'... And the Theatre was Full of Poofs, and I Thought it was Fantastic': Researching the history of gay men and the movies

The history of gay men and movies has often been discussed as matter of representation and in terms of images on screens. those boys in the band and their eventful party; Al Pacino's nights in the leather bars of New York; a bus called Priscilla; two cowboys in love. Also the focus of inquiry had been the gay men on and behind the camera. Rock Hudson, Rupert Everett, George Cukor, Gus van Sant. More recently, a growing number of researchers have begun to contemplate and investigate the gay men in the cinema audience. this chapter disucsses the use of oral history interviews as a methodology for investigating the history of that audience.