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, ...
2025-11-27 17:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Are the witches of Wicked queer? How about the witches in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz? There's a lot of rumors and speculation about the actors in both films, with some sources claiming Glinda actress Billie Burke and Wicked Witch actress Margaret Hamilton were both friends of Dorothy. So let's take a dive into the actual factual history and see what holds up.
Backup link to the video: https://youtu.be/2P5INPtS3g4 2025-11-23 17:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post
I am delighted to welcome back a friend of the Sewers, film critic and holiday aficionado, Linoleum Knife’s Alonso Duralde. His book, 2025-11-20 22:20:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Did director Joe Pasternak and actor Anthony Perkins REALLY eat spaghetti with their hands? In this week's bonus video, we're tackling an extremely bizarre Hollywood mystery. In a documentary about MGM, Esther Williams (the synchronized swimming lady) tosses an off-hand comment about Pasternak putting on quite a show in the commissary; and it's oddly close to an accusation about Perkins that appeared in a variety of gossip magazines. My theory is that Pasternak was a prankster and Perkins was...
2025-11-16 17:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
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 Wicked films. He was also music director for the Academy Awar...
2025-11-13 17:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post
MGM musicals are known for being big, brassy, sassy musical humdingers. They're big and bold and bright and colorful and cheerful and ... very, very, very gay. Why is that, though? Well, it's thanks to a group of folks known within the industry as "Freed's Fairies."
Backup link to the bonus video: https://youtu.be/UgRCAWDDtCk
2025-11-09 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris podcast is Trung Le Nguyen, author of the new graphic novel Angelica and the Bear Prince. Trung’s books emerge from his lifelong love ...
2025-11-06 17:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello there! I wanted to get the bonus video out a few days early this week so you can join us for a very special two-day livestream on Twitch this weekend. This Saturday and Sunday, we'll be watching scenes from Young Frankenstein and comparing them to the screenplay -- looking at what was on the page versus what made it into the film. That's at noon pacific, Saturday and Sunday, at https://twitch.tv/mattbaume.
And on ...
2025-10-31 16:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest this week has been giving a lot of thought lately to what he was born to do. Wellington Love is one of the producers of the new documentary I Was Born This Way, which tells the story of Archbishop Carl Bean. That might not be a household name, but you’re certainly familiar with his work and the people he...
2025-10-30 16:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris
is Jim Farmer, festival director of Atlanta’s Out on Film fest. Jim’s a longtime arts reporter in Atlanta, though he got his start in journalism doing just-the-facts newsgathering — a beat ...
2025-10-16 16:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Some very fun gossip in this week's bonus video: Back in the 1940s, the actor who voiced Disney's Prince Charming had a not-very-secret affair with the actor married to The Bride of Frankenstein. Bill Phipps was the man behind Cinderella's Prince Charming, and he met a fellow actor named Charles Laughton backstage at an Actor's Lab performance. Charles was married to actress Elsa Lanchester at the time (who, in addition to being the Bride, was also Katie Nanna in Mary Poppins... and ...
2025-10-12 16:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Now that we’re in October already, it’s a fine time to reflect on the uncanny grasp that horror has in the hearts of so many queer people. So for this week’s episode, we’re heading into the Sewers archives for a chat with director Jeffrey Schwarz, for whom horror is just one small slice of the story. Jeffrey’s made a lifelong study of film, starting with an early job editing the documen...
2025-10-09 16:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post
The film Andy Warhol's Frankenstein is not actually, as the name might suggest, the work of Andy Warhol. (Aside from one visit to the set and his attendance at an after party.) So how did his name wind up on this weird piece of ... let's be polite and call it "art"? And is the star of the film, Joe Dallesandro, really the "first overtly sexualized male in the movies" as many around him claimed? All that and more in this week's bonus video!
And join us today for a livestream of...
2025-10-05 16:00:33 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris podcast is writer Mark Waddell. His novel, Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World, comes out next week on October 7 — a queer story about an office worker whose career advancement involves wo...
2025-10-02 16:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
As you may have seen, I have a new video premiering this weekend about the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman, which features an iconic performance from a then-obscure actor named Raul Julia. Thanks to my research into Raul’s career, I’ve had another of his iconic roles on my mind lately — that of Gomez Addams in the Addams Family films.
So for this week’s Sewers...
2025-09-25 16:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Jennifer Lopez has been waiting her whole life to be in a great big MGM-style musical... and now she is! In this week's bonus video, we're taking a look at some fun stories about how she wound up in the new Kiss of the Spider Woman, which looks shockingly good despite being a mid-budget indie film. Plus, the story of how her green dress led to the creation of Google Image Search. And what's up with that thing on my hand?
Backup link to the video: 2025-09-21 16:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is David Secter. As a student in the 1960s, David bluffed his way into getting equipment, money, and crew to make a groundbreaking queer film called Winter Kept us Warm. And despite the fact that he went in with zero filmmaking experience, the movie wound up becoming the first English-language Canadian film to screen at Cannes … and we...
2025-09-18 18:36:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Of course we love Raul Julia for his Gomez Addams. But there's so much more to his career: Making Shakespeare Puerto Rican, dabbling in a sort of pre-The-Matrix cyberpunk movie, a recurring role on Sesame Street ... and of course, his later role in Street Fighter. So for this week's bonus video, we're taking a look at some of his fascinating overlooked roles.
Backup link in case the video doesn't play: https://youtu.be/LUB...
2025-09-14 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
I’m chatting with two guests on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week: TV producer David Moor and historian Dr. Lee Arnott of the delightful podcast The Problematic Gaze — that’s “gaze” as in an intent stare, though they’re the other kind of gays as well. David and Lee both grew up in ...
2025-09-11 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Back in the 1980s, the guys who wrote Conan the Destroyer wrote an X-Men film that was supposed to be the launch of a Marvel movie universe ... but then the studio fell on hard times, the script was shelved, and the project was lost to the sands of time. But not completely lost, because I dug up an ooooold magazine article with a detailed synopsis of the movie. And so for this week's bonus video, I will regale you with a tale of what might've been: Xavier as an action hero, evil East...
2025-09-07 16:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
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 puts to work in his sermons … and that inspired him and his husband to propose to each ...
2025-09-04 16:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
I have two guests on this week’s Sewers of Paris, both of them connected to a secret society of mutants. JP Karliak is the voice of Morph on X-Men ‘97, among many other roles; and Anthony Oliveira is a writer of many Marvel comics, among many other books. I spoke to them both about why the X-Men hold particular importance for them — part of my research for a new video abou...
2025-08-28 16:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Sometimes, you can get your way through polite negotiation. And other times, you just have to be a real jerk about it. That's what happened with Northstar, the first openly gay superhero at Marvel: Top executives went "ballistic" at the idea, back in 1992, but some brave writers and editors stood up for the character and managed to get their way after an especially aggressive meeting. This week's bonus video is all about Northstar's coming-out ... and about how Disney's Marvel films are only ...
2025-08-24 16:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is David Duffield, who simultaneously lives in the past, the present, and the future. David’s work as a historian excavates queer histories that had previously been withheld from public view. It’s a project that gives those of us alive today a connection to the lives of people who came before us. And it’s inspired, in part, by David’s connect...
2025-08-21 16:00:17 +0000 UTC View Post
It's hard to imagine anyone other than Hugh Jackman in the role of Wolverine, and yet ... it very nearly wasn't. And it's even harder to imagine anyone other than Ian McKellen playing Magneto (successfully) ... and yet it nearly wasn't him, either. Who do we have to thank for these two actors landing their iconic roles? Oddly enough, it was a little bit thanks to Tom Cruise, and a little bit thanks to a young low-level executive named Kevin Feige.
For this week's bonus video, we'll dive...
2025-08-17 16:00:22 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is Jon Kinnally, author of the new memoir 2025-08-14 16:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
There are two different versions of But I'm a Cheerleader -- one that looks great, and another that looks absolutely terrible. And of course, the terrible version was the only one you could get for many years, because the studio that produced it threw out all of the original elements. But there was one pristine copy hiding away somewhere, and the story of how it was tracked down for a beautiful 4K restoration is the topic of this week's bonus video!
Plus: An X-Men mystery; Fleckman's id...
2025-08-10 16:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is from the future. Sean’s the host of the TrekCulture podcast, an expert on all things Star Trek, and his name is even the inspiration for a Star Trek character in one of the novelizations. That’s fitting, because it was a novel that helped point Sean in t...
2025-08-07 16:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post
There are a lot of "ex-gay" "therapists" who say they can "cure" homosexuality. But they more you hear about their supposed treatments, it's hard not to notice that a lot of them seem really really really gay. So in this week's bonus video we're taking a look at some of the weirdest, the gayest, and also a few that are truly horrifying. (And a heads-up: This is going to include some talk about sexual abuse.)
Plus, a tiny little sneak-peek at my next video -- about the 2000 X-Men film, a...
2025-08-03 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
You are almost certainly acquainted with my guest on this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris podcast — through the episodes he wrote of Will & Grace, Cybil, Frasier, and the show he helped create, The Chris Isaak Show. Bill was a theater guy who get his foot in the door of TV thanks to a few lucky breaks and some colleagues who recognized how fu...
2025-07-31 16:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post