Scotty Bowers, nice-guy provider to Hollywood’s gay and bisexual community (and sometimes even straight guys from time to time) during the sexual suppression heyday of the late 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, has passed at age 96. He co-authored the 2012 book “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars” and was the star of Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (’17).

A good guy, always candid, quick with the smile, joyful eyes.

The first time I met Scotty was at the salad bar in Fairfax Whole Foods (NE corner of Santa Monica Blvd.), and he couldn’t have been nicer to a stranger. We later conversed a couple of times during the promotion of Tyrnauer’s film.

I’ve been on the Scotty Bowers trail for about a year now, and so when the Brigade guys asked if I wanted to talk to Matt Tyrnauer, director of Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, I figured “why stop now?” We met at BUILD studios (corner of Broadway and East Fourth Street), and retired to a kind of green room with free soft drinks and energy bars. Our chat lasted 29 minutes, give or take. A good interview, if I do say so myself. Then I watched Matt sit for an on-camera BUILD interview.

I’ve explained this six or seven times, but most of Tyrnauer’s surprisingly intimate, low-key, non-gossipy film is about old Scotty — a 90something, white-haired pack rat who owns two homes in the Hollywood hills and lives with a good-natured, seen-and-heard-it-all wife who loves him — and only intermittently about the mostly gay and bi movie stars and celebrities (Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Walter Pidgeon, Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, Katharine Hepburn, Noël Coward, James Dean) who regarded Scotty as a trusted pimp and pleasure-giver who could and did set them up with same-sex lovers.

After studying Bowers for 98 minutes and listening to him talk about how terrifying things were for gay and bi actors in the intensely homophobic ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, and considering the affection he has for his old gay friends and the strong feelings and immense respect they have for him…after the film is over you’ll probably be convinced, as I was, that Scotty is no bullshitter.

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood opens tomorrow at the IFC Center.

Again, the mp3.

Last night at the Aero I caught my second viewing of Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (Greenwich, 7.27). Tyrnauer and the film’s subject, the legendary Scotty Bowers, sat for a post-screening q & a with Deadline‘s Pete Hammond. Like the film, the discussion delivered charm, candor and much laughter.

I noted a few days ago that this 98-minute doc is an honest, believable portrait of the life (present and past) of a 90something guy who was a sexual go-between for gay or bisexual Hollywood stars in the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. The film is partly based upon Bowers’ six-year-old memoir, “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.” Tyrnauer’s film is well-assembled, well-narrated, intimate and often touching.

There’s one aspect of the doc that the politically correct brigade won’t like, and that’s Scotty’s declaration that he was happily and homosexually active when he was 11 or 12. And with several priests even! He wasn’t coerced or manipulated or taken advantage of, he says — he knew exactly what he was doing and was entirely the captain of his own ship.

A certain marquee-brand director told me the same thing back in the mid ’90s, that he was having sex with older guys when he was roughly the same age. I related because I was leafing through nudie mags when I was eight or nine. I wasn’t sexually active until my late teens, but if a pretty older woman had invited me indoors when I was 12 or 13 or 14, I would have been delighted.

Responsible adults don’t like to hear this stuff, and as a rule I realize that sexual activity at a tender age can be highly traumatic for many if not most. But certain people start earlier than others.

I’ve posted a few times about Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (Greenwich, 7.27), a 98-minute doc about Scotty Bowers, the amiable, formerly unsung go-between who wrote about servicing Hollywood’s gay and bisexual community during the ’40s, ’50s and beyond. His six-year-old memoir is called “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.”

I will once again share what I came to believe during the watching of it, which is that Bowers, whose tell-all book has been challenged and mocked and who’s been described here and there as highly imaginative, isn’t lying about anything.

For most of Tyrnauer’s surprisingly intimate, low-key, non-gossipy film is about old Scotty — a 90something, white-haired pack rat who owns two or three homes in the Hollywood hills and lives with a good-natured, seen-and-heard-it-all wife who loves him — and only intermittently about the mostly gay and bi movie stars and celebrities (Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Walter Pidgeon, Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, Katharine Hepburn, Noël Coward, James Dean) who regarded Scotty as a trusted pimp and pleasure-giver who could and did set them up with same-sex lovers.

After studying Bowers for 98 minutes and listening to him talk about how terrifying things were for gay and bi actors in the intensely homophobic big-studio era, and considering the affection he has for his old gay friends and the strong feelings and immense respect they have for him…after the film is over you’ll probably be convinced, as I was, that Scotty is no bullshitter.

Three weeks ago I was invited to see Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, a 98-minute doc about Scotty Bowers, the amiable, formerly unsung go-between who wrote about servicing Hollywood’s gay and bisexual community during the ’40s, ’50s and beyond in a five-year-old memoir called “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.”

Tyrnauer’s film will screen tonight at the Toronto Film Festival, which means I can finally…hold on…the embargo notice says I can’t review it until 11:59 pm this evening. Okay, so I won’t. But I will share what I came to believe during the watching of it, which is that Bowers, whose tell-all book has been challenged and mocked and who’s been described here and there as an unreliable bullshitter, isn’t lying about anything.

For most of Tyrnauer’s surprisingly intimate, low-key, non-gossipy film is about old Scotty — a 90something, white-haired pack rat who owns two or three homes in the Hollywood hills and lives with a good-natured, seen-and-heard-it-all wife who loves him — and only intermittently about the mostly gay and bi movie stars and celebrities (Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Walter Pidgeon, Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, Katharine Hepburn, Noël Coward, James Dean) who regarded Scotty as a trusted pimp and pleasure-giver who could and did set them up with same-sex lovers.

After studying Bowers for 98 minutes and listening to him talk about how terrifying things were for gay and bi actors in the intensely homophobic ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, and considering the affection he has for his old gay friends and the strong feelings and immense respect they have for him…after the film is over you’ll probably be convinced, as I was, that Scotty is no bullshitter.

It follows that a high percentage of his recollections about the private sexual lives of movie stars are most likely true. I found this an inescapable conclusion. Just as your gut tells you that Donald Trump is one of the worst bullshitters in the history of western civilization, you can just sense that old Scotty is a straight-shooter. Okay, maybe he’s hazy on a few historical details but the man is 94, for God’s sake. Cut him a little slack.

I have not reviewed Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, but I’m telling you that Scotty Bowers is a man of apparent honor. Read this 3.19.12 profile of Bowers by L.A. Weekly‘s Paul Teetor, and then see Tyrnauer’s film, and then read “Full Service” and tell me I’m wrong. I don’t think I am. I really don’t.

I’ve posted four previous pieces about Scott, the book and Tyrnauer’s film — here they are.

The unthinkable is a curious feeling about the late, highly notorious Roy Cohn, the merciless pitbull attorney and fixer whom some regarded as “evil incarnate.”

I felt it last month while watching Ali Abbasi‘s The Appprentice…a twinge of sympathy for Cohn…you feel just a bit sorry for the guy.

This morning I shared this emotional detour with director Matt Tyrnauer, creator of an excellent 2019 documentary about Cohn, called “Where’s My Roy Cohn?”

Here’s my five and a half year-old Sundance review.

HE to Tyrnauer: “I’m a huge fan of The Apprentice, which I saw last month on the Côte d’Azur. It’s right up your Roy Cohn alley, as you’ve no doubt read.

“The astonishing thing, for me, is that Abbasi’s film actually makes you feel a tiny bit sorry for Cohn when Sebastian Stan‘s Donald Trump more or less turns on him and essentially brushes him off after Cohn’s IRS troubles and AIDS affliction have taken their toll.

“For in so doing Trump violated a code of shady ethical conduct that was explained by William Holden’s Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch: “When you side with a man you stick with him. Otherwise you’re like some animal…you’re finished!”

“I wouldn’t have thought that generating a certain measure of sympathy for one of the 20th Century’s most loathsome men would have been possible, but The Apprentice manages this.

“There’s also a faint measure of irony in the fact that The Apprentice portrays young Trump (the narrative begins in ‘73 or thereabouts when Trump is 27) as not altogether repugnant. He’s essentially portrayed as hungry and ambitious but not yet venal or rapacious.

“Stan’s Trump performance struck me as just right — never flirting with parody, not Alec Baldwin-ish, no cheap laughs. And for my money Jeremy Strong’s Cohn performance is drop-dead brilliant. He should be Oscar nominated for it.

“Okay, there’s one cheap laugh when, early in their mentor-apprentice relationship, Cohn says to Trump, ‘You have a fat ass — you should do something about that.’

“Have you seen it? Do you have friends who’ve seen it? I’d love to hear your specific reactions, etc.

“All hail Scotty Bowers in heaven!”

Friendo: “Although I didn’t sympathize with Cohn in the last part of The Apprentice, I found him weirdly likable. That’s the paradox of Roy Cohn. He was a vicious operator but he was kind of like Tony Soprano. He’s…compelling.”

HE to friendo: “All I was saying is that there’s a code of honor, even among fuckheads. If you accept big favors and counsel from someone and thereby rise in the world, even if he’s the devil himself, you don’t throw him under the bus when he’s going through hard times. You stick with him through thick and thin.

“Like Scorsese stuck with Elia Kazan.”

My January 2019 review of Where’s My Roy Cohn?:

“How can a study of the most notoriously ruthless attack-dog attorney in U.S. history be anything but a dark poem? A movie, I’m thinking, about ghosts, demons, banshees, goblins. A merging of fact and nightmare.

“The film is actually less poetic than a smart, sturdy, well-assembled thing — an efficient portrait of a closeted, scabrous, old-school shithead. It’s a fully respectable as far as it goes, but Cohn’s legend doesn’t feel all that linked or connected in the current zeitgeist. He was raised and shaped in another era, a darker time.

“The only element that vibrates is the fact that Donald Trump admired Cohn’s fang-toothed approach back in the day. Yes, Cohn was an inspiration to the youngish Trump in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, but Trump’s hyper-aggressive approach to the rough and tumble of big-time politics, looking to exploit whatever fears and anxieties might be lying around…well, we knew that going in.

“How absorbing is Where Is My Roy Cohn? — how sharply assembled, how hard-htting? Very, but at the same time it never really sheds its skin and transforms itself into something you might not see coming. I’m sorry but I didn’t enjoy it as much as Tyrnauer’s Scotty and the Secrets of Hollywood or Studio 54 docs, both of which were released last year.

“Cohn was a cold, bloodless, out-for-numero-uno creep, and seemingly a drag to be around. As a subject, I mean, as well as in real life.

“I guess I was looking for some kind of crazier current, maybe something borrowed from the realm of Mike Nichols‘ Angels in America. The film is “good,” as far as that goes. Tyrnauer is a gifted, highly intelligent filmmaker. I have no complaints with what it is — I just wish it had unfolded in a loopier, less conventional way.”

Let’s say you intend to produce a narrative film about the late Scotty Bowers — bisexual pimp to the stars in the ’40s and ’50s, author of a tell-all book about his sexual adventures and the subject of Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.

Let’s also say that you’ve managed to persuade gentle erotic mood-spinner Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) to direct your Scotty film. But you still need to find the right screenwriter[s] to make Scotty’s story into an engaging, playable thing.

In all honesty, would you hire Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, a couple of edgy straight guys who’ve done little more than wallow in adolescent, arrested-development stoner comedies since they broke through 13 or so years ago…would you hire Rogen and Goldberg to write your Scotty movie, a fair amount of which would have to include some guy-on-guy action…dicks, boners and such?

If your answer is “uhm, no…that’s probably not a great idea,” I would share your viewpoint. If your response is “yeah, hiring the writers of Longshot sounds intriguing and could definitely work,” I’d love to hear an explanation.

The apparent intention is to make Scotty’s story into…what, a satirical period comedy? Or at least to goof it up to some degree? I’m not saying Scotty Bowers didn’t live his life with a certain twinkle in his eye, but Rogen-Goldberg never wrote a line or a gag that didn’t reflect stoner Millennial mindsets and attitudes. Plus their sexual conveyances have always been unrelentingly straight. How are they supposed to make bisexual currents in 1940s and ’50s Hollywood come alive?

Just to clarify, HE strongly approves of Guadagnino directing but is totally effing stunned about Rogen-Goldberg writing the script, as reported earlier today by Deadline‘s Mike Fleming.

If you were Jack L. Warner in late 1945 and planning to produce Night and Day, a film about the life of Cole Porter, who would you hire to write it? Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, right?

Fleming reports that Tyrnauer and Altimeter Films partner Corey Reeser will produce alongside Rogen and Goldberg’s Point Grey Pictures. Searchlight’s Richard Ruiz will oversee the project.

I wasn’t especially interested in seeing Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan‘s Hollywood miniseries (Netflix, currently streaming) as it sounded, to go by reviews, like another exercise in woke historical revisionism.

The series reimagines late ’40s and ’50s Hollywood by eliminating musty taboos and prejudices that were in force 60 or 70 years ago. Hollywood on the planet Tralfamadore. Powerful women players (directors, agents, casting directors), gay guys and people of color occupying significant slots in the power structure plus a Scotty Bowers-like gas station offering sexual services.

Recreating and re-inventing America’s ethnic and sexual history has been in fashion since Hamilton, I reasoned, or over the last five years. Hardly a radical or even interesting idea today. Or so I thought.

Last night I finally watched the first two episodes, and guess what? Hollywood is engrossing, well-written, briskly paced, not predictable and most of the actors get it right. (I was particularly taken with David Corenswet, the lead character.) The wokester fantasyland thing, it turns out, is dramatically liberating. Or it felt that way to me. I intend to watch the remaining five episodes.

The actor playing Rock Hudson, Jake Picking, still isn’t right. (Murphy couldn’t find a so-so actor who at least half-resembles young Hudson?) But the guy playing agent Henry Willson, Jim Parsons, is exactly right in every department. Samara Weaving as extra-ambitious actress Claire Wood has a special blonde spitfire thing going on. This is partly because she’s actually attractive in a 20th Century sense, which is somewhat unusual in this day and age.

Before last night’s On The Basis of Sex guild screening I sat down with Bill McCuddy and Neil Rosen of “Talking Movies.” The topic was mainly the Broadcast Film Critics Association documentary awards, which are happening on Saturday in Brooklyn. A few docs that should have been at least nominated were blown off, for some reason. Eugene Jarecki‘s The King, a transcendent doc about Elvis Presley and American culture, was ignored. Matt Tyrnauer‘s 100% brilliant Studio 54 was also given the go-by…why? Ditto a pair of HBO docs — Marina Zenovich‘s Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind and Susan Lacy‘s Jane Fonda in Five Acts. Why didn’t they nominate Divide and Conquer, the phenomenal Roger Ailes doc?

Judd Apatow‘s The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, my absolute favorite doc of 2018 and arguably the best film Apatow had ever made, has been nominated for Best Limited Doc Series. What does that mean? It’s not a series but simply a long film (i.e., 270 minutes).

I was torn over which film to choose in the MOST COMPELLING LIVING SUBJECT OF A DOCUMENTARY category. The nominees are Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, RBG, Free Solo, Bad Reputation, Quincy, Three Identical Strangers, John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection and Filmworker. I kept flip-flopping between Scotty Bowers and Leon Vitali, and finally went with Scotty because Leon wouldn’t answer my numerous inquiries about the 4K 2001: A Space Odyssey doc.

I can’t divulge the location, but Hollywood Elsewhere will be there in spirit if not physically. And I’ll apparently be interviewing director Matt Tyrnauer when he arrives in Manhattan early next week.

Yes, I’m a serious fan of Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (Greenwich, 7.27), in part, I suppose, because I’ve always found good backroom gossip irresistible, but mostly because I really and truly believe Scotty Bowers was a sexual go-between for gay or bisexual Hollywood stars in the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. And because I admire Scotty’s intrepid attitude about everything.

“The sexual proclivities of some of the biggest stars of that era — Cary Grant, in particular — were well known to the town’s insiders,” Tyrnauer told Brooks Barnes in a 7.16 N.Y. Times article. “But people still gasp. That says so much about the enduring power of the Hollywood myth machine.”

I’ve been waiting to see Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, a doc based on Scotty Bowers and Lionel Friedberg‘s “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars,” for a long time. I first heard about Tyrnauer trying to pull it together…what, back in ’13 or ’14? It’s taken forever, but now, finally, a special pre-Toronto Film Festival screening is happening later this week.

The official TIFF debut of Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood will happen on Saturday, September 9th.

“Reliable Source,” posted on 6.18.16: “Last night I ran into Scotty Bowers, the 92 year-old co-author of “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars,” which popped in early 2012. (Here’s my review.) It happened at a nearby Whole Foods (Fairfax & Santa Monica Blvd.), and for a guy who will turn 93 in less than two weeks he’s very charming, alert and well-spoken.

“The only other over-90 fellow I’ve spoken to who has the same classy manner and mental acuity is Norman Lloyd, whom I first interviewed in ’05 and who’s now 101.