Gay Cowboys

Last weekend I went to see Rent in Harvard Square, along with several hundred other girls and a few theatre-boys. I actually liked Rent a lot. Of course it's not realistic - it's a musical - no one really thinks artsy squatters with HIV were bursting into song in the Village in 1989. It's also, at this point, a period peice. It's like how Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar were made into films in the early 80s, 15 years after they were produced on Broadway.

Interestingly, the fashion redux movement has lately approached the late 80s bohemian (short skirt-tights-boots/jeans-tucked-into-boots, etc.). Coincidence? I think not. The ladies and I realized that we have now seen several cycles of the male stripey scarf in our own short lifetimes, but the newest crop of college students (born in, what, 1987?) don't even remember when The Real World premiered.

So. There was a lot of semi-drunken chatter going on in the theatre, which was packed, before the movie started. Previews came on and the chatter diminished, but not by much. Until the preview for Brokeback Mountain came on, at which point there was a collective, "Oooh!" and someone in the row in front of us said, quite loudly, "Hush, it's the gay cowboys!"

This cracked us up and I think everyone else realized what had happened, too, and all started giggling again. Another preview came on after the Hot Gay Cowboys, which featured a guy who is about the marry this hot rich-but-annoying English girl, but then falls for a hot-but- not-rich American girl, shags her, is very torn, blah-di-blah . . . I could hear the sound of six hundred topiaried eyebrows drawing together. Then the title frame flashed up saying, "A film by Woody Allen," and everyone in the theatre, including me and the ladies, groaned knowingly. And then laughed again. It was brilliant.

A much more fun moviegoing experience than being at the Harvard Square cinema for Good Night and Good Luck.