The Sewers of Paris

The Sewers of Paris

Revealing stories about the books, movies, tv, music and more that have changed the lives of gay men. Each week, a guest plucks a piece of entertainment from their past, and answers the question: how did it change your life?

Episodes

March 2, 2023 58 mins

If you happen to be in Toronto this weekend, you may want to find your way down to Massey Hall on Saturday night for a one-night-only performance called Och and Oy!, starring actor Alan Cumming and NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro. Their collaborative show is a mix of cabaret and storytelling, and to mark its debut, I’m diving into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2018 conversation with Ari Shapiro, who was then as now one of the hos...

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This week we’re concluding my conversation with filmmaker David Weissman (We Were Here, The Cockettes, Conversations With My Elders) with part 3 of our talk. Previously we talked about his background in hippie enclaves of Los Angeles in the 1960s, and then his move to San Francisco. We ended our last conversation on a pause, since it was moving in a direction David wasn’t prepared to talk about — and so this week we’re resuming wit...

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This week we’re picking up my previous conversation with filmmaker David Weissman, who started off in hippie enclaves of Los Angeles in the 1960s before moving up to San Francisco for the particularly adventurous 70s. In this part of our chat, we touch on SF’s counterculture scene, the music and nightlife, and also the political upheaval that soon followed.

Just as we were starting to talk about the 1980s … our connection momentaril...

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My guest this week is documentary filmmaker David Weissman (The Cockettes, We Were Here), who was in exactly the right place at the right time to have a front-row seat to one of the most revolutionary periods in American culture. In fact, he wasn’t just an observer of the Venice Beach LSD scene in the 60s, or of San Francisco’s chaotic drag cauldron in the 70s — he was an active participant, exploring and enjoying an explosion of m...

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My guest this week is Andrew Farrier, a New Orleans tour guide and podcaster who began his career in a small Louisiana town, giving tours of haunted houses as a kid. A child of hippies, Andrew was given wide latitude to explore creative pursuits, and it wasn’t long before he found himself in New Orleans, testing the boundaries of performance and exploring surprising histories — from early gay inhabitants to a close friend’s long-hi...

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December 22, 2022 62 mins

Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris Holiday Special Special! In the spirit of the season, we’re diving back into the Sewers archives for my 2017 conversations with numerous past guests about their very favorite seasonal entertainment. We'll have an appreciation of Batman Returns from writer Anthony Oliveira, author of Lord of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling among many other works. There's a tribute to Snow Miser from Glen Wel...

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We’re doing something a little different on this week’s episode — we’ve got TWO guests. Kaela Joseph and Tanya Cook are the authors of the new book Fandom Acts of Kindness, which is about how fandoms can change the world, from Star Trek to Xena Warrior Princess to Supernatural and Our Flag Means Death. Kaela and Tanya have spent years within various nerdy communities, where they’ve seen how fans can use their love of all things gee...

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This week my guest is J.P. Der Boghossian, and I’m also his guest. JP’s the host of the podcast This Queer Book Saved My Life, where he talks to queer folks about their favorite books. And we’re doing a sort of podcast exchange — for the first half of the episode I’ll interview him about the entertainment that impacted him the most, and then he’ll turn things around and interview me about one of my favorite books. Let me know what ...

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This week’s guest is Noah Adams, a researcher investigating the experiences of people who are trans and autistic. Noah’s understanding of himself began with cartoons in childhood, with characters that drew his interest in ways that he wouldn’t fully understand until years later.

By the way, in our conversation, Noah mentions a fundraiser that he’s doing to help queer people relocate to safety — here’s the link for that if you’d like...

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My guest this week is Ben Sander, creator of the character Brini Maxwell, a drag hostess who’s helmed shows about crafting, cooking, and homemaking, for decades. It all started with a little cable access show that he produced with some help from his mother, before becoming a cable TV series, with live shows that continue to this day — with Brini the character continuing to evolve as Ben her creator explores new artistic frontiers.

(...

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My guest this week is Edgar Gomez, author of the book High Risk Homosexual. Edgar spent years trying to figure out who he was, bouncing from one group to another — which took him from skater cliques to an encounter with a sex worker in Nicaragua to enrolling in school to become a cop, until he was expelled after being falsely accused of being a drug dealer. Edgar auditioned a lot of identities before he found one that felt right — ...

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My guest this week is Josh Weed, who ten years ago became a minor online celebrity after writing a blog post about how he was gay, Mormon, and happily married to a woman. Well, things have changed a bit since then. In 2018, Josh and his now ex-wife decided that it just wasn’t working, and they parted ways to pursue new relationships. Since then, they’ve both re-married, and remain close friends. And Josh has had some space to refle...

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This week I’m talking to Mayor John Bauters — yes that’s right the actual mayor of Emeryville, which are the words on the sash that was made for him by Pixar studios, just one of the constituencies in his East Bay town. John never planned to become an elected official, and he doesn’t care if people vote him out. Which is maybe what makes him such an unusual leader. 


We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First, a reminder that I’...

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My guest this week is Professor Paul Baker, a writer and linguist whose work includes some FASCINATING explorations of Polari, the secret 19-century queer language that existed in England a century ago. He’s also delved deep into the history of British don’t-say-gay laws, gay seafarers, and in an upcoming book about campy queer culture. Given his expertise in campy sitcoms, drag stars, and celebrated actresses, I have a feeling tha...

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Over on YouTube, I just released a new video about the long queer history of vampire lore — from Victorian novels about killer lesbians and undead seamen to early motion pictures and then the groundbreaking novel Interview With the Vampire in the 1970s. A new adaptation of Interview just premiered on AMC this week, and so in honor of that we’re diving into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2015 interview with Levi Hastings.


Levi’s a...

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For this week’s episode, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to run an interview about horror movies, since October’s about to begin — or about romantic comedies, in recognition of Billy Eichner’s new rom-com Bros. So I decided to run an episode about horror AND romance. It’s a revisit of my 2018 interview with Michael Varrati, Hollywood screenwriter responsible for such films as From Hell She Rises, and Seven Dorms of Death … and also A...

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My guest this week has two lives — his theater life and his law life. By day, you may know Chris Geidner for his reporting and writing on some of the most pressing legal issues of the day. But he’s just as passionate about musical theater, going all the way back to the time he was enthralled by Phantom of the Opera. In fact, it was one little twist of fate that led him to a legal career instead of a life in the theater — but, as he...

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You might know my guest this week from his saucy art on Twitter, but there’s much more to his work than X-Men in Speedos. Josh Cornillon grew up reading sophisticated graphic novels in his native France, and those books infuse the writing and illustration that he does today.

We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First, hey in case you haven’t heard, I’ve got a book coming out next year about how subversive queer comedy transform...

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TJ Klune’s childhood grew up reading books in a forest under the trees, which sounds idyllic … minus the part about how he was mercilessly bullied. Literature and libraries were his safe haven, and in fact a librarian was the first person he ever came out to. In his adult life, TJ found himself working a grueling job in the insurance industry, longing to tell the stories in his head. But nobody was more surprised than he was when, ...

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Fifty one years ago this month, a strange and beautiful art film called Pink Narcissus had its San Francisco debut, and went on to forever change the life of my guest Ian MacKinnon. I spoke to Ian back in 2015, and this week we’re revisiting that interview to mark the half-century birthday of one of his favorite films. Growing up in the midwest, Ian couldn't even picture what life as a gay man even looked like. And he certainly...

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