On The Village People Interview

On The Village People Interview
The Village PeopleThe Village People was definitely the most surprising interview. I went in there asking what I thought would be a warm up question - something about their status as gay icons, pioneering gay icons, which would seem obvious at this point in history, and they just slammed on the breaks and just said 'WOAH WOAH Gay?! US?!... Nothing gay about us.' Now of course I wasn’t asking about them personally -I couldn’t care less- but it doesn’t seem like a radical notion, but they were completely taken aback by this. And I just fumbled on kind of dumbfounded, so this was a compelling enough train wreck situation to capture on film.  Months later, in the editing, I was going through the book and it kept referring to the founders of The Village People. One of whom, mind you, had died of AIDS in 1991, another of whom was still alive. I thought whatever happened to this other guy, Henri Belolo? I just Googled him and there was his company in Parism, and a couple weeks later, I was on a plane. It was fun to go back to him, and he of course told a completely different story.

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