Queer Cinema World Tour is our regular feature taking you to destinations behind your favourite LGBTQ2S+ film moments. This week we visit Hollywood, the setting for 2015’s Tangerine.
“I will go with you under one condition. You must promise me that there’s not going to be any drama.”
“I promise, I promise.”
“Look at me in my eyes and promise.”
“I promise no drama, no drama.”
So begins the drama-filled adventures of Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) in director Sean Baker’s stunning break-out film Tangerine. It’s a road trip film of sorts, as the duo track down Sin-Dee’s pimp-slash-boyfriend Chester (James Ransone), who cheated on her while she was away.
Yet the “road” in this trip takes place, for the most part, within a dozen or so blocks between Hollywood and Santa Monica boulevards, where tourists, sex workers, hustlers and other assorted kooks intermingle. By turns hilarious and tragic, the film never judges the lives of the two trans sex workers at its heart—it’s actually the performances by newcomers Rodriguez and Taylor that make the film so affecting. The area itself is a blend of the hypercommercial and the seedy.
Because L.A. as a whole is probably one of top cities in the world for LGBTQ2S+ culture and nightlife, it would feel like cheating for this Queer Cinema World Tour to make the short trip over to West Hollywood—that tiny gay kingdom is less than an hour’s walk (not that anybody in L.A. would walk) from the location of Donut Time (6785 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood), where so much of the action takes place (it’s no longer a doughnut place). So let’s keep this tour in Hollywood proper. The place deserves to be a queer and trans destination on its own merit. After all, the first L.A. Pride parade took place here in 1970, starting at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and McCadden Place.
In the opening scenes of Tangerine, Sin-Dee struts over stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We can’t quite catch the names she walks over, but LGBTQ2S+ stars commemorated on the strip between North La Brea and North Gower include Billy Porter, Gillian Anderson, Tallulah Bankhead, Drew Barrymore, Montgomery Clift, Lee Daniels, James Dean, Ellen, Melissa Etheridge, Neil Patrick Harris, Rock Hudson—the list goes on.
In fact, through its history, the Hollywood dream factory has so depended on queer people and queer culture—coded and closeted, of course, for most of that history—that we could declare: “Look at it all, from the TCL Chinese Theatre to the Capitol Records building (the label signed Sam Smith, Troye Sivan, Halsey)—it’s all queer, every last bit!”
Right there in the middle of the Walk, like the attention seeker he is, RuPaul runs his Drag Race empire out of his World of Wonder offices near the corner of North Cherokee Avenue.
If you’re too busy chasing an MIA boyfriend to look around at Tinseltown on your own, you can book a tour with The Lavender Effect who will surface the history for you.
It’s not all glamour. Hollywood is also a home for real people with real needs. The McDonald/Wright Building of the Los Angeles LGBT Center (1625 Schrader Blvd., Hollywood) is just off Hollywood Boulevard and is home to the Audre Lorde Health Program (ALHP), which provides services to those who identify as women or girls, centring those who are lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer. The Centre has eight sites across the county, employing a whopping 800 people.
Though we can hope that Sin-Dee and Alexandra would take advantage of the Centre’s health services, as visitors, we’d probably be more interested in the Centre’s nearby Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center (1125 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood), which is home to galleries and a 200-seat theatre.
The Centre has been known to host its annual Pride picnic at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Megastars like Judy Garland, Peter Lorre, Marilyn Monroe and Estelle Getty are buried here, as is, in 2015, gay model Dirk Shafer, named Playgirl’s “Man of the Year” in 1992.
When you need to blow off steam after a hard day on the streets, there’s no reason to rush over to WeHo. In fact, Hollywood is home to some real quirky, edgy gems.
Club Tempo (5520 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles) is a “Latino cowboy” nightclub with drag shows and go-go dancing men most nights of the week. Reload (1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood) hosts gay after-hours parties, many of them on long weekends. Goths will love Bar Sinister (1652 N. Cherokee Ave., Hollywood), which hosts, among other queer events, the Gender FVCK party by Club Zero One.
Tangerine doesn’t end with dancing or celebration. It turns out Alexandra was the one sleeping with Chester. After they fight, Sin-Dee is subject to a transphobic assault by potential clients. Yet, in the very, very end, the two lead characters remain loyal to each other—the final moments we see them together are poignant. That’s a real Hollywood ending, though perhaps not the kind of happy ending you were looking for.
