I, of course, cannot keep up with all of the new releases, nor do I try. Today, LGBT content in media is more available than ever before. I relied on my discoveries of gay nuances in classic cinema to catch any glimpse of LGBT life. Even 60-minute-away-drive Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo were both fiercely conservative. I was living in the middle of the New Queer Cinema movement and LGBT media was becoming available to urban cinema goers but not to me in Santa Maria. I was open to any and all genres of movies but I always felt as if I struck gold when I stumbled upon a film that had any hint of LGBT characters or content.
I then explored Italian Neorealism, French New Wave and transitioned to New German Cinema in my late teens-I would like to take a brief moment to thank the librarian that made these obscure VHS purchases that got little circulation. I became familiar with the American black and white melodramas. New releases were not always available at my library and any that were, were checked out. Classic movies or-for the sake of this article-pre-1980s movies were what was left on the library shelves. The borrowed tapes kept me from the boredom of small town life and emerging teenage angst when friends or yard work were not at hand.
Our town received two TV channels via antenna with media content I did not usually enjoy. Cable was a luxury my working-class family did not always have.
I have been a fan of classic movies ever since I began checking out VHS tapes from my local library (Santa Maria Public Library) in my tween years at the dawn of the 1990’s.