AND THE BAND PLAYED ON ....

Still catching up on Oscar-nominated Best Films for 2019. Last night we went to see Bohemian Rhapsody. I have to admit right off: I’ve never been a big fan of Queen. In fact, my only contact with their music before this film came from another one, Wayne’s World—“party time, excellent!”—where Mike Meyers cranks up the volume on the Gremlin’s crappy AM radio and sings along.

Truth be told, I was much more of a disco, R&B, soul kinda girl: Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. The Stones. Parliament. Donna Summer. Barry White. Aretha. I really wasn’t into glam rock bands with bad perms like KISS or Queen. However, after seeing this film, I realize that I really missed out on something. Queen’s music rocked me! It was musically sophisticated, innovative, and the lyrics actually had meaning. I might even buy the soundtrack.

Seated to my left in the theater were two young men, probably early 20-somethings. If my Gaydar from my San Francisco days is still working, I think they may have been gay. I was aware that the young man seated nearer to me was squirming and squealing at certain moments during the film. And I could see out of my peripheral vision that tears were streaming down his cheek when Freddie got his diagnosis. I wanted to reach over and console him, but we each kept our eyes straight ahead, mesmerized by Rami Malek’s Oscar-winning performance.

After the film, we met these two young men in the lobby. I made eye contact with the one who had shed tears, who seemed to want to talk to me, too. We struck up a hurried conversation and enthusiastically agreed on how much we’d enjoyed the film, the music, and the performances. I shared with them both that the film brought back very painful memories of friends I’d lost to AIDS at the beginning of the epidemic, which at that time—the mid-‘80s—was still called the “gay men’s cancer.” They nodded earnestly and sympathetically and said, “Yeah. We were too young.” It was a warm, genuine, bittersweet, shared moment of real connection with two strangers from another generation. Thank you, Freddie Mercury!

One side note on Rami Malek, according to his bio on www.imdb.com:

“Rami Said Malek was born in Los Angeles, to an Egyptian Coptic Orthodox family. His late father was a tour guide in Cairo who later sold insurance. His mother is an accountant. Malek was raised in the Coptic Orthodox faith. Malek has an identical twin brother named Sami, younger by four minutes, who is a teacher, and an older sister, Yasmine, who is a medical doctor.”

That’s right. Another immigrant family, this one from a predominantly Muslim country, all of whose members should make us feel proud of their achievements and damn lucky to have them.

Keep it real!

Marilyn

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