The Very Graphic Village People

So, um...yeah. There was...huh. Guys, I just can't think of anything to say. I'm at a lose for words regarding this week's film for Hit Me With Your Best Shot from Nathaniel at The Film Experience. The film that's left me so stupefied happens to be the first film to have the honor(?) of receiving the very first Razzie for Worst Picture. No argument there. Can't Stop the Music, the hard-hitting drama about a young girl discovering how music has the power to soothe her soul in a concentration camp...nah, just kidding, its about the Village People. And for 2 hours I literally could not stop the music, but mainly I just wondered what the hell it was that I had gotten myself into. Let's try to make sense of it all...

So, this much is true: Steve Guttenberg, The Gutt, stars as a non-village person. He's a roller-skating DJ, but he's really a composer that wants to bring his funky beats to the masses. Luckily his ex-model roommate (I'm not entirely sure he is the roommate. Does he pay rent? He may just be her plant waterer? But judging how men in Native American headdresses just make appearances in her apartment without much notice, I'm guessing she's not aware of a lot of the goings-on in her home.) has connections in the music industry to get him started. That's code for, she slept around with the right people.

Since they're too poor/cheap to pay professional musicians, The Gutt and The Model assemble a gaggle of gays to record the music. The group is made up of every gay porn scenario known since the beginning of time. There is the Cop, Leather Stud, Army Man, Cowboy, Construction Worker, and, of course, that old gay cliché, Indian. This was the very un-PC times of 1980, so, yes, he was an Indian and not a Native American. I'm actually pretty sure he was Puerto Rican anyway.

Along the way Bruce Jenner, post-Olympic fame, pre-Kardashian, reality TV infamy, shows up for reasons I'm still not entirely certain of. Oh yeah, Model needs to get laid. But it's a little questionable when he dresses like this:

Yep, nothing says I'm a heterosexual looking to romance the ladies like a belly shirt and ball-hugging never-nudes. No. Seriously. That's what they wore in 1980.

For my Best Shot I toyed with the idea of going highbrow and comparing the shot of Model flashing her leg to catch a cab to that of Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night and showing the evolution of the Romantic Comedy throughout the years. But that didn't seem true to the spirit of this film. So I went another direction and just decided to go Gay, Gay, Gay! And where else but at the YMCA!

Things get a little homoerotic and NSFWish from here on out...

I don't know if you are aware, young man, but in addition to getting yourself clean, having a good meal, you know, pretty much doing whatever you feel, the YMCA is the perfect place to record an album for free. Perhaps it's the spacious gyms or the swimming pools. Although, I don't recall them actually doing any recording in any studio. Instead we get various opportunites to ogle some beefcake! In the locker room:

Out by the pool with some synchronized swimmers:

In the weight room, pumping some iron:

And let's not forget the showers, where we can get all lathered up for a steamy rub down...

Don't adjust your computer, that is honest-to-goodness penis in this PG-rated "family" musical comedy. That's more penis than Looking had in its entire season. Your move HBO.

But as out-there all that is, I had to choose something a little more artistic for my Best Shot. But don't worry, it's all as cheesy and dated as everything else in the film. It's just a tad classier:

And My Actual Best Shot:

Like the film itself, it is a product of its time. Using the newest, hippest technology available in 1979, they were creating interesting visuals that fit this music-video of a movie. More of just a cool graphic design than a shot that illuminates any insight into the movie (this is the wrong movie to be trying to do that anyway, okay), the patriotic silhouette is as striking, bold, and colorful as the band itself.