Early Morning Rant: "Call Me By Your Name" and Hampton Roads' Backwardness

Yesterday began the United States release of the movie "Call Me By Your Name" which has received rave reviews and Oscar buzz ever since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year.   Outlets as diverse as the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Variety, The Independent, New York Times, Rotten Tomatoes, etc., have all lauded the movie and its actors and directors.  All of which, of course, means it is NOT showing in Hampton Roads and cannot be found among any of the "coming soon" information" although it appears to be coming to Richmond next week.  With a strong gay romance theme, my fear is that other than the Naro Theater in Norfolk, few theaters in the region may show this movie that likes to view itself as "world class" and sophisticated - Virginia Beach perhaps laughably is trying to court Amazon for a major headquarters facility - yet has a huge Regent University/Pat Robertson display at Norfolk International Airport (which has no international flights).  Talk about telling visitors the area is not sophisticated or accepting!

The irony to me, of course is that places like Hampton Roads - Southwest Virginia even more so - need to see this movie and perhaps have their parochial eyes opened to the reality that love is love (reading the book which the movie is based on, which I have done, would be equally good).  In many ways the husband and I have a very nice life in Hampton Roads, but this is yet another occasion where I am reminded that this is not where I really would prefer to live.  There is a reason why all of our vacations are to truly progressive cities and/or foreign countries (Ft. Lauderdale in a month, Key West in March, and London and Paris next September).  

Yes, Virginia is set for another four years of progressive Democrat leadership under Ralph Northam, Mark Herring and Justin Fairfax which hopefully will improve things over all - an employment non-discrimination law protecting LGBT Virginians would be a nice start.  But socially and culturally, Virginia still has a very long way to go.  As shocking as the concept might be to Virginia Republicans who daily prostitute themselves to right wing religious extremists  best embodied by The Family Foundation, it takes more than low taxes to attract world class, progressive businesses.  Meanwhile, the husband and I will persist in doing our part to open minds in this area even though it gets exhausting at times.

Reflections on Les Miserables, Christianists, Republicans and Javert

Friday evening the boyfriend and I went to see Les Miserables at the wonderful Commodore Theater (more on the theater in a future post) in neighboring Portsmouth which we found most enjoyable.  For non-students of history, Les Miserables was written by Victor Hugo in 1862, but the revolution story line was based on the actual June Revolution of 1832, which as in Hugo's story was brief and ended badly for the students as in the book and movie.  Hugo had some first had knowledge of the ill-fated revolution since as a student in 1832 he himself had been briefly been inadvertently caught between the opposing force close to Rue Mondetour.   Not all critics have been kind to the movie and indeed, not all of the singing is Broadway quality.  But there are pleasant surprises such as Cambridge educated Eddie Redmayer (previously seen in My Week with Marilyn) who has performed in London's west end and Aaron Tveit who has done Broadway stints.

One of the ironies I stumbled upon via CNN is that the movie has apparently been targeted for marketing to conservative and evangelical Christians on a theory that:

The story in "Les Miserables" is heavy with Christian themes of grace, mercy and redemption. The line everyone seems to remember is "to love another person is to see the face of God.”

NBC Universal looked to capitalize on those components and promoted the film to pastors, Christian radio hosts and influence-makers in the Christian community.

Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family was one of the groups that partnered with Grace Hill Media for a special screening. For the event, Focus on the Family brought in partners from across Colorado, adoption agencies, child welfare officials and church leaders.

Yes, I saw these themes, but I also saw damning parallels with the social policies of today's Republican Party which seems determined to bring back the horrific wealth disparities seen in 1830's Paris and the disenfranchisement of and frightening health conditions experienced by countless Parisians, first under the Bourbon restoration and then under Louis Phillipe's rule (Louis Phillipe himself was eventually overthrown as the conditions of the working classes deteriorated, and the income gap widened considerably ).   Indeed, if one is not a white conservative Christian (preferably with a great deal of money), one is viewed by today's GOP much as the wealthy Parisians viewed the misfortunate and poor.

And then there is the figure of Javert, first appearing as a prison guard and later as a policeman who is inflexible and cruel, seeking a legalistic form of blind justice.  Javert is incapable of seeing the common humanity of others or the good and kindness in others. Thus the irony that the movie was marketed to the folks at Focus on the Family, an organization whose hallmarks are hypocritical legalism and misplaced self-congratulatory piety, along with huge doses of hatred towards those who don't embrace their fear and legalism based religious dogma.  If one is looking for someone judgmental like Javert, look no farther than James Dobson and the professional Christian crowd. 

Will the Christofascists recognize themselves in Javert and today's Republicans see the similarities of their policies and during the rule of the Bourbons and then Louis Phillipe?  Sadly, I doubt it and all of us will suffer as a result.  History has many lessons to teach, but those filled with hubris and self-congratulatory piety rarely seem to learn the lessons.

James Dean: A New Film Tells the Sexual Truth

I'm not one for "outing" people after they have died, but at the same time until the lives and successes of gays from past generations becomes common place knowledge among society, it will continue make it easier for our enemies to malign us all collectively as freaks, perverts and whatever other derogatory terms folks in the anti-gay industry dream up.   While James Dean was perhaps not a role model in some ways, he was nonetheless a major stay who became a legend after his untimely death.  Thus, it is appropriate that the general public know the truth about who he was.  A new movie,  Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, seeks to set the historical record straight.  Here are highlights from The Advocate:

What could possibly be left to say about late screen icon James Dean? After countless books, documentaries, and film bios, director Matthew Mishory thinks there’s plenty. Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, his feature directorial debut currently making the rounds of film festivals around the globe, offers a breathtaking look at a little-known period in the actor’s life. 

Set in the early 1950s when the charismatic Indiana native was just another determined hopeful, Mishory’s Dean (portrayed by The Gates star James Preston) depends on the kindess of well-to-do gentlemen friends, while experimenting sexually with his male roomate as well as numerous females. It’s a portrayal that will likely excite many fans of the mercurial star but upset others unready for the sexual frankness on display here — all told in glorious black-and-white cinematography.

We wanted to create a very intimate and perhaps unexpected portrait of who this man was. And that is the core of James Preston’s performance — actually conveying who James Dean was, not as an icon but as a person.

What is it about Dean that keeps people enthralled nearly 60 years after his death?
On the one hand, there is the sort of self-created mythology of James Dean as sensitive rebel bad boy that perhaps exists in at least one of the screen performances but largely was created through publicity photographs and the public imagination.  .   .  .   .  Dean continues to enthrall and always will because he fundamentally changed acting. He changed the way actors act on-screen. He brought a naturalism and an intensity to his performance that I feel didn’t exist before him. As many have pointed out, watching him act opposite his contemporaries, one often wonders if he is in an entirely different movie. Without Dean, we would never have had the great young method actors who followed — River Phoenix, for instance. So I think he fundamentally changed the way actors act and also the way Hollywood portrayed young people. The three Dean performances represent probably the first three truly realistic and compelling young characters in studio movies. Dean marks perhaps the first real American teenager put to film.

One area of Dean’s persona that’s still constantly debated is his sexuality. Do you think he privately conformed to some label? Was he bi? Was he gay?
One of the things I really like about our film is that you’ll never hear the words “gay” or “bisexual” or “heterosexual” spoken. You won’t hear any sexual labels expressed because we approach the topic of sexuality without any angst or hand-wringing at all. The characters are who are they are and were, and we leave any judgments or labels to the audience. That said, the notion that James Dean was nonheterosexual hardly begins with this film, and what is essentially common knowledge is, to my mind, entirely uncontroversial. One thing that so fascinates about this era, the late ’40s and early ’50s, especially among the Hollywood elite, is that people lived much more freely, sexually, than they do in our more conservative times. The great difference is that privacy still existed, so they did so behind closed doors. And of course there was an entire studio publicity machine in place to keep certain realities hidden from prying eyes.

Do you think that grappling with his sexual orientation really gave him insight into playing these tortured characters?
I think that, as James Preston has often remarked, Dean had no lack of pain to draw upon. His mother died horrendously of brain cancer when he was 8 years old. He had a father who probably didn’t love him enough and definitely didn’t know how to show it. And then he made his way to Hollywood, without a trust fund or family name, to chase a truly impossible dream  . . . .

James Preston gives a mesmerizing performance. How did you decide he was right to play Dean?

.   .   .  .  When we got to the callbacks, it was between James, who had come to us through [Joshua Tree actress] Dalilah Rain, and a few others. And when James came in we knew that we had our Jimmy. It wasn’t that he looked more or less like James Dean, although he did, and it wasn’t that he could do a mimicry or an impersonation, because we didn’t want that at all. James had a naturalism to his performance style that fit what we were trying to do.

Reflections on "Magic Mike"

The boyfriend and I had dinner with some friends and then went and saw the new release"Magic Mike".  What was lacking in the plot was more than made up by the eye candy.  Believe me, not much is left to the imagination with some of the stripper costumes.  And it goes without saying that I'm sure that both the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Convention will put the movie on the "morally objectionable" list.  Which means the church ladies will be dying to see the movie - just like the prim women of near by Gloucester County who are overwhelming the county library with their requests for "Fifty Shades of Grey." 

This evening the theater was packed and the audience was probably 90%+ women (and us gay gays, of course).   Let's just say that the ladies in the audience really got into the mood of the strip club scenes and their reaction alone was enough to make the outing entertaining.  If you are  looking for a serious plot and drama, "Magic Mike" is not for you.  If you want some laughs and some very pretty eye candy, then it's worth the cost of the ticket.  The only real down side is that many of us will leave feeling that we REALLY need to start doing sit ups and hitting the gym.

Huffington Post has a contest where you can guess which actor belongs to which chest photo here (see the sample below). 

Wings - The Original Broke Back Mountain?

Among the nominees for the Best Picture Oscar this year is the silent movie, The Artist. A film critic at Towleroad has described this year's Academy Award nominees overall as a Hollywood nostalgia fest. Which ultimately leads him to brings up the subject of the winner of the first best picture Academy Award, the 1927 movie Wings that involves two World War I fliers. I remember seeing the movie a number of years ago and it definitely has its homoerotic moments such as in the clip below which captures what was most likely the first same sex movie kiss:

Pretty passionate if you ask me and filled with angst and a feeling of lost love. The reviewer had this to say:

If you've never seen it, it's totally worth a look and not just for the gorgeous flyboys. Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen play Jack and David, two fighter pilots who are initially at odds. In one early military training scene they're constantly giving each other the eye. Their drill master calls them "powder puff guys" -- I'm not making this up -- and then they proceed to beat the shit out of each other. Jack regularly has David flat on his back but David won't give up. Finally Jack stops and smiles.

"Boy you're game!" he says in a title card and just like that they're besties, tenderly wiping blood from mouths (with boxing gloves still on). It's all macho ridiculous and incredibly hot if you ask me. Their super tight friendship, threatened by sharing the same love ("It" girl Clara Bow), finally leads to one of the most famous embraces in early cinema:

Elizabeth Taylor - Death of a Legend

There have been countless tributes and columns written about the death of Elizabeth Taylor yesterday. I will not try to out do them, but felt it appropriate to post a few thoughts and reflections. Taylor was a legendary actress and won two best actress Oscars in the course of making over 50 films. Yes, she had an often turbulent love life and multiple marriages. On one issue, however, she stood out even more: her willingness to use her fame and star power for a cause she truly believed in even when it was not popular in the 1980's. The cause, was HIV/AIDS research and treatment and one news clipped noted that she had helped raise over $120 million. Not only did she help found amfAR, but she also had her own foundation as well.

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As for her film's, it is hard to pick a favorite. As a history major, I always liked her in Cleopatra which wasn't a box office success, yet was pretty accurate to history, especially for Hollywood in that era. I also remember A Place in the Sun in which she stared with Montgomery Cliff because the movie was based on a real incident that happened on Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack Mountains not too far from our summer home.
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And politically, for a while she was a definite presence in Virginia as former U.S. Senator John Warner's wife. While I was no longer in Virginia Beach at the time, she even attended a Warner fundraiser at a home down the street from my parent's long time home.
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She will be missed and it's outrageous that the Westboro Baptist Church says that it will demonstrate at her funeral because she was "queen of the fag hags." One can hope the funeral will be on private property so that the false Christians and bigots from Westboro can be arrested for trespass charges. Then again, Westboro deserves credit for demonstrating time and time again the ugly face of Christianity as practiced by gay hating denominations of which it is one of many.

James Franco: "Maybe I'm Just Gay"

I will concede that I like James Franco - besides being beautiful, he seems to show an interest in understanding gay lives and the issues that go along with not conforming to the dictates of a heterosexual dominated society which has often utilized antiquated religious beliefs and chosen ignorance to demean and stigmatize gays. In addition, he seems to enjoy making tongues wag with calculated comments such as one in an Entertainment Weekly interview where he discusses his gay movie roles. As EW notes, "“Is James Franco gay?” is a favorite query of the pop-cultural chattering classes." Hopefully, the day will come when one's sexuality is a complete non-issue. Until then, it's nice to have an actor who seems to cherish taking on gay roles that give insights to the larger public as to our common humanity. Here are some highlights:
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Having the public ponder your sexuality is a celebrity rite of passage. But the thing that makes Franco’s case so interesting is that, unlike the loud denials from some stars and even louder silences from others, the response from the 127 Hours star (who, for the record, has been in a years-long relationship with actress Ahna O’Reilly) is actually pretty nuanced.
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The actor definitely doesn’t let the speculation inhibit his choice of roles; Franco’s filmography is packed with gay characters, from Allen Ginsberg in Howl, to activist Scott Smith in Milk and poet Hart Crane in his just-wrapped feature The Broken Tower.
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“There are lots of other reasons to be interested in gay characters than wanting myself to go out and have sex with guys,” he says. “And there are also lots of other aspects about these characters that I’m interested in, in addition to their sexuality. So, in some ways it’s coincidental, in other ways it’s not. I mean, I’ve played a gay man who’s living in the ’60s and ’70s, a gay man who we depicted in the ‘50s, and one being in the ‘20s. And those were all periods when to be gay, at least being gay in public, was much more difficult. Part of what I’m interested in is how these people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition. Or, you know what, maybe I’m just gay.”

Where the Boys Are

This weekend in Ft. Lauderdale - actually on this past Friday - the City celebrated the 50th anniversary of the song and movie "Where the Boys Are" which I remember well from when I was a kid. In retrospect, I guess I should have known what was up with myself even then since I focused more on the boys in the film than the girls. In any event, walking along the beach - particularly along Sebastian Beach - there were loads of posters like the one set out above. Saturday Connie Francis also performed her famous song. While we missed the event, it certainly brought back memories seeing all of the posters and event details. Here are highlights from a release issued by the City of Ft. Lauderdale that also has a link to a video clip of Francis' arrive in the city:

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Connie Francis still knows how to make an entrance! Riding in a vintage red Cadillac convertible, the star of the 1960 classic movie "Where The Boys Are" recently returned to Fort Lauderdale Beach to announce plans for the “Great American Beach Party,” a major special event scheduled for May 29, 2010 that will celebrate the film’s 50th Anniversary.

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We’re honored to welcome Connie Francis back to Fort Lauderdale Beach to mark this historic occasion,” said Fort Lauderdale Mayor John P. “Jack” Seiler at the kick-off gathering. “It’s a unique way to unveil our plans for a one-of-a-kind event that pays tribute to this film and captures the spirit and nostalgia of the 1960s.”

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The Great American Beach Party with Connie Francis will take place on Saturday, May 29, 2010, and will feature a day and evening full of exciting activities on Fort Lauderdale Beach.
Read the "Where The Boys Are" event flyer

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The free event will begin at approximately 11:30 a.m. when a portion of Fort Lauderdale’s world famous A1A will be transformed into an entertainment mecca, featuring music, live performances, and activities for the entire family.

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Live bands will perform classic hits from the 1950s and ‘60s throughout the day in the vicinity of A1A and Las Olas Boulevard. Children and adults will enjoy an array of activities including hula hoop, limbo and Twister contests, a water balloon toss and a sand castle building competition.

Bollywood Finally Goes There

As I have mentioned a number of times previously, I have a significant number of Hindu clients of either Indian descent or who were themselves born in India. As clients go, they are wonderful: loyal, responsive and pretty prompt payers. While I do not flaunt my sexual orientation, neither do I hide it in my professional life. As such my clients may or may not know I'm gay, but the critical element to these clients is respect, responsiveness and competence in delivering legal services. Some I suspect have gay family members, although it's an issue we have never discussed since professionalism and propriety are always important and I cannot help but wonder what some of them will think of Bollywood's venture into a gay theme movie. As AfterElton notes, the upcoming May release of Dunno Y . . . Na Jaane Kyun, is already being called Bollywood's answer to Brokeback Mountain. Obviously, gays exist in all cultures and perhaps this new movie will help push the culture in the direction of tolerance and acceptance. Here are some highlights:

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Bollywood puts out more films than any other movie location in the world, but they've never put out an explicitly gay film. In 2008 they released Dostana, in which the lead pretends to be gay to get the girl, but that's about it for major releases. But that's about to change in May with the release of Dunno Y . . . Na Jaane Kyun, already being called their answer to Brokeback Mountain.

India is still waiting for a final ruling decriminalizing gay sex nationwide, but art is moving the ball forward with a film starring a relative newcomer Kapil Sharma, but directed by powerhouse director Amil Sharma, best known for macho action films.
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The first posters were released this week, and they're steamy to say the least. We'll be watching developments as the May release approaches.

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I hope the movie does well and that it perhaps prompts people to rethink some of their religious and cultural based prejudices.

One Crazy Night - The Sequel - Autograph Session

Tonight I spent some time signing a stack of posters for the upcoming movie premier of One Crazy Night - The Sequel which will be on December 29, 2007, at 11:00 PM following a pre-screening party for the cast members and friends. I know pretty much everyone in the cast since they are all locals in the gay community. It will no doubt be an insanely crazy night. What is particularly funny is that one of my friends who is a fellow cast member, started out with a small part and ended up with a major role much to his nervous surprise.

http://www.onecrazynightthemovie.com/

Regression in Norfolk - Loss of Lambda Rising

Last night I happened by the only gay book store in the area, Lambda Rising, and was disturbed to find out that the store will be closing at the end of June. When I asked why the store was closing, I was told that the gay community just did not support the store sufficiently. This is symptomatic of the biggest problem with the gay community here: too many are hiding “under the radar,” they do not support gay vendors and businesses as they should. To me, the area gays need to do what the small but very successful Jewish and Greek area communities have done for many, many years. Namely, when needing a service or commodity, if there is a community member that can provide what is sought as opposed to taking one’s business to a non-community member, they ALWAYS give the business to their fellow community member. Why give business to someone how hates you or doesn’t support your equal rights. To me, it’s a simple concept. I hope that perhaps HRBOR can help this stupidity cease.

As for Lambda Rising, while it has the obligatory gay porn magazines and videos, the bulk of its merchandise is (1) quality books on gay themes and issues or by gay authors, (2) great music CD’s and (3) gay themed movies that – OMG – have a real plot and story line. Among the book section, there are many books on religion and spirituality that I found to be an immeasurable resource in working through my coming out and religious recovery process. It will be a tremendous loss to the LBGT community not to have this resource. The b/f and I will greatly miss the store and will have to take advantage of the going out of business prices to stock up.