The Sewers of Paris

For the last few days I’ve been looking back over the many great performances of Patrick Stewart — among them, of course, his role as the captain on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s reminded me of just how powerful that franchise has been, across many decades and incarnations. And for this week’s episode, we’re heading into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2021 chat with David Strugar. David grew up in a religious family, and until his early 30s was closeted and struggled through ex-gay treatment. Helping him to put that life behind him was Star Trek, where he came to realize he’d picked up more of his sense of right and wrong than from church. After cutting ties with his old life, he sold almost everything he owned for a one-way bus ticket to LA.Also, in case you missed it: I have a new video up on YouTube paying tribute to Patrick Stewart — as as captain of the Enterprise, sure, but also for the surprising choice that he made after Star Trek ended, stepping away from blockbusters to appear in an indie gay rom-com. That video’s available now at Youtube.com/MattBaume.And I hope you can join me at Twitch.tv/mattbaume this Sunday for a livestream of the classic Patrick Stewart gay rom-com Jeffrey.

My guest this week is Eliot Glazer, whose work you know from shows like Broad City, The New Girl, and Difficult People; and the new series So You Think You Can Sports? Eliot’s career took a couple of unlikely swerves — first, escaping from Long Island on an opera scholarship that he turned into Golden Girls scholarship. He also struggled though some especially bad advice when he was coming out in the early 2000s, which is partially what inspired his new book of essays, entitled The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Gay. We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First a quick heads-up that, just in time for Halloween, I published a new video on YouTube this weekend about the show Interview with the Vampire, and why this story of blood-sucking creatures from the shadows resonates so strongly with me. That video’s available now at Youtube.com/MattBaume.Also, a quick heads-up: This weekend we'll be watching The Paul Lynde Halloween Special on Twitch! Hope you can join us -- it's at noon pacific on Sunday Nov 1. (Timely!)

We generally have queer guests on this show, but I’m willing to make an exception for this week’s guest: The actor Barry Bostwick, who played Brad in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A few weeks ago I ran into Barry at the pop culture convention Ancient City Con in Florida, and he very generously sat down to chat with me about Rocky Horror, what he hears from queer fans whose lives the movie changed -- and occasionally saved — and also the advice he got from a psychic for playing George Washington. Also, a quick heads-up that I have a new video about to go live on YouTube. It’s about the show Interview with the Vampire, and why the situations these creatures of darkness find themselves in feel strangely familiar to me. Make sure you’re subscribed at Youtube.com/MattBaume and hit the notify bell to get an alert when it goes live.This was a video interview, and you can watch my conversation with Barry (with film clips and archival photos) here: https://youtu.be/bWlTIXW4GbY

As we head into spooky season this October, I want to take a peek back into the Sewers archives for a chat with Sam Irvin. As a kid, Sam Irvin loved Bride of Frankenstein, and he brought that influence with him as an adult when he co-produced the film Gods and Monsters, and directed the show Dante’s Cove and the movie Elvira’s Haunted Hills — among many other projects. Whether working with Christopher Lee, Brian DePalma, or Ian McKellen, Sam is an endless source of amazing haunted Hollywood tales.We’ll have that conversation in just a moment. First a quick reminder that I host weekly livestreams every Sunday on Twitch. This weekend we’ll be continuing our watch-along of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And you can get a heads-up on other fun projects by subscribing to my email newsletter at MattBaume.com.

Sorry this week's Sewers of Paris is coming a few days late -- it took a little extra time to arrange but I think it's worth it! This week I’m chatting with Scott Heim, the author of the 1995 novel Mysterious Skin, which was adapted into a film by Gregg Araki in 2004.Scott's book is the story of two teenage boys, both dealing with the same childhood trauma in very different ways, and this conversation’s a little different from the usual Sewers of Paris interviews: Scott recently passed through Seattle, and I sat down with him at Northwest Film Forum to interview him for our local alt-weekly, The Stranger. You’ll hear the audio of our conversation in this episode. And if you’d like to watch the video version, you can find that on The Stranger’s YouTube channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry1RUyWAuNM