quote:

There is "All Men Are Liars" which I didn't see mentioned...

Hi Alida,

Thanks for correcting the oversight. sissy Missed this movie when it was released ... but it sounds like it was a low-key Australian affair that might have been overshadowed by the success of the previous year's release of Priscilla. But the very contrived "boy crossdresses as a female guitarist in an all-girl band in order to earn enough money to buy back his mother's piano" story line is certainly unique! But the movie has the TV being sexually attractive to the band leader Angela who starts to question her own sexuality when she finds herself attracted to what she thinks is another woman, and that part of the movie plot rang true for sissy. Even if the reason for Mick crossdressing in the first place is a little contrived, it's still good to know that neither his nor Angela's pheromones are confused for one minute by his choice of clothes, and because this movie is honest enough to ultimately acknowledge the basic chemistry of Mother Nature, sissy decided to add this movie to the poll list.

Other than the film Just Like a Woman, which is about coping with real heterosexual male transvestitism, sissy cannot think of any other movie that addresses the subject of male crossdressing where the accepted motive for the man wearing lingerie and dresses is simply because he enjoys it and it helps him attain a more relaxed headspace - or subspace, if you prefer. To say: "I am a regular guy but I sometimes enjoy wearing lingerie or slipping on a dress" is simply anathema for the movie industry. There always has to be an ulterior motive for the crossdressing presented on the big screen that the majority of the audience are more likely to believe, or even relate to, in order to accept it.

Television is no different. The sitcom Bosom Buddies was fashioned after the earlier movie Some Like It Hot with the contrived reason for why two regular heterosexual guys that women find attractive in their own right - Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari instead of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis - need to regularly crossdress being that they have to do it in order to remain tenants in the NYC rent-controlled female-resident-only Susan B. Anthony Hotel. Similarly, Corporal Klinger in M*A*S*H only crossdresses in order to try and get himself discharged from the Korean War and return home to his wife - certainly not because he enjoys doing it (although you could have fooled this sissy!). Tom Hanks may not wish to hear this, but his character Kip / Buffy Wilson in Bosom Buddies may be his best-loved and funniest creation of his whole top notch comedy career.

If the motives presented for crossdressing in movies aren't for special or contrived comical situation comedy reasons, they are usually because the guy is gay (with the implication that dressing in female clothing goes hand-in-hand with being sexually attracted to other men, which is totally bogus as most really gay men are NOT attracted to drag queens), the guy has psychological or psychopathic reasons to crossdress, or the guy has gender dysphoria and wishes that he can live and pass as a Woman full time, either without SRS (e.g., Dil in The Crying Game or the Lady Chablis in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) or after SRS (e.g., Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp).

Only in the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie is a male in female clothing depicted as a regular (clothing aside) babe-pursuing aggressive heterosexual guy ... but once again the motivation presented for the crossdressing is that Tim Curry's Dr. Frank N. Furter character is from a different planet where that is the normal way for men to dress there. This once again let's the audience off the hook ... phew, thank goodness he's from another planet, I guess dressing that way is OK then if that's the fashion there ... thank God he doesn't actually ENJOY doing it!

Curtsies,

sissy maid lola





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< Message edited by sissymaidlola -- 4/17/2005 2:48:16 PM >

_____________________________

If i don't seem submissive to You, it may be because i'm NOT submissive to You.

(in reply to Alida)

quote:

I chose the bird cage because when i read the question it immediately came to mind before i even saw the choices. Also because i am a big Nathan Lane fan

OK, now sissy is totally confused! Did you actually VOTE for The Birdcage, hazeydaisy, or did you just choose it ? Because that movie only has one vote cast for it right now, and sissy thought that vote was from katyanna above. Yes, Nathan Lane is pretty good as Starina, isn't he? Both his performance, together with that of Robin Williams, made that movie remake preferable to the 1978 original IsHO ... although there are probably many purists out there that would be very upset by that notion. Anyway, who could resist seeing Popeye Doyle ... Lex Luther ... um, Gene Hackman ... in drag, too!

Curtsies,

sissy maid lola





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_____________________________

If i don't seem submissive to You, it may be because i'm NOT submissive to You.

(in reply to hazeydaisy)

quote:

I thought i had voted but after reading the reply to my post, and just to be on the safe side, I voted this time for sure lol

Hi, hazeydaisy, thanks for responding. Since you are a new member and these things are not explained on CollarMe anywhere (as far as sissy is aware), here is a useful FYI for the future. If you were able to vote "this time for sure" that tells you right there that you didn't vote last time. The CollarMe software will prevent you from voting multiple times in any poll. Until you have voted on any poll thread you will always be presented with the ballot screen while being prevented access to the current results ... once you have voted you are never presented with the ballot screen again, and only the current poll results are displayed for any post on that poll thread. As you can see, The Birdcage now has two votes (at least it does as sissy is writing this!).

Best regards,

sissy maid lola





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_____________________________

If i don't seem submissive to You, it may be because i'm NOT submissive to You.

(in reply to hazeydaisy)

quote:

I totally forgot which I voted for: 1) The Birdcage which I loved, or 2)Mrs Doubtfire, because I found both Hilarious, and have both on DVD....

Hi, Madame M. As can be determined from sissy's replies to hazeydaisy, You must have voted for Mrs. Doubtfire. And before anyone accuses sissy of anally monitoring the voting on this thread, the reason sissy knows how many votes the various movies had, and when, is that he had to take a snapshot of the voting in this poll in order to write this post. At that time The Birdcage had zero votes. Hindsight is always 20/20 but sissy now wishes that he had set this poll up the same way he set up his BDSM fast food chain poll where one can vote for as many of the options that one likes ... but unfortunately it's too late now! That way You could have voted for both of those movies, and similarly, although Tim Curry would probably still be way out ahead, we would also have got to see the effects of other members' alternative favorite movies that just didn't quite make their final vote choice.

Here is an interesting piece of trivia about The Birdcage that You may not have known, Madame. The director Mike Nichols originally hired and cast Robin Williams in the role of Albert in the movie. That would make perfect sense coming after his performance four years previously as Mrs. Doubtfire. However, Robin stated that he wanted a change from flamboyant characters and asked to be cast as Armand instead. Mike Nichols agreed, re-cast him, and subsequently chose Nathan Lane for the role of Albert. Yet sissy can't help wondering whether the term "flamboyant character" is not just a euphemism for "drag queen" or "CD" in this instance since Robin Williams is, by his very nature, "flamboyant." Every one of his movie personae (straight or otherwise) is larger than life ... he is the consummate "life and soul of the party" which is why everyone likes him so much. Even the role of Armand is pretty flamboyant as overall screen characters go!

So Robin may have been a little concerned with what two high profile CD movie roles might do to his perceived film and television image (and maybe even his overall gender image in his personal life). To some extent, playing a character that is the opposite sex is the ultimate acting challenge. Playing someone that is playing that opposite gender role for real might be even as great a challenge. Accordingly, many otherwise great actors and actresses cannot do it ... or would refuse to do it. Most male actors with an action hero macho screen image (such as Chuck Norris, Sly Stalone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) simply could not carry it off (their bodies, facial expressions and mannerisms are too overtly masculine), or they would simply refuse to even consider doing drag because it would tarnish that hard-earned macho image that brings them so many movie scripts in other areas. So kudos are definitely due to Gene Hackman (who had a whole slew of very masculine, if not totally macho, screen personae under his belt) for doing drag in The Birdcage - even if only briefly near the end of the movie.

Kudos should also go out to John Travolta whose film career has also been pretty much built on hallmark macho / masculine roles on the big screen (Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Urban Cowboy, Pulp Fiction, Face/Off, etc.). In his OP sissy gave a brief bio of ultra-bad taste maverick movie director John Waters and his favored screen actor Harris Glenn Milstead (a real lifestyle drag queen transvestite) better known by his movie and musical career persona, Divine, in order to explain why sissy included the movie Pink Flamingos in his poll. Divine starred in a number of John's earliest low-budget films, and was particularly well known as being part of the regular crew known as the "Dreamlanders" that appeared in many of Waters' earlier works such as Eat Your Makeup (1968), The Diane Linkletter Story and Mondo Trasho (1969), Muiltiple Maniacs (1970) and Female Trouble (1974), in addition to Pink Flamingos (1972). Divine and Waters also collaborated on the two movies Polyester (1981) and Hairspray (1988) before Divine died of an enlarged heart in 1988 at age 43.

That last movie went on to spawn the Tony award-winning Broadway musical Hairspray. In the original movie, Divine played the character Edna Turnblad, and then on Broadway, Harvey Fierstein played this colorful overweight laundress character. This Broadway musical is now being adapted back to the silver screen again and Variety reports that John Travolta "has the inside track" for the role of Edna Turnblad in the movie remake by New Line which starts filming this September. The script for the upcoming movie will be written by Leslie Dixon who wrote the film script for ... You guessed it ... Mrs. Doubtfire, and also coincidentally, scripted Look Who's Talking Now with John Travolta. This is not a popular decision ... there are many that feel that Harvey Fierstein, who established this drag role on Broadway, should also play the role in the film - in the same way that Tim Curry was the natural choice to play the Frank N. Furter role in the movie after he had uniquely given that character so much life on the stage - so it is still not a done deal. Nevertheless, whether he gets the role or not, brownie points to Travolta for even putting himself up for this part.

So if Your fantasy is to see John Travolta in a dress, by about this time next year You will be able to stop using Photoshop to adapt those pics of him from Get Shorty ... just like all those others out there no longer had to manipulate still shots of Patrick Swayze from Dirty Dancing after To Wong Foo ... was released! It would appear that reality always catches up with - and sometimes even overtakes - fiction in the end!

Respectfrilly Yours,

sissy maid lola




Attachment (1)

< Message edited by sissymaidlola -- 4/18/2005 7:26:47 PM >

_____________________________

If i don't seem submissive to You, it may be because i'm NOT submissive to You.

(in reply to BlkTallFullfig)

quote:

ORIGINAL: sissymaidlola

OK, so who is/are your favorite big screen crossdressed male performer(s) over the last fifty odd years ? Or if you prefer, which is/are your favorite tranny movie role(s) from that period ? Or if you would prefer yet another perspective to approach this poll from ... which was your favorite movie with a gender-bending theme during the second half of the 20th century ? [Note: currently the oldest movie in this poll is the first-listed Cary Grant movie, which was released in 1949, and the latest movie in the poll is "Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil" which was released in 1997.]


Text updated 3/28/05 by sissy maid lola

sissy Apologizes that he limited his initial poll to only ten movies, but he was under the impression that that was the maximum limit allowed for the number of options in a CollarMe poll (his having not seen any other poll here with more than ten options offered until today). Therefore, much of the rationalization that sissy wrote in this OP for why he excluded certain movies from his short list of ten no longer applies, and it has now been rewritten below.

This poll was originally initiated as a list of ten gender-bending / tranny-themed movies together with a rationalization (the original version of this OP) for why those ten had been chosen while all others had been excluded. At the time of the OP there were three or four movies on sissy's list that he really regetted having to omit (see below), and by the end of the week he had remembered another half-dozen more, so he initiated a second (PART II) poll that included all of these additional movies at the Easter weekend. In perfect accord with Murphy's Law, today sissy discovered that the number of options that can be offered in a poll is certainly much larger than ten - it's at least thirty, and probably much more than that. Accordingly, the ten movies that were in the "PART II" poll have now been added at the bottom of this one ... and clearly further movies can also be added to these.

The original ten movies in the poll had been listed in chronological order (from 1949 to 1996), but the additional ten movies completely overlapped this time span (1969 to 1997) and so they could only be appended to the original list, rather than interspersed with it, if existing votes cast for the first ten movies were to be preserved. Currently, the first fourteen movies (with the exception of one that is misplaced) are still listed in chronological release date order (running from 1949 to 1997), with the last six movies being listed in reverse chronological release date order (running from 1990 to 1969). Any additional movies that are appended to the poll at this point will continue to make the list order even more arbitrary.

Why the following movies were included

The main purpose of initiating the second poll was to rectify some of the obvious oversights / intentional omissions in the first poll for tranny movies from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The three movies that sissy originally omitted from the poll that he particularly regretted leaving out were:

- Roman Polanski's "The Tenant" (originally titled in the French "Le Locataire")
- George Roy Hill's "The World According to Garp"
- Beeban Kidron's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar"

and the three movies that were included in their place, with some possible regrets, were "Psycho", the Cary Grant movie, and both versions of "La Cage aux Folles" (where perhaps only one of the two would have sufficed). However, sissy included those three instead because sissy is a huge admirer of film directors Mike Nichols and Alfred Hitchcock (and "Psycho" is probably Hitchcock's quintessential movie) as well as also being a big fan of Cary Grant.

Ruminating some about whether he should really have included the film "Psycho" or not - and since he did include it, why not also include any of its sequels - made sissy remember Brian De Palma's own homage to (or, depending on your viewpoint, rip-off of) this classic movie ... "Dressed to Kill". Once again, soft sweet transvestites are falsely depicted on the big screen as psychopathic killers! How sissy came to overlook this movie for his first list of ten he'll never know.

Similarly, the movie "Nuns on the Run" must have flown under sissy's radar back in 1990 when it was released ... as sissy is a big Monty Python / Eric Idle addict he is not quite certain how that one got past him. So many thanks to Mercnbeth for adding that one to the second list of ten movies. The plot of that film makes it sound like "Some Like it Hot" meets Dudley Moore's Leaping Nun of Norwich character from "Bedazzled" !!

Thinking of Dudley Moore made sissy think of Liza Minelli which in turn made him remember Bob Fosse's 1972 classic movie "Cabaret" ... which was essentially a whole burlesque / drag fest centered around the Kit-Kat Club in Berlin in the early thirties just as the Nazis were coming to power. The problem sissy had with this movie was identifying a specific transvestite character / role in the movie ... and thinking harder about it made sissy then remember the 1969 tasteless but classic Luchino Visconti movie "La Caduta degli dei" (renamed "The Damned" for the American market) which was set in the same timeframe and location as "Cabaret" and focused on the Machiavellian rise to power under the Third Reich of a murderous transvestite pedophilic mother-rapist from upper German class nobility! Continuing sissy's lousy analogies, "The Damned" is "Cabaret" meets "A Clockwork Orange" !!

Contemplating films that might be in bad taste made sissy remember another classic transvestite movie from around that period ... the 1972 exercise in ultra-bad taste by movie maverick John Waters known as Pink Flamingos. This low-budget movie directed by John (a.k.a. the Prince of Puke and the Pope of Trash) brought us yet another collaborative performance from the real-life transvestite actor Divine who played the 200+ pound doggy-poop eating white trash pink trailer park drag queen Babs Johnson. In addition to Babs - who was promoted as the "filthiest person alive" together with her egg-eating mother, chicken-loving son and voyeuristic "companion" - the film also featured chick-with-a-dick Elizabeth Coffey, a pre-op M2F transsexual who had already undergone hormone therapy to develop breasts and female features at the time of filming in Miami.

And talking of transsexuals brings sissy to two further movies he left out of his original ten because the gender-bending roles were TS/TG rather than TV:

- Richard Spence's "Different for Girls" (a.k.a. "Crossing the Border")
- Clint Eastwood's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"

The former movie got somewhat mixed reception from cinema audiences, but the latter title is both a truly great novel as well as a very popular classic film whose larger-than-life TS character, the Lady Chablis, needs no further justification for inclusion in this poll.

Finally, the 1992 movie "Just Like a Woman" is one of the few serious, rather than comedic, movies in both polls that addresses real transvestitism head on. Rather than the crossdressing being a sub-plot (as the TG nature of Dil is in "The Crying Game" or John Lithgow's TS character is in "Garp") the whole movie is actually focused on the main story of two lovers learning to understand and cope with the one partner's need to crossdress. Furthermore, this main gender-bending character (Gerald/ine) is a heterosexual transvestite struggling with the true nature of his sexuality rather than a thespian or female impersonator, a psychopathic killer, a homosexual drag queen, or someone that crossdresses due to some rather unbelievable set of circumstances. As such, this is one of sissy's personal favorites of the twenty movies listed in this poll.

Why the following movies were excluded

sissy Makes no apologies for ignoring the movie "Victor / Victoria". Besides the fact that Julie Andrews plays a crossdressed female performer in that film (although she is shacked up with a male drag queen who would have qualified as the male nominee), that movie blew large chunks IsHO - as much as sissy loves most of Blake Edwards' other films, particularly the Pink Panther series, that particular movie probably represents the nadir of his movie-making career.

The infamous Ed Woods' movie "Glen or Glenda" also got the big elbow because it was a little too cheesy (like almost all his movies!) and was "Calamity Jane" really a gender-bending movie ? i don't think so! The Joan Crawford movie "Johnny Guitar" also didn't make the grade ... mostly because sissy hasn't seen it, hee, hee, hee ... hey, it's his poll, so screw you, buddy!

Other "close but no cigar" movies were "Goodbye Charlie" starring Debbie Reynolds and Tony Curtis (some times sissy wonders how Mr. Curtis ever acquired his macho screen image) and "The Christine Jorgensen Story" (hey, helloooo ... a post-op TS is NOT a crossdresser!), and transsexual drag queen movie "Myra Breckenridge" (maybe next poll ... any excuse to think about Raquel Welsh and Mae West, eh!).

The crossdressing and gender-bending in "Yentl" and "Just One of the Guys" movies are both of the wrong kind ... remember this is a MTF CD movie poll, not an FTM CD movie fest! Maybe sissy should do a separate poll on just that topic ? (oh shit, then sissy will have to include "Victor / Victoria" ... so perhaps better that he not, eh ?). Finally, sissy never saw the movie "Mascara" so unfortunately it didn't make the grade, either.

One of sissy's all time favorite movies is Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's original "Bedazzled" - not the pathetic nineties remake! - but he was not able to determine the name of Dudley Moore's Leaping Nun of Norwich character ... anyways, most people wouldn't really consider it a gender-bending movie now, would they ?

Well that pretty well covers all the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties movies with a transvestite or crossdressing theme that sissy could remember ... but he is certain to have screwed up and, even after two attempts at this, still missed a few more, so if you can think of one that you feel has been seriously overlooked, please post it below. Two movies with tranny themes that immediately come to mind that still haven't been included yet are Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask" which contains a whole transvestite vignette starring Canadian actor Lou Jacobi, and Arthur Penn's "Little Big Man" which contained a native American Berdache character called Little Horse who was what the Cheyenne call a "hee-man-eh". Far from being a "he-man" ... the term "hee-man-eh" meant that he was a transgendered male that dressed and lived full time as a squaw.

The nineties decade probably saw the release of as many CD / transgendered themed movies as the total of all the previous decades of film making, and this rate of release continues unabated in the 21st century. This poll originally contained four movies from the nineties, and this has now been extended to nine with the addition of the second group, and there are easily enough GOOD tranny-themed movies from 1997 - 2005 still not mentioned, which when added to the few CD or gender-bending movies that were made prior to 1949, might possibly make for another poll by itself (but don't hold your breath for that one!). Hopefully the eleven pre-nineties movies listed in this poll represent the best of the well known gender-bending films of the 1950s through the 1980s ... but if they don't, since the limit on the number of movies that can be included in the poll is much higher than sissy originally thought, post a message on this thread stating what has been overlooked and the movie(s) can possibly be included.

Regards,

sissy maid lola

quote:

:: pouts ::

it only allows for one vote, can i vote over and over?

:: grins widely ::

i loved many of the movies listed and a few are some favorites...

But the Birdcage came to mind because my brother went (being a huge fan of Robin
Williams) not knowing the plot, He took His little boy and His best friend..
guys night out.. They left about 30 minutes into the film when a couple sitting
beside them commented on what a cute "couple" they made with their little boy.
(Texas Taboo)

:: giggles :: i still tease Him mercilessly

Hi katyanna,

Thanks for participating in the poll. WRT to voting for more than one movie sissy agrees with you entirely ... see his response to BlkTallFullFig above. The trouble is, the option that allows the user to vote for as many poll options as he wants is not what is needed here either. With that option, if a member has a clear favorite movie he will vote for it and be done. But the vote of someone that cannot make up their mind over which of, say, ten of the movies they really like, so they vote for all ten, actually counts ten times more than the vote of the more decisive person who voted for just the one movie. Under that scheme dithering is unfairly rewarded and decisiveness penalized.

What is really needed is a third poll option where everybody has to make n choices - no more, no less. For this poll n could have been set to 3. That way, everybody votes for three movies or their vote isn't registered. The choices could be ranked first, second and third, but that now gets unnecessarily complicated as the votes would now have to be weighted. However, it probably should be possible for someone to apply their three votes to the same movie, or two votes to the same movie and one elseswhere.

Perhaps sissy should recommend such an enhancement to the poll software in the Feature Suggestions for CollarMe.com forum ?

Best regards,

sissy maid lola




_____________________________

If i don't seem submissive to You, it may be because i'm NOT submissive to You.

(in reply to katyanna)

quote:

ORIGINAL: sissymaidlola
So if Your fantasy is to see John Travolta in a dress, by about this time next year You will be able to stop using Photoshop to adapt those pics of him from Get Shorty ..
sissy maid lola

quote:

No one mentioned Stephen Dorff as Candy Darling in "I Shot Andy Warhol" ?
That's the only reason I saw that film!

Hi Ms Akasha,

Thanks for posting and recommending this movie, Ma'am. Now let's see if sissy has this right ... the only reason You saw that film was because no one mentioned it here on sissy's thread? Oooh, lola is very flattered, Ma'am! <giggles>. OK, being serious now, sissy assumes that You meant the acting of Stephen Dorff as the transvestite Candy in this movie is the only reason You saw it. That makes sense, Ma'am, as Stephen Dorff did get a lot of praise for his portrayal of Warhol's TV companion. But then again Jared Harris' portrayal of Andy Warhol in the film also got good reviews for the way he was able to capture Warhol's strange magnetism and aloof nature. Similarly, Lili Taylor also received plaudits for her title role portrayal of Valerie Solanas and her anger and disgust with everyone. So good acting all round in this movie ...

Candy came from out on the island
In the backroom she was everybody's darling,
But she never lost her head
Even when she was givin' head - she said

Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
And the colored girls go, doo dodoo ...

Accordingly, sissy Has added the movie to the poll list. Take care, Ma'am <curtsey>

sissy maid lola




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< Message edited by sissymaidlola -- 4/28/2005 10:47:09 PM >

_____________________________

If i don't seem submissive to You, it may be because i'm NOT submissive to You.

(in reply to AAkasha)

quote:

How did you know I had this fantasy? M

Ahhh, just call it transintuition, Madame M. <curtsey>

sissy maid lola




_____________________________

If i don't seem submissive to You, it may be because i'm NOT submissive to You.

(in reply to BlkTallFullfig)

quote:

If so, this means that Robin Williams has appeared in four of the above tranny movies, and en femme in two of them. <snip> Plus there is a Mrs. Doubtfire sequel scheduled, which will bring his total gender-bending movie appearances to five (assuming there are no others that sissy has forgotten about). That might be more than the number of trashy on-screen drag queen roles played by the real-life TV actor Divine. sissy Will have to do further research on that one ...

sissy Did actually do that research and incorporated into this post. Robin will still have to go some if he is to match the number of Divine's appearances in a movie that features transvestitism (no matter how inconsequentially) and definitely have to hike up his skirts and get down to some serious on-screen crossdressing if he is to match the number of Divine's transvestite movie roles.

sissy maid lola




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_____________________________

If i don't seem submissive to You, it may be because i'm NOT submissive to You.

(in reply to sissymaidlola)