Exhibitionistic gay guys with an artistic bent have many redeeming qualities. Apart from being sparkling conversationalists, wielders of rapier wit and stylish dressers with a wealth of valuable grooming tips, gents of the bent persuasion are also magnets for chicks eager to indulge in inventive sexual experimentation. Witness the pert, nipple-baring birds who flock about the flamingly alternative leading man of director Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine (1998). Loosely based upon the rise and descent into depraved excess of glam-rocker David Bowie, who openly flirted throughout the 1970s with notions of his own homo leanings, Goldmine is a musical melodrama that is not for the bi-squeamish. Most of Velvet's full-frontal and buttock exposure is of the male variety.