DOASKDOTELL MOVIE REVIEW of Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss, and Kiss Me Guido, and Kiss Me Kate

Title: Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss

Release Date: 1998

Nationality and Language: USA, English

Running time: 92 min

MPAA Rating: R

Distributor and Production Company: Trimark, Revolutionary Eye

Director; Writer: Timmy O’Haver

Producer: David Moseley

Cast:

Technical: Widescreen

Relevance to DOASKDOTELL site:

Review: This movie has also been called “Billy’s First Screen Kiss.”

This is the best of the "gay" movies in 1998. Sean, a young gay photographer, having become unemployed, starts his own studio in an entrepreneurial venture. He meets a "perfect 10" waiter, Gabriel - and there's one problem - Gabriel's straight. Or is he? Nothing more tantalizing than a gay man having a crush on a straight man whom he perceives as more "powerful" or "charismatic." Sean gets Garbriel's career going - to the point that Gabriel makes it big time and then falls in love with another man himself. Along the way, Sean gets one shot at Gabriel when he finds himself in an intimate situation and winds up getting to caress a hairless torso. Funny thing, Sean turns out to have the most "charisma" after all himself.

The movie has some odd camera shots, with characters staged from a distance, as if in some kind of model world.

Kiss Me Guido (1997, Paramount/Capitol, dir. Tony Vitale, 86 min, R) is another comedy about a first gay kiss. Here Frankie (Nick Scotti), an Italian American straight “stud” with a bit of homophobia, rents an apartment with a GWM, which he thinks is a “guy with money.” Sorry. Well, Frankie is getting into acting and gets a chance to take gay actor Warren’s (Anthony Barrile) place. There is a real catch: he will have to kiss another male actor on stage. (Is Frankie the “Kate” or the “shrew” of the next movie?) Indeed, he gets the willies and vomits for a while before going on stage (not a good thing for an actor). The kissing scene is not particularly noteworthy, but an elderly woman in the audience faints anyway. In real life, actors are having to do this more often (as do the actors in “Brokeback Mountain”)

Kiss Me Kate (1953, MGM, dir. George Sydney, 110 min, PG) may be the original “kiss” movie,. It’s rather complicated, as it merges Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” with a story about two divorced actors brought back together by Cole Porter (Ron Randall). They’ll sing some of the play to his music, on a very artificial, Globe-like stage, all ready for 3-D (I don’t know if there was another musical in 3-D). Katherine, the shrew, is Kathryn Grayson, and Howard Keel is Petruchio. At one point, Kate sings “I Hate Men!” (the song even mentions hairy chests), and Petruchio has a clever line that raising in heir takes a lot more commitment than raising cane. The film was shot in the less common Ansco Color.

Related reviews: GLBT films, Brokeback Mountain

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