Amy Winehouse died seven years ago today and several years removed from its Oscar win and box office success, Asif Kapadia’s Amy lingers in the public consciousness. A popular work of non-fiction due to its remarkable access to the story of a spiralling genius. For me, however, Amy remains a personal bug bear; an unethical and cruel work of documentary filmmaking that uses the words of its dead subject against her.
It was purely coincidental then that I thought about Amy while watching Matt Tyrnauer’s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood. The two films definitely do not share the same world, but this revealing piece of Inside Hollywood muckraking does raise questions about ethics all its own. I admit I got a bit of a salacious thrill out of it, but that doesn’t stop me questioning whether I ought to have.
The Scotty of the title is Scotty Bower, a WWII vet who ventured west after the war and rather remarkably found himself successfully falling into an unexpected trade. He wouldn’t call himself a pimp, but rather just a businessman making people happy. His business, of course, was arranging sexual trysts between Hollywood superstars and same-sex partners within the metaphorical closet. At first in just a trailer at the back of the gas station he worked and later seedy hotel rooms across the street and eventually even hotel bungalows, Scotty provided secret rendezvous for the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Walter Pidgeon, Cary Grant and many more at a time when homosexuality was illegal. He was beloved by his clientele, willed estate by actor Beech Dickerson and cinematographer Néster Almendros even bequeathed him his Academy Award for Days of Heaven.
Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood is in essence about the man himself, charting his life and during this peak period of the 1950s on through the present day where he lives a relatively quiet life with his wife Betty, a lounge singer. This in a way allows the film to side-step the murky territory that his book Full Service wades in by outing numerous people across the industry. The documentary isn’t so much about the outing of celebrities, just the man who did it. It walks a tightrope in that regard.
Did Scotty have a right to write his book? The film has nothing to say about that. The few times it is brought up – whether that be by people at book signing events or Elizabeth Hasselback in a clip from talk-show The View – Bowers replies with his trademark shrug and a defence that “everybody knew”. Of course, not everyone did know. This era of Hollywood worked because people were all too willing to accept the blessed life that was being presented to them even if in retrospect it was all so obvious. Bowers’ wife, Betty, even notes that the women at the hair salon don’t appreciate Scotty’s book because, as Betty puts it, it ruins the fantasy.
In many ways, Scotty is the documentary version of a gossipy brunch with daiquiris and mimosas aplenty. And while as a form of entertainment its irreverence is its strong suit, it is also symbolic of what ultimately makes the film slightly disappointing. It comes off as all surface. What the film doesn’t do, and which I really wish it had, is actually use Bowers’ story to interrogate the ethical and societal issues that his story raises. Bowers wasn't the first to discuss the sex lives of the rich and famous and it's true that many LGBTQ audiences will already be aware of many of the stories the film details, which only makes the subjects it won't broach all the more frustrating.
But I did nonetheless appreciate its openness towards sex and the body that was both appropriate and necessary. Chris Dapkins cinematography is appropriately LA-sunkissed, and the talking head selections like Stephen Fry are nicely restrained in their use. Classic film clips selections are a particular hoot, especially those of Cary Grant who in the light of day was hardly fit into the contemporary definition of discreet. I just would have preferred Tyrnauer actually engage with the more relevant and pertinent issues with the same gleeful fizziness with which it tackles the private lives of its secondary subjects.
Release: In limited release from this weekend through Greenwich Entertainment.
Oscar Chances: I have a suspicion that the branch won't respond to Hollywood gossip when they don't even like documentaries about movies more broadly.