Filmmaker Gregg Araki was born on this day in 1959
Celebrating a birthday today is queer filmmaker Gregg Araki. He was born in Los Angeles in 1959 and became a prominent indie-film director in the 1990s.
Araki’s films have included his breakthrough feature; 1992’s The Living End, a road movie that focused on two HIV positive men; his teenage apocalypse trilogy that included Totally Fucked Up, The Doom Generation and Nowhere; The romantic comedy Splendor and the critically acclaimed but controversial Mysterious Skin.
The actors in Araki’s films are mesmerising, incredibly good looking, youthful and intriguing. Many successful actors have his films on their early career resume including James Duvall, Margaret Cho, Jonathan Schaech, Rose McGowan, Heather Graham, Ryan Philippe, Mena Suvari and Denise Richards.
Back in 2011 OUTinPerth chatted to Araki about his film Kaboom! His most recent work was the television series Now Apocalypse that sadly only aired for a single season in 2019.
He’s also been a director on lots of other television shows including American Crime, 13 Reasons Why, Riverdale and Heathers.
In 1982 Dustin Hoffman’s ‘Tootsie’ challenged everyone’s understanding of gender roles
Dustin Hoffman’s film Tootsie opened in cinemas in the USA on this day in 1982. The film followers out of work actor Michael Dorsey who is talented but volatile, unable to get any work he dresses as a woman and creates an alter ego Dorothy Michaels, soon he is cast on a daytime soap opera and his career takes off.
Back in 1982 the film challenged people’s views on gender roles, and the treatment of women. Watched today it might seems a little clunky, and be viewed in a different way, but it triggered a lot of conversations nearly forty years ago.
Alongside Hoffman the film starred Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning and Sydney Pollack. It also features a few people who would go on to become huge movies stars in the following years, Bill Murray plays roommate Jeff Slater, and in her first ever film role Geena Davis appears as soap opera actress April Page.
The script had it’s beginning in the early 1970s and several prominent actors of the time considered it before Hoffman signed on for the lead role. Peter Sellers and Michael Caine were also considered for the lead.
The film went on to become the second highest grossing movie of 1982, behind E.T the extra-terrestrial. Jessica Lange won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role, while Dustin Hoffman won the BAFTA for Best Actor. At the Golden Globe Awards it won Best Film – Musical or Comedy, and Hoffman and Lange also went home with statues.
