{"id":3967,"date":"2018-06-11T04:13:43","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T11:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=3967"},"modified":"2018-06-11T04:13:43","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T11:13:43","slug":"grease-is-still-the-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2018\/06\/11\/grease-is-still-the-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Grease Is Still The Word"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I attended the 40<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary screening of the restored version of <strong><em>Grease<\/em><\/strong> on the <em>Paramount<\/em> lot.&nbsp; In circumstances far too convoluted to explain, I was part of a small handful of elite VIPs \u2013 primarily cast members who were guests of director <strong>Randal Kleiser<\/strong>.&nbsp; After the screening, scores of fans descended onto our group to get autographs and photos.&nbsp; Twice, people asked if I was in the film.&nbsp; OK, let\u2019s do the math \u2013 the film is celebrating 40 years.&nbsp; Exactly how old do I look?&nbsp; Eventually, I told people I was the stand-in for Cha Cha \u2013 the best dancer at <em>Saint Bernadette\u2019s<\/em>!&nbsp; Aside from that, Miss DiGregorio, how did you like the film?&nbsp; I loved it.&nbsp; The restoration work is amazing.&nbsp; The video has never looked so pristine or vivid, and the audio remastering let me hear bits of background dialogue for the first time.&nbsp; I wholeheartedly recommend getting the Blu-ray.<\/p>\n<p>One doesn\u2019t often get to meet a childhood crush, but while I was hangin\u2019 with the T-Birds, pal <strong>Barry Pearl<\/strong>, who played Doody, introduced me to <strong>Kelly Ward<\/strong>, who played the blond Putzie.&nbsp; The fact that Kelly didn\u2019t run for the hills when I confessed he was my secret love only endeared him to me more (truth be told, I spent much of the evening dancing with his wife than I did mooning over him).&nbsp; While watching <em>Grease<\/em>, I was struck by how much Kelly looked like <strong>Tab Hunter<\/strong>.&nbsp; And that leads to our next story.<\/p>\n<p>In the 2005 book <strong><em>Tab Hunter Confidential<\/em><\/strong> (and the subsequent documentary in 2015), the actor discusses his clandestine love affair with fellow queer actor, <strong>Anthony Perkins<\/strong>.&nbsp; That story will be the genesis of a film currently in development.&nbsp; <strong><em>Tab &amp; Tony<\/em><\/strong> is being produced by <strong>Zachary Quinto <\/strong>and <strong>J.J. Abrams<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I attended the 40th anniversary screening of the restored version of Grease on the Paramount lot.&nbsp; In circumstances far too convoluted to explain, I was part of a small handful of elite VIPs \u2013 primarily cast members who were guests of director Randal Kleiser.&nbsp; After the screening, scores of fans descended onto our<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3976,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions\/3976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}