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'Top Gun 2,' 'Clueless' the musical, Mikki del Monico, 'Genius'
Tom Cruise

Top Gun 2. Seriously, you guys, Top Gun 2.

 

Remember back in the day when everybody was like, “Oh, Tom Cruise is gay,” but then it turned out he was just weirdly sci-fi religious? Well, he may not have been gay, but he did star in one of the strangest, gayest, films of the 1980s, a right-wing, Reagan-esque military fantasy that was somehow dunked ride-my-tail-anytime- first in the deep end of homoerotic signifiers. That’s right, we’re talking about Top Gun, the queerest cultural object of the 1980s side of Torch Song Trilogy. Well, guess what? Maverick is coming back to the shirtless beach volleyball court of public adoration in what is right now known as Top Gun 2. David Ellison, CEO of production company Skydance, revealed at a recent press junket that a shooting script is in development and that Cruise is interested. Which means it might not happen at all. Or it might be ready for Christmas 2016. Or 2019. We don’t know. But we believe in the lesbian superpower of Kelly McGillis, and that alone, in a perfect world, would make it so.

 

Clueless the musical, as if you’re not excited by that

 

When Cher Horowitz leaves Beverly Hills, her next logical stop is, of course, Broadway. And it will be that next stop if Clueless director Amy Heckerling has her way.  Heckerling’s been kicking around the idea of a Clueless musical for a while; she’s already written the book for it, and is currently pushing even harder for a Broadway stage adaptation (of the film that she already adapted from Jane Austen’s Emma). The director envisions the project as a jukebox project – we’re guessing with period ’90s pop nuggets – rather than one with original songs. And since the critically acclaimed comedy has aged very well over the last 20 years (yep, you are totally old now), there’s no reason why this thing couldn’t be a monster hit. Nothing’s official at all, but Katy Perry is reportedly interested in taking part. This casting move would, of course, make Cher a 30-year-old high school student, but the 90210 zip code has already seen a few of those kicking around its pop-culture campuses. So why not?

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Trans filmmaker Mikki del Monico’s moment

 

There are times when it seems like you can count the number of trans filmmakers on one hand, and if you think about it, that’s not really an exaggeration. So when a new trans director pops up with finished product ready to screen for an audience, that’s news. Welcome, then, Alto, the debut feature from Mikki del Monico, which recently had its premiere at San Francisco’s Frameline, the venerable international LGBTQ film festival. Starring Diana DeGarmo (American Idol, season 3, whose musical theater career has kept her busy ever since), Alto is a lesbian rom-com musical set in the world of organized crime. And no, that’s not a typo. The shoestring budget indie will be making the film festival rounds as the months roll on, and del Monico will be working it hard to make sure you remember all the relevant names. Keep your eyes peeled for this one.

 

Hey genius, get ready for Genius

 

You might not recognize the name A. Scott Berg, but he’s a gay writer who’s won both a Pulitzer and the National Book Award. He’s also responsible for the story that became Barry Sandler’s screenplay for the classic gay drama Making Love. Now his 1978 biography, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, about the literary editor of novelists Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is a film. The directorial debut of English actor Michael Grandage, Genius boasts a script by John Logan (The Aviator, who’s also co-producing alongside Berg) and an awards-season-ready cast. Colin Firth plays Perkins, and the film co-stars Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Guy Pearce, Dominic West and Laura Linney. In other words, it’s the kind of period picture you’ll see over Christmas, place bets on during the Oscar telecast, spend time wishing you could live in the vintage clothes the actors are sporting, and feel smarter for having seen it. It’s called Genius, after all.