Movies like Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2018)
The best movies like Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2018) are Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed (2023), Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story (2021) and I Am Divine (2014). If Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedParis Is Burning (1991)8.0/10 from 579 votes
- NewestBang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story (2026)Released 2026
Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed (2023)
This timely exploration of Hollywood and LGBTQ+ identity examines the life of legendary actor Rock Hudson, from his public "ladies' man" persona to his private life as a gay man.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story (2021)
In 1968, Jackie Collins published her first novel The World Is Full of Married Men to remarkable success and immediate scandal. Over the next decades, Collins would go on to build an empire writing books where female agency came first. Jackie Collins’ women were unapologetic about their needs and their sexual desire, and to her devoted readers, Collins became a symbol of the effortless power that defined her heroines.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
I Am Divine (2014)
Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story (2026)
Robin Byrd pioneered NYC public access with her cult sex-positive call-in show. Now the larger-than-life 70-year-old champion of free speech, queer visibility, and safe sex reflects on her unique legacy and her hidden, decades-long marriage behind the scenes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Bettie Page Reveals All (2013)
The world's greatest pin-up model and cult icon, Bettie Page, recounts the true story of how her free expression overcame government witch-hunts to help launch America's sexual revolution. When she saw the film The Notorious Bettie Page, produced by HBO in 2006, the main person concerned reacted unequivocally: “Lies! Lies!” In a long interview recorded shortly before her death, the woman who entered the collective unconscious as the ultimate pin-up gave her version of events to director Mark Mori. In a gravelly voice, Bettie Page tells her own story and lifts the veil on areas often hidden by images that have made so many men and women fantasize since the 1950s: her abused childhood, an eclipse that lasted forty years, her mental illness. Through testimonies and unpublished archives, this documentary brings back to life a body and a face endlessly declined before our eyes, just as Bettie wanted: “I would like people to remember me as I was in the photos.”
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNatalie Wood: What Remains Behind (2020)
Explore the personal and professional triumphs and challenges of actor Natalie Wood, which have often been overshadowed by her premature death.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Starz Inside: Ladies or Gentlemen (2008)
Why do movie audiences find men in skirts and women in pants anything but a drag? Discover the playful history of the most daring cross-sexual performances in Hollywood history, from Some Like it Hot to Big Momma's House.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (2009)
A revealing look at the outspoken, flamboyant founder of the Playboy empire. With humor and insight, the film captures Hefner's fierce battles with the government, the religious right and militant feminists. Rare footage and compelling interviews with a remarkable who's who of 20th Century American pop culture, present a brilliant and entertaining snapshot of the life of an extraordinary man and the controversies that surrounded him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
That's Sexploitation! (2013)
Before the advent of modern-day pornography, a vast and rapidly-paced world of smut peddling was the norm, complete with its own secret history. This documentary reveals the untold story of American cinema's gloriously sordid cinematic past. Starting in the 1920s, expert exploiteer David F. Friedman and Henenlotter navigate us through more than five salacious decades of skin flicks. It's the true story of dirty movies, traced in elegant detail from the bizarre locations where these nudie shorts were screened to the ongoing legal battles fought by their promoters. And of course there are the stories of the innovators themselves, people who often risked their own security and livelihood to make these films, believing in some way that what they were doing wasn't a 'bad' thing - and that it could rake in some dough.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Folsom Forever (2014)
In 1984, a scrappy little neighborhood in San Francisco - home to many low-income tenants and the heart of the gay male leather scene - faced destruction from the bulldozers of redevelopment and the AIDS crisis. The Folsom Street Fair was started to call attention to gentrification and raise money for AIDS charities. FOLSOM FOREVER tells the story of how this small street fair grew into the biggest outdoor kink and fetish event in the world, and managed to do a lot of good along the way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016)
Nude men in rubber suits, close-ups of erections, objects shoved in the most intimate of places—these are photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, known by many as the most controversial photographer of the twentieth century. Openly gay, Mapplethorpe took images of male sex, nudity, and fetish to extremes that resulted in his work still being labelled by some as pornography masquerading as art. But less talked about are the more serene, yet striking portraits of flowers, sculptures, and perfectly framed human forms that are equally pioneering and powerful.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThat Guy Dick Miller (2014)
Documentary about veteran character actor Dick Miller, whose career in and outside of Hollywood has spanned almost 200 films across six decades, featuring a diverse range of interviews with directors, co-stars, and contemporaries.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Disappearance of Shere Hite (2023)
Shere Hite’s 1976 bestselling book, The Hite Report, liberated the female orgasm by revealing the most private experiences of thousands of anonymous survey respondents. Her findings rocked the American establishment and presaged current conversations about gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy. So how did Shere Hite disappear?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood (2008)
A look at the forces that shaped Pre-Code Hollywood and brought about the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Cockettes (2002)
Documentary about the gender-bending San Francisco performance group who became a pop culture phenomenon in the early 1970s.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Jane Fonda in Five Acts (2018)
Girl next door, activist, so-called traitor, fitness tycoon, Oscar winner: Jane Fonda has lived a life of controversy, tragedy and transformation – and she's done it all in the public eye. An intimate look at one woman's singular journey.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGarbo (2005)
An original documentary from Turner Classic Movies, Garbo offers an intimate look at the life and career of the movies' most luminous, reclusive and mystifying star. A portrait of Garbo the woman is drawn through interviews with biographers and admirers, plus many of the friends, relatives and associates who came closest to penetrating the lonely star's veil of solitude.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBRATS (2024)
In the 1980s, Andrew McCarthy was part of a young generation of actors who were set to take over Hollywood after a string of successful teen movies. However, when the New York magazine cover story in 1985 dubs them the Brat Pack, stars in the making suddenly find themselves losing control over the trajectory of their careers. Now, almost forty years later, McCarthy looks to reconnect with peers and co-stars so that together they can reflect on their respective legacies.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisArthur Miller: Writer (2017)
One of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, Arthur Miller created such celebrated works as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, which continue to move audiences around the world today. He also made headlines for being targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthy Era and entering into a tumultuous marriage with Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. Told from the unique perspective of his daughter, filmmaker Rebecca Miller, Arthur Miller: Writer is an illuminating portrait that combines interviews spanning decades and a wealth of personal archival material, and provides new insights into Miller’s life as an artist and exploring his character in all its complexity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Tab Hunter Confidential (2015)
Throughout the 1950s, Tab Hunter reigned as Hollywood’s ultimate male heartthrob. But throughout his years of stardom, Tab had a secret. Tab Hunter was gay, and spent his Hollywood years in a precarious closet that repeatedly threatened to implode and destroy him. Tab Hunter himself shares first hand, for the first time, what it was like to be a studio manufactured movie star during the Golden Age of Hollywood and the consequences of being someone totally different from his studio manufactured image.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)
Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWrangler: Anatomy of an Icon (2008)
The outrageous story of 1970s porn icon Jack Wrangler, and how he rose to the top of the gay, and then straight, adult film industry.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Stardust: The Bette Davis Story (2006)
Combining unprecedented access to Davis' vast personal archives with original interviews, this documentary reveals a startling portrait of one of Hollywood's most gifted and enigmatic stars.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Why Be Good?: Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema (2007)
Before the G, PG and R ratings system there was the Production Code, and before that there was, well, nothing. This eye-opening documentary examines the rampant sexuality of early Hollywood through movie clips and reminiscences by stars of the era. Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich and others relate tales of the artistic freedom that led to the draconian Production Code, which governed content from 1934 to 1968. Diane Lane narrates.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Paris Is Burning (1991)
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDiane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge (2024)
The story of the iconic trailblazer known by her initials DVF worldwide. Child of a Holocaust survivor, Princess by marriage, and founder of a fashion brand. Featuring interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Marc Jacobs, Hillary Rodham Clinton and more.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon (2013)
Supermensch documents the astounding career of Hollywood insider, the loveable Shep Gordon, who fell into music management by chance after moving to LA straight out of college, and befriending Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. Shep managed rock stars such as Pink Floyd, Luther Vandross, Teddy Pendergrass and Alice Cooper, and later went on to manage chefs such as Emeril Lagasse, ushering in the era of celebrity chefs on television.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPlayboy: Sex at 24 Frames Per Second (2003)
Examines the relationship between sex, women, and the role of female sexuality in popular Hollywood culture, focusing on Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Jean Harlow, and Sharon Stone.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Chris & Don: A Love Story (2008)
Chris & Don chronicles the lifelong relationship between author Christopher Isherwood and his much younger lover, artist Don Bachardy, and it combines present-day interviews, archival footage shot by the couple from the 1950s, excerpts from Isherwood's diaries, and playful animations to recount their romance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood?
The closest matches to Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood are Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed (2023), Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story (2021) and I Am Divine (2014). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood?
People who watched Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood most often go on to Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed (2023), Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story (2021) and I Am Divine (2014).
What is the highest-rated movie like Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood?
Paris Is Burning (1991), rated 8.0/10 by 579 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood?
Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood?
Yes: Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed (2023), Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story (2021) and I Am Divine (2014).
How are movies similar to Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.