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"Party
Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n'
Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr," by
Robert Hofler
; Da Capo Press (308 pages,
$15.95
paper)
———
The
excesses and outrageous misjudgments of
Allan Carr
, the openly gay, morbidly obese, caftan-loving talent
manager, party promoter and producer, are best
exemplified by two projects he oversaw that bookend the
1980s: the disco-disaster Village People movie
"Can't Stop the Music" (which he also
co-wrote) and the infamous Academy Awards show of 1989,
which opened with
Rob Lowe
and Snow White singing a hooray-for-
Hollywood
version of "Proud Mary." There were triumphs,
too: Carr produced the 1978 smash "Grease,"
the highest-grossing movie musical of all time until
2008's "Mamma Mia!," and 1984's multi-Tony
winner "La Cage aux Folles." Energetically
chronicling Carr's hits and misses, author
Robert Hofler
champions the completely apolitical but consistently
outre Carr as an "accidental gay activist,"
whose "unspoken goal" was "to bring gay
into the
Hollywood
mainstream."
Apart
from the occasional awkward construction ("On that
breath of contentious air") and factual goof (drag
activists the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are
identified as the Sisters of Perpetual Indignity), the
worst part of Hofler's breezy book is its unwieldy,
misleading, vanilla title — suggesting a frat-house
kegger in which Carr has only a supporting role. (Odder
still, there's a photo of
John Travolta
and
Olivia Newton-John
in their "Grease" costumes on the cover.) Yet
Hofler, a senior editor at Variety and the author of
"The Man Who Invented
Rock Hudson
," clearly delights in documenting the popper- and
cocaine-fueled bacchanals at Carr's
Beverly Hills
residence/ pleasure dome, where he hosted such legendary
events as the Rudolf Nureyev Mattress Party while rent
boys, muscled
Hollywood
hopefuls and A-listers of both genders grooved (and then
some) in Carr's basement "AC/DC Disco."
In fact,
Hofler is so fascinated by his subject's unapologetic
flamboyance and voracious appetites (for food, men and
drugs) that he devotes just one chapter to Carr's
childhood and background. It's a wise structural
decision, with little armchair psychoanalysis to
interfere with the story of how a spoiled, tubby,
movie-mad only child born
Alan Solomon
in
Highland Park, Ill.
, in 1937 became both the ringleader of Caligulan orgies
and a shrewd showman. Or, as
Marvin Hamlisch
, one of Carr's clients, puts it: "There was the
wild guy for public consumption and then there was this
very smart guy who listened to people and listened to
ideas and knew when to act on them and knew how to get
things done."
Not
everyone thought so highly of Carr. "Grease"
co-star
Stockard Channing
calls him "a nasty mother figure";
Arthur Laurents
,
Jerry Herman
and
Harvey Fierstein
, the creative team behind "La Cage aux Folles,"
referred to the moody producer as "Flo," short
for menstrual flow. Though no one can claim that Carr,
who died in 1999, left behind a great cinematic legacy,
Hofler attempts to redeem "Can't Stop the
Music" by calling it "
Hollywood's
first, and only, big-budget gay musical."
Carr's
greatest production may have been himself, fiercely
flaming in deeply closeted
Hollywood
and unafraid to call out higher-ups like then-
Paramount
chief executive
Barry Diller
: "Barry can't believe that a queen who wears
caftans and is so out and visible could make as much
money as I did. Because of 'Grease,' I made him sign the
biggest check he has ever signed, and he will never
forgive me."
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