This Week's Guest: Gabriel Fontana
How much are you willing to do for love -- and how much can love do for you? This week's guest is Gabriel Fontana, who grew up in violent crime-ridden Brazilian ghettos before escaping to Sweden, where he rose to pop stardom as the winner of a Swedish Idol spinoff. Gabriel's always been something of an escape artist, relying on a mix of hard work, talent, and love to pull himself out of places he didn't want to be. Now, with thousands of fans following his every move, he's feeling more intoxicating adoration than ever before in his life -- and an ever-growing impulse to pursue that attention wherever it calls him.
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This Week's Recommendation: Stonewall (1995)
Big thanks to Gabriel Fontana for joining me. Keep an eye on him -- I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of Gabriel in the future.
But for my recommendation this week, cast your gaze back to the past -- to 1969, by way of the 1995 film Stonewall. Do not confuse this with the more recent movie of the same title, which is not worth your time! The 95 film is a lovely and at times unbearably sad glimpse into the lives of queer outcasts at a time before Pride parades. The movie chronicles the lives of some down-and-out young gays in New York in the days leading up to the Stonewall riots, and while it takes a few creative liberties with chronology, the film humanizes our recent history in a way that will stick with you like no textbook could.
It seems incredible that our community was so vilified so recently. It seems like it must have been impossibly long ago. But just to put that in perspective: the distance from Stonewall the riot to Stonewall the movie is about the same as the distance from the movie to today.
Stonewall the place was something of a refuge for queers with nowhere else to go, a home for people who had to look out for each other because no one else would. Together, they managed to stand up against the world, and to inspire the pride that we relish today. And I love how the movie makes gorgeous use of music as the tension of that summer builds. Pop songs are as much a part of that gay culture as the slang and the wigs and the cruising, and seeing gays of decades past relishing the same songs we love today instills in me a deep sense of connection and melancholy for the pioneers I'll never get to meet.
Stuff We Talked About
Music
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/