What is the pop culture that made you?
I grew up in New Jersey as an only child, with parents who were already 40 and 43 when I was born. Their age had a huge impact on my sensibilities, especially when it came to pop culture and entertainment. They introduced me to a world of mid-20th century showbiz that I probably wouldn’t have encountered if they’d been younger. Because of that, I developed this deep knowledge and appreciation for earlier pop culture—it shaped me in so many ways.
Even though we were only 18 miles from New York City, my little New Jersey town felt worlds apart. As I wrote in my memoir A Boy Named Phyllis, it was 18 miles and a world away. It was so small-town and provincial, and I craved glamour and excitement from an early age. Television was my escape.
How so?
I remember this one pivotal moment: I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, and I saw Cher on TV. She was dazzling, and I just thought, “Oh my God, I want to go where she is.”
There was a special Cher did in 1976—I was about 13. It was Cher, Elton John, and Bette Midler, all dressed in these stunning white outfits covered in disco mirror balls, surrounded by silver balloons. I looked at that scene and thought, “That’s where I want to live.” And, in many ways, I feel like I got to go live there. My life now, as much as I dreamed it would be, is full of silver balloons and mirror-ball moments. Entertainment and pop culture shaped me—they gave me an escape and inspired me to build a life that was exciting, vibrant, and glamorous.
Growing up in New Jersey, where home entertainment was such a central part of life, it sparked my interests in fashion, disco, and movies. I always describe myself as this glamour-starved kid in the suburbs, hungry for an urban, electrifying life. And that’s what I set out to build.
So was that special an awakening of some sorts for you?
When I think back to Cher, Elton, and Bette Midler on that TV special, they represented not just an awakening, but a kind of lifestyle epiphany. It wasn’t so much about sexual orientation as it was about the realization that I wanted a bold, colorful, glittering life. They shaped my idea of what kind of gay man I wanted to be—because I’ve always believed it’s better to be colorful than not.
And I’ve been lucky. I’ve actually gotten to meet all three of them—Cher, Elton, and Bette. It’s like life came full circle. Those icons who inspired me as a kid helped me dream of a life I’m now living. And honestly, when I interviewed all three of them, I was like, you know, I never need to go out again. I’ve met everyone I ever wanted to meet and I did live by that, but I really could feel that way for a moment. I was like, what’s going to be better than this?
Your books, especially your latest Disco: Music, Movies, and Mania under the Mirror Ball is certainly a full circle moment for the lifestyle epiphany you talked about. What has your process been like?
I had written a book that came out in 2019 on the history of drag in show business, and one of the things people praised the book for was that it shed light on and gave respect to an art form that people didn’t give enough respect to, didn’t appreciate. And I thought, well, that is kind of my mission as a writer: to excite people about something I’m excited about and to show respect to something that didn’t get what it deserved. I started thinking, what can I say, or what topics do I have something to say about? And I realized that disco was one of only a couple of them that I was really itching to do. So I started researching disco in its many forms and went down every online rabbit hole you could go down—watched clips, listened to music, and watched movies. I just immersed myself for about three or four years in all things disco.
I took the same approach that I took with drag—it’s sort of the kitchen sink approach, in that it’s a little bit of everything, or a lot of everything. I was trying to get as much stuff mentioned and explored as I could in the book. And I think the thing that makes this disco book different from the earlier ones is that I don’t push away the stuff that was silly or bad or kitschy. I embrace all of it.
You show a genuine interest in what we call “bad” movies, which shines through in your work, not just in the Disco book.
I love a bad movie way more than I love a good one. The more I researched disco movies—if we can even call it a “canon”—the more I realized people would say, “Oh my God, you have to see this one disco scene!” The one that always makes me laugh is from a Blaxploitation movie called Abby. It’s basically The Exorcist, but the exorcism takes place on a dance floor. The disco ball explodes, igniting the bar and setting everything on fire. It’s just incredible—pure chaos. That one kills me every time.
Then there’s this horror movie called Jennifer. It’s like a bargain-bin version of Carrie, except her powers involve snakes. She has power over snakes. It’s absurd. There’s a fantastic disco scene in it, filmed at the same club featured in Thank God It’s Friday. The club, Osko’s, used to be in Los Angeles, and the whole thing is just the worst—but in the best way. And Skatetown, U.S.A.—what a terrible movie! But it’s so much fun. It’s pure, delicious cheese. So cinematic, so over-the-top macho—it’s ridiculous and wonderful at the same time.
I fully agree with you, as I have done many genre-specific marathons over the years (most recently, TUBI originals) I think there’s a savant-like quality in those movies that most critics deem “bad.” That’s what makes them cult movies.
That’s a great way to put it. It’s fascinating to me that people would commit to telling a story about a possessed woman spending time in a disco, or about the goings-on at a roller-skating rink. There’s something irresistible about the earnestness brought to such a cheesy topic. I think the key is that nobody sets out to make something bad on purpose. If it’s deliberately bad, it’s not really fun. But if someone tries to create something that’s more fun than it is good, it becomes very appealing—and even heartwarming, in a way. Not every meal has to be a 10-course tasting menu from a Michelin-star chef. Sometimes, it’s a quarter-pounder with cheese—and that can be pretty delicious in its own way, even if it’s not good for you. I feel the same way about art. It can’t all be the most important, groundbreaking thing. Sometimes, it’s about a splendid misfire.
There are things like The Apple that really make you sit there and think, “What the hell am I looking at?” It’s one of those moments where you just can’t look away. It’s so absurd, with its models and out-of-this-world concepts, that you can’t help but be hooked. It’s the worst thing ever—and yet, you’re living for it. That kind of reaction is hard to come by these days, but when something makes your jaw drop in 2024, in a good way, that’s art. It’s rare for something to still surprise you like that, to make your eyes pop out of your head in disbelief. And that’s a good thing, because so much of what we see now feels overexposed and jaded. When something can still tickle you in that way, it’s a real treasure.
Occasionally, someone will try to make something serious, but it’ll turn out all wrong—and in that wrongness, it becomes so deliciously right. That’s the charm of some of these works. But you can’t force that kind of magic. You can try to learn it or recreate it, but if it doesn’t come naturally, you’re not going to capture it. it’s just, if you’re not a cheese, if you’re lactose intolerant, artistically speaking, stay away from the cheese. But if you get it, it’s really great.
Based on how you love to dig deep for treasures (of taste more or less questionable according to standard parameters), how do you know when a project is done?
I think when they start yelling at you, you have to stop, basically. It’s hard to decide when you’ve got it, but I think a manuscript sort of reaches critical mass. You start to think, okay, you know, I’ve got a lot here, and I’ve got enough here. And you just get this sort of instinct thing that you’re there. But honestly, you could keep adding to it until someone yells at you and says, “I need it tomorrow,” you know, and then you’ve got to turn it in.
So it’s somewhere between that awakening feeling of, “yeah, this is kind of it,” and someone screaming at you. I think you do have to stop at a certain point because sometimes, you know, if you turn in something that ends up looking like The Unabomber’s Manifesto, you’ve gone too far. I think I do have a sort of authoritative but fun quality to the writing, so it sounds like I really do know what I’m talking about. And this is, you know, I think it’s also enough material to make people feel smart about disco at a cocktail party—not necessarily where they feel like they have to become an expert on it.
Somebody said to me when I was writing the drag book—and I was getting nervous—they said to me, “Just write about the stuff you find interesting, and if you don’t find it interesting, don’t write about it.” And so I really took that to heart, because you sort of have to be your own barometer of what’s germane to the topic and what isn’t.
So, yeah, and I think that’s what I tried to do, because you don’t want to come off like a crazy person. No, you want to come across as an enthusiast and an expert, but not that crazy person who’s been watching disco movies for the last 30 years in their basement. You don’t want to be that guy either, you know. So, sort of find the happy medium.
As someone who gets overly enthusiastic when researching and has had editors rein me in, I need to know this: how does one avoid sounding like a rabid fan?
I think it goes back to basic rules of writing because when you’re writing a news story, you really do have to say, well, what is the most important information, and in which order should I present it? I think it goes back to news writing. Even though you’re writing these flamboyant features on the Ethel Merman disco album, you still have to approach it like it’s a news story–not exactly like “Two men robbed a bank at noon at the corner of Main and Broadway,” but almost as if you’re doing that.
You have to use your journalism skills. That’s why I think—it sounds like sour grapes—but some of us went to school to be journalists. It’s not just, “Oh, I can write, I’m a journalist.” I guess some of them turn out to be terrific, but generally speaking, it does pay to be a trained journalist who really knows what they’re doing and can write a murder-suicide story or the Ethel Merman disco album story. You have to be able to write all of it to be good at what you’re doing.
Speaking of sour grapes, how do you cope with failure?
I take it extremely personally, even if I had absolutely nothing to do with the failure. I lick my wounds for about seven years, and then I start again. I do know I am not good with failure. I’ve been lucky because there hasn’t been a lot of failure on my part, but I’ve certainly been a part of shows that didn’t get picked up past the initial 40 episodes or a newspaper that went under. On a Friday afternoon, they were like, “Clean out your desk. We’re done.” I’ve been a part of all that.
They canceled not only my radio show but the entire channel on the same day. They got rid of the whole thing. It was like, “Oh good, we’re not just gonna fire you. We’re firing everyone.” I’ve been through that a number of times, and it never gets easy. I don’t like it, and I spend way too much time feeling hurt. I don’t recommend that for anyone. Just pick yourself up and move on to the next thing, because it’s not your fault. However, that’s easier said than done for me. I always come up with something else to do, and you have to. You have to reinvent yourself, or you’ll find yourself with absolutely nothing to do.
Cher famously did it many times in her life: think of all the different genres she embraced, from the duets with Sonny to the leather-clad persona of the “If I Could Turn Back Time” era all the way to the “Believe” Eurodance and Autotune celebration–and the many less-than-stellar periods in between!
Cher is a huge inspiration, but I don’t think she ever bothered as much as I do, I think she’s smart enough to retain her confidence. I mean she was also called an inspiration regarding getting older, and she said “getting older sucks.”
While in the midst of a very disappointing year, professionally, I have to say It’s good to hear someone admitting to how bad it feels, rather than trying to find some profound meaning behind setbacks.
It’s weird, a mentor said to me “what have you ever failed in your life? NOTHING, You never really failed spectacularly in anything, you’ve always risen to the occasion.”
That said, it does not always work out. You can work as hard as you can, and sometimes it does not work, and it’s not your fault; it’s some network’s fault, it’s some publisher’s fault, or some CEO’s fault for closing a newspaper. I heard all these stories. You can feel good about what you bring to it and you should always do that, but sometimes it does not work. The quality of something does not always translate into its success. There are too many brilliant Broadway musicals that never found an audience. It’s not about hiding a light under a bushel, but some stuff is never going to find an audience even though it’s going to be brilliant to a lot of people whose lives are going to be changed. Quality does not ensure success.
So for writers and creatives like you and even myself, someone who treasures reporting on and researching the weird and wonderful but faces grimmer and grimmer budgets, what is one to create and make anyway?
I do admire when someone creates something that is jaw dropping for any reason, whether it’s good or bad: it could be a B Movie or it could be the statue of David, where you’re just your breath is taken away. You know, it could be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen or the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen but it makes such a strong impression that I do tell people to give it a watch, a listen, and know it’s not a hoax. The important thing for me is just trying to remain valid. That’s really the thing. As you get older and the longer you’ve been doing this, it’s more like, “Well, what else do I have to say, and what can I bring my heart and soul to?” I think you have to ask yourself that question when you’re doing a project that’s going to take as much time as a book does.
I was just in the running to write the eight-millionth book on Taylor Swift, and I was so glad when they went with somebody else. I thought, “Oh, thank God.” I would have done it for the money, but there’s nothing left to say. As much as I love her, there’s nothing I could bring to it that somebody else couldn’t bring even more to. But about disco? No, there aren’t that many people who could say what I can about it.
Frank DeCaro recommends:
You should always have something delicious to eat: do some cooking and make sure you eat something you really love, don’t just gobble it down. I do love sugar, it’s my favorite thing. I like to bake a cake and eat it. I made a sour-cream coffee cake recently and ate the whole thing.
I love doing laundry, it’s the most gratifying and satisfying experience. I’ve loved it since I was a little kid. My father got me a Suzy Homemaker washing machine when I was a kid. It was a girls’ toy but he said it was ok. I still do the whole laundry in the house, but I absolutely DO NOT iron.
I like coming up with something that makes people laugh on social media.
Watching old TV or a bad movie, I like a terrible movie much better than a good movie, something like Showgirls. Regarding old TV, now that I live in Los Angeles I walk by tv locations, and I get a kick out of seeing that, say, a restaurant that appeared in an episode from 50 years ago is still there.
The Ethel Merman Disco Album: it’s really the triumph of nerve over taste. There’s a lesson there. I still can’t listen to the whole thing, and it’s this amazing artifact that many people think is not real.
This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Angelica Frey.
Angelica Frey | Radio Free (2025-02-04T08:00:00+00:00) Writer, radio host and performer Frank DeCaro on learning that sometimes failure has nothing to do with you. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/04/writer-radio-host-and-performer-frank-decaro-on-learning-that-sometimes-failure-has-nothing-to-do-with-you/
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