Horror is a genre
that really deals
with putting women in peril.
We all know the formula.
A terrified girl being
pursued by a masked villain.
Of course she runs, and falls,
and the k*ller gets her.
The monster attacks
and the audience reacts.
The kids call them slasher or splatter movies.
They signify a disturbing new
trend at the movie box office.
Even with its predictability
fans would line up for more.
I really like seeing a
strong female lead come into
her own and take on the male villain
in a horror movie.
Survivor girl.
The final girl.
The final girl.
Very often you
have a female hero
because they feel
more vulnerable.
In the midst of the 1980s,
the horror genre
was running wild.
Terror filled the walls
of video rental stores
and became a weekend ritual
for slumber parties everywhere.
And for every
screaming final girl
was a new monster to stalk her.
Michael, Jason, Pinhead,
Chucky, Leatherface,
but no one was scarier
than Freddy Krueger.
Freddy Krueger is
every girl's dream
and every girl's nightmare.
The burned boogeyman
who frightened audiences
with his razor glove
and wicked tongue.
Freddy is the ultimate nightmare
"A Nightmare on Elm Street"
unleashed a new cinematic terror
that left audiences
screaming for more.
But then came the sequel
to break all the rules.
Someone is coming back to Elm Street.
I just wanted to do
something different.
I didn't wanna do
another slasher movie.
"Freddy's Revenge"
brought Krueger
out of the dream world
and into the body
of a teenage boy, Jesse
Walsh, a bold choice
that was obvious even to
the film's cast in 1985.
We had a real
sensitive male lead.
Instead of a typical
macho teen boy
we had sort of this nerdy,
sensitive kid and he became
the equivalent of our heroine
in jeopardy in part one.
For Mark Patton, a starring role
in a hit film series
was a dream come true.
I wasn't intimidated but I had
lots of respect for Mark.
He has that vulnerability
and that sex appeal...
Just everything that goes
into being a scream queen.
The mainstream public,
they weren't ready
for a male scream queen,
they couldn't articulate it.
This was totally written to be a g*y movie.
I think it's hard to watch it and not think that.
He could have had such
a different career path
but was cast in this
movie was so q*eer,
the fact that it wasn't
owned as a q*eer film
made a light shine on him that
was completely inappropriate.
The film that was poised
to launch his career
ended up destroying it.
I wake up in the middle
of the first movie that
I'm the lead actor in
and realize that there's
a g*y subtext in it.
I was a g*y person and
I was living in terror.
In the 1980, to be q*eer was
to be this diseased pariah.
I think, in away, Mark Patton
paid the price for that.
As quickly as he had arrived
Mark vanished from
show business.
What happened to Mark
is not the exception.
I think that that
happens constantly.
The movie was 30 years ago
and you're still pissed
off at Dave Chaskin.
You've been lying for 30 years about this.
I mean I never wrote you
know, he screams like a woman.
This is not my theory.
This is my truth.
This is what happened to me.
I don't know what happened
30 years ago to make
him quit acting.
So many of us had no idea
what he was doing
for nearly 20 years.
Mark Patton pretty
much disappeared.
Like they said, he was
the Greta Garbo of horror.
You know they couldn't find him.
They didn't know where he was.
Cher gave me the best
advice in the world
and it's come back to haunt me,
she said,
"Mark, in show business,
what you need to do, is
always do what's best for you
because that's what everybody
else is gonna be doing."
This is like the
tip of the iceberg
as far as this film is.
How many of you have never seen
"Nightmare on Elm
Street 2" before?
It's okay, if you can raise your hand, it's okay.
It's okay guys don't worry.
This movie is the gayest thing...
And it's true.
And we did Xanadu last month.
It's true, it's true.
This is the gayest movie you are about to see.
That's right.
It makes
"Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"
look like a staunch,
Republican film.
Just please, does us a favor,
sir you've never seen it before,
put on your gayest
goggles, please do.
Please do.
In 2015, the
infamous horror film,
"A Nightmare on Elm Street:
Part Two",
celebrated its 30th anniversary.
In honor of the occasion the
lead star, Mark Patton,
spent the year on
the road, traveling
to different horror conventions
to meet the fans of Elm Street.
Bill?
Yeah.
What time is it?
Like 9:35.
Isn't it seven?
Isn't what seven?
O'clock.
Yes, yes it is.
Wake me up in 30 minutes.
Welcome back fans,
I am Fozzie Bear
and I am the official GLBT
correspondent for NLTOP.
I edged out Andy
just by a little.
I'm here with Mark Patton,
Hi Mark, how are you?
Hey, good morning.
Good morning,
how are you feeling
this morning, first of all?
Oh, I'm feeling great.
You don't wish you
were dead at all?
Oh never, never, never.
Oh no, me either, I'm feeling good.
Yeah, no, I wake up
on Sunday mornings.
I'm like I don't know
how, Beyonce does this.
And Bill said, "well
Beyonce's really young."
I was like, "okay, well I
don't how Cher does this."
'Cause I feel like I'm between
Beyonce and Cher or some place.
Part of you lives in alternate universe, you know.
I spend my days
signing photographs
of myself that were
taken 30 years ago.
Hi, can I get a signed picture?
Sure, of course.
And, feel weird
about that, honestly.
But it is a business.
When the door opens
I become Mark Patton.
Right.
It's almost like a veil falls
over me and I become the star.
And I tell people this all time.
It's like if you're
gonna do this
then be really professional, because for most
of these people it'll
be the only time
they ever meet you,
and it's a big deal.
I mean I've had people say to me,
"if I could meet you
"or I could meet Brad Pitt,
I would meet you.
You're my Brad Pitt."
And they're nervous
and they're scared.
You know, it's like
a lifetime memory
and it only takes one
second to ruin that.
If you think that this is
whorish for you to do this
then be a good wh*re, because
you're taking their money.
They want you to
be a movie star.
Just go ahead and be it.
And that's your job as an actor.
If your rent is due,
nobody really cares.
They don't wanna know
about your problems.
They want to see the movie star.
♪ One, two, Freddy's
coming for you... ♪
The kids of Elm Street don't know it yet,
but something is
coming to get them.
Opening to unexpecting audiences in 1984,
"A Nightmare on Elm
Street" introduced
the world to Freddy Krueger,
the fantasy-horror villain
who stalked and
m*rder*d the kids
of Elm Street
through their dreams.
Critics praised
creator, Wes Craven,
for breaking the mold
of the horror heroine
with his refreshingly
proactive lead, Nancy Thompson.
This gruesome flick became the first major hit
for independent studio
New Line Cinema,
and they quickly jumped into
the production of a sequel.
This time, they asked
budding screenwriter,
David Chaskin, to take
a stab at the story.
It's starting to happen again.
Nightmare two is
a possession movie
and I especially
liked the concept
of an innocent
person being invaded.
"Freddy's Revenge".
The film's successful box office
opened the door for
six more sequels,
and a surge of
merchandising followed.
Freddy Krueger is just a phone call away.
But "Freddy's Revenge" was not a fan favorite.
When I first started going to shows people would
walk up to my table and tell me
how much they hated the movie.
I mean, like "What
are you doing here?"
Two, two is my least favorite.
It's so hard to watch.
Well, it deviated from
the original storyline.
It didn't feel like Wes Craven.
He was a god.
I remember laughing
at that one more
and it was mainly
because of the dance.
He's dancing all over
his bedroom and
doing this motion.
With the little,
popper doo-dad.
It was a really g*y though.
There was a lot of
g*y in that movie.
Oh, there's a lot
of subtext in there.
It wasn't subtext,
it was right there.
A lot gratuitous bulge,
which is always appreciated.
And the g*y bar scene.
That winds up in the showers.
Towels snapping, and
with Mark Patton's,
I mean he's a scream queen.
Mark Patton, he screams, he's a super nice guy,
and he chokes you
when you meet him.
Yeah...
It's more like this, like.
I don't need to...
It's gentle, it's
a gentle choke.
I don't need to meet him then.
You don't want that,
you don't need that.
I don't know what Mark went through on the show.
I don't know he felt.
Mark, I think, is
looking for resolution.
I think that some of the circumstances
around the making
of this film created
a lot of hurt for him.
Judging from what
happened, and then him
not being in a movie or the entertainment industry
for like 27 years, I
think he was content
if had they never
done that documentary,
I don't think that he
might've ever pursued
trying to find out why or maybe have some closure.
The 2010 documentary, "Never Sleep Again",
set out to chronicle the entire Elm Street legacy,
with interviews
of the filmmakers
and stars of all eight films.
Having disappeared
from the public eye,
Mark was their most difficult subject to find.
Only after hiring a
private investigator
were they finally able
to locate him in Mexico.
I had not thought about acting in many years.
I had made myself unfind-able.
I was off the grid.
I was living on a
dirt road in Mexico
and I got a telephone call
from "Never Sleep Again",
and I said,
"I'll come and tell my story"
under one circumstance,
that I get to confront
"David Chaskin and say,
you wrote this as a g*y movie."
You've been lying for 30 years
about this and every time
people ask you about it, you say
"No, Mark was just so g*y
that he ruined the movie."
I didn't even know I was famous.
I didn't know any
of this existed.
And then I dived
in to the internet.
And that was an eye opener.
That really pissed me off.
I had a very interesting
childhood actually.
My mother was the daughter
of a Southern Baptist minister
and my father was from a
very large Catholic family,
and they met each other
and they got married.
By time my mother was 22
she had five children,
one of which had
died, and by the time
she was 24 she had
a hysterectomy,
'cause that was birth control
where they came from.
My parents divorced when I was 14
and I sort of became
the mom in our house.
I took care of everybody.
I paid the bills.
I did all that kind of stuff.
My mother visited
mental institutions
on and off for most of her life.
I came from a place where everybody
looked exactly the same,
blonde hair, blue eyes,
but I was beautiful,
and I was noticed, and my grandmother
had said something
to me like,
"your hair is like a girl",
or "why do you have
it cut like that?
And why do you have
this bracelet?"
And, "boys aren't supposed to wear bracelets."
And I had a nice little flip.
And I thought, you know what,
if God doesn't love me
there's something wrong with God
and when I roll over I'm not
gonna care about this anymore.
I knew I was g*y when I four years old, probably,
and I remember I had
a set of bunk beds,
and I had built myself a tent,
and I put all the pillows up,
and I was being carried
off to marry the king.
But I wasn't a girl,
I knew I was a boy,
and I was gonna marry the king,
and it was really fabulous
and I knew absolutely that
under no circumstance should
tell anybody what I was doing.
And they didn't
understand me at all.
I mean, I was a brother
from another planet.
Actually, I was a sister
from another planet
My dad didn't understand me,
but my dad wouldn't let
anyone f*ck with me.
I know my dad loved me a lot.
But I think that my dad
resented my freedom.
I was free because I was g*y.
When you become a
parent you trade
your dreams for somebody else's,
and I never had to
trade in my dreams.
And it was the same with all the people around me.
I don't know why, but
deep down inside me
I knew that there was something wrong with them
and there was nothing wrong with me, and that all
of my problems were just a problem with geography,
and when I moved to New
York I remember my dad
was in the front yard
raking the leaves.
He didn't offer me any money.
He didn't ask me when
I was coming home.
He just said goodbye.
It was like I was abandoning him
and he was pretending
that I was not leaving.
He, 'til the day he died,
thought I had run away from home.
I mean that's the way
they talked about it.
It was like, "come and
visit me in New York."
"Well, you're the
one that left."
That was the option,
you know, you left
and you didn't come back, I
mean, I didn't come back
to my home for four
and a half years,
and nobody came looking for me.
I moved to New York
on February 18th, 1977
with a one-way plane
ticket and $132.
I'd never been on plane.
My drama teacher had told me to get out of town.
I was 17 years old.
There was no other option.
I couldn't stay where
I was, because I mean
apart from being an
actor, you know just
the g*y me, is I
would've been dead.
Some redneck would've k*lled me
on a back road and that
would've been my life.
I was safe in New York.
It only took one walk
down Christopher Street
to know that I had arrived, 'cause the doors
started flying
open, and that was
the same way with show business.
It was just, it was
all meant to be.
And I moved into
the Hotel Woodward,
which was a prostitution hotel.
I didn't know that at the time.
All the girls wore little jackets and stuff,
and it was $37.50 a week,
and I had to pay for two weeks.
The boy down the
hall had an agent.
He was making a fortune
and I just thought,
I didn't even know
you needed an agent.
So, I followed him to his agency
and there was a big
sign on the wall,
and it said if you're an actor
do not knock on this door.
Put your resume and
your picture underneath
the door and we'll call
you if we want you.
I knock on the door
because it didn't apply
to me, 'cause I wasn't an actor,
you know, officially.
And the owner of the agency had come in early,
opened the door, looked at me and said,
"what do you want?"
And I said,
"I've come to apply for a job as an actor."
And he said, "okay",
and he looked at me,
and he said, "how old are you?"
And I told him how old I was.
And he said, "okay come
back at 11 o'clock."
And they later told me he said
"we didn't care
"if you could talk,
they way you looked
"we knew we were gonna make
a fortune in commercials on you."
Within days I had my first national commercials
and then I started making money,
and that was that.
♪ So kiss a little longer
♪ Just give me the sunshine, give me a dew ♪
And I said that night,
"you know what",
"I'll give myself five years.
"If I do something really
major in five years
"then this is all meant to be and it'll be okay."
The curtain comes down.
The laughter and
cheers go on and on.
I opened on Broadway
with Cher, Karen Black,
Sandy Dennis, Robert
Altman directing,
on February the 18th,
1982, at 6:30 at night.
So I made my five
years by 30 minutes.
That kind of timing
is just divine.
My family knew nothing about New York, Broadway.
I mean my first Broadway show,
my mom called me up.
I told her I got it.
Then she called me back later
and she was so embarrassed,
she was like, "do you have
to make your own costume?"
We rehearsed for
"Come back to the
Five and Dive, Jimmy Dean" here.
The Rolling Stones came
here one afternoon.
David Bowie, David
Bowie kissed me
on the staircase downstairs,
which was really exciting.
And anybody who had worked
for Robert, Robin Williams,
and they'd watch the
show and give us notes,
but they treated you as peers,
which was really exciting.
You know, nobody every treated
me as a young person.
It was always, I was a peer,
I was a part of that group
and you were just included
in the entire experience.
It was really wonderful.
I was starstruck
by Cher and then
I was completely
taken under her spell.
All of the time that
I spent with her was
pretty magnificent,
because she was
exactly what you
wanted her to be.
When you enter into her world,
that's the real Hollywood world.
Martha, do you
think they could be
as big as Marilyn Monroe's.
I think they might be bigger.
Do you, do you really?
He played an outcast Texan boy named Joe
who reunites with a group of friends years later.
But to their surprise
he has changed
his gender and is now Joanne,
played by Karen Black.
Tell me about Joanne.
She's a transsexual.
There was an altar to
James Dean and I stepped
through it into the arms of
the crowd, which went wild,
and just in a minute, Cher's
gonna walk down through
the center and the crowd is
going crazy, and it's insane.
After a short run on Broadway,
Robert Altman went
into production
on a feature film adaptation
with the original cast.
That was it, and the next year
I was at the Cannes
Film Festival.
♪ Sincerely
You really can't imagine when a dream like
that comes true, in the
way that that came true.
"Kinky Boots" is at
the Hirschfeld Theater
which was the Martin Beck Theater, and if you go
to the mezzanine
and in the middle
of the whole presentation there's a picture of me
where I used to sit,
its a Hirschfeld.
I'd been scouted to go
to LA for pilot season,
but I really wasn't
prepared to go.
Had I not gotten
in that car my life
would have been
completely different.
We drove in a Karmann Ghia
from New York to Los Angeles
and I was dumped into the deep end of Hollywood.
We were living in South Pasadena
with a friend of mine.
I was doing pilot season.
Mark came out and I feel like
I talked about him with Tim.
I said, "you know I have
this really cute friend
who's staying with me", and he's like
"well when are you
going to introduce us?"
My friend Jeff Marcus said,
"Oh, come over and meet Tim."
And my destiny walked
right in the door.
The only thing more
beautiful than these
is the woman receiving them.
Timmy was spectacular
looking, insanely funny.
Beautiful, black-headed boy, beautiful eyes,
and he was the
reverse image of me.
Tim was a successful
TV actor in Los Angeles
in a steady gig, living
in a house in the Hills.
When we moved in together,
like the day we met each other.
Tim changed my life.
And we lived next
door to Madonna
in a house on the top
of Mulholland Highway.
I liked to spy on
Madonna and I liked
to go to dinners at
Merv Griffin's house.
I mean, I knew how
to work the system.
Free clothes, free travel, when somebody else
is paying the
ticket, it's a blast.
The adulation and all
that kind of stuff,
it's wonderful, and
work is wonderful.
And that's why
you're there anyway.
To pretend to be somebody
else and get paid for it.
It's like amazing.
After years of supporting roles,
Mark had the talent and the drive
to become a leading man.
I was going towards my destiny.
All he needed now was that k*ller opportunity.
Horror movies, mutilation, decapitation,
t*rture, does that
sound entertaining?
Half of American
households now have
video cassette recorders, and for many children,
they're a ticket to R-rated gore
that the kids are too young to see at the movies.
They seem to love every moment
of today's horror films.
Through the home video market, horror movies
had become bigger, badder, and gorier than ever.
They were an absolute
retaliation against
Reagan and the growing
Conservative movement.
Take a walk down our opposition's memory lane,
it starts to look like "Nightmare on Elm Street".
The kids loved them.
I love blood, and guts, and stuff, you know.
It turns me on you know.
The parents hated them
and organizations
tried to ban them.
They were talking about
the Friday 13th
and Freddy Krueger.
But, for many aspiring actors
at the time,
low-budget horror films
became a gateway to a
career in Hollywood.
The demand for new blood allowed
for a constant stream of
fresh talent to emerge.
Everyone was looking to be
casting the next big horror hit.
I cannot tell you
how many friends
told me "I would never
do a horror film."
And it didn't really ever
dawn on me to say to them,
"well, you don't have to really worry
about it because nobody
asked you."
I was happy to get
this job, you know.
I mean I loved it.
Mark was a very good actor,
he had a good luck,
and he did have
that vulnerability.
I cast him basically
because he felt like
he was the right
guy for the part.
I knew about the movie,
of course, but it wasn't
like really on my
radar at the time.
I was working way too much,
and then when I the second one,
they put a screening together
of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" for me
after I had signed the contract
and watched it with a friend.
I had no idea what it was.
Then I was like, "oh my God,
what have I got myself into?"
When I think back on it,
it was hard, hard, hard work.
It was a lot of hard work.
There was all this
stuff in this film
that I had no idea how to do.
I didn't know how to do
any of it and basically
I had an anxiety attack,
and that anxiety attack
lasted for the entire
pre-production period.
We all were fighting
to become comfortable
with the effects and
Marks had to lots,
and lots of effects in
this, and he was under
the glue as much as
I was in some cases.
And it was all so fast.
We were sh**ting that pool scene
on July, the fourth.
We opened in New York City
on every screen
available on Halloween.
Times Square was head to toe
"Nightmare on Elm Street".
It's "Nightmare on Elm Street",
"Nightmare on Elm Street",
and everywhere you
turned was my name
and pictures of me,
and it was immersive.
Who, me scared?
Yeah.
It scared the devil out of me.
At 10 o'clock in the morning
every theater was sold out.
I would go in anonymous
and walk out famous.
It was unbelievable.
I just became a
movie star overnight.
Freddy's back, watch out.
While Mark was riding high
on the back of a box office hit,
Freddy Krueger was becoming a household name.
But the sequel left the audiences
feeling underwhelmed
and a few were picking
up on something odd,
buried just below the surface.
None of that ever
occurred to me.
When the "Village
Voice" came out after
the movie opened and called it
this great, g*y movie,
we all had a huge laugh.
We thought it was
the funniest thing.
You know, where did
they get that from?
As the reputation of this movie started
to grow, it sort of
became a nightmare.
I mean, really a nightmare.
People have selective memory
a little bit about this.
It was on the page of the script
that there was gonna be
this S&M sequence
in the shower room.
And I knew we were
treading in there.
I knew we were
tiptoeing around this.
I knew we were crossing
a line a little bit,
and I knew Freddy
was part of that.
Freddy was pushing
those buttons.
And we did talk about this,
I mean I didn't talk to Jack
about it, but I remember
talking to Robert about it.
Right away, I knew
there was h*m*
undertones in the
script when I read it.
I knew at the audition, I knew.
I didn't get it.
I didn't catch it in the script.
I never was aware until
I heard that Native magazine
in New York had said this is the first g*y movie.
And then I was like, yeah.
Is Freddy a manifestation
of this taboo thing
that's somewhere in
the back of his head?
You can play with
it all you want.
You know with "The Advocate", they
were the first ones to notice.
Nobody saw it, Bob asked
me was there anything
in there, and I
said, "you know."
Nah, there's nothing, what are you talking about?
Where it really became
cryst-clear for me
was when we were doing
the scene on the stairs.
Look at Robert and
I, it's a love scene.
I remember with Mark,
caressing his face,
and I remember asking Mark if I could make that,
if I could make it,
and I think the word is h*m*.
Mark and I are nose to nose,
and I've go the claw
on him like this.
And he asked me
actually, if he could
put the blade in my mouth.
And one of the pieces of coverage,
I rimmed his mouth.
But I said, well
you know, whatever.
I mean, I can go there with you.
And my makeup artist,
he comes running across,
screaming at the top of his lungs,
"stop, he needs makeup!"
And so he grabs me and he goes,
"don't you dare
"let him put that
blade in your mouth.
"It'll look like
you're blowing him."
I'm playing with oral there.
I'm playing with a lot
of symbolism there.
But mostly for me it
was d*sfigured Freddy
playing with Mark's
beauty, which is what,
"Beauty and the Beast".
When you actually go
back and you look at it,
you know the S&M bar
with the guy in leather,
and his a*s is being whipped.
I mean, you know it's shot
through with this stuff.
You know, why I didn't
get it I don't know.
But I mean just because it never
occurred to me, you know.
Obviously, I didn't
want it to be obvious,
that subtext, which is why I
never really admitted to that.
That and because it was
so much more fun not to.
My agents
went to watch the movie
and they were like,
"yeah you can carry a movie,
"but we're gonna have to
make you a character actor,
because you can't
play straight."
In order to keep his image marketable,
Mark's agent had to act fast.
They began working to conceal his sexual identity.
She threw a couple of
pairs of jeans and T-shirts
on the floor, over in
the corner, you know.
Like went through my dirty laundry and threw 'em
in the corner, and she was like,
that's what you can wear
to auditions and the rest of the stuff has to go.
Setting him up
for his most challenging
acting role yet, the
all-American boy.
There were 10 boys in
town at any given time
who could actually get a job.
That's why you keep everything on the down-low.
You don't wanna give
anybody anything
that they can use against you.
I knew I was in danger
and it was scary
because I wanted
to be a movie star,
and I made it, and I didn't want to destroy it,
and this movie destroyed it.
And I remember thinking one day,
thank you Jesus, you gave me
everything that I asked for,
every bit of it, you
gave me every bit of it.
It's all here, and then the
next day it all went to hell.
The irony of Mark Patton's
career is that at a time
when young g*y men all
over America and Europe
were coming out and
feeling relieved,
and being accepted, the
doors all shut again.
At some point
during the beginning
of the A*DS epidemic,
everything changed.
By the time "Freddy's Revenge" opened,
the A*DS epidemic had consumed
the nation's headlines.
Rock Hudson, the quintessential leading man,
had not only been outed
as g*y by the press,
but his tragic death to A*DS had
sent all of Hollywood
into a panic.
Movie star Rock Hudson, died
at his Coldwater Canyon
home this morning.
His publicist said that
the movie star's body
has already been cremated.
Hudson's battle against A*DS came to an end...
Gossip rags like the "National Enquirer",
had ignited a
full-fledged witch hunt
to expose anyone thought
to be in the closet.
It became regular,
front-page news.
There was a moment
of time in the mid-70s,
and I think it may
have been a combination
of the 60s culture and the rise of Disco culture,
and I saw this
sort of melting pot
occur there, and
everybody got along.
The early 80s were just amazing,
because there were
no boundaries.
Cocaine wasn't addictive.
There was no HIV.
Everybody was bisexual.
So, it's like you
could pretty much sleep
with anybody that you
wanted to sleep with.
There was hardly any stigma.
Yes, there was kind of an etiquette
of don't ask don't tell,
but it was much
like you don't talk
about politics and
religion at dinner.
We were free, I mean were living the liberation.
And then the check came.
The A*DS virus is intelligent,
adaptable, and relentless.
In 1985 it was still an enigma
and completely unstoppable.
Its parasitic
qualities reeked havoc
on all functions of the body,
and the gore and horror
it caused were
worse than anything
that had ever been dreamed up
on the silver screen.
It became a boogeyman for an entire generation.
While "Freddy's Revenge"
showed the devastating
transformation of one teen,
g*y men across the world
were actually experiencing it in real life.
At the time, I was
emotionally rock-bottom.
I, it was so scary.
HIV and A*DS was
happening everywhere
and nobody knew
what was happening
or who it was happening to.
You know, there was
a time when everybody
lost a lot of friends, or you
walked around and it was like
zombies on the street the way that people looked.
I know what it's
like to watch zombies
walk down the street, and they're your friends.
I mean you'd have a friend who was this beautiful,
hot man and you'd run into him six months later
and he was somebody's grandpa,
and then you never
saw him again,
and if you didn't see
somebody for a year
you just assumed they were dead.
It just seemed like overnight everybody woke up
at the same time and everyone became paranoid.
It was the worst years
of my life, personally,
professionally, I think I was
having a nervous breakdown,
didn't even know it,
just because I was ill-equipped
for the enormity of what
was being thrown at me.
Because it just got to the point
where it was just
so overwhelming,
and then you fall
into denial, you know.
I was a teenager during
that time and that was one
of the main reasons
I didn't come out,
because it was so terrifying;
there was nothing positive.
It seemed horrific to me what
was going on, what was being
said on TV, when you know
that who you are isn't that.
Gays are being called a
dangerous and violent group
that corrupts children and infects
the community with A*DS.
You hear that it's vile.
You hear that they are
doing despicable thing.
Well, what they're doing
is abnormal in the sense
that they were, they're
most of these people
that they're not fit, they're not human beings.
They have emotional problems.
There were no role models.
I mean, I was raised in a
religious background, so,
on top of that
everything that I heard,
it was incongruent
with who I knew I was.
h*m* is a sin.
God's plan for man was
Adam and Eve, not
Adam and Steve.
The constant dynamic of
being beaten down verbally,
image wise, TV, it
was just terrible.
And then all these deaths, and I kept thinking,
you know, if I start having sex,
I start having g*y sex,
I'm gonna get A*DS,
I'm gonna die.
If these f*gs don't
k*ll us all with A*DS
they'll bankrupt us all,
but before that happens
God almighty will visit
this country with judgment.
I decided to hide
it and just pretend
that basically I was straight.
I made myself believe it.
It was a struggle
and it was a struggle
I almost didn't make it out of.
I almost ended up
k*lling myself, so...
People did go back into the closet
in great numbers.
Big stars, actors that I know,
that were being very free
and liberated and all of a sudden,
they sort of had
to return to masquerading as a leading man.
Like, the public always came,
especially with Tim.
We had dogs.
He had a photo sh**t
and they were
sh**ting in the house.
I got really mad because
I didn't think it was fair.
I had to leave the house of course,
and it no longer
became my house,
it was his house,
and I didn't want our
dogs in the picture.
Tim and I had a very tempestuous relationship.
So we would break up a lot.
The rumors spread
that he had A*DS.
And Timothy did not tell me.
He was not the first
person that told me.
It's a, a dear friend
of mine told me
and I said "no, that Tim
was not HIV positive",
that he wasn't sick",
and then I called him and he was.
So, it was pretty devastating, 'cause I had talked
to Tim like, a few a
hours before, right?
How do you tell somebody that you're intimate with
that you have disease
that's gonna k*ll you
and they might've
given it to you?
There's no protocol with that.
You could be judgmental and say
that you know what you do but you don't, because
the shame was so intense,
and the fear was so intense.
But I never blamed him.
I never, never, I loved him,
I don't blame him for anything.
So, I got a call from
a guy in New York
and he said, "hi, how are you?"
It's like, I'm friend
with Tim and said,
"well Tim said I should
call you when I got
to New York because I don't know
anybody, blah, blah, blah."
And he said that we could get dinner,
and he knew enough
about us that I
just assumed, right.
And I went out to dinner with this guy,
and about midway
through the dinner he said,
"oh my God how's Tim doing?
I'm really worried about him
and blah, blah, blah."
And I didn't really reveal
anything but I just revealed
enough to say, well you
know he's doing as best as,
you know, we don't
know what's going on.
And that guy worked for
the "National Enquirer".
You know, they broke
into Tim's hospital room
and they took pictures of him
in bed while he was dying,
And I remember just really in that hospital room
mustering all of my courage to just to pretend
like we were still happy friends
having a wonderful time,
and as he lay there,
not looking like the Tim I knew,
and then he passed away
and I was not at the memorial.
Through a combination
of experiences,
both professional and
private, they broke me.
Because he's in a Hollywood that is fearful
and wants everybody
to butch up now,
and I think that that's what
made him go a little crazy.
And I thought, this is f*cking insane.
There were people asking
me if I could live
in the closet while all
these people are dying
and I'm having a
nervous breakdown
over my friends and I
just don't want this.
So, I guess at that moment all
of this came together
and I made a choice.
After walking away from his acting career,
Mark retreated from the
public eye, completely.
Decades later, a
new generation was
taking a second look
at "Freddy's Revenge".
We're always reinventing the bogeyman.
It's constantly in flux.
In my class, we go through a lot of different
monster as, dot dot dot,
monster as racial other,
monster as a different nation,
a different ideology.
Nightmare On Elm Street
2 is useful to talk
about the monster
as the h*m*,
a monster as q*eer and tapping into that paranoia.
The relationship between
horror film and reality
is reciprocal; that horror films
do reflect culture,
but they also give
us a vocabulary
to talk about things
in the real world.
Well there's three ways
I think in a horror film
to think about how
queerness emerges.
One, is this sort of
h*m* as a threat
to others, and
often the h*m*
is linked with sadism or violence
in the horror film.
There's the h*m*
threat to the culture,
that they represent something
as foundationally antithetical
to the family, or to the future.
And then the third
way is the h*m*
as the monster within,
that would emerge,
and that we have to
constantly repress.
And I think for all those reasons q*eer theory
is intimately linked
to the horror film.
A lot of horror movies
have used queerness
as something to be afraid of,
and what's interesting
about "Nightmare on
Elm Street, Part Two",
is it's not the k*ller
who's necessarily q*eer.
It's someone, you know,
dealing with themselves.
All right guys,
tell me as social historians,
you and I, how do we
talk about this film?
"Nightmare on Elm Street
2" is one of those films
where you could say
it's not subtext
at certain points,
it's just text,
especially from a modern
perspective when you're
looking back and saying of
course that's a g*y bar.
Of course that is anxiety
about this creature coming out.
We can see Jesse reading
this erotic fantasy
about a man in a diary entry.
Under the sheets with me, tearing
at my nightgown
with his steel claw.
He has to repress his own desires
in order to survive.
I think it's interesting
how you have this final boy
who's actually acting
like a final girl.
Right, do you
think in a weird way,
given what we know
about the final girl,
who tends to be more masculine
than her female counterparts,
does that make sense
that he would be
kind of to this
side of feminine?
There is nothing to figure out.
It may not even
be about sexuality.
I wanna help you.
It actually could just
be about gender first,
and you change that up...
I'm not gonna let
anything happen to you.
Automatically shifts the dynamic of the film.
You know the mainstream public, I don't think
that people thought,
oh this sucks because it's g*y.
I think they weren't ready
for a male scream queen.
They couldn't articulate it.
I think one of the problems
with having a final boy
is that the final girl has to
go through this transition
from being a victim to an agent,
and sort of taking up the phallus
and turning the tables.
I think in our culture,
we can't accept that
a boy will be at any
point unphallusized,
and then have to go
through this sort
of coming-to-age to gain power.
I'm scared.
Jesse, who is doing this to you?
Fred Krueger.
He's inside me and he
wants to take me again.
I think it was different,
it was breaking ground
for that kind of horror film
to introduce a man in that way.
This is a virgin,
and it's a family altar.
There's all kinds
of prayers in there.
It's a gift.
It's beautiful though, isn't it?
And it would make
a nice disco lamp.
That's my dog and that's me.
This is me jumping
out of the airplane.
This is how I
arrived in Vallarta.
I mean you can tell my head was a little confused.
Well I've had many dark nights
of the soul in this house.
I became very sick with HIV.
I had full-blown A*DS,
cancer, tuberculosis,
I had like everything
that you could
possibly have all
at the same time.
I was bed-bound for
a year and a half.
I was struck dead,
but I was also lucky
because I got sick when
the c*ck came out,
but unfortunately
I had tuberculosis,
and tuberculosis
medicines, you have
to be treated for
tuberculosis for a year,
and they're not compatible with HIV c*ck.
So, I had to take all
of the old line therapy.
I had AZT, DDI, D14, neuropathy,
and the AZT almost k*lled me the first year.
But this is what happened to me after I got here.
It's like I had a spiritual breakthrough,
and this is me.
I always draw me as a deer, and it was me trying
to get away, but every
time I would leave
I would fall into a depression
that I'd have to come back.
I knew that I wanted
to move down here,
but I also knew that
I couldn't not work.
So I decided to
open a store here.
Yes, we're very famous
in Puerto Vallarta.
They call us the Prada
of Puerto Vallarta.
When I came down here, nobody knew I was an actor.
I mean I didn't want
really anybody to know.
Then, "Never Sleep Again"
happened and I was interviewed,
and suddenly I was out of the closet,
and that's really
when Hector began to find out
about my life as an actor too,
because he really didn't
know much about it.
And then it suddenly became people were coming
to the store and asking
for my autograph.
Then, I went off on tour.
You know, I think in theaters
you can feel all
kinds of creepy vibes.
They're good, but you can feel everybody's energy
in here if you're kind
of sensitive that way.
There's a lot of hopes
and dreams in this room.
The Supremes, actually the
beautiful Mcguire Sisters.
Actually when we came in here,
somebody said that it
smelled like high
school, which it does,
and that's a really, really good memory for me,
because that's where I really
found myself originally.
So this will be here.
Yeah, I'm gonna
give you the Ray-Bans.
And you're getting a special,
they only had gold ones.
That's okay,
I'm gonna get these.
The timing of Mark
coming here is
actually really awesome,
because next week
Portsmouth actually celebrates its first Pride.
There are still things
happening within
out community that are
not being talked about.
You have this
monster in the room.
When you give it a lot of power
it'll become something huge.
Mark is a wonderful
platform for talking
about HIV, for
talking about A*DS.
So I decided that if I was
gonna do this I was gonna take
my little bit of
fame and I was gonna
squeeze as much of out
it as I possibly could.
I knew that this glove
was really powerful.
The first year I was gonna talk about bullying,
and everybody could
related to that.
The next year I talked
about h*m*,
because conventions
were very closeted.
I wanted to shine a
light into this world
and make it save for
g*y horror fans to come.
I would always let
all of these people
get to know me as
a healthy person
and then I would tell them
that I was HIV positive,
so that they could know that they had met a person
who was g*y and who had HIV,
and they couldn't say they didn't know anybody.
We've reached a point
where you can actually have
a completely normal life, HIV
can be completely managed.
Research has reached a point
where they're comfortable
talking about the fact
an undetectable person
is unable to transmit HIV,
not necessarily that it's
being eradicated,
but it's being stopped from progressing.
When I was on the
cover of "The Advocate",
and HIV plus magazine that went
around the world,
I was thrilled.
With that glove on it
went around the world.
Oh, do I need that tape.
See I have the tape
look, go like that.
That's amazing isn't it?
With a little bit of make up
and like that from a distance.
I could like, still play
a juvenile on stage.
Ladies and gentlemen
please welcome the star
of "Nightmare on Elm Street Two,
Freddy's Revenge",
Mr. Mark Patton
ladies and gentleman.
Bunny, you must be so excited.
I am actually...
'Cause this has been your dream
the entire time we've
been doing this theater.
Well, I love a
girl with a dream.
Can you make my dream come true?
Well, I can try.
Will you dance for me?
No.
No.
Come on Mark.
No, I don't dance.
Mark, you have to dance for me.
Do you really want me to dance?
You want him to, come on.
I will take this dance.
I'll do it with you.
This has turned out to be a lot
of peoples favorite
part of this movie,
especially straight
guys really love this.
"Risky Business" had just come out and everybody
wanted me to be Tom Cruise, and I just wasn't.
♪ Let me hear you when
you call my name ♪
♪ Til I finally believe you
♪ I only want, I only
want to please you ♪
If I knew then what I know now,
well I would dance more
like Crispin Glover, electroshock therapy,
but you know
I guess it's perfect, 'cause everybody loves it.
♪ I would follow
you into the night ♪
♪ I wanna hear you
when you call my name ♪
♪ Til I finally believe you
♪ I only want, I only
want to please you ♪
After traveling the horror circuit
for the past year, Mark heads
to Fort Lauderdale
for the grand finale.
The first ever "Freddy's
Revenge" reunion.
Welcome to Shock Pop
It's just a big, it's a circus,
it's a big circus.
I feel really, totally
weird, I don't know why.
I feel very strange right now.
But like some of
these people I haven't
seen in like a really long time,
which is really weird.
Good to see you.
Well none of us have changed.
We're all exactly the same.
We all got pickled.
You know Mr. Clu.
It's Mark, how are you?
Oh, how are you?
She said you were down here.
I want that room unpacked by tonight,
young man.
Okay dad, I promise.
See he's got the brains and I,
of course, have the body.
And this is Ms. Joanne Willette.
She is the number
one b*tch on the...
I am the best b*tch.
She is the best b*tch...
In real life, too.
You okay?
Yeah, I'm fine.
Wow, how are you?
Good.
It's so great to see you.
It's so great to see you too,
you haven't changed a bit.
You look pretty much the same.
Yeah we look
all the same people.
You have a little more mileage on you.
Yeah.
There has never been
"A Nightmare on Elm Street 2" reunion.
I have only spoken on stage with Robert one time
in my life and it
was by accident.
When we're busy
we don't get a lot
of time to talk to each other.
You're signing autographs the entire time.
It's like we don't have time
to sit down and rumble.
You know, we don't have the time
to sit down and work things out.
You guys ready?
Are you guys ready?
They said, yes.
All right, let's start off with,
let's bring out the
first off the director
of "Nightmare on Elm Street,
Part Two, Freddy's Revenge",
let's hear it for Jack Sholder.
The star, the scream
queen of this film,
Mr. Mark Patton, Jesse Walsh.
At a Q&A for Nightmare Two,
I swear to God seven out
of 10 times the
first question is,
"did you know that this was a g*y undertone film?"
And I usually just kind of
break out with, but I didn't
mm-hmm, and I just try to have some fun with it.
Hey, I have a question for Mark.
I read that you had a lot
of problems with h*m*
in Hollywood, and I
just wanted to know
if there was any pressure
to act straight otherwise?
For me it was terrifying.
I wasn't an out, g*y actor.
There wasn't any such thing
as an out, g*y actor then.
In 1985, Hollywood was very
h*m* and very A*DS-phobic,
and when you signed a contract
for a television series,
they gave you a blood test,
so if you were g*y
you were hiding.
After the panel discussion,
Mark and the cast returned
to their hotel to catch up.
When they talk about the
h*m* of the film
the end of the sentence
always is, Mark Patton,
an out, g*y actor in Hollywood.
I was not an out, g*y actor in Hollywood in 1985.
I was a 25-year-old
young man working
very hard to have a career.
I'm now a 50-year-old
man who's out
and I'm a g*y activist,
it's a big difference.
This isn't about anybody's sexuality at all.
Through the subtext and the questions,
and some of the stuff
that happened and evolved, you know, it was Jack,
and Michael, and Joel that I think realized that,
or maybe even sensed
it, I'm not sure.
Jack, you'd know better than I.
Well, I think a lot of this has
to do with the lens
that you look at it.
I think there was kind
of a perfect storm.
I do too.
'Cause look, I
was the director...
I agree.
I was the director and
I think about all this stuff,
and I think about story,
and I had no f*cking idea.
Right.
That there was this subtext,
but there were lots
and lots of things.
You filmed in one
of the biggest g*y
bars in Los Angeles.
Oh, was that a g*y bar?
Yeah, oh my God yes.
It was called "Toilet Bar".
Yes.
Jack, please don't play dumb.
It's the...
These guys didn't know.
They didn't know.
They person that knew...
I KNEW ON MY AUDITION!
No, I went and
I scouted the bar,
because I wasn't thinking about these things.
You didn't
think about it though?
And now that you mention it, I do remember,
I went and I scouted the
bar when it was closed.
That's right.
I didn't see a whole
bunch of g*y guys.
This was written
not as a g*y bar,
it was written as
a tr*nsv*stite bar.
That's right.
In the script, and
they actually threw
kind of odd looking women in.
So, while we were sh**ting the movie you always
seemed like you were
slightly out of sorts.
That's kind of my recollection.
You mean as far as...
You were just a little, cranky.
Cranky's not the right word.
I guess, slightly out of sorts.
You just didn't seem happy.
I was very tired.
I was feeling a lot of pressure.
It gets around to the
h*m* stuff all the time,
but here I was in this movie.
I was g*y, my lover was sick,
I wake up in the middle
of the first movie that
I'm the lead actor in,
and realize that there's
a g*y subtext in it,
and my agents are waiting to
see if I can play straight.
My agents went to watch the
movie and they were like,
yeah you can carry a movie
but we're gonna have to make
you a character actor because
you can't play straight.
And the minute I heard
that, I heard everyone
that had ever called
me a f*gg*t in my life,
at the top of my lungs,
and I was like, I can't do this.
You know, I sensed that there was a resentment
that was built from you,
and I wanna ask you...
What made me so mad?
Where the resentment came from?
Yeah, what pissed you off?
Everything that
you see me doing in
"Nightmare on Elm Street"
is written in the script.
David, when he was asked over
the course of all these years,
did you write this movie as
a g*y movie, he said, no.
David went out of his way to say that it was me.
Do you know what I mean?
He would say, no,
I didn't do this.
Mark, the actor did this.
Okay, but he was saying that you did what?
That I had made the movie g*y.
I got a stick up my
a*s against David
when I read this stuff
because I thought,
you know what, this is
seriously cruel stuff.
After an
eye-opening chat
around the fire, Jack
was waiting for Mark
at the convention
the next morning.
Well, I mean this is stuff
that I probably would have
said last night if
it occurred to me.
There's one aspect of this
that I've gotten an insight from,
because I didn't really
know who the hell you were.
At call time I saw you and at wrap I said goodbye,
that was it, but it's
been a really good
experience for me
to get to know you.
Your life I think, there will
always be a level of turmoil,
because you have some
conflict in your life...
But we all do.
Yeah, but I think you may
have a little more than others,
and I'm sure when you're
referring to the dark side
that there's a lot of hate mail
and a lot of bad stuff
that would be very hard
for anyone to live with,
which is part of celebrity.
It's just, it struck me last night
that you were getting
a little too wrapped
up in the David thing,
and your whole thing about
that just struck me as odd.
Odd in what way?
The movie was 30 years ago,
and you're still pissed
off at Dave Chaskin.
You had a goal in your life
which was to be a movie star
and you sort of got there,
and then you chose to not,
and so, you know why,
and there's gotta be a reason,
and I think you put a
lot of stuff on David.
I mean, the way it came out
maybe wasn't that good.
But it's not about you.
It's not about you at all
and what I wanted to say is
I think it's time that
you just let it go.
It's over, it's done,
and I think, that's
the perspective that
I wanted to give you.
I don't know
anything about David.
The point is he didn't
admit his intention
back when it wasn't
acceptable to be g*y,
then when people started
to notice his subtext
he denied it, and instead he
pointed the finger at me.
Now that it's becoming
an interesting thing,
he's owning it, he wants
to take credit for it.
Now everybody's having
a great time with this.
Meanwhile, I'm being called f*g a 100 times a day.
David didn't come to this convention
because of me.
The reason he's
not here is because
he doesn't wanna have
this conversation.
This is not all about David and it never has been
all about David, 'cause
it really is about me,
and it's about people like me.
I talk to young people and say look,
you're standing
on the shoulders of a
lot of different people.
Know your history.
Don't forget your history.
I'm just reminding the
generation that's here
that this is what
happened in 1985.
One of the first
things that like really
offered escape for
me was horror movies,
and I don't really
know why but for me,
and I think part of
it was being a sissy,
and getting bullied, there
was sort of this otherness
in certain horror movies
that identified with.
I think one of the best
things about this movie
is that I think a lot
of people in this room,
it was kind of our
first g*y movie,
but we didn't know
it at the time.
For many q*eer people
this was probably
their first look
inside of a g*y bar,
their first look
at an S&M culture.
Coach Schneider in the shower,
you know strapped up,
you know, whipped with a towel,
that was some beginnings
for a lot of us.
You know we were used
to so much female nudity
in horror movies or
even kind of any movies.
Any movies.
Adult comedies at the time, that to actually see
nude men as a g*y
teenager, it was
like wow, that's kind
of cool, you know.
Being a kid who grew up
in the 80s, like,
you know h*m*
was the norm.
I have this nightmare
that I go to Hollywood
and find out that
Mr. T is a f*gg*t.
Wait a minute, are you
gonna tell me you're a f*g,
I mean if you're gonna
tell me you're a f*g,
I don't think I can handle it.
In the 80s, I mean you had
kid's movies saying f*gg*t
and f*g, I mean
it was just awful.
Thor's my hero.
Thor's a h*m*.
Just answer me one question.
Yes, you're a total f*g.
What'd you say
f*gg*t, what'd you say?
You're a f*gg*t Blaine.
f*g!
h*m* was
treated like the plague,
like, you were like a vampire
so stay away from me.
f*gs in the shower,
f*gs in the shower,
f*g alert, f*g alert,
f*g alert everyone.
And that's the comedy, that's the joke
Nobody was making films
really for minority audiences
at the time, and this is the
thing about q*eer spectators.
I think all of us, we learned to be scavengers.
The fact that this
film has become
a kind of cult object
is fascinating.
Part of the hallmark of
q*eer viewing is that maybe
we will forget about the ending
of the film and just enjoy
the section in which the
q*eer monster run amok.
"Nightmare on Elm Street 2"
was on of the first films
I saw that I thought
was relatable to me.
It made me feel a
little less alone.
I could relate to Jesse.
And that was the
first time that I saw
that the hero of the movie
be a sissy boy, a Nancy boy.
I mean, Mark Patton was probably my first crush.
He was my first, like boyfriend.
And he was facing problems that
nobody else around him could
understand, and somehow
he showed some strength
dealing with those problems,
so he's somehow kind
of a hero to me.
Having any secret,
being g*y, transgender,
any sort of internal conflict
can be so real and so violent,
And that's part of
the genius about it.
I mean whether it was
intentional or not, it works.
You know, I was sort of adverse
to g*y stuff growing up,
and this was a movie that sort
of snuck in under the radar,
and then really enjoying
it on that level,
and coming out myself
shortly afterwards.
You know, this was an
important movie to me.
It's great that it's
in an iconic franchise
that another 10-year-old somewhere,
somehow can find,
and it will have the
same effect on them,
that they might not be able to see the g*y movies,
or the g*y TV shows, but parents
might let a Freddy movie
fall through the cracks.
You know, I think one of the reasons
so many young q*eers
identify with those scream queens of final girls
is because they fought
back against the bully,
and that was what we were dealing
with everyday in school.
Even at 10, I was
kinda like I wanna be
in one of those movies
but I wanna be her.
I wanna be the one that kicks
Freddy's butt at the end,
and they were always
the strongest ones.
You know, they were great
to look up to at the time.
I was bullied,
and to me, Nightmare
was about beating your bullies.
I mean right away, off the bat,
Freddy driving the bus,
Freddy's the biggest bully in the world, right?
How do you beat a bully?
You show you're not
afraid of 'em anymore
and that's what Nancy does
to take away Freddy's power.
You have to face
that monster head on,
and if you don't face
that monster head on,
then how are you ever gonna
make a difference in this world?
Well, we're going
to see David Chaskin.
This is the one moment that
I never really expected.
I never thought David
would sit down for this.
I just don't really
want a generic apology.
I want him to really understand
what he actually has done.
I'm hoping for like a really nice,
sort of atonement,
and amends, and like
we can hug each other
and walk way from
the whole thing,
and he doesn't have to get tarred and feathered.
But just in case, I do have a
cauldron in my bag with me.
I'm trying to put the times in perspective here.
Most people at the time,
it was just a horror movie
and I think what you first
saw were a lot of people
that just said, I don't like it.
I love the idea that people are rediscovering it,
and saying, you know
there's some stuff here.
Well, I find it
really interesting
that over the course of 30 years
you're denying this.
That I denied...
That you had written
this as a g*y movie.
You would say, well
it was subtext.
Yeah.
But at first you
denied any subtext
and then you decided to get out
from underneath it,
and you took the
attention off yourself
and you placed it
on somebody else.
Everybody knew that
it was a g*y movie.
I mean, it had been discussed
in the press, quite a bit.
Oh, I gave an
interview five years ago
where I admitted it, it
was to a website, but...
Yeah, I actually have a
couple of your interviews
that like when you ask me...
This is where I get haunted...
But yeah, it is haunting.
There's a quote that you
have and I'm just going
to sort of give it
to you off the cuff.
You didn't write the movie as a h*m* movie,
you wrote it as a h*m* movie,
the type of movie
that they should show
at a conversion camp,
that the love a good woman
can make any g*y man straight.
Well that was a joke...
And well, I'm just
telling you what it was.
This is what is says, okay.
At the end of this
particular article
you say it was
supposed to be subtext,
but then casting ruined that.
You're talking about me.
I have issues with
a lot of this stuff
because I was only doing
what I was told to do.
It was a funky chicken
number if I remember.
Actually it says that I close
the drawer with my a*s
in the script, and...
But you also have pencils
sticked up your nose.
That was in it...
Right, there is somebody
that all that stuff got thrown
on, and the person that
it got thrown on was me.
I do remember this,
very, very specifically.
I remember that you didn't wanna do that scene
the way it was with the
pencils in your nose
and all that other stuff,
so Jack said, "well
what do you wanna do",
and you said, "I can dance."
What I recall about
that dance scene,
at the end of that dance scene
was people applauding.
Nobody directed me and pulled
me over and said
this doesn't work.
It's the same way
with this scream.
You know, nobody ever pulled me aside and said,
you know what I don't think
this scream is such a good idea.
Wasn't it Jack's job?
It was Jack's job, yeah.
See, I never wrote
he screams like woman.
You know what I mean?
You know, when I heard
you to begin to talk about
the subtext, your subtext
inside of the film, the first
question that I wanted
to ask you was why?
Because I didn't
understand it at all.
It was a very
dangerous move to pull.
First of all, you
have to understand
the context of the times, I was in New York,
starting in 1978,
I had never met
in my life an out
of the closet g*y.
Coming out in the 80s was a scary thing, I'm sure.
It's gotta be because nobody, not only do you have
to deal with your
parents, you gotta deal
with your straight
friends, and it just
wasn't something that
people talked about.
It just seemed like a very visceral, animal thing
that's not controllable and that would infiltrate
somebody's mind, and it's just
another thing to worry about.
Because of what was happening,
because of the A*DS thing,
and the A*DS thing
made it even worse.
I mean what if I do this, and what if I get A*DS,
and it just seemed like it would add to the horror
in a sense, maybe it was
a little exploitative,
but you know, that's what movies do,
they manipulate people.
And that's why I wanted to make
it as subtle as possible.
I mean subtext's
supposed to be subtext.
It's supposed to stay down
there and I think it did
until people started
really analyzing stuff.
I don't know if it's
something that you feel
that I shouldn't have
done, I don't know.
I'm not gonna say I
haven't made mistakes.
I'm not gonna say I haven't
said things that I've regretted.
You did.
But I hope you can forgive me
for any perceived or,
it wasn't intentional.
Certainly, I don't want
to promote h*m*
but I do want to point it out.
Right, first of all
I wanna say thank you,
and that was the
only thing I wanted
from this entire experience, what you just did.
I wanted somebody
to say that if I was
hurt by it that they were sorry.
You know, and you're the only
person who has done that.
I don't want people to
think you're h*m*
because I think that
would make me a bully.
My intention is not to
harm you in any way.
I know and I'm really
glad we're able to do this.
I wish we could've
done it in Florida.
It really meant the world to me.
I don't really think it
would've been possible
in Florida to be
honest with you.
Really?
No, I think it probably
need to happen like this,
you know, just me and you,
because ultimately in the end
this really is all
about me and you.
You know, you wrote
it and I played it.
I got what I wanted out of
this ultimately, you know,
which was I got an apology from David Chaskin.
When I got to the part where
it became very vulnerable
for me, he sat
there and listened,
and he didn't try
to interrupt me,
and talk me out of
what I was saying.
I said things to him
that I don't think
that I had been able to
articulate in my mind,
but I just wanted one of them
to say there were sorry.
I think that's a great
thing about apologizing,
and doing, and investigating,
and talking to people
is that really is where
the healing comes.
The reason that I began this process,
this whole process,
really, I was angry at David, I did blame David.
I felt like he was
responsible for,
I guess I made him
responsible for a lot
of things that he
wasn't responsible for.
He's not responsible for A*DS.
He's not responsible for
h*m* in Hollywood.
He's not responsible
for 14-year-old boys
sitting in the dark,
calling people f*ggots.
David's not
responsible for that.
But I did bring
all of that energy
and he became my focal point.
I did hang the blame on him
and I'm certainly
glad now that I don't.
I've had a great amount of
healing I think around this.
Like, I've let go
of a lot of things.
But, I also have
realized what I gave up
in this world, and
I gave up a lot.
I did ask God, as I understood God,
I did say why me?
Why did this happen to me?
I heard the voice of my
own spirit or my own God
saying to me, look,
I made you famous
and then I made you not famous.
I let you get sick and I
let you do it in private
because you could've
never done it in public.
You could never
handle A*DS in public.
It would have been way
too humiliating for you.
If I would've started
taking the medicine
earlier the medicine would've k*lled me, right.
And then, as soon as you got well,
sitting on a dirt road
in Mexico, I made
you famous again,
and I gave you a rock to stand on
and a story to tell.
So, you get on the
rock and you tell
the story and that's
what your job is.
My generation's gone.
I have no friends my age.
I want people to
know their history.
I want to them at least hear
from somebody that the way
the world is now, it wasn't
this way five minutes ago.
They need to know what happened,
and we need to keep
telling them, because if
we don't keep telling them
there are a whole lot of people
that would like to put
them back in a box,
and put them back in their place
where they belong.
The world has
changed since 1985,
and you know why the
world has changed?
It's changed because of
people like me, who stand up
and tell their story, and say look,
this is what happened
to me, and I will be God damned
if I'll let it happen
to another person.
This being the g*y
film, at Halloween,
I'm always gonna make
the scream queen list.
I'm, and do I like that?
Do I like being identified forever and ever
as a scream queen, as a
g*y movie, that's mine,
that's it, that's my
title, that's who I am.
Like the worst
thing that you can
say to me is I'm a girl,
you scream like a girl.
And I always say, what's
so bad about screaming
like a girl, it made
me rich and famous.
I used to say I take the
bricks that people throw
at me and I build a firm
foundation with them,
and that's what I've done with
"Nightmare on Elm Street".
Now, like over the course of the last five years,
it's like really, like
you've seen what's happened.
Now you type in, Mark Patton g*y, and it's like
Mark Patton is a social activist who is a horror,
like a leader in
the horror community
and all this kind of stuff, and it's all nice,
and the creepy stuff
is buried way down.
It doesn't lead with
the creepy stuff.
You have to start digging for the creepy stuff.
Yeah, if you don't like the dialogue, change it.
I changed the conversation
on "Nightmare on Elm Street",
and I wanted to save
Jesse and I saved him.
So I have to proud of
it because it's my baby,
and right now he's
the favorite one,
and so, of course
I'm proud of it.
You know, this is my creation.
When "A Nightmare on Elm Street",
the first one came out
and a lot of the world
has Heather, but to all
of the g*y fans of
horror, we have Jesse.
All of these other people can say
whatever they want to,
this is about those boys
who are sitting in a room,
they looked up at the screen
and they saw themselves.
This is my testimony that you can live through
it all and you can watch
it happen, and they can
throw rocks at you
til the cows come home
and you can still come
out of it a winner.
♪ Don't lie
♪ Don't cry
♪ Don't try
♪ No need to have
♪ No need to have
♪ Don't hide
♪ Don't thrive
♪ Don't choose
♪ No need to have
♪ No need to have
♪ Reactions of your own
♪ There's something
wrong with me ♪
♪ And there's nothing
wrong with me ♪
♪ Don't read
♪ Don't learn
♪ Don't yearn
♪ Just live through me
♪ Just live through me
♪ Don't burn
♪ Don't fade
♪ Don't fall
♪ Just live through me
♪ Just live through me
♪ That's all you ever know
♪ All of my problems were
just a problem of geography ♪
♪ Don't think, don't
blink, don't sink ♪
♪ Just waste, just
pace, just case ♪
♪ Just bleed for me
♪ Just bleed for me
♪ Just bleed for me
♪ Just bleed for me
♪ I'm still what you want
♪ Nothing of your own
♪ Nothing of your own
♪ Nothing of your own
♪ Nothing of your own
♪ Nothing of your own
♪ Nothing of your own
♪ Nothing of your own
♪ And if you don't face
the monster head on ♪
♪ Then how are you ever gonna
♪ Make a difference
in this world ♪
There's more
to it than just well,
call it premonition,
or women's intuition
if you like, but I'm afraid.
Of what?
Afraid I'm going to lose you.
To a dream?
To a dream that might be real.
It could all be
real for a little while.
All the ways
that I love you Tony.
Take care of yourself Val, I'll see you soon.
I'm afraid.
Of what?
I'm afraid
I'm going to lose you.
To a dream?
To a dream that might be real.
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Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019)
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