Hacks: Disgraced comedian decides to turn lesbian, gay leather dude spirals, and there are some jokes. With bonus Devon Sawa

 

I've been avoiding the recommendation of Hacks, on MAX, because the icon shows two ladies in bikinis, and who wants to watch a tv show about computer hackers in bikinis?  But yesterday I casually looked through the episode list, and saw what looked like a black guy at a gay leather bar.  

Not many black guys into leather -- in years of going to the Faultline in West Hollywood, I only met one.  So maybe this show is worth checking out after all.

Turns out that the title is a misdirection. Hacks is an obsolete term for writers who churn out incompetent but popular trash,  In this case, the hack is Deb Vance (Jean Smart), a Vegas lounge lizard trying to revise her snarky 80s-style standup for a more sensitive generation.  Her head writer and confidant, Ava, had her own standup career cancelled after an insensitive tweet.  I'm reviewing the gay leather bar episode, 2.4, "The Captain's Wife."

Scene 1: At a dusty farm, Deb is filming an infomercial, selling strange-looking socks. Her bus driver, Weed, keeps turning on the air conditioning. Her photographer, Damien, notes that she forgot the American flag print. "Stupid f*king American flag."  Lots of presumably gay characters here: Weed is played by a very butch Laurie Mecalf, and Damien by Mark Indelicato.

Head writer Ava wants to stay behind during Deb's upcoming gig on a gay cruise, because she's afraid of water, and can't swim.   "You're going. Wear a life jacket."

And forget all the sensitive nonsense: Deb's going to do her old stuff, the classics.  "The gays get me." 

Scene 2: Swishy guys in a club bathroom gossipping and snorting cocaine. Marcus  (Carl Clemons-Hopkins, below) puts on a business suit: it's 7:00 am, and he has a breakfast meeting across town.  I remember staying at a sex club all night.  They put out a breakfast buffet at 6:00 am.  They ask him to stick around for his mental health.  He refuses, but he lets them score some of his addies (Adderall, a stimulant used to treat ADHD).

Scene 3: Boarding the cruise ship, Deb wonders why there are so many ladies in line. Famous comedian Margaret Cho, the last cruise's headliner, is just leaving. She tells Deb that the audience was mediocre, but the gay sex was great.

"Wait -- I thought this was a gay cruise."

"It is.  A lesbian cruise."

Uh-oh.  Gay men love Deb, but lesbians hate her.  She doesn't understand why. Ava suggests "the hundreds of thousands of jokes at their expense that you've told over the years."

Scene 4: At the cruise ship bar, Ava is approached by a grabby, hand-kissing, way over-eager lady horndog. She's not actually freaked out.  I wonder if she is a lesbian, too? Wikipedia lists a girlfriend and a boyfriend. 

Meanwhile, Deb calls her agent, Jimmy (Paul W. Downs), to complain about booking her on a lesbian cruise.   He's busy working on a residency -- a permanent casino gig.  "How about Terrible's Casino?"  "No way -- too far from the Strip."  

There actually was a Terrible's Casino, though I can't imagine why someone would choose that name.  It closed in 2020.

Next Deb chides Ava for having fun instead of writing some lesbian jokes.  "You speak lesbian, right?  Cause you're half?"  I don't know what that means. Maybe a lesbian mother and a straight father? 

Scene 5: Back in Vegas, Marcus, the gay leather bar guy, gets home to find two middle aged ladies on his couch. One is his mother.  "What are you doing here?" he asks angrily. "I told you I needed to get work done today." They came to pet his dog and upbraid him for spending all night at the club. He yells at them for trying to control his life.  

Scene 6: Ava is trying to dump someone's ashes into the ocean, when a lady approaches to flirt and ask her to the "She-ano Bar."   Cut to Ava getting ready, telling Deb about the Olympic athlete on board. Girlfriend going to get her some lady jocks.  She invites Deb to come along as her wing-person.  Nope, but Deb is willing to fix her outfit.

As they are bonding, Ava wants to know: with all her jokes about how terrible sex with men is, has Deb ever considered being with a woman?  "Nope.  I like men.  I wish I was gay, because it would be a hell of a lot easier."  Are you crazy, lady?  Let's start with your Sunday school teacher telling you that God hates you, and work our way forward.

Ava calls her out on her straight entitlement, and Deb agrees that it might not have been easier to like girls -- back when she was a kid in the 1960s. But she got a crush on John Lennon of The Beatles and never looked back.

"But why do you like men?"  I was asked that a lot, back when coming out meant a barrage of stupid questions. You like who you like, idjit. You don't have any control over it.

Ava concedes that "your sexuality is not a choice," but Deb still should try to figure out why she is straight.  "Maybe you aren't really attracted to men, you're attracted to their power." 

Scene 7: Convinced to try it out, Deb goes to the She-ano bar and cruises some lesbians.  The next morning, everyone at the breakfast buffet is friendly, and she has embraced lesbians as a potential audience: "They love women, and I'm a fabulous woman." 

Left: Former teen heartthrob Devon Sawa, whom Deb has sex with in another episode. 

Scene 8: Marcus at the club, dancing his butt off with his swishy friends He's dressed as a BDSM bottom, but it's not a leather bar, it's an old-style gay disco. 

He runs into Wilson -- according to wikipedia, his ex-boyfriend.  The breakup has resulted in his downward spiral.  He wanted to call and say "I love you," but he's blocked all of Wilson's social media profiles and deleted his number.  Wilson is concerned about his drug use, but doesn't want to get back together.

More Deb and a lot of Devon after the break

Agent Elvis: McConaughey as the King, Cavalero as a drug dealer with a bulge, and Gary Coleman as a dick with a dick

 Agent Elvis (2023) features Elvis Presley (Matthew McConaughey) interacting with some of the real people and events of the 1960s, like Timothy Leary, Howard Hughes, and the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, but as a secret agent, working for the mysterious Commander (Don Cheadle).  Episode 1.3 has a Tony Cavalero sighting.

While filming A Change of Habit (1969), Elvis hears about the Moon Landing, and, upset that he's not going, decides to take out his frustration on some drug dealers.   His assistant Bobby Ray (Johnny Knoxville) tells him that Flyboy (Tony Cavalero), who hangs out in the studio parking lot, selling maps to movie stars' homes, actually sells cocaine.   His handler tells him that they still have scenes to shoot, but he rushes down to the parking lot.

Why is Flyboy dressed as a pimp to sell cocaine?  He explains that drug dealing and pimping have an intersecting clientele. 

Who is his cocaine supplier?  Flyboy doesn't want to say, because "snitches get stitches," so Elvis steals his clothes, ties him up in the back seat of his car, and sics his ape companion, Scatter, on him.  Faced with having his head bit off, Flyboy tells him.  

With Flyboy trapped in the trunk, Elvis enters a sleazy apartment building.  His handler appears again, ordering him to get back to the studio to film the remaining scenes. Besides, taking down drug dealers won't get him on the Moon Mission: "No matter what you do, it's not going to turn you into an astronaut." 

Elvis doesn't listen: he beats up the drug wholesaler and his henchmen, but Scatter kills them before they can tell him about the big cocaine shipment coming in.

More after the break

"Reefer Madness,": Marijuana hysteria, demonic bulges, a dinner date with Satan, and Christian Campbell's cock

 

I've shown many classes the 1936 film Reefer Madness.  It was originally released as Tell Your Children, a cautionary tale about the dangers of marijuana.

There's a strong gay subtext: drug dealer Ralph (Dave O'Brien) sees high schooler Jimmy (Warren McCollum), murmurs "Nice!", and practically licks his lips in anticipation.  

Wrangling an introduction, he says "Nice to meet youuuuuu!" with a lascivious leer, then invites Jimmy to the soda shop, where he will try to get him hooked on the psychosis-inducing weed in a parallel to how gay men were accused of recruiting boys.

After Jimmy is tricked into taking a puff of "the evil weed," he is plagued by instant addiction, psychotic rambling, uncontrollable sexual desire (the most horrifying to audiences of the day ), drunk driving, and finally murder.  It seems laughably sensationalistic today, but in fact Harry J. Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1963, devoted his entire career to feeding the flames of the panic.  As late as the 1950s, marijuana was considered more dangerous than heroin. 

The movie was placed on the exploitation circuit, officially meant to educate viewers about the "dangers" of the practice, but really drawing crowds interested in gawking at the degradation. In the 1970s it was discovered by the hippie art-house crowd, who would watch while high for an ironic twist.  

In 1998, Reefer Madness: The Musical appeared off-Broadway, eliminating the redundant characters and upping the camp.  Christian Campbell (left) played Jimmy, lured from his "wholesome" heterosexual chastity by drug dealer Jack (Robert Torti, top photo) and cohort Ralph (John Kassir).  

In addition to the gay subtext, there was a lot of beefcake, with the super-muscular Jimmy stripped down to his underwear and a chorus of semi-nude male and female devils.

Film beefcake, bulges, and frontals after the break

"Tell Me a Story", with lots of bulges, butts, sleazoids and shootings

 

Tell Me a Story (2018-), on CBS and Vudu. "A re-imagining of classic fairy tales":   Well, I've already seen Once Upon a Time, but ok, I'll give it a shot.

Scene 1:  "Three Little Pigs."  Close-up of a bare chest tattooed with the words "Fuck You." belonging to the uber-muscular Pig #1/Eddie (Paul Wesley, left), a low-life drug dealer.  

He is asleep in his underwear in his trailer, showing a nice bulge, when his friend Pig #2/  Mitch (Michael Raymond Jones) drops in. They discuss how much they need money.

Scene 2:  The Pigs' Big Bad Wolf/Jordan (James Wolk), a restauranteur, strips down to take a shower. He's with a girl, but still, bare chest and butt, and I think a bit of his penis. Wow!  They argue over whether to get married or just continue hooking up.

Left: his butt.

Scene 3: "Hansel and Gretel" Gretel/ Gabe (Davi Santos) and his roommate Billy (Luke Guldan, left), discuss their lives as gay strippers, hustlers, and druggies. Ok, they're promoting the negative stereotype that all gay men are sleazoids, but they are promoting the negative stereotype in their underwear.  Muscular physiques, underwear bulges!  Four in a row!  

I've never seen a tv show display so much male skin and so little female.  Just the way I like it.

Scene 4: "Little Red Riding Hood" High schooler Red/Kayla, mourning her dead mother, is smoking marijuana and acting out, so her Dad moves her to small-town Manhattan to get a fresh start.  

More sleazoids after the break