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Then one day I was in the living room of Gore Vidal in the Hollywood Hills.
He was a friend of mine and I eventually became his literary executor.
He, apropos of nothing, blurted out, I want to find Scotty.
I said, Whos Scotty?
He said, Scotty was my pimp.
Well, tell me more.
One day I arrived at Vidals house and Scotty was in the living room.
I basically started making the movie that day.
We began filming on his 90th birthday, which was soon after that.
He would say, Oh, you know me, Im an open book, baby.
I think there was a level of comfort because of our mutual friendship with Gore Vidal.
He met Gore Vidal in 1947 at the gas station.
They were close in the way that Scotty and George Cukor were close.
It seems like Scotty has so many stories.
Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy.
They are the big three.
These peoples fame happened the better part of 100 years ago.
They are still immortal names in my opinion, figures of great historical significance.
That ended up on the cutting-room floor.
But it just seemed like it was too much [for the audience to absorb at once].
A lot of variations on that explanation applied to many, many people.
Tennessee Williams, for instance, is not mentioned in the film.
Liberace is not mentioned.
Deborah Kerr is not in the film.
There were lots of experiences with Roddy McDowall.
He said, These were Roddy McDowalls poppers.
I used to go pick them up for him and I never gave him these.
This is truly a historic item in the history of homosexuality.
What were you considering when youre discussing their sex lives?Were dealing with historical figures.
Thats how I approached it.
Movies are an important story.
The history of Hollywoods an important story.
The history of movies and the way they changed the world is an important story.
The most famous people in the movies of that period were probably Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.
To claim that is homophobia.
I dont understand why its acceptable, frankly.
just dont do that.
Now I take that as good humor, but we have to question why that is.
Why should we straightwash the history of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn?
Its what Gore Vidal used to call the heterosexual dictatorship.
Now we know better.
Scotty is not a secondary source.
There are many different varieties of this.
The most direct one that is in the film is the Cecil Beaton diaries.
Scotty says he had a long relationship with Cecil Beaton.
Cecil Beaton writes about Scotty in his diary and makes it very clear.
Theres a chapter in Cecil Beatons 1960s volume and the chapter heading is Scotty.
Scotty didnt know about it.
Someone sent him the book and thats how he found out about it.
Scotty said at one point that Noel Coward brought him to Fiji in the 50s from Los Angeles.
Doesnt that tell you something about the so-called history of Hollywood?
But he was there.
It shows up in films.
Theres one inLaura, theres a scene with Vincent Price, Dame Judith Anderson, and Clifton Webb.
Those three people were major clients of Scotty, and there they are together.
Do you think these people would have considered themselves to be gay or lesbian?
You and I werent around.
We are only getting this through the history books and through whatever information we can glean.
It was a much less silo-ed time.
The word gay wasnt really used to mean what we mean by it today.
It meant happy, and it was a very used word.
The widespread acceptance of the gay identity in so called polite society just didnt exist.
There were many words used in and out of the community at that time.
Pansy, queer, he is musical.
I think that community behind closed doors was almost like a secret society.
I find that in a way quite positive.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
