Bonus video! The gay activist who caught a real-life murderer in The Exorcist
Hello there!
I've got some more fun artifacts from my Yale research trip to share with you -- this time, some scribbles in scripts and early drafts from the sitcom Ellen.
Plus! A group of very effective lesbians shutting down a particularly homophobic & antifeminist speaker on the Dick Cavett show. You can watch the full video of their action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJxXH_Gysrs
And I have a BIZARRE story about a gay media activist named Arthur Bell, who did a ton of great work in the 1970s. He's mostly known for influencing media depictions of queer people. But he also had a role in catching a murder, with connections to the movie The Exorcist and also Cruising!
I'm sprinting to get a new video out to you by next week (or, if things go off the rails, the week after). In the mean time, please come join us on Discord for watch-alongs of My So-Called Life every Thursday night! Here's instructions for joining the Discord server: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-patreon-for-100466127
Backup link to the video in case it doesn't play: https://youtu.be/YhRNI2h-Quk
Comments (6)
I'm not sure if you watch American Horror Story (if not, that show is like 5 seasons past it's prime) but last years season had one of the main characters that I guess is based on Arthur Bell.
Oh I haven't seen that -- I'll have to take a look.
I was reading a bit of Pal Bateson's Wikipedia page. William Friedkin's directing Cruising might not have been entirely coincidental. The second paragraph of the article includes this passage. "The experience inspired Friedkin to make the 1980 film Cruising which, while based on a novel written a decade earlier, incorporated in its storyline the city's leather subculture, with which Bateson had identified." But how accurate that part of the article is I couldn't say.
That's fascinating. I would love to know how Friedkin did his reasearch into the leather scene!
Matt, you might trying contacting a professional comic book presser. If they can’t help you out, maybe they know someone who can?
I'm not *entirely* convinced that Bateson committed more than one murder -- he confessed to more, but like the movie Cruising, the police told him that if he confessed to more and helped clear their docket there was a better chance that he'd serve less time (weird as that is). The earlier murders were also different MOs, and the whole thing smacks of just trying to conjure up a monster to pin everything on instead of actually investigating things thoroughly. Also, to make this entire thing even more of an ouroboros: The murders they wanted him to confess to were possibly inspired by *the book* Cruising. Gay men in the village were found stabbed to death and their underwear was set on fire, similar to the book. So you have a book that might have inspired murders and then the accused murderer inspired some plot changes to the film adaptation of the book.