How many months have I been hearing about Tab Hunter Confidential? It’s played at every gay-friendly film festival in the country not to mention SXSW and several others. So when do I finally get to see the damn thing? Nobody’s approached with any screeners or screening options…nothing. It’s been floating around for roughly five months but still doesn’t want to be viewed by columnists like myself. Not yet! In the words of Cliff Gorman‘s “Emory” in William Friedkin‘s politically incorrect The Boys in the Band, “Who do I have to fuck to get a drink around here?” Update: Someone sent me a link.

From a 3.14 post: The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has posted an interview (and accompanying audio q & a) with ’50s teen heartthrob Tab Hunter, whose closeted-in-Hollywood tale is told in Jeffrey Schwarz‘s Tab Hunter Confidential, which is screening at South by Southwest (a.k.a., “South By”). Hunter, 83, has never sounded to me like a layered or complex fellow, but he seems happy, settled. He lived an amazing life, certainly during his mid-to-late ’50s heyday.

The doc is a visual accompaniment to “Tab Hunter Confidential,” an ’06 tell-all written when Hunter heard about the then-imminent publishing of Robert Hofler‘s “The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Wilson.” Wilson was a gay Svengali who spotted, brought along and managed the biggest closeted hunks of the ’50s and early ’60s, including Hudson and Hunter. Wilson’s first move was always “butching” these guys up with studly-sounding screen names — i.e., Arthur Gelien/Tab Hunter, Roy Scherer/Rock Hudson, Robert Mosely/Guy Madison, Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr./Ty Hardin, etc. No Wilson client was actually given the name “Ben Dover.”