Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Anxious Dave

I've got one movie left in my Netflix queue. It's Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. It's listed as "Short Wait" in my queue, and I'm anxious as to whether it'll arrive before Tuesday. I'm going crazy! I somehow doubt any video stores in Saskatoon will have the dvd. I haven't seen the movie since 1996 or '97, back when it was the CFCF Late Movie one night in Montreal.

Having cable takes the fun out of late movies, because great stuff is playing 24 hours a day on the Independent Film Channel and Turner Classic Movies. Right now on IFC they're showing At Close Range, a 1986 crime flick starring a young, and therefore really cool, Sean Penn (Have you ever seen Bad Boys? It's amazing!) and a mustachioed, and therefore really Walken-y, Christopher Walken. Holy crap, look at the cast listing at IMDB: Mary Stuart Masterson, Chris Penn, Kiefer Sutherland, Crispin Motherfucking Glover, and Stephen Geoffreys.

"Stephen Geoffreys?" you may be asking. "Is he the guy who ... yeah, I have no idea who he is. Who is he?"

Stephen Geoffreys played the sex-obsessed altar boy in Heaven Help Us who passes out when he sees all the girls sticking out their tongues for Holy Communion. He played "Evil Ed" in the Fright Night, which I remember being really good. He played the guy who gets laid in Fraternity Vacation, which also starred a young Tim Robbins. (Hey, if you saw these movies, you'd go, "Oh, it's that guy!" He's ... distinctive.) And yeah, he's the guy who played bit parts in mostly decent movies and then went right into a two-decade career in gay porn. Check it out, some of these sound great! Gay Men in Uniform: really, how much more specific a title do you need? Mechanics Bi Day, Lube Job Bi Night: now that's what I call a work ethic. Cock Pit: did it really take until 1997 for a gay porn movie to be called "Cock Pit"? The Big Screw-Up: why, that sounds like something Dashiell Hammett could have written! Transsexual Prostitutes and Transsexual Prostitutes 2: I'm guessing his character was so rich and multi-layered in Transsexual Protitutes that he had to come back for the sequel. Or maybe he likes being in porn. Who am I to judge? It's not like gay porn producers are beating down my door to get me to perform in Seamen Training Day. I mean, I'd probably say no, but it'd be nice to be asked.

Back to the non-gay-porn At Close Range with Penn and Walken and Glover: I'm Tivo'ing it, which, coupled with cable tv, is really taking the fun out of late movies. Even though it's only tv, I'm nostalgic for when I didn't have cable and I could expect a late movie. I've seen so many great movies late at night that I might never have heard of otherwise. Dark Star, Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains, the aforementioned Dirty Mary Crazy Larry -- see, these are the kind of low-rent movies that are cheap enough for last-place local tv stations to buy the rights for, and the kind that are too low-rent to be shown on "respectable" broadcast and cable stations. It's kind of a shame that infomercials are replacing late movies on broadcast channels, but I felt the same way when Oprah debuted at 4 pm on channel 7, thereby taking the slot that was home to the occasional Afterschool Special. Ah well, such is life: out with the old (teens with problems) and in with the new (housewives with problems).

Best line from an Afterschool Special? "I've got this thing inside me ... it's called gonorrhea."

I hope Stephen Geoffreys has seen that one.