Episodes

  • A Little Space Alien (Ep 486 - Superman/Glenn)
    Sep 19 2024

    This weekend, there’s a new documentary coming to theaters about the life of Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman. It’s called Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, and it’s about his career, the injury that changed his life, and about what Superman the character means to different people. For this week’s episode, we’re diving into the Sewers archives to revisit a 2018 conversation on that topic. My guest was Glenn Kiser, whose name you might not recognize but he’s had a hand in countless films over the last thirty years — helping to craft movies alongside directors like David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Jane Campion, and George Lucas. As a kid, Glenn would obsess over movies and dream of the day he could make his own — never dreaming that his journey could take him from living on an isolated ranch in Texas to working at Skywalker Ranch.

    We’ll have that conversation in just a moment. First, if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, I hope you’ll consider supporting the show on Patreon. Patrons get access to an exclusive Discord server, stickers and books in the mail, bonus videos, and more. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com/mattbaume.

    And you may also enjoy my other projects — my YouTube videos, weekly livestreams on Twitch, my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, and my email newsletter. Check out all that at MattBaume.com.

    Also, I hope you’ll check out a new documentary series premiering on CNN on September 22, about TV milestones that shaped American culture. It’s called TV on the Edge, and I’m just one of the folks interviewed on the show.

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    57 mins
  • Homosexuals Are Mad as Hell and We're Organizing (Ep 485 - live television/Mark Segal)
    Sep 12 2024

    My guest this week is Mark Segal, who started making waves in the 1960s and hasn’t stopped since. Mark was there for Stonewall, he was there for the organizing of the first Prides that followed, and he was ready to get arrested for the cause of gay liberation — and was many times, including on one memorable occasion when he invaded a broadcast of the CBS evening news. These days, he claims the title of the nation’s most awarded LGBT journalist, he continues to oversee operations at the Philadelphia Gay News, and he has some wisdom to offer queer people following the trail that he blazed.

    We’ll have that conversation in just a moment. First, if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, I hope you’ll consider supporting the show on Patreon. Patrons get access to an exclusive Discord server, stickers and books in the mail, bonus videos, and more. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com/mattbaume.

    And you may also enjoy my other projects — my YouTube videos, weekly livestreams on Twitch, my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, and my email newsletter. Check out all that at MattBaume.com.

    Also, I hope you’ll check out a new documentary series premiering on CNN on September 22, about TV milestones that shaped American culture. It’s called TV on the Edge, and I’m just one of the folks interviewed on the show.

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    54 mins
  • A Strange Kind of Family (Ep 484 - Grey Gardens & Second Life/Tony & Brad)
    Sep 5 2024

    Tony Maietta and Brad Shreve are the co-hosts on the podcast Going Hollywood, where they talk about their favorite films. And on this week’s Sewers of Paris, we’ve got a double feature — first an interview with Tony and then an interview with Brad. Tony’s an actor-turned-writer whose books include The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens, which he wrote after a chance encounter with The Marble Faun himself. And Brad’s a writer of queer mystery novels, though he went through a pretty rough time before his writing career took shape — spiraling through drug use, homelessness, and a period where the only way he could communicate with his then-boyfriend, now-husband was through the video game Second Life.

    We’ll have those two conversations in just a moment. First, if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, I hope you’ll consider supporting the show on Patreon.

    Patrons get access to an exclusive Discord server, stickers and books in the mail, bonus videos, and more. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com/mattbaume.

    And you may also enjoy my other projects — my YouTube videos, weekly livestreams on Twitch, my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, and my email newsletter. Check out all that at MattBaume.com.

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    46 mins
  • I Got Excommunicated (Ep 483 - House of Heat/Koaty & Sumner Blayne)
    Aug 29 2024

    This week, I’m chatting with two guests, Koaty and Sumner Blayne. They’re adult performers, they’re a real-life couple, and they’re two of the stars of the new Tubi reality series House of Heat, which centers on a house full of porn performers. So how did a structural engineer and a nice Mormon boy wind up in that particular line of work?

    We’ll have that conversation all about that in just a moment. First, if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, I hope you’ll consider supporting the show on Patreon.

    Patrons get access to an exclusive Discord server, stickers and books in the mail, bonus videos, and more. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com/mattbaume.

    And you may also enjoy my other projects — like my YouTube videos for a queer look at movie and television history, my weekly livestreams on Twitch, my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, and my email newsletter. Or you might like Matt’s So-Cast Pod, a podcast about the 90s TV series My So-Called Life.

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    34 mins
  • An Angry Phone Call from Faye Dunaway (Ep 482 - Mommie Dearest/A. Ashley Hoff)
    Aug 22 2024

    My guest this week is A. Ashley Hoff, author of the new book With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic. In it, Hoff chronicles the making and cultural impact of a particularly iconic film, and seeks to understand how such a weird piece of culture got made … and why it’s become so important to so many people.

    We’ll have that conversation in a moment. First, if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, I hope you’ll consider supporting the show on Patreon. Patrons get access to an exclusive Discord server, stickers and books in the mail, bonus videos, and more. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com/mattbaume.

    And you may also enjoy my other projects — like my YouTube videos for a queer look at movie and television history, my weekly livestreams on Twitch, my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, and my email newsletter. Or you might like Matt’s So-Cast Pod, a podcast about the 90s TV series My So-Called Life.

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    38 mins
  • The Grateful Dead at a Christian College (Ep 481: Grateful Dead/Jason Durant)
    Aug 15 2024

    My guest this week is Dr Jason Durant, a New York based therapist who kicked himself out of the closet with some help from jam bands and a crush on a straight boy. It was discovering The Grateful Dead while at a Christian college that helped him come to terms with himself. And a job on a pot farm that led him to complete a degree in psychology.

    Jason has a new book out about his experiences, entitled Boy From the North Country: A Queer Therapist Looks Back at Overcoming Trauma With Mindfulness. There’s a link to where you can find it in the description of this episode.

    We’ll have that conversation in a moment. First, a quick heads-up that just this week I’ve posted a new video over on YouTube — it’s the story of Howard Ashman, and how a gay hippie who just wanted to put on fun shows with his friends wound up revolutionizing Broadway and Disney. That’s at YouTube.com/mattbaume.

    Also, if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, I hope you’ll consider supporting the show on Patreon. Patrons get access to an exclusive Discord server, stickers and books in the mail, bonus videos, and more. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com/mattbaume.

    And you may also enjoy my other projects — like my YouTube videos for a queer look at movie and television history, my weekly livestreams on Twitch, my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, and my email newsletter. Or you might like Matt’s So-Cast Pod, a podcast about the 90s TV series My So-Called Life.

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    36 mins
  • What Makes You Stand Out (Ep 480 - The Little Mermaid/Terry Blas)
    Aug 8 2024

    As you may have heard, I have a new YouTube video coming this weekend about Howard Ashman, the lyricist behind The Little Mermaid among many other works. So for this week’s episode, we’re diving into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2016 interview with artist Terry Blas. Terry was inspired to become an artist after seeing The Little Mermaid — and it helped him figure out how he could navigate the world wearing a variety of hats: Nerdy, Hispanic, Mormon, gay, comic illustrator.

    In the near-decade since I first interviewed Terry, he’s produced some fantastic comics, all of which you should check out — Lifetime Passes, Hotel Dare, Dead Weight, as well as biographical books about Cesar Chavez and Frida Kahlo just to name a few. I got a huge kick out of listening back to this conversation with Terry, knowing how much success was about to come his way.

    We’ll have that conversation in a moment. If you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, I hope you’ll consider supporting the show on Patreon. Patrons get access to an exclusive Discord server, stickers and books in the mail, bonus videos, and more. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com/mattbaume.

    And you may also enjoy my other projects — like my YouTube videos for a queer look at movie and television history, my weekly livestreams on Twitch, my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, and my email newsletter. Or you might like Matt’s So-Cast Pod, a podcast about the 90s TV series My So-Called Life.

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    47 mins
  • A Lonely Dramatic Experience (Ep 479: Who Framed Roger Rabbit/Greg Lockard)
    Aug 1 2024

    My guest this week is Greg Lockard, author of the graphic novels Liebestrasse and Trick Pony. Greg’s career in comics started on the business side, handling paperwork and contracts, but he always felt he had stories inside him trying to burst out. So when an opportunity to climb the corporate ladder came, he was faced with a tricky choice — stay in the office, or break away from that job security to strike out on his own with a gay love story he’d been waiting to tell.

    If you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, I hope you’ll consider supporting the show on Patreon. Patrons get access to an exclusive Discord server, stickers and books in the mail, bonus videos, and more. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com/mattbaume.

    And you may also enjoy my other projects — like my YouTube videos for a queer look at movie and television history, my weekly livestreams on Twitch, my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, and my email newsletter. Or you might like Matt’s So-Cast Pod, a podcast about the 90s TV series My So-Called Life.

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    40 mins