Aging & Wisdom Quote by Allan Carr

Carr’s line lands with the offhand cruelty of backstage chatter: a “bit hardcore” here, “not that keen” there, as if homophobia were just a regional quirk, like stricter parking tickets. The phrasing is doing double work. On the surface, he’s reporting local sentiment in Montreal; underneath, he’s laundering prejudice through distance. By attributing the hostility to “over there,” Carr makes it sound observational rather than complicit, a casual weather report on intolerance.

Then there’s the loaded choice of “the old homos.” It’s not merely dated; it’s diminutive. The “old” can read as a sneer at a perceived type (out, flamboyant, maybe older gay men) and a way to make the target feel already obsolete. It also hints at a film-industry hierarchy where queerness is managed as a liability: tolerated when it’s discreet, mocked when it’s visible, treated as a problem to be navigated with local audiences and gatekeepers in mind.

Context matters: Carr’s career sits in the late-20th-century entertainment world where camp could be monetized, but gay people were still routinely othered, especially in public-facing talk. If this was said around production, touring, or festival circuits, it reads like a pragmatic warning dressed up as banter: don’t expect warmth there; keep your head down. The “they” in his sentence is telling, too - an unnamed bloc of locals, industry people, or authorities. Vagueness turns discrimination into an ambient force, something nobody owns and therefore nobody has to challenge.