Looking for Mr. Goodbar

This is like, they shouldn't have let me watch this.

I, I think I told you where I'm watching, you know, uh, Eric, because they made a mistake on the Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

Yeah.

Eric was like, "Oh, they gave me...

Yeah.

Um, but they attached it to a screening of, uh, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, the- Oh ... uh, film with Diane Keaton.

Okay.

And, uh, the producers loved it so much that they were like, "Hey, you should make a full-length version of it," and then now we're here.

Cheech and Chong's next movie, which I just think is hilarious because it is, it's hilarious.

Being There, The Rose, The Deer Hunter, Heaven Can Wait, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Marathon Man, Funny Lady, the list goes on and on.

And as an assistant, just because I think this is notable, he was a camera assistant on the Sugar Land Express, which, of course, was Steven Spielberg's first theatrical movie.

He'd done some stuff before that, but that was his first movie.

AIDS is a sh- huge part of how this rumor, the panic rises, and but, you know, it's maybe how it starts, but is it why it persists? Obviously, no.

Interestingly, Richard Gere's really f- his first breakout role was playing a gay man in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

I think I'm okay to give out spoilers for 60-year-old movies, 50-year-old movies, but he plays a cl- semi-closeted, very deeply conflicted, self-loathing gay man who murders Diane Keaton after having sleazy sex with her, meeting her in a pickup bar.

It was kind of a moral panic film about, uh, singles bars, about straight people acting a little bit more like gay people.

He was v- very good-looking, and he was also, had a great body and was not afraid to show it.

Richard Gere, at 31 years old, is a rising talent, recognized for his radiating sex appeal in films like Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

In 1979, he shoots what will be his breakthrough role, American Gigolo.

Before its release, he heads to Broadway to co-star in a risky new play called Bent.

It is the gayest thing you can imagine.

And the opening- Starring Richard Gere, wow ... and this was Richard Gere in 1977- Prime Richard Gere ...

Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

Yes.

The first five or six movies he makes, American Gigolo, he actually talks about, uh, servicing men in his job.

Uh, his, he plays a gay hustler in, um, Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

He plays, uh, uh, adulterers.

He plays, like, a lot of, uh, difficult characters.

And most of the time, they're just Oscar-bait rom-coms.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Altered States, movies like that.

Officer and a Gentleman, The Official Story, Soldier's Story.

If you went to a movie studio today and said, hey, I want an A-list movie with these scripts, they would go, well, you're batshit crazy.

Yeah.

Now, those five Academy Award nominations were for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Heaven Can Wait, 1941, WarGames, and Murphy's Romance-

Okay

... which are not films I'm familiar with.