Before the internet and the ubiquity of social media influencers, there was Robin Byrd – the spirited, anything-goes New York City public access host, clad only in her signature black crochet bikini. From 1977 to 1998, Robin created, produced, and hosted the late-night call-in show that incorporated performances and interviews with adult entertainers and experimental artists. Each show ended with a bawdy song and dance to her track “Bang My Box”, turning her unapologetic, eponymous show into a national platform for sex-positivity and free speech.
In Jyllian Gunther and Stephanie Schwam’s lively, intoxicating and poignant new feature documentary, Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story, we meet Byrd as she approaching her 70th birthday. The film sees her candidly recount the origins of The Robin Byrd Show, revealing how sexy nighttime entertainment became a clarion call for sexual freedom and honest talk about sex beginning in the late 1970s. During the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s, Byrd became a tenacious champion for queer visibility, AIDS awareness, and safer sex messaging, providing a welcoming community lifeline for many. However, her platform of inclusivity and frank sexual expression drew criticism from conservative activists. She became the target of a national censorship battle that took her to the Supreme Court, and the ensuing landmark verdict cemented her legacy as a fierce First Amendment advocate.
With a wealth of deftly used archive footage, the film reflects on Robin’s career and place in history, while tracking her life today living in New York City and Fire Island, including an intimate portrait of her tenderly caring for her husband of over fifty years, Shelly, who is living with dementia. With insightful contributions from the likes of Annie Sprinkle, Sandra Bernhard, Heather Hunter, and Michael Musto, as well as the voices of some of her many loyal “Byrdwatchers”, Bang My Box celebrates a woman who defied expectations and remains a pioneer in the world of content creation and a cult icon.
Following its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story will debut on HBO on Tuesday, June 30th at 9pm ET/PT and will be available to stream on HBO Max. Speaking exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann ahead of the film’s launch, Robin Byrd reflects on the imapct that she made with her show, while filmmakers Jyllian Gunther and Stephanie Schwam discuss their approach to telling her story.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: Jyllian and Stephanie, what do you remember about your own earliest encounters with The Robin Bird Show?
Stephanie Schwam: “I’m from Los Angeles but my mother used to come to New York on business and she’d bring me along with her. She would leave me alone in the hotel room at night with the remote control and that’s how I first stumbled upon Robin’s show. I thought, who is this crazy woman? I was in grammar school and I had never seen anything like it before. It was naked people and they were joyful and it was incredible. Whereas, I remember the first time I snuck porn I was so scared. I thought, what is that man doing to that woman?! Then I saw Robin’s show and it was so different because of that joy. I’d never seen boobs that big and I’d never seen a penis before, but it was not scary, it was so fun. So I snuck it and waited for my mother to come back. Then I’d immediately turn it off.”
Jyllian Gunther: “I’m a New Yorker and grew up in Downtown Manhattan and Robin’s show was on everywhere I went. So I saw it as a child and I never had to sneak it. Our parents weren’t even paying attention anyway. My dad was probably watching it too. It was ubiquitous as a child of the 70s and 80s in New York and everyone was talking about it. It was like cartoons, it was just on and we watched it all the time.”
That’s such a great point about the joy of the show. Clearly, that was what you’d set out to do Robin?
Robin Byrd: “Absolutely. My exact mission was to bring fun, fantasy, and relaxation to you at home. To turn you on and tuck you in at night. I accomplished that totally.”
Jyllian and Stephanie, why did you feel that Robin’s story deserved to be shared as a documentary?
Jyllian: “The reason we initially chose to approach Robin is very different than what we discovered along the way. We thought she was a sexy, funny, interesting New York staple who meant so much in this small way to so many people who grew up when the show was on. But then as soon as we actually dug in, we discovered that she meant much more than that. We had no idea of the impact she had on the queer community. We had no idea that she fought for First Amendment rights, for her freedom of speech. We didn’t know how active she’d been during the AIDS crisis. She was really bringing people together. She was doing something in this local community that was actually on a national stage because it was New York.”
“Her story was so much bigger than we’d thought and so as we went deeper in it was so gratifying to learn the way she touched other people’s lives and the way that we could talk about her both historically and in her present day life and bring those two things together. The deeper we went it was only more and more gratifying and more interesting and felt more important.”
In terms of your fight for First Amendment rights, Robin, that’s something that really resonates at this time. You started making your show nearly 50 years ago but I can’t imagine it being made today.
Robin: “No, neither can I and I can’t imagine doing what I did to fight to stay on TV now either.”
In some archive footage we hear someone’s fears about book banning.
Robin: “Yeah, and now we have queer book bannings.”
Stephanie: “Yeah, that’s an incredible moment. That comment was made by one of the panelists on The Phil Donahue Show in the 80s. She says, ‘the next thing you know, they’re going to ban what we watch on TV and they’re going to ban what we read.’ It seemed outrageous and that it would never happen at the time she said it, but now here we are. The two-page spread about our film in New York Magazine has Jimmy Kimmel as the cover story and it’s all about his show getting censored.”
Robin: “Right now the FCC has launched a review of ABC’s TV licenses. So ABC is encouraging its viewers to speak out and comment publicly because it’s not them, the dictators, it’s we the people, and we have to fight.”
Jyllian: “That reminds me of the point that we like to highlight. Robin fought Time Warner over free speech and won and now Time Warner is paying for this film. That always gets a great cheer when we mention that at screenings because it’s such a gratifying twist.”
Robin: “Which reminds me how esoteric and synergistic this whole project has been, and karma is a bitch! There’s good karma and then there’s better karma.”
Robin, I’m sure that a number of filmmakers have approached you over the years with ideas about making a film. Why was it different this time or why did you feel that you could trust Stephanie and Jyllian to tell your story?
Robin: “Number one, they were huge fans with so much love in their hearts for me. It was oozing. It was during a Mercury retrograde when they approached me and so I had to reconsider things. Plus, they’re women, so I knew it was going to be from a woman’s point of view. Although, some are a little more conservative than others, but I bring out the best in everybody.”
Alongside you as co-directors, it was almost an entirely all-women production team including Sarah Jessica Parker and Alison Benson’s Pretty Matches. How intentional was that given that Robin’s show was obviously female-led too?
Stephanie: “I think we ended up hiring the best people for the job.The Pretty Matches part of it just made so much sense. They flipped out when they heard about the project. Obviously, Robin represents this time in New York that’s now gone and it’s the Candace Bushnell era that fueled Sex and the City. So that made perfect sense. One of our executive producers is Greg Scarnici who is one of Robin’s best friends and so it was really important to have him there.”
“Our editor, Jeremy Stulberg, is a Gen X gay man and having him as part of the team was really important for us and took the film to the next level. He brought a point of view that Jyllian and I couldn’t bring. He grew up with Robin on TV and he really vehemently told us, ‘she was the reason why I wore condoms and she totally could’ve saved my life.’ To have that perspective was absolutely imperative.”
Robin, we hear you talk about public access being community service TV and it really came into its own in those terms when it came to safer sex messaging. Your show was on as HIV/AIDS was emerging and at the height of the crisis, why was it important to you to talk about wearing rubbers? It’s even part of the Saturday Night Live sketch based on The Robin Byrd Show that we see a clip of in the film which shows how much you were talking about using condoms.
Robin: “It was important to me for many reason, especially the fact that I lost a lot of loved ones. Talking about condom use was actually even prior to that. In 1977, 78, and 79, I had a ‘can you guess how many condoms are in the fishbowl’ contest. I always had one of those little finger condoms in there and that was a half, so I knew that nobody was going to ever going to guess the real amount. It was about making condoms fun because condoms are very frowned upon. Like, ‘oh, it’s so hard to put on’ or ‘it doesn’t feel right’, blah blah blah. But to me, all it took was using a condom to save somebody’s life. Dental dams also.”
“I used to joke and play around while we were doing the “Bang Your Box” song at the end of each show and I would grab somebody’s penis and put it in my eye. Then I realized, wait a minute, if they were positive I could potentially get HIV through my eye. I thought, I’m going to still do the penis thing but I’m not going to put it in my eye anymore, so I put it in my ear or I put on my cheek instead.”
“The idea was to make light of something that seems so dark to so many people because of the way that they were raised. So it was a community service to show people that all it takes is one wrong move and you’re dead, especially in the late 70s and in the 80s. It also came from my own use of condoms. Even though I was having sex with Shelly, I was still an orgy queen prior to meeting him and AIDS stayed dormant for years until it really came out. So it was important to me to talk about because I had the voice and I had the audience.”
Jyllian: “Robin had the voice throughout multiple movements in history; the feminist movements; the pro-porn vs anti-porn moral majority; free speech; celebrating queer life; and HIV/AIDS. Robin was there the whole time, following her instinct. We call her an accidental activist because she was just speaking from the heart as these things were happening. We had all that history laid out and Stephanie, who has a history background, was really meticulous about making sure we were clear about what was happening when, what Robin was doing at that time, and where things crossed. We built the film in that way.”
You make brilliant use of all of the archive footage in the film. What were your guiding principles for using excerpts from Robin’s show?
Jyllian: “Because Robin had 600 tapes, and we could only afford to digitize 40 of them because of the expense of that process, we had to really think about what was important to us. So we thought about the different periods of history and when in her show that was coming to light. So the condom use was something we searched for. Sandra Bernhard was someone we searched for, as was Michael Musto on the show and also being in her commercial for the 970-BYRD phone line. We searched for when she started doing Men for Men and when she had call-ins from Tree, the bartender at Julius’ bar. We had thought about all those things and searched for them, versus scrolling through. It was very important for us to know what we wanted from her archives in order to build the film.”
Robin: “I’ve always had my foot in the gay community. There used to be a gay magazine called Blueboy that started in the 70s and I had a feature in there called Robin Byrd’s Mailbox. Readers could write in to the magazine and I would answer questions about whatever they wanted to ask me. It was basically always sex related and it was gay. Funnily enough, I just saw an old a picture of me somewhere wearing a t-shirt that said “Robin Byrd’s Mailbox” on it.”
One of the great things about your viewers being able to speak to you live when you were doing the show was that you knew who was watching and engaging with it. You must have picked up on the fact that a lot of gay men were watching pretty quickly and then you rewarded them by having men dance on the show.
Robin: “Well, I looked at it this way: you could have sex while you’re watching TV, but you can’t have sex with your TV. I knew that some of the men were watching the men, some of the men were watching the women, some of the women were watching the men, and some of the women were watching the women. I don’t like categories. I don’t like, ‘Okay, you’re in this file and you go there.’ I gave everybody something to turn them on and tuck them in with and whoever enjoyed it, enjoyed it.”
“I encouraged people to come out of the closet because in the 80s people were being outed. I said, ‘If you don’t want to come out of the closet, then stay in the closet with your suits and your ties and your skirts. Enjoy your life and when you’re ready to come out of the closet, you can.’ A lot of people back in those days couldn’t come out because of their jobs. I mean, even to this day, how many athletes who are football players or basketball players come out and say, ‘I’m gay’? Not too many.”
Robin, when you watched the finished film, what did it mean to you to hear from the Byrdwatchers about the impact that your show has had on their lives?
Robin: “I hate to say this, but I hear it all the time. I never paid myself. Any money that I made went right back into the show and so to me that was always my payment. How much the viewers appreciated the show and how much of an impact I had on their lives. When they told me that I’d gotten them through bad relationships, or grief, or illness, or just life itself. I led by example.”
Jyllian: “As you say James, it’s also fact that it’s now in the film and collected. Robin and I have talked many times about the film. Even during a screening when Robin and I were taking a whiz together and we happened to be in separate stalls, Robin said through the stall wall, ‘I love this movie!’ Not to toot our own horns but the most pleasurable part of making a vérité film is if your subject feels that they were depicted in a truthful, honest way. That collection of people is just one part of the experience of Robin and the show and it’s good for us to hear that you knew this before and that we got it right by including it.”
You include Sandra Bernhard, Michael Musto, and Annie Sprinkle who all make insightful contributions, but other filmmakers may not have included the viewers’ perspectives too which I think was a beautiful idea.
Stephanie: “Thanks, that was really fun for us to do too. We actually set up a 1-800 number and put out something saying, ‘Hey Byrdwatchers! Call in and tell us what Robin meant to you.’ We thought aesthetically it would be a great hat tip to the show and also be a way for us to gather stories. It worked a treat and was fantastic.”
The public-facing aspect of your story being told is one thing, but how open were you to your personal life being part of this documentary? Including your life with your husband Shelly and talking about your childhood? All of which is so sensitively and poignantly handled in the film.
Robin: “I think they nailed it. It’s part of me. In fact, part of me grew during making this documentary and I realized that I had an issue of loss and a sense of everything being so good one moment and then the carpet being pulled out from underneath me the next. Like, the show was going great and then Time Warner wanted to change the channel. Then the show was going great again after they changed the channel, but then they wanted to ban my show.”
“I was adopted at childbirth and taken away immediately. I realized that that’s why I have that feeling of not being good enough and the belief that I was not going to have an easygoing life. Feeling that it was going to be taken away from me because it was too good. So it was very important to everybody and myself to come out and finally let people know that I don’t have a family. I had a family, but they weren’t really a family. Blood is thicker than water, so hold on to your family if you can, but it was easier for me to walk away because I had no blood connecting me and that’s what made me. That’s what gave me my voice and my purpose in life which was to bring joy to people.”
Jyllian: “Robin having created her own chosen family, which is such a common experience for people in the queer community, was something that made her have such a strong connection with people which still exists.”
The scenes of Robin and Shelly are intimate and touching. As filmmakers, had you always set out to tell some of Robin’s personal story or was that something that developed as you were making the film?
Stephanie: “We didn’t know what we were going to get at the beginning. When we first met Shelly, we thought, oh my god, he’s a dream, wouldn’t he be so great to film? Robin, rightly so, was very protective of him and it took a minute for her to trust us and feel our intentions and understand what we wanted. We didn’t have a preconceived idea of what we would capture and then when we were let in it was the most wonderful gift from the universe. We realized that here was this man who helped Robin to build this whole thing and now it’s now her turn to take care of him. To be able to have that love story unfold so magnificently, we knew that was going to elevate the film into something that we hadn’t anticipated.”
Robin: “Shelly was always there to support me in anything that I did. As he says, ‘It was all you, Byrd.’ Yeah, it was all me, but because of him I was able to do it. Because he gave me that love and he believed in what I was doing and we just went for the ride.”
What was your reaction when you saw the film for the first time, Robin?
Robin: “I felt so emotional when I saw it. It’s such a beautiful film. I was like, wow, I’ve done a lot in my life! I never, in my wildest dreams, thought that it would happen, but this is exactly what I wanted. My dream was to have it happen like this because I wanted my story to be told by me and they nailed it completely. They’re so caring and loving too. It really was an esoteric journey for myself.
I ran into you in Cherry Grove a couple of years ago when this film was being shot and I was excited to know it was happening, but you never know what the end result will be or whether it will even be seen. So I was thrilled that it is such a beautiful film. Robin is so deserving of the love, detail and care that you’ve brought to telling her story.
Robin: “Thank you. I agree that they have done such a beautiful job with it.”
Jyllian: “Thanks for sharing that. That’s really nice to hear because we all walk by crews all the time and think oh, they’re making a film about that person but will we ever get to see it. It’s wonderful that you saw that and then you liked what you saw when you got to watch the film eventually too.”
Yeah, there were a few big cameras so I was impressed. I was like, this looks like a big deal.
Robin: “Well, I am a big deal! I’m deserving of it.”
Stephanie: “It was also amazing that we could go in fully funded at a time where nothing is getting over the line, nobody’s making anything. The idea that this sailed over the goal line and that it sold to HBO at the top was absolutely incredible. Not to mention that HBO is part of the same company that Robin sued so long ago, which makes it all the sweeter.”
By James Kleinmann
Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story debuts Tuesday, June 30th at 9pm ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.
Leave a Reply