “It's a send-up of those historical bios we were force-fed in elementary school (e.g. Young Abe Lincoln), only this one's about our notorious Veep. I'm not crazy enough to think we'll get a rise out of Dick over the book, but we may have a shot at his wife.” A shot at his wife? Hopefully not with her hubby’s hunting gun! No, what Kluger actually means is “Our depiction of Lynne is (how do I put this?) sexually inflammatory.” Hmm, THAT should get a rise out of Dick.

Forty Movies Worth Seeing Before Sex and the City Comes Out!

Posted by Michael Musto at 3:00 PM, March 27, 2008

As a raging film queen who will gladly suck in anything on celluloid from Greed to Norbit, I love a book that celebrates underappreciated films while providing tips on how to fill all those lonely nights without suggesting you give Sweet Smell of Success an 100th go-round. John DiLeo's "Screen Savers--40 Remarkable Films Awaiting Rediscovery" (Hansen Publishing Group) is just that kind of kooky collectible. Dealing in movies that have been "underseen, dismissed, or taken for granted," DiLeo trumpets dusty gems like Portrait of Jennie, the 1948 fantasy in which Jennifer Jones' lack of depth actually works ("because Jennie is a question mark, an apparition") and the '99 wartime buddy flick Three Kings ("a reverberating capper to the Gulf War and an alarming prelude to the disastrous Iraq War"). He also makes a strong case for Cover Girl ("It is not a great musical, but..."), Pretty Poison ("a startlingly funny, offbeat mix of smiles and chills"), and something called The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg ("Ramon Novarro's finest performance"!). His glaring omission of Howard the Duck will only disturb people who think of Psycho as a romantic comedy.

Get Down and Boogie at the Latest Club Library?

Posted by Michael Musto at 3:00 PM, March 25, 2008

Books and nightclubs generally don't go together any better than Vicodin and smack do. Yes, Rapture Cafe is an East Village bookstore/hangout that has a lot of parties, but the titles there are generally wildly light and trashy (like MY book) and besides, they're diligently covered up for the bashes, lest the gays get some education that might spoil the fun. But now, fine literature and clubbing/ho-ing come together for the first time when Mansion New York (the big dance club, formerly Crobar, at 530 W 28) introduces a library for the high-minded strays that want some artistic appreciation in between drunken bumping and grinding on the dance floor.

As the release states, "Within the 10,000 square-foot Main Ballroom with 35-foot dome ceiling resides the powerHouse Library, the centerpiece of the mezzanine. Featuring a selection of powerHouse Books' latest releases and classic backlist titles, the Library will host an exclusive series of launch parties and private receptions in conjunction with art shows in the Gallery."

So next time a clubbie barrels up to you and says, "I'm gonna read you!" you hold up your copy of John Gruen's powerHouse book about Maria Callas and say, "No, bitch. I'm gonna read THIS! You should try it sometime."

Foster Hirsch and The Crème de la Preminger

Posted by Michael Musto at 12:00 PM, January 14, 2008

I'm worshiping Foster Hirsch's Otto Preminger, The Man Who Would Be King, a gorgeously researched biography of the erratic, moody, but sometimes brilliant Hollywood director who wielded a whip made of chutzpah. Otto's one of the main luminaries of my bad movie club thanks to some of his stellar misfires, like Skidoo (a lovably failed psychedelic comedy with a trash can ballet and Groucho Marx as a mobster named God), Such Good Friends (an erection-toppling marital satire featuring a b.j.-getting James Coco and a nude Burgess Meredith), Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (a feelgood film about a burn victim, an epileptic, and a disabled homosexual), and Hurry Sundown (one of the most high-lariously misbegotten racial epics ever made—though who can forget Burgess Meredith, fully clothed this time, muttering about 'a syphilitic old [n-word] woman'?)

The hunky John Phillip Law has the amazing distinction of being in two of these kooky clinkers—Skidoo and Sundown—and having survived them, he gets to reveal a couple of fascinating things in the book. First that Jane Fonda felt she did her best work in Hurry Sundown! (I know she meant at that time, but even then, she'd done better! What about Cat Ballou? That actually won an Oscar and I honestly don't believe Hurry Sundown did.) Also, that Law had turned down the immortal Midnight Cowboy (presumably the Jon Voight role) to do the loudly bombing Skidoo! Ouch. Not since Doris Day decided to costar in Caprice instead of The Graduate has there been a choice so. . . right for my bad movie club.

By the way, Film Forum's current series of Preminger's work omits Skidoo and Hurry Sundown, which I guess are considered embarrassing splotches on the face of contemporary civilization, and I'm madder than a disabled homosexual about it. I will never grace their doors again! But wait, all's forgiven! The series just showed Bunny Lake is Missing, Otto's twisty black and white 1965 thriller starring Carol Lynley (who runs through the whole film, probably looking for the Poseidon), Laurence Olivier (who's half awake), Noel Coward (as an s&m fetishist with a little dog), and those ersatz Beatles, the Zombies. Bunny is a lost child who turns out to have been abducted by crazy Keir Dullea, the pretty boy Coward once wrongly shot down with "Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow." After the screening, the still-here actor talked onstage with author Hirsch about how the real nutjob was Preminger, with his withering sarcasm and bullying screaming fits. "Remember Stalag 17, when he played the German commandant of the concentration camp?" asked Dullea. "That was Otto on a GOOD day!" Dullea also claimed that on the set of Exodus, Preminger grabbed young actress Jill Haworth, shook her violently, and ironically yelled, "Relax! Relax!" (I'm starting to perhaps understand why Haworth didn't show up for her scheduled appearance at Film Forum the week before.) Dullea's best day on the set of Bunny Lake? "The day I found out I got the lead in 2001: A Space Odyssey!"

Trouble Boy Thomas Dolby Strikes Again

Posted by Michael Musto at 10:32 AM, January 10, 2008

Don’t tell me I don’t read! I scan the obits every day to look for apartments. And I regularly devour the less challenging parts of the National Enquirer and some of the lighter profiles on bigmuscle.com. Oh, and also publishers‚ catalogues! They’re much easier than actual books, and if you turn the page you really don’t miss anything.

One interesting new book I found out about in the Kensington catalogue is The Sixth Form by Tom Dolby, the super rich guy (thanks to Dolby sound) who’s SO well off he put an expensive Avedon portrait of Truman Capote way off in a corner of his West Village apartment. (I’ve been there. Swell place.) Not that Dolby hasn’t forked over his dues. Way back in the ‘90s, he was an intern right here at the Voice, and used to chase me and Lynn Yaeger around with moist eyes and his tongue out. I was afraid he’d turn out to be a total Eve Harrington and end up taking over the place and firing me, but instead, he went on to do a service website called citytripping.com and then write a novel, The Trouble Boy, which I must have liked because I’m quoted on the cover calling it a “racy romp of fabulosity, fierceness, scandal, and enlightenment.” Tom’s new book, The Sixth Form? It’s a dark tale about secrets and lies at a Massachusetts prep school. Is it gay? Well, as Dolby explained to me via e-mail, “For years after The Trouble Boy, whenever people heard I was writing a novel set at boarding school, I think they assumed lots of salacious sex and boys romping in gang showers after the lacrosse game. But this is more realistic. (Sadly, I never had any sex while at prep school.) It's still gothic, sexy stuff, boys stealing kisses in graveyards, pot-fueled fantasies—though the main character, a senior in high school, is actually straight. His best friend, though (who—plot spoiler—does turn out to be gay), has a mother who's a big fag hag and has his first sexual experience with a very hot guy 10 years his senior. All in all, I think there should be plenty to keep all my gay fans happy, though the book primarily takes place in the uptight, WASPy world of a New England prep school. Then again, what could be more gay than that?” Sounds like a racy romp of fabulosity, etc. (But no sex at prep school? That’s sick!)

This week's La Dolce Musto: "A New Crisis for Britney's Sister?"