If you’re not willing to brave the crowds and corporations at the New York City Pride parade today, there’s another option: stay home and watch a Pride movie on Netflix. Fortunately, Netflix has a great new documentary that is Now streamingperfect for this occasion: Outstanding: A comedy revolution.
Written and directed by Page Hurwitz, this new documentary focuses on a performance by over 20 LGBTQ+ comedians at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in May 2022. Big names in comedy like Lily Tomlin, Sandra Bernhard, Wanda Sykes, Eddie Izzard, Hannah Gadsby, Tig Notaro, Rosie O’Donnell, Margaret Cho, Bob The Drag Queen, and Trixie Mattel, among others, took the stage to perform a stand-up routine. Some talked about their lives as queer comedians, while others told unrelated jokes. But the most important thing about the documentary isn’t the current performers, but the queer history lesson Hurwitz weaves in.
Through talking head interviews and archival clips, Hurwitz guides viewers through the history of queer comedy, from the days of “anything goes” vaudeville to the aggressively heterosexual regression after World War II. World and the proud post-Stonewall movement. Younger viewers may be surprised to know that, before the days of the Internet and cell phone videos, many gay comedians of the ’60s and ’70s weren’t afraid to talk about their personal queer lives, in certain spaces. Lily Tomlin, for example, fondly remembers working at an LGBT activist show with Richard Pryor, where she happily admitted to the crowd, “I sucked a dick,” before chastising them for not caring about black lives. . (Hurwitz presents the archived clip of Pryor doing that show, truly a treasure of comedy history.)
Then there are inspiring interviews with Robin Tyler, the first lesbian comedian to do a show about being a lesbian comedian on television in 1978; and with Todd Glass, one of the first major comedians who had already made a name for himself as a “straight” comedian, before coming out as gay in 2012.
Hurwitz also includes the ways comedy has been weaponized against queer people, including a startling clip of a young Eddie Murphy hurling insults and making AIDS jokes, in which he insinuated that gay men deserve to die for their supposed lifestyle choice. It’s certainly not a good look for Murphy, who is currently promoting his own Netflix project, Beverly Hills Police: Axel Fwhich will arrive on the streamer next week.
Earring The book closes with a section on trans comics, featuring interviews with Eddie Izzard (who also goes by Suzy in her personal life), Patti Harrison, Mae Martin and more. They all reflect on the harm inflicted by transphobic comedians like Dave Chappelle, who recently had his own Netflix special in 2022. In one tense moment, Martin insists, “My problem isn’t so much with Chappelle, but rather with the people in charge of giving his ideas a platform.”
The entire documentary is a powerful and informative reminder of how crucial comedy has been (and will no doubt continue to be) to the queer movement. And it’s the perfect example of why it’s important to come out and be proud.