Matt Tyrnauer Talks "Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood"

[Music] hi everyone welcome to build this afternoon my name is Ethan alter I'm senior writer with Yahoo entertainment here to talk about a new documentary so the Golden Age of Hollywood is synonymous with glitz and glamour an era when larger-than-life stars like Humphrey Bogart Katharine Hepburn Cary Grant and Betty Davis focus the public's eyes on Tinseltown but you must remember this behind all the tinsel those actors were just ordinary humans with ordinary human desires enter Scottie Bauer's a marine turned gas station attendant who cater to those desires by arranging secret trysts for celebrities tryst that he sometimes took part in himself those secrets are revealed at last in the new documentary Scottie and the secret history of Hollywood directed by our guest today Matt turn our it's currently playing limited release and the film profiles are now 95 year old Scottie as he dishes on that vanished era of Hollywood and the people he knew and loved let's watch a clip from the movie Scottie and the secret history of Hollywood that's we call business baby people are very invested in the establishment view of movie star history the strict moral code that we associate with Hollywood was a very traditional viewpoint the movie stars were just good honest law-abiding citizens it turned out there was a whole alternate world to which most of us had no access own knowledge Scottie Bauer had this gas station and he supplied men and women to the various Hollywood stars people disappearing up in a trailer doing this or that was fun people wanted something Scottie would get a cult part would say can you bring 15 guys one right after the other I figured cancer pepper therefore they're a bit of 150 girls I've been with very grant rockcastle Charles Lawton at Frank Sinatra's house I had a three-way with a Bogart or Lana Turner there was a whole network of folks waiting for some lights guide to come along he wasn't simply this madam called for event Scotty's revealing that these people were real flesh-and-blood like us it can add up to an awful lot of people into the thousand I didn't know him then I don't know him is that person not sure what you and wet nebran car and into World War two Scotty was in horrific battles laborer Jima we had 7,000 guys killed it made me happy to be alive it's warm he's caring he likes to make people happy the world was different than if it became public that you were gay you would be immediately fired they could go to jail Scottie was able to allow these people to have lives dr. Kinsey interviewed me and ever had sex with a girl yes how about what a guy yes would you do everything but somebody's flesh think you're weird you're different I did the book to show that people are still feeling time she said you misled her trust running a tell-all book what's wrong with being gay but thanks anyhow we are now embracing where the motto was do your own thing Scottie was telling that when it was not culturally acceptable if it wasn't for this guy I would have thanked I often think back of how nice things were I felt good that I made so many people happy great well welcome Matt thanks so much for coming today whew I saw this documentary at the Toronto Film Festival last year and came away really enjoying it and loving especially the sort of double meaning I think of the title secret history which we'll get to I think it's talking about Hollywood both as a Dream Factory and as a city the history of both of those things let's start with the Dream Factory idea now you're an LA native born born and raised there what sort of you're growing up what do you remember about the place where you live did you buy into the myth of it well my father was a TV producer he produced shows like Columbo yeah I mean the myth is alluring even for the people in the industry they buy into it we all buy into it I think but when I became a journalist and filmmaker I was very interested in showing alternate histories and I realized there was a great deal going on that I didn't know about growing up there one realizes that about a lie actually if you if you really look closely there's much more than meets the eye so I think this is the ultimate more than meets the eye look at a secret world that was thriving in Los Angeles after the world the Second World War all the way down to probably the 80s before the LGBTQ movement became what we know it today do you remember specifically when sort of the cracks in LA's mythology started appearing to you did you pick up Hollywood babble-on for example and read that you know my my parents had Hollywood babble-on so I was weaned on Hollywood babble-on I think we all were really I anyone who paid attention Hollywood babble-on would sit in the bookshelf next to the reverent biographies of the movie stars and it was really the only alternative finger is still alive really deserves a lot of credit for that I think this is a retake in a way because Scotty Bowers who's now 95 and ran this brothel to the stars out of a gas station in the center of Hollywood was really present in in the so called Imperial bedrooms of the city in a way that Kenneth Anger wasn't kinda thinker was an alternative filmmaker Scotty was welcomed in the greatest homes of the city and specifically in the greatest bedrooms do Scotty published his own memoir full service in 2012 did you run out and buy it right away were you aware when it was coming out well I was given the manuscript gore Vidal the great writer was a client and friend of Scotty's they met in 1947 at the mythical gas station now no longer mythical because we know it's true but gore helped him get the manuscript published so when I made the deal with Scotty to make this movie he had the manuscript and he'd all helped get it published mm-hmm I read it then what jumped out at you right away about it what was this sort of the story that sort of summarized it for you and why was such a great beast well it's it's really in a perverse way a greatest generation narrative it's the part that the All American boys left out of their post-war lives he's the all-american boy enlisted in the Marines underage at 17 fought in every battle it seems in the Pacific came back to LA but instead of going back to the farm in Illinois or getting a job at you know Schwab's or something like that he becomes a gas station attendant who's working double-time as the manager of the Richfield oil station but also the male madam to the stars and in that he meets everyone from every strata of life in Hollywood from the gas station attendant cool Marines come sex workers who he was friends with to people like Cary Grant's who went into the gas station for more than and we should say seeing the stars out of that limelight sort of in ordinary day do you think he had a different perspective on them and that way how did he see them differently in the rest of the world he's the least starstruck person I ever met you know he had this farm boy perspective he doesn't care for movies really he says he's seen three movies in his entire life he's now seen this one about ten times so I guess he's seen 13 movies but he was not really after anything other than being a worker and making people happy he wasn't just a pump jockey and a male prostitute he was a tree trimmer he drove a taxi at one point he would you know fix the electricity in these people's homes go Christmas shopping for them he's the man of all work for a lot of really important people in frankly a very important city at the time which had to have a covert sexual world when it came to same-sex relationships because of morals clauses in the contracts of the movie stars which prevented them from being publicly anything other than straight and also the vice squad which was like a sexual Gestapo extorting famous people in the town if they dared to reveal anything other than a sham marriage to the public the most some of those explosive details probably for people who love to buy into the myth is about Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn specifically I mean we for years that's always endured that they were the sort of great romance II even though he'd left his wife for her and so that there was always that element of it too but this sort of explores the fact that both of them were gay and had to keep that hidden and that's that's I think details that people have trouble reconciling in some ways well you know Hepburn and Tracy are one of the great Hollywood legends Hepburn herself helped to propagate the myth after Tracy's death you see that a little bit in the movie we have corroboration the movie for Hepburn's lesbianism Lisbeth who is the greatest gossip columnist and very respected truthful journalist knew Hepburn very well and confirms that she had lesbian relationships Spencer Tracy jour cuecore the great director put Spencer Tracy up in his guest house the secretaries of Cukor confirmed that Tracy was having a relationship with Scotty Scotty confirms it why people hold on to these myths is an interesting question why does it does it damage the the standing of Hepburn and Tracy to know that they were anything other than straight maybe they were bisexual maybe they were gay on Tuesday and straight on Wednesday who knows I mean that's really not as interesting to me is the fact that they had to make up a story a cover story in order to survive and we need to know that and we need to know about the straight washing that occurred habitually in the in the power corridors of our world and certainly I mean people have been angry at Scotty for sure for sharing these details who's claiming he's profiting off the dead and things like that I mean wouldn't people have approached you about that what sir of your your response to the Cary Grant for example is a person of world important still he's an immortal Hollywood legend there have been many biographies written about Cary Grant so you could argue that a biographer who writes a biography about Cary Grant's you know several marriages is profiting off the dead as well why just because he had a homosexual relationship or two or three or 12 does that mean that your profiteering off of him that's homophobia really it's homophobia masked as pearl clutching and and shocked at anything abnormal happening what as Scotty eloquently says in the movie what's wrong with being gay why is it so shocking that someone no matter who they are had a homosexual relationship dr. Kinsey told us this happened in the Kinsey Report in the 50 is why are we still clinging to these myths that we were fed by what the church our parents whomever it's sort of alarming to me actually that it's still coming up and I think this makes Scotty into kind of a visionary and that who told him that all this was cool way ahead of his time now people are interested in sexual fluidity and aren't into gender labels or sexuality labels Scotty is 95 and he was getting that in 1940s so I think there's something to be said for that and I think he's someone to look at and look to as an example do you sort of feel I mean obviously the generational divide is there from people who remember these actors when they were young and growing up watching them for younger people who maybe don't know who they are or don't mind the the stories behind them are they as fascinated in history do you feel like watching it with young people of this exposing this era makes them more relatable I made the movie in part for a younger generation so they could see the struggles that people had to go through and appreciate that if you're an LGBTQ person today you stand on the shoulders of people that came before you and that we really need to know our history we need to know about the bad old days but we need to know a nuanced portrait of them not everything was horrible Scottie was very happy there were a lot of people that were living true lives then but they had to in his words play it cool we don't have to do that so much anymore at least in big cities but I don't think a lot of people realize that you could be ruined by your own police force just for being gay and that they could extort you and shake you down for that that was the LAPD it wasn't some obscure defunct agency that you know stopped existing it's the LA Police Department they did that and I'm happy to call them out on it 50 60 years after the fact do you see a connection between the film's premiere to Toronto before the me2 movement really is kicked in but do you sort of feel that there's a connection between the truths that Scotty is telling and the truths that are coming out now in the present day it's very different in terms of what people are being accused of but the idea of showing the what's happening behind the scenes I mean it's kind of apples and oranges I think you're people are being accused of something that is non-consensual now as far as I've been able to determine from everything anyone's told me this was the picture of consensual 'ti I've spoken to probably a dozen people who are in their 80s and 90s and were around no one's told me anything untoward or anything that even approaches something non-consensual and everyone spoke and in my early miring Liam Scottie so I think it's it's not quite the comparison Scottie can be certainly a big talker in the movie it seriously is very exuberant as these great stories do you ever did you ever have the sense that he was exaggerating was there any a sense that did ever ever since there's a tall tale happening for you i tall tale in terms of a fib no I mean we're talking about 90 years of history here almost I mean I can't I wasn't there for the whole 90 years so I don't know if any story has changed but I think that everything is in essence very truthful I've cross-checked cross tabulated facts you can look at the fact pattern as it appears in the record in anything from Wikipedia to other biographies to people's Diaries sessile beaten the great photographer and art directors Diaries the null Howard Diaries photographic records of where people were at particular times people who appear in film and photographs of Hollywood premieres and other people in the background who are actually present in Scotty's life you can check it out and it all checks did he tell you any stories that you that you were really blown away by something that you had never really had heard before I mean there are things of such extremity that it was a real learning experience for me I think this is why dr. Kinsey interviewed him so much because Kinsey was interested in data that people were afraid to give him so he could have a full picture of what was happening behind the scenes in in the realm of human sexuality Scotty was unabashed I mean there are really wild scenarios happening if we think that our ancestors were prudish I think again I mean there was one actor of a great film noir actor named John Dahl who was being hung upside down from trees and the canyons of LA during thunderstorms which I didn't know was a fetish by the way that's a new one and there were many new ones that Scott need to tell me the movie doesn't tell you everything but it tells you a lot and there's no shortage of humanity in it but also there's plenty of sex and certainly i'm scottie emergences this really complex human figure as well he has his own history of childhood sexual trauma although he doesn't claim to be a victim at all which is interesting I don't know if you felt that that that would that was a cover story or not a cover but if he was again I sort of adapting that pose or if he if he really didn't feel any trauma from those days well it's Scotty's story and his it's his life to tell about he talks about situations as a very young man having sex with older people which most people would immediately say well that's child abuse oh I questioned him on it in exactly those terms and he immediately on multiple occasions says no he does not feel like a victim this is a very unusual stance to take but it's something that he believes very deeply it's his truth it's his story to tell it's a cinema verite film so I let him tell this story and I'll let the viewer decide whether they are disapproving approving shocked or otherwise speaking to the other meaning of the title's secret history one of the things I really love about the movie as you watch him drive around Los Angeles and his version of LA is gone it's it's history he knows where those places are like things that are something else now he knows what they used to be and that's the secret history portion he's the sort of key to unlocking this past of LA that isn't there anymore yeah you know I grew up in Los Angeles and Sunset Boulevard on the west side of LA people used to always tell me there was a bridal path in the middle of Sunset Boulevard which I lived a half a mile from and some people who were older told me we used to ride our horses to school every morning and then I looked out my window one day we lived in a canyon down into a riding stable that was just about a 50 feet from Sunset Boulevard the riding rink was where the horses would be tied up when they would ride their horses to school so I began to see as a young guy in LA if you look closely there was evidence of a hidden past almost forgotten past and this movie is really my tribute to that Los Angeles Scotty is a living monument to that pass and he drive around town with him he can show you where everything was he frequently does and it's been fascinating to hear but I've always thought that Los Angeles was an Easter egg hunt and there was a hidden history a secret history and this movie more than just a revisiting of the sexual history of hidden Hollywood is really an exploration of a lost city and also just the other image that sticks with me is him in his garage they've been transformed in Lee's library is full of just information that people people aren't looking for them but he has them he has the stuff I just buried him what it's an ordinary garage is actually a treasure trove of artifacts well the history of gay Los Angeles and all most gay and New City obscures itself certainly in the past it did because it was just too risky to be overt about it Scottie is a great collector of things to say the least so in his hoarders dens and storage units we found really hundreds of photographs of again the secret city the secret history of LA photographs of the gas station boys and one girl and Scotty himself posing in risque photographs and even matchbook covers to gay bars that everyone had all but forgotten and he had it all squirreled away no one would know that unless it fell into the right hand so I'm glad we were able to find it this art came to mind to me and it may have melancholy but I don't but Scotty is and so it but those line from Barry Lyndon that they are all equal now the last line the idea that at one point this these secrets meant something and now they're just everyone's they're all they are well this also nearly under Barry Lyndon you hear ashes to ashes dust to dust and you know we are all equal which i think is the message of the movie what's interesting is your next movie is a document about studio 54 and that that whole cycle that that place lived out in the very in a very public eye so you're going from a private secret Hollywood to a story of New York that was very public was that an interesting transition well this is the secret history of studio 54 really in a lot of ways Ian Schrager who is the co-founder with Steve Rubell who died unfortunately from a Jovie related illness in the 80s shraeger still going strong tells the story from his point of view so that's woven into the film and he's never told it before so you really get a point of view on this club and we also found that you've never seen and we also found hours of 16 millimeter film footage shot inside that it was literally was not developed so you really see this mythic place from an angle that no one has seen it before go since you divide your time sometimes between LA and New York is there difference that you see in the two cities and their approach to their history and how they sort of function is that that way yeah you know I lived in New York for a long time now back in Los Angeles New York has gotten a lot better at venerating and preserving his history I mean the past 50 years have been a years of preservation and great consciousness Los Angeles which I love has a much more throw down attitude toward its history it's a 20th Century City the 20th century is the the century of you know disposable fast food containers and also disposable history which is very sad this movie is an attempt to correct that a little bit but again in Los Angeles part of its charm is you can see the history if you look closely and I think there's a certain wonderful native thing to that you know when I was growing up the noise and schindler all these modern houses that are so you know venerated now we're falling apart I'm being torn down and no one cared about them and suddenly in the 90s people started to restore them and now they're the most prized homes in the city things move in cycles I think that we're on a great upswing for lgd LGBTQ rights I think Scotty is an emblem of that so let's hope that upswing continues but I think we need to be reminded that there was a dark past and the more we know about that the more we can prevent future generations from having to suffer the way our ancestors and people in our past did now you mentioned that Scotty has seen this movie ten times now so as it jarred any other memories loose that easy eager to do a second one or a follow-up I think you would I'm not sure we could it took three years to get this one done he has such a great memory but one thing leads to another sometimes and people who were very famous weren't mentioned during the two years we were filming because something reminds him he's he's not one of those people when you ask him well tell me about Gary Cooper and John Wayne were they gay he doesn't say that at all I mean he's not gonna give you John Wayne's you know life as a drag queen it just doesn't happen so it's not as if everyone had a secret gay past but some people just aren't famous anymore and they were incredibly famous in his time and when they come up you do hear interesting stories so for every name in the movie I'd say there are ten that are not mentioned and LA had a really rich history it was the cradle of the gay rights movement really really even more so than New York and San Francisco people forget that as well Scotty I think was a unsung hero of that time well let's turn it over the audience for some questions hi you mentioned your father being like a filmmaker around this relative era of Hollywood and I was just wondering how that like affected you on like a personal level or like how the story was meant to be told well my father was a TV writer and producer at that time TV was the second class the second tier it was called the business and the film business was called the industry it was very distinct however the kind of shows he wrote worked was Columbo for example or Murder She Wrote was another one those were the shows that actually had the old actors on as guest stars because they couldn't get work in movies so I had an interesting perspective on the old history because he was very interested in it I think I got a lot of this from him he had the Hollywood babble-on book I you know I think I was probably you know in the third grade when that was published what does a third grader make of Hollywood babble-on but you can kind of get it from the pictures so I think all of this was plant these seeds were planted for me at the time and I really do see this film as my Los Angeles film I think it has allusions to one of my favorite movies shampoo which i think is one of the great la films and if you look at the Warren Beatty character in shampoo and you imagine him not as a kind of vehemently heterosexual character but as someone that's a little more flexible I think shampoo could almost be a movie about Scottie Bowers and that we even did some shots in the film that were alluding to shampoo up in the canyons because there's so many great great shots of Beatty in the canyons thank you thank you so the industry and society has changed a lot since Scotty's time and it's really interesting to hear about the secret history what do you think decades from now will be the secret history of Hollywood today oh that's one I haven't been asked before well who knows I mean that's why it's secret right now I I mean maybe maybe crazy polymorphous things are happening and we'll want to know about them I there is a bit of straight washing happening still in our world I some alleged film scholars have spoken up against this movie saying that these shenanigans so-called of movie stars really are not relevant and someone said I prefer to look at their work on screen well that's fine I mean we should look at the work on screen but when someone survives the test of time the legacy of Grant and Hepburn is coming on a century now we can't have biographies of them being cleansed of information so the the marriages of Cary Grant which were promoted by the studios are in the record but the other relationships significantly one with Randolph Scott who was another major star is bleached out so this is a corrective to that someone survives the test of time from today and there's something obscure I'm sure eventually we'll we'll know that as well you know la is out consequential because the studio's really conspired to create an image that they sent around the world and it took so this heteronormative idea this kind of white picket fence Andy Hardy meet-cute world of Hollywood was was foisted on us and we took a hook line and sinker we couldn't we can't and shouldn't do that anymore sorry it's almost hard to imagine there being a secret history of Hollywood now given the way everyone lives their lives very much in public well yeah it's to with Instagram and Tumblr I guess there are no secrets at that level but I'm sure we'll find some other ones snapchat the the archive great well thank you so much to our guest Matt turn our today for tuning yeah for coming by make sure it's got any the secret history of Hollywood is in theaters now limited release and studio 54s coming out later this year so thanks very much everyone [Music]

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Keywords: AOL Advertising, BUILDseriesNYC, AOL Inc, AOL, AOLBUILD, #Aolbuild, build speaker series, build, aol build, content, aolbuildlive, BUILDSeries, Matt Tyranauer, 2018, film, director, Scotty and the secret history of hollywood, Scotty Bowers, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Vanity fair, valentino, oscar, the last emperor, citizen jane, ford, rockefeller, HBO, Chicago international film festival

Id: 8pgjx6913cE

Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 01 2018