‘Everybody’ features the main cultural influence of the global male catalog – Deadline

For countless gay men of the early aughts, the Global Male Catalog provided an introduction to fashion…and fantasy. Handsome men with chiseled jaws and muscular bods fill the IM pages, often in nothing more than skimpy underwear. Straight dudes might be bursting at the seams with the Victoria’s Secret catalog of “angelic” lingerie; He was the International Male for Gay Men.

The documentary Everyone: A Global History of MenPlayed at Los Angeles’ Outfest LGBTQ+ Film Festival, it explores the history of the pioneering publication that presented itself as a “catalogue/magazine.” Brian Darling and Jesse Finlay Reed directed the film.

“It was based on my experience of going into a bedroom and locking the door,” IM said to cheer, Reid joked in a Q&A after the weekend screening. “I came to Brian and said, ‘You know what? Let’s make a 3- to 5-minute movie about what this means for a certain generation of young gay men.’

Producer-writer Peter Jones entered the project with his connection to International Male.

“I was a customer,” Jones told Deadline during an after-party at the Chateau Marmont. “I bought a black fishnet tank top and jaguar print, yes, the lycra type of gym clothes I’ve worn for years.”

International Male began in the mid-1970s, the brainchild of Gene Burkard, a former Army vet, singer and songwriter. For his first successful product, he took inspiration from a bandage-like medical garment that he disguised as a colorful “jock sock.” Out of the boring jock strap and into something bold and sexier. At the start of the outfit he got in the UK, “B [dock] As Darling explained, workers shoveling coal. They named him Stoker.

Reid added: “It was actually British surplus that they found on the docks, it was all mustard in a big pile, and they said, ‘We want to buy these.’ “They bought it. And it sold like crazy.

“They were one of the pioneers in using military surplus and turning it into fashion,” Darling said. “How many jumpsuits have you seen? Purple and blue… they had trench coats and different things from Germany during the war. And then when they were done, they would take it somewhere and copy it… it would sell well.

Burkard wrote the catalog version – let’s say J. Peterman from Seinfeld. About the “Bombay” trouser, IM praised, “A brutal fatigue with an irresistibly sophisticated high style.” Or from a blue cotton work shirt: “We found it in Greece… It’s become an interesting fashion quest.” In the year The cover of the Fall 1993 catalog featured “Go Young Young.”

The clothes were meant for men of every stripe—gay and straight. Stripes, bold Versace-inspired prints, khakis edgy enough for Indiana Jones, and—arrr, matey-clothes to fly your pirate flag: a thick doublet and a shirt worthy of Blackbeard. In fact, the movie inspired some of the IM’s pirate-like gear. Seinfeld The “Tiffany Shirt” episode.

Fashion maven Carson Cressley, featured in The Global Masculine, has benefited from dressing men in men’s clothes, not men’s clothes. Everyone. “The Beginning of the Metrosexual Movement – Where You Can Dress Up Just for Fun”

Gay men were by no means the sole or primary target of the catalog. The film found that 75-percent of buyers were women shopping for men, trying to get them to swap their cute Dockers and Hanes for something more adventurous.

“Her girlfriend said, ‘Honey, will you please try?'” Jones said. she is saying. “The thing about having the clothes shipped to them at home, the guys try them on in the bedroom and send them back if they don’t like it… As a business, it was very smart for women to shop for their men. He said.

The buff, white-bread models are typically masculine and offensive to straight male consumers, although the gay men who poke around in the catalogs may be wearing the swagger they have in mind.

“Straight people were a big customer, but he had a big impact in the LGBT world because what he was able to do, he brought these pictures of well-dressed men to all 50 states,” Jones said.

On the film’s website, Burkard says, “We never said we were a gay catalog, but gay people said, ‘I get it.’

The filmmakers interviewed Burkard before his passing in December 2020. They also interviewed Gloria Tomita, the global male vice president and general buyer, as well as former models, photographers, groomsmen and other employees at every level of the company. Darling, Reed & Jones came away impressed with the warm atmosphere Burkard and Tomita had fostered at their San Diego headquarters.

“There’s a Facebook page, like an ex-employee. They visit each other, they stay in touch,” Reed said. “Everybody we’ve talked to says, ‘This is the best job I’ve ever had.’

“But it was more than that,” Darling added. “It wasn’t. [just] The best work was, literally, ‘We Were Family’. It was a unique experience. How many people say that about their work?”

Many of their male employees were gay and faced consequences for embracing their sexuality.

“Gene and Gloria’s relationship with the crew and the young people they hire that awakens and is rejected by their families. As far as the cultural relevance of this movie goes – I wanted people to see the humanity in the business world,” Jones commented. “I think now of the two documentaries about Abercrombie and Fitch and Victoria’s Secret. They were run by psychopathic maniacs who abused people. We now have an international guy and Gene Burkhart who is a great guy who cares about his employees.

Foreign actor Matt Bomer narrated the film. Everyone: A Global History of Men It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last month and then played at Frameline in San Francisco. The filmmakers want wide distribution for the documentary.

“Hopefully someone will pick it up and a lot of people will see it,” Jones said. “We have a very interested party that has been in this position. [Outfest] Being able to check it out and hear the audience’s reaction and see it on the big screen, I take that as a positive sign. But we’ll see.”