Matt Baume

In the early 1980s, a young actor named Danny DeVito had a grudge against the network ABC, and he settled it the way any reasonable person would: By blowing up ABC headquarters. That started some dominoes falling that would eventually change the face of television, with shows like Cheers, Seinfeld,

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is David Lauterstein, the founder and CEO of Nasty Pig. You probably know his company for their sexy fetish-infused street wear, so you might not expect that David’s background is in writing poetry. But the closer you look at his approach to designing clothi

For this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris, we have two guests: Andrew Klaus-Vineyard and Daniel Talbott are the directors of a new documentary short called Welcome to Tool Shed, which opens to the door to an iconic leather bar in Palm Springs. They’re just back from showing the film at Cannes,

To mark the recent release of the second Wicked film, for this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris we’re revisiting my 2020 interview with Dee Michel, author of the book Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love the Wizard of Oz. Dee’s book is an in-depth examination of queer Oz fandom, wh

The second of the Wicked films comes out later this month, and so for this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris podcast we’re jumping into the archives to hear my 2017 chat with Tony winner Stephen Oremus, who was the music director for Wicked on Broadway and conducted the orchestras for the two Wi

My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is the Reverend Joseph Peters Matthews, the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick Episcopal Church in Lynnwood Washington. Joseph’s path to the clergy took him from the small-town South to New York City, along the way developing a love for musical theater that he p

My guest this week is culture writer Erik Piepenburg, author of the new book Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America's Gay Restaurants. It’s a nationwide tour of the places queer people gather to eat, and how those places satisfy more than just our literal hunge

Hello there! So, you've just been through a bank heist. Robbers have held you at gunpoint for hours, the FBI rescued you, and ... what happens next? Do you have to go in to work the next day, do you get overtime, and how does anyone know that YOU weren't one of the bank robbers? In this week's bonus

As you might’ve heard, I have a new video up on YouTube about the film Dog Day Afternoon, and a queer bank robber who stunned New York way back in the 1970s. For this week’s podcast episode, we’re diving into the Sewers of Paris archives to explore queer life (and, occasionally, crime) in New York o

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is author and architect Robert Raasch, whose recent debut novel The Summer Between is a coming-of-age adventure set in Greenwich Village of the late 1970s. It’s a topic that Robert knows well, having lived through that time himself — making the most of

Hello there! It's hard to believe how many mistakes John Wojtowicz & company made when they decided to rob a bank in August of 1972 -- the heist that was eventually dramatized in the film Dog Day Afternoon. That movie includes a few of their goofy missteps, but it leaves out some of my favorites: Th

Hello there! The film Dog Day Afternoon opens by saying that it's based on a true story, and it is: The events of the movie unfold almost exactly as they did in real life, with a bisexual bank robber holding up a bank and telling everyone that he needs the money to pay for his wife to get (in the pa

When you think of great queer allies in Hollywood, Al Pacino may not be the first name that springs to mind. But it turns out that he not only had a surprisingly progressive attitude towards LGBTQ+ folks, going back decades ... but he secretly did some very important charitable work on behalf of que

It's 1978 and director William Friedkin needs to do a little research, so he strips down to a jockstrap and walks into The Ramrod with a friend who's carrying a concealed revolver. In this week's bonus video, I have the weird story of how Friedkin found himself nearly nude and surrounded by orgiasti

Hello there! Imagine it's 1992, when being an openly gay person is tremendously dangerous in most of America -- and you've volunteered to have your big queer life broadcast to millions of homes. Norm from season 1 of The Real World had absolutely no idea what he was signing up for, but he knew enoug

Hello there! I have a juicy tale of revenge in this week's bonus video! It's the story of how Lance Loud made the most of a very unpleasant dinner with an insurance industry CEO. Plus! A little correction/update about what may have been some intentional deceit behind the scenes of An American Family

Hello there! For this week's bonus video, I want to draw your attention to a figure who appeared ever so briefly on PBS back in 1973: Holly Woodlawn, an icon of queer theater, a Warhol superstar, and a magnificently weird storyteller. Holly was a trans woman who hitchhiked from Florida to New York a

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Ian Carlos Crawford, who you may know from the podcasts Slayerfest 98 and My Bloody Judy. As a youngster Ian felt something awakened in him by powerful women like Storm and Buffy — but it wasn’t until moving to New York that he discovered it was a f

My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is jazz musician Richard Cortez, whose new album Mood Swings comes out in one month, on October 24, 2024. Richard’s love of music was instilled early in life, but he hit some road bumps on his first attempt to move to New York and make it big in the arts. Th

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Mark Segal, who started making waves in the 1960s and hasn’t stopped since. Mark was there for Stonewall, he was there for the organizing of the first Prides that followed, and he was ready to get arrested for the cause of gay liberation — and was m

My guest this week on the Sewers of Paris podcast is Dr. Jason Durant, a New York based therapist who kicked himself out of the closet with some help from jam bands and a crush on a straight boy. It was discovering The Grateful Dead while at a Christian college that helped him come to terms with him

Hello there! For this week's bonus video, Ollie and I have a story for you about the time Jeffrey Katzenberg nearly ruined The Little Mermaid, and how Howard Ashman fought tooth and nail to stop Disney execs from making one of the worst calls in movie history. Plus! A montage of New Yorkers absolute

You've probably never heard of the Workshop of the Player's Art, but this grungy little 99-seat theater had a colossal impact on American culture -- and helped save Disney animation in the 90s. In this week's bonus video I want to tell you about how a bunch of scrappy theater kids managed to turn a

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is author Rasheed Newson, a TV writer who got his start on the show Lie to Me and has gone on to write for The 100, Narcos, Bel Air, and more. Last year his debut novel, My Government Means to Kill Me, made a big splash — it’s the story of a young gay

This week, March 17, marks 54 years since the premiere of the groundbreaking film The Boys in the Band. Set in a New York apartment in the 1960s and based on the play by Mort Crowley, it was one of the first major movies to feature majority-queer characters. And to mark that 54th birthday, for this

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is New York comedian Justin Randall, who was a very different person when he moved to the big city a few years ago. Back then he was a closeted actor, and the idea of coming out seemed like a distant dream — and not a good one. But things changed when

Hello there! In this week's bonus video, we're exploring the wild, creative, often-cutthroat party games invented by puzzle-masters Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins. Stephen of course you know from West Side Story, Into the Woods, Company, Sweeney Todd ... and Anthony you know from Psycho and it

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Frankie Miranda, the first openly gay president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation — a nonprofit serving the Latino community. Frankie’s background isn’t what you might expect for the head of a political organization. When he moved from Puerto Rico

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast spent eight years auditioning for Drag Race before he was accepted and his life completely changed. Alexis Michelle, aka Alex Michaels, was a theater performer when he discovered a love of drag, and gradually figured out how to turn his hobby into his

My guest this week is Ben Sander, creator of the character Brini Maxwell, a drag hostess who’s helmed shows about crafting, cooking, and homemaking, for decades. It all started with a little cable access show that he produced with some help from his mother, before becoming a cable TV series, with li

My guest this week was present for some of the earliest days of what we now recognize as reality TV — he helped produce Gay Riviera, a 2001 Bravo series about queer dating. Kevin Haddad never expected to find himself behind the scenes of a series that helped developed the rules of reality television

Last week I spoke with Bret Shuford, one half of the couple known as the Broadway Husbands. This week I’m talking to his husband, Stephen Hanna, about leaving home to pursue a ballet career and discovering just how physically grueling that world could be — not to mention surprisingly hostile to sens

My guest this week is Bret Shuford, one half of the couple that calls themselves the Broadway Husbands. Bret met his husband Steven while they were both working on Broadway, and they started a blog about their lives together before embarking on their latest adventure — raising a kid. I’ll be talking

Welcome to June, Sewers of Paris listeners. Every year for Pride month, I like to revisit my conversation with a man whose tales of old queer New York are absolutely captivating. He earned the nickname Tree thanks to his six-foot-five stature, and he’s been a part of New York’s gay community going b

There’s a new book out this month about the history of The Women’s House of Detention, a women’s prison that was located just across the street from The Stonewall Inn, that played a role in the 1969 uprising, and that for better or worse shaped queer culture in New York’s iconic gayborhood. The auth

My guest this week is David Pevsner, writer, actor, and erotic blogger. His book Damn Shame, a memoir of desire, defiance, and show tunes comes out in January (it’s available for pre-order now) and catalogs his adventures on Broadway and on TV, as an escort, and as a naked Tumblr star. It all starts

My guest this week is Craig Johnson — director of the movies Skeleton Twins and Alex Strangelove, among many other projects. His creative interests straddle two very different worlds: Troubled suburban families, and weird creepy monsters … which maybe aren’t so different after all. Fortunately, he g

My guest on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week is Jeffrey Masters, host of the podcast LGBTQ&A. He moved to LA with a plan to make it big as an actor, which doesn’t always work out for the best — and for a time, it looked like things were going south as he found that his Shakespearean training le

My guest on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week is Fran Tirado, who you might recognize as the host of Food 4 Thot. Fran grew up in a sheltered religious community, and it was a chance encounter with gay Greek myths that helped him break out. Now he’s dedicated himself to a different kind of scrip

On tonight’s episode of The Sewers of Paris: The Wizard of Oz, The Brady Bunch, and a never-completed sitcom starring Diana Ross. My guest this week is TV writer Stan Zimmerman, whose credits include episodes of The Golden Girls, Gilmore Girls, The Brady Bunch Movie, and the gay kiss episode of Rose

This week’s guest is John Epperson — also known by his stage name, Lypsinka, who you might’ve seen in the documentary Wigstock, in the movie Black Swan, and gracing New York stages from the legendary Pyramid Club to Lincoln Center. John moved from small town Mississippi to New York to chase a dream

My guest this week is Rob Urbanati, a New York playwright and director. He had a unique upbringing — he grew up openly gay in a small suburb in the 1960s, and people were generally accepting. That gave him an unusual freedom to explore the gay scene, the hippie scene, the club scene, and the drug sc

Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. This week’s guest, Terry LaBolt, was suggested to me by a Sewers of Paris listener, and I’m so glad that they did. Terry has an absolutely amazing collection of stories from across his career, starting as a young kid transfixed by musical theater, then later

As we reach the conclusion of a particularly busy Pride month, I wanted to dive back into the Sewers of Paris archives for a conversation with someone who knew Greenwich Village in the years before Stonewall. The Village is the gay enclave that was the model for many of the enclaves we know today, a

Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. Fifty-one years ago, a riot against police brutality helped kick off the modern Pride movement, and on this episode we’ll hear from someone who remembers it. He earned the nickname Tree thanks to his six-foot-five stature, and he’s been a part of New York’s

My guest this week is Dee Michel, author of the book “Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love the Wizard of Oz.” Dee grew up in the 1950s with the threat of the red scare looming over his family — his parents met at a Communist Party meeting, and there was the constant threat that the fami