Page 63 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

Jack Fritscher Chapter 1 45

Video,” to accompany my twenty-two photographs (pages 34-36, 38-41). I
offered “bodybuilding” for Drummer 124 and wrote the lead feature with
DeBlase selecting an excerpt from Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-
Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982, plus five of my photos (pages 16-17,
35). Following up in 1989, because my former lover Robert Mapplethorpe,
whom I had featured in Drummer 24 and Son of Drummer, had recently
died, I nominated Mapplethorpe as the hook for Drummer 133 and wrote
the lead feature article, “Pentimento for Robert Mapplethorpe: Fetishes,
Faces, and Flowers of Evil.” Additionally, because “safe sex” was the new
buzz word, I tendered “nostalgia for the way we were in the Titanic 1970s”
as the theme for Drummer 139 with my lead feature article, “Remembrance
of Sleaze Past.”

Editor’s note:

See DeBlase’s editorial credit for themes created by Fritscher in Drummer
139, p. 35: “So, inspired by Jack Fritscher’s theme, we decided to do a
photo shoot with a hot leatherman nibbling on...cake...” which referenced
both Proust’s cookie and the title of the “Remembrance” feature arti-
cle. See also Tim Barrus’ posting of this re-instituted “theme approach”
as a way to solicit and build issues out of the grass roots readership in
Drummer 120, page 19.)

DeBlase continued:

Do you mind having your name mentioned in conjunction
with your Palm Drive Video company? I was going to name you in
the review I did of your Gut Punchers [Drummer 115], but since you
didn’t include your name in your own literature [because I was keep-
ing my literary identity separate from my photographic identity], I
didn’t do it. What is your feeling on the subject? I think Drummer
readers will take your name as a badge of quality and be more
likely to purchase from a company they haven’t dealt with before—
if they knew of your association. [A couple weeks later, on Saint
Patrick’s Day, March 17, over lunch at Original Joe’s, DeBlase said,
“Let me give you this business advice. Your name is a brand name.
People are still learning the name of Palm Drive Video. You should
start calling it ‘Jack Fritscher’s Palm Drive Video.’” [And so, on
DeBlase’s marketing recommendation, the name was changed, and

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