We’re Cloudbusting, Daddy!

Bobby Kendall in moments from James Bidgood's hauntingly beautiful lgbtq+ surrealist fantasy arthouse masterpiece Pink Narcissus, 1971. Filmed using a Super-8 camera over the course of ten years in a tiny Hell's Kitchen apartment in New York, Bidgood made all the costumes and constructed the intricately beautiful sets himself using classic Hollywood Technicolor films like Ziegfeld Follies, The Red Shoes, and The Thief of Bagdad as inspiration for his vision. Some of the costumes were nothing more than beads and posing pouches, others sheer voluminous material, and the ones involving pants and jackets were so tight that Bidgood sewed the seams shut while Bobby was wearing them before the camera rolled (few of the costumes stayed on for long, with the actors in the film baring a great deal of flesh throughout). Bobby Kendall, described by film auteur John Waters as "the only person that has ever challenged Joe Dallesandro as far as being the most sexy underground movie star", is featured below in two photographs Bidgood took during production of the daring, groundbreaking, and recently restored 71 minute long movie. Pink Narcissus was Bobby's only film appearance and his real name and later whereabouts remain shrouded in mystery, his beauty as a young man preserved for the ages on celluloid and left behind as an enigmatic and ethereal memento.

"When [Lawrence of Arabia] was in production, screenwriter Michael Wilson was not paying much attention to Lawrence's sexuality. Wilson was more concerned with the theme of colonialism versus nationalism, and Lawrence's scholastic pursuits. This clearly displeased Lean, who wanted to paint more of a controversial character study, albeit on a large canvas, than Wilson had so far achieved. As far as one can judge from Wilson's notes, Lean had two overriding concerns - Lawrence's sexual make-up, and the scene that he would film in Petra. As far as the former is concerned, Wilson noted that Lean had, revealingly, compared the Lawrence-Ali relationship to Brief Encounter, his 1945 film about an unconsummated love affair starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson." - Brief Encounters: Lesbians and Gays in British Cinema 1930 – 1971 by Stephen Bourne

consider this a tribute to one of my favorite theories: they might've (to some extent) ben hur-ed jensen ackles: