If the queer neighborhood of New York Metropolis had a fairy godmother, it might be Robin Byrd.
Certain, her crinoline ball robe was changed by a black crochet string bikini, and her magic wand had an enormous plastic rubber on the finish. However for many years, Byrd made folks’s fantasies really feel doable whereas fiercely defending them from the forces that needed queer intercourse, queer our bodies, and queer pleasure pushed again into disgrace.
I first met her throughout one among my earliest journeys to Fireplace Island about ten years in the past. Not rising up in New York, I had no actual reference level for who she was. However even earlier than I understood the total mythology, I understood the response. She moved alongside the boardwalks like a minor deity: hair in a bun, physique unmistakable, presence plain. When folks referred to her, I might inform she was somebody particular.
Since then, I’ve develop into greater than aware of the legacy and lore surrounding her. For individuals who could not but know, the brand new HBO documentary Bang My Field: The Robin Byrd Story, which premiered on the Tribeca Competition and arrives on HBO June 30, affords a long-overdue introduction to Byrd’s movie star, her public-access empire, and the tireless advocacy work she did for the LGBTQ+ neighborhood throughout among the most scary and formative eras of our current historical past.
“I’m so completely satisfied that individuals get to see me for me,” Byrd, 71, tells Out of the documentary, “as a result of all people has their very own conceived fantasy. All people thinks they know me.”
Directed by Jyllian Gunther and Stephanie Schwam, and produced by Sarah Jessica Parker’s Fairly Matches Productions, the movie isn’t merely a nostalgia journey by way of late-night cable, classic porn stars, and pre-Giuliani downtown debauchery. It’s that, in fact, and thank God. However additionally it is a portrait of a lady who understood one thing lengthy earlier than the mainstream caught up: that intercourse may very well be foolish and sacred, that pleasure may very well be political with out being programmatic, and that being seen — actually seen — may very well be a type of survival.
‘No matter your fantasy made me to be’
Robin Byrd poses in entrance of a neon signal for The Robin Byrd Present.
The Robin Byrd Present
From 1977 to 1998, The Robin Byrd Present turned Manhattan Cable Tv’s Channel J into Byrd’s personal glittering, low-budget, late-night universe. She interviewed grownup movie stars, strippers, escorts, downtown characters, nightlife fixtures, and queer folks of each stripe. She took calls from viewers, whom she lovingly known as her “Byrd Watchers.” She danced. She flirted. She requested questions with the curiosity of somebody who by no means believed intercourse must be hidden behind euphemism or disgrace. It was, in spirit, the raunchiest and silliest podcast conceivable — a long time earlier than the phrase podcast even existed.
She preached condoms and safer intercourse with an enormous grin, not a wagging finger. And he or she did all of it within the uniform that turned her iconography: the crochet bikini, the blonde hair, the physique supplied not as perfection however as permission.
“I’m no matter your fantasy made me to be,” Byrd says. “Some folks thought, ‘Oh, that porn channel.’ Even folks that by no means noticed the present had perceived visions of what I used to be. And now the doc actually tells them what I’m and who I’m, which isn’t any completely different than who I used to be in entrance of the digicam.”
Then, as a result of she is Robin Byrd, she undercuts the sentiment with amusing and a wink.
“I’m not any completely different in particular person than I used to be on the present,” she says. “Besides — no, I’m not even much less bossy. I’m simply as bossy after I should be.”
For the filmmakers, making the documentary meant peeling again these fantasies and discovering the depth beneath the persona. Gunther remembers rising up in New York and seeing Byrd on a black-and-white tv as a baby, registering her principally as “a horny humorous woman.” What neither filmmaker totally understood originally was the gravity of Byrd’s influence.
“We didn’t know she went to the Supreme Courtroom and fought for First Modification rights,” Gunther says. “We didn’t know she was a feminist. We didn’t take into consideration any of these issues. The entire thing was like she was an onion that we had been unpeeling as we made the movie.”
That means of discovery turns into a part of what makes Bang My Field really feel so alive. The movie doesn’t retrofit Byrd right into a tidy activist narrative. It doesn’t faux she was strolling round downtown with a manifesto tucked into her bikini backside. In actual fact, the filmmakers are cautious to let her stay as unruly and unclassifiable as she has all the time been.
“She did her personal factor,” Schwam says. “She didn’t have a manifesto. She wasn’t political. She simply did what she did together with her instinct and her coronary heart.”
That distinction issues. Byrd’s work was political exactly as a result of it was not packaged as politics. She was not translating queerness, intercourse work, want, kink, bisexuality, or gender nonconformity for well mannered society. She was not asking permission to humanize the individuals who got here by way of her studio. She merely handled them as already human, already fascinating, already worthy of airtime.
The present additionally belonged to a really particular late-night financial system: the period of phone-sex traces, 1-900 numbers, and public-access advertisements that promised fantasy, intimacy, and escape for a number of {dollars} a minute. Earlier than apps, DMs, OnlyFans, and even the web as most individuals understand it, these numbers had been a type of analog portal — half hustle, half efficiency, half lifeline. At first, Byrd’s line catered principally to straight males, however as she shortly amassed a loyal homosexual following, she expanded the enterprise to incorporate homosexual males and transgender performers, diversifying the platform whereas creating profitable alternatives for queer folks working within the intercourse trade.
Two performers seem in a phase from The Robin Byrd Present, which featured a mixture of grownup leisure, reside calls, and performances.
The Robin Byrd Present
“For Robin, the on a regular basis was political,” Schwam says. “However once more, it was with out this kind of intention of politics. She wasn’t performing activism. She wasn’t performing feminism. She was a feminist.”
“She was sex-positive and body-positive,” Schwam provides. “The concept of a ‘queer secure area’ didn’t exist within the language. She simply did her factor, after which language and bins and definitions got here to satisfy her.”
Byrd’s personal rationalization for why she did the present is easier, and much more devastating.
“I didn’t like what I watched on tv late at night time,” she says. “It was principally information. I felt that there was a necessity for some kind of love to show you on and tuck you in and have some candy goals.”
“At the moment, even within the seventies, AIDS was beginning,” she provides. “There have been folks dying. No person had a beloved one, or they misplaced their beloved one, or they had been afraid of getting a beloved one. And I used to be there for them. I needed to be that particular person. I needed to allow them to know that I’m right here for you. When you don’t have a beloved one, you all the time have me.”
Then she reveals the wound beneath the mission.
“I meant it as a result of I by no means acquired that love,” Byrd says. “I used to be by no means on condition that heat hug.”
Byrd, who was adopted at a younger age and misplaced her adoptive father when she was very younger, carries that origin story inside the girl she turned: somebody who went in search of love and determined, someplace alongside the way in which, that she would develop into the love so many others had been denied.
“I simply didn’t like what I watched on tv,” she says. “I needed to alter it.”
The place is Robin Byrd now?
Robin Byrd sits together with her canine in New York Metropolis’s Central Park.
HBO Documentary Movies
One of many causes the documentary works is that it resists one of many laziest traps in movies about sexual figures from earlier eras: the lurid “The place are they now?” gaze. There aren’t any conventional speaking heads staring into the digicam, no parade of ageing former performers handled like cautionary tales. As a substitute, the filmmakers use voices, archival materials, and the unusual intimacy of individuals calling in — an intentional selection that feels related to the world Byrd created.
“We actually determined to drag again and let the footage and Robin converse for itself each time doable,” Schwam says. “Taking the speaking heads out wasn’t only for the sake of it. It was a pure resolution, a hat tip to the Byrd Watchers calling in.”
The filmmakers needed to keep away from the rubbernecking impulse that so usually attaches itself to former porn stars, intercourse employees, nightlife folks, and anybody who as soon as lived publicly by way of their physique.
“There’s a component of being distracted by the way in which any person seems now,” Gunther says. “We’ve already gotten to see them. Let’s hear them now.”
The result’s a documentary that trusts its topic and its archive. It lets Byrd be humorous, bossy, tender, evasive, commanding, and emotionally out there — generally all throughout the similar scene.
The movie’s emotional heart, nonetheless, isn’t solely Byrd’s profession. It’s her relationship together with her husband, Shelly. Their decades-long love story provides Bang My Field an surprising tenderness, particularly because the movie observes Byrd caring for him amid his dementia. What might have felt like a secondary plot turns into one of many documentary’s most transferring threads: the sex-positive public-access queen now dwelling a quieter life outlined by devotion, routine, and care.
Byrd is obvious about what that a part of the movie reveals.
“It reveals the love, completely, that I’ve for him,” she says.
Individuals, she says, are all the time asking what she is doing now.
“I all the time reply: I’m having fun with the life I constructed,” Byrd says. “While you’re working, you could have your job. While you’re retired, you don’t have that anymore. I’ve one other objective: to handle him.”
The filmmakers noticed that love too. Of their interview, they describe their first in-person assembly with Byrd and Shelly as “principally a double date.” Shelly, they are saying, was magic. Their timing collectively was rapid and revealing. When Byrd would describe one thing she had carried out, Shelly would chime in to say he had the tapes, that he had filmed it.
At first, Byrd was protecting of him and his routine, cautious in regards to the filmmakers’ presence. However over time, as belief developed, she allowed them to see extra.
“In the long run, I believe she noticed that we beloved him a lot,” Schwam says. “She allow us to embrace him.”
Gunther provides that exhibiting Byrd’s life now meant exhibiting her caring for “the one who took care of her this entire time.” It allowed the movie to have a good time Shelly as greater than a supporting character within the Robin Byrd mythology. He was not simply the person behind the digicam, or because the movie places it, her “head gopher.” He was a part of the inspiration.
That love story additionally complicates any simplistic studying of Byrd as merely a sexual provocateur. The movie is filled with pleasure, however additionally it is filled with dedication. It understands that sexual freedom and long-term devotion should not contradictions. In Byrd’s life, they seem to develop from the identical supply: a refusal to let different folks outline what intimacy ought to appear like.
Two New York icons, one story
Robin Byrd poses with associates in New York Metropolis’s LGBTQ+ nightlife scene.
The movie arrives with an particularly becoming New York connection by way of Sarah Jessica Parker, who serves as one among its producers. For the filmmakers, Parker’s connection to Byrd made cultural sense past movie star attachment.
“I believe Sarah Jessica actually understands that Robin is a precursor to her tv present,” Schwam says. “She’s actually extra of the Candace Bushnell period.”
That lineage feels proper. Earlier than Intercourse and the Metropolis turned feminine sexual candor into shiny HBO status, Byrd was doing one thing stranger, scrappier, and extra radical on public entry.
“I moved to New York Metropolis on January 1, 1977,” Parker informed HBO on the crimson carpet. “Not terribly lengthy after that, I turned a younger grownup, lived by myself, had a cable field, and found this singular, extraordinary, virtually mystifying particular person. I had by no means seen any person who talked like that, who was having the sorts of conversations no one else was having. She was lovely and good and caring and irreverent, fully in possession of herself.”
However what Byrd turned when it was vital, Parker added, is an important a part of understanding her.
“She was a fierce advocate, a champion of free speech,” Parker stated. “However within the queer neighborhood, on the most pressing and vital time throughout the AIDS disaster, she had no drawback screaming and yelling about what was wanted and what was being ignored.”
It’s a story that’s lengthy overdue. Parker stated she had not heard from so many associates in anticipation of a mission in fairly a while. That pleasure is sensible. For a lot of New Yorkers, Byrd is not only a media determine. She is a part of town’s erotic, queer and messy subconcious.
‘It’s the pioneers that get the arrows’
Robin Byrd throughout the early years of The Robin Byrd Present.
However Byrd is much less taken with being canonized than in ensuring folks perceive the street they’re strolling on. In its ultimate stretch, the documentary finds Byrd confronting ageing and her personal bare physique at 70, the age she was throughout filming. The sequence turns into one of many movie’s strongest statements: that visibility isn’t solely about youth, intercourse, or spectacle, however about refusing to vanish.
“What sort of hypocrite am I telling all people to like your physique?” Byrd says. “Right here I’m somewhat woollier than I used to be after I was youthful. And I’m like, wait a minute, it’s not embarrassing to me. I’m simply providing you with the truth of ageing and being 70. I’m not a hypocrite. I set by instance.”
That instance extends past physique acceptance. Byrd needs youthful LGBTQ+ folks to know that the freedoms many now inherit weren’t inevitable. They had been fought for by individuals who got here earlier than.
“What I need folks to know is the place they got here from,” she says. “The way it acquired there. How you’ll be able to be okay with being homosexual and out of the closet.”
“I needed folks to know that I used to be the pioneer,” Byrd provides. “I’m the one which took the arrows for the roads that you’re settled into. It’s the settlers that get the land, but it surely’s the pioneers that get the arrows.”
It’s a devastatingly correct description of queer historical past. The individuals who make the world extra livable not often get to benefit from the fullest model of what they made doable. They take the arrows. Others arrive later and name the land residence.
Byrd took arrows from censors, moralists, firms, individuals who lowered her to smut, individuals who watched with out understanding, and a tradition that has all the time been completely satisfied to devour sexual labor whereas refusing to honor sexual laborers as thinkers, caretakers, and artists. But she stored exhibiting up in her bikini with a condom and a smile, telling folks to guard themselves, take pleasure in themselves, and love themselves above all else.
The filmmakers say they hope audiences go away the movie loving themselves the way in which Byrd has been instructing folks to.
“We would like folks to like themselves the way in which Robin is instructing us all to,” Schwam says. “Irrespective of how laborious that’s.”
In addition they joke: “I hope you allow feeling attractive.”
Actually, that works too. As a result of in Robin Byrd’s world, attractive was by no means simply attractive. Sexy was alive. Sexy was curious. Sexy was related. Sexy was a purpose to choose up the cellphone, ask a query, use a condom, dance awkwardly, watch a stranger, acknowledge your self, and perhaps really feel rather less alone earlier than going to sleep.
After I inform Byrd that seeing her outdated safer-sex clips now feels revolutionary — the way in which she talked about rubbers with out stigma, with humor, urgency, and ease — she doesn’t appear shocked.
“I’ve all the time been forward of my time, Alex,” she says.
She has. However Bang My Field makes clear that maybe the remainder of us are lastly catching up.
Bang My Field: The Robin Byrd Story premieres June 30 on HBO and might be out there to stream on Max.
