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| Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (seated) in their World of Wonder (photo: World of Wonder) |
La World of Wonder
by Michael Musto
 ately, it's been a World of Wonder world and we just ker-plotz on the couch watching it. The heady heads of that L.A.-based production company, my old cohorts RANDY BARBATO and FENTON BAILEY, seem to have developed a near monopoly on pop-culture cable shows that plumb the depths and heights of our childhood fixations and fears.
They recently served up The Hidden Führer for Cinemax, positing the thesis that Hitler may have killed gays, but hey, he fucked 'em too. ("We were expecting to show up at our building afterwards and find that it was bombed," Barbato tells me. "It provoked a great dialogue." And some twisted fantasies too—from, um, other people.) For Trio, they've produced Flops 101: Lessons From the Biz about real bombs to worry about. ("Cop Rock, Taboo, Seussical," says Barbato. "All our favorite things.") And they recently uncorked Showbiz Moms & Dads for Bravo, but Barbato swears the trip to Mama Rose-land wasn't terrifying, "it was delicious. I think it's better to pay lots of attention to your children than neglect them. It's better to feed your kids pixie sticks for breakfast than nothing at all!" Honey, feed me cut glass for all I care, just make me a li'l star already!
Feeding us pixie dust, the current gay media mania has helped propel World of Wonder (who last year brought you the feature film Party Monster) to even giddier levels of cable-box visibility. In the biz, says Barbato, "fears about the scary gays have transformed in their desire to exploit the scary gays, which is leading to other potential problems like that Fox reality show [the quickly canceled Seriously, Dude, I'm Gay]. But all in all it's a good thing and it taps into our natural sensibility." And my unnatural sensibility.
To help them with their scandal-soaked projects, the WOW-sers have hired lavender legends like STEPHEN SABAN, GABRIEL ROTELLO, and JAMES ST. JAMES, making their office, Barbato says, like a gigantic nightclub. An '80s one? "Yeah, instead of poppers, we have wheelchairs." Next up they'll produce Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the ramifications of the 1972 porn flick in which Linda Lovelace found she had a clit (instead of a brain) in her mouth. And though WOW no longer manages velvet-throated RUPAUL—long story—Barbato's thrilled that Ru is poised for a musical comeback.
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