OMG, we were floored when EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner Rita Moreno rocked the house in her acceptance of the Lifetime Achievement Honor at the recent SAG Awards. She dropped the f-bomb and was sassy, brassy and classy. So we're thrilled to hear that producer Marc Huestis is bringing the lovely Rita to the Castro Theatre on Sat., March 15, for a one-day event called Putting on the Ritz.
Of course, "The Ritz" is the 1976 film of gay playwright Terrence McNally's hit Broadway play, and it's the film for which Moreno snagged the T in EGOT - that is, her Tony Award. Who could forget Rita as the tacky, wacky queen-of-the-steam Googie Gomez belting out, "Ebeything's coming up rho-ziz, por me and por ju." And just for "ju," Huestis promises a full-on 1970s bathhouse scene at the glitzy 8 p.m. tribute event, replete with ushers in towels, a ritzy performance by tap-happy Matthew Martin, classic career clips from Moreno's five-decade career, and a high-wire onstage interview with Rita, climaxed by a rare theatrical screening of "The Ritz." All hosted by svitzy D'Arcy Drollinger as bathhouse Bette. Phew! Poppers, anyone?
Seriously folks, at 82, Rita is one helluva survivor, so it's fitting that partial proceeds benefit Let's Kick ASS (AIDS Survivor Syndrome), a grassroots movement of long-term survivors. Plus, Huestis tells us, at 1 p.m. there will be a screening of the Sing-Along West Side Story, which earned Moreno the O in EGOT (her Oscar), and it will be hosted by our own local winner Marga Gomez and introduced by Rita, WSS' "Anita" herself. Tix are going fast, but call (415) 863-0611, ask for Nardo , and get an especial discount!
Street Sheets
Last week we were happily immersed in gay author Lars Eighner's classic memoir of homelessness "Travels with Lizbeth - Three Years on the Road and on the Street," reissued in a new paperback edition from St. Martin's Griffin following its 20th anniversary last year. Eighner and his dog Lizbeth ping-pong between Austin and L.A., hitchhiking and sleeping in homemade encampments. It's an in-depth and personal look at what it's like to be gay and homeless, and although it takes place in the 1980s-90s, it feels even timelier today, in the aftermath of the financial collapse.
Part of the book's real power comes from its "there but for the grace of God go I" factor. Like many Americans not tipping the top of the capitalist pyramid, Out There is really just a few paychecks away from not being able to pay our rent - from "homelessness." This last term we have always felt to be a misnomer, as even were we totally impoverished (rather than merely the working poor), we'd still have a home - it's called San Francisco. We just don't have a society that cares much for poor people.
With his lucid writing and patient analysis, Eighner is the ideal guide for bourgeois readers to what poverty in America actually feels like. "To be poor is to be subject utterly to the agents of the law. This as much as anything, I think, is what a middle-class person fails to appreciate about being poor. A middle-class man may want to avoid being stopped for speeding in his BMW, but if he is stopped he sees a face of the law very different from the face shown to the poor. Middle-class people have rights, and they like to think that everyone does. The rich, of course, know that rights are bought and sold, and the poor know it, too. Those between them live in an illusion."
Eighner finds tenderness with other vagrants when it presents itself, which is not often. "Having offered Mike the protection of my bedroll for the night, I felt it would be ignoble to make a pass at him. Yet high resolve had little chance against my proximity to his young virility and his proximity to my warmth. As a tacit compromise, first I, then he, masturbated barracks-style - that is, each as the other pretended to be asleep."
A chapter on Dumpster diving, written in the style of Jonathan Swift, is a classic essay and has been widely anthologized. In a new afterword, Eighner writes he "intended it to be something of a protest of an economic system that produces waste and excess on the one hand, and want and privation on the other." Yet it also contains genuinely good advice on finding discarded yet still unspoiled food in the trash heap. For future use.
Ultimately, what kept us reading was the author's voice: Assured, droll and specific. What do we mean by voice but the guiding consciousness behind a literary project, along with the author's skills with language. Eighner has that gift in spades, and his memoir deserves never to go out of print. We'd dive into a Dumpster for it.