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I asked myself the other day: why do I never go to the movies anymore? Why don't I even watch movies on DVD? Once, I loved to go to the movies. I would see anything. Many decades ago, I recall I cut a class at college to see a dud of a film, called, I think, John Loves Mary, and I was the only person in this vast movie palace. I should have gotten the message.

Growing up as a gay boy, I understood, as did many others, that a familiarity with the history of cinema was one of the required courses to hold your own in faggot conversation. Think Christopher Durang's History of American Film-- the perfect distillation of what happens when a gay man is immersed in movie culture and then writes about it. In fact, as an odd coincidence, I suspect Chris and I were often in the audience at the Harvard Square Cinema at the same time, reveling in those double features of old Mae West or Marx Brothers movies. See where it got us?

I

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often think that movies are just a trick played on the young, who, as a group, are part of the disenfranchised, all of whom are vulnerable to this medium. Chris and I were also coming of age when film got very arty and its rep took a steep rise up.

Another attraction of attending the movies is that you had the chance to pick up other men or have sex with them right in the movie theater. This is nothing new. I suspect men had sex with each other in the secret corners of the theaters of classical Greece while the latest boffo hit by Sophocles was on the boards.

While in college, I started working in a movie theater part-time. We were the first in town to have Saturday midnight movies, then considered a daring concept (also requiring me to go down to the office of the city censor in Boston, as it was then called, to purchase a "Lord's Day License" for 20 dollars, as showing movies early on Sunday was a violation of the law.) Various underground stars of the cinema came by to screen and discuss their films: Nam June Paik, the Kuchar brothers, and others. It was fun. I worked as an usher, a projectionist, and finally a manager. While a projectionist at a drive-in movie theater-- remember those outfits?-- I'd show six movies a night, three each on two screens. Most memorable was Deadly Weapons, starring Chesty Morgan, screened at the Medford Twin Drive-in on a snowy January night (four cars showed up-- I counted). It took fortitude. Work is work.

Just as no author is a hero to his bookseller, no film is a favorite to its projectionist. My last job in the industry was as manager of a gay men's porno cinema, which was interesting. It closed in 1983. Still, at my latest situation, running my bookstore, I have visitors, gentlemen of a certain age, who drop by and regale me with their adventures in my previous dark venue. I still have my glasses from the time we premiered the first gay men's porno movie in 3-D, Heavy Equipment, which created the effect of having Jack Wrangler's erect cock float off the screen and into the theater and near your face. A moment worthy of selection into the Gay Hall of Fame-- do we have one of those yet and, if not, why not? (Imagine being Executive Director!)

After my exciting years dealing with the moving picture wound down, I like to return to books with the fixed image-- pictures! It's funny: I've sold lots and lots of the series Dieux du Stade, four DVDs of beautiful naked French men, presented as, allegedly, rugby stars, which some may well be. Who's asking? A book based on the shoot for one of the DVDs was published, in the USA market titled Locker Room Nudes, and a number of men have told me they prefer the book to the DVDs.

I was listening to an interview with Annie Leibovitz the other day-- it was a rebroadcast on the occasion of the publication of her book which was published last fall. Annie was terrific. So's her book. Full of the regular celebrity grist, but also full of her family and Susan Sontag. I sat down with a book of photos by Horst the other day and was lost for about an hour. It's amazing the power of photography, and of course Sontag wrote about all this long ago. Photography gives us not only the sensuous quality of the image, as with Horst, but the historical content. The new volume, Men of WWII: Fighting Men at Ease, put together by Evan Bachner, who did the earlier title, At Ease, is a collection of photos of US GIs in the Pacific Theater (back to theaters again!). These were photos taken on the government nickel, in a photo team put together by Edward Steichen, who had free access to the young men who defeated Hitler and Tojo and some of the other bad guys. The new book is as remarkable as its predecessor. Something not done in Vietnam or our subsequent wars. Too bad.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com