Florida Agenda

By Warren Day

What character, fictional or real, has appeared in more movies, either in a small or big role, than any other figure?   What would be your guess?   If you were to say Jesus, you would be wrong.  Also if you suggested Robin Hood, Abe Lincoln, Cleopatra, James Bond, or Queen Elizabeth I you’d be far off.   But if you guessed Tarzan or Dracula you would be getting very close (yes there is a dearth of female characters on this list).

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the character who’s appeared in the most motion pictures is elementary my dear Watson, because it’s Sherlock Holmes.

Starting in 1887 Arthur Conan Doyle, an unsuccessful doctor, wrote 56 short stories and four novels featuring the Great Detective and his colleague Dr. Watson. Almost instantly Holmes entered into the mythic realm, one of literature’s great iconic figures. And beginning in 1900, Holmes has appeared in over 230 films and still counting, not to mention hundreds of TV episodes.

He’s also proved to be one of the most flexible and adaptable of characters, and since Sherlock Holmes has entered the public domain, fertile and futile minds have been free to put whatever spin their imagination can conjure or their marketing research infers.  We’ve had Holmes as melodrama, drama, comedy, satire and even a musical. He’s been a spyhunter in World War II, a figure in the holodeck of Star Trek, a teenager at a boarding school, a young man in modern London, a drug addict under the care

of Sigmund Freud, and even a couple of times a gay man cavorting with Dr. Watson (to quote “The Boys in the Band,” no straight man has a male roommate past 30).  He’s truly the “flubber” of movie characters, able to stretch into whatever form writers or studio heads might want.

In 2009, the director Guy Ritchie, ex-husband of Madonna, turned him into a fast-paced, unshaven action hero, a kind of Indiana Jones of the Victorian Era, with enough comedy between him and Watson to almost be the Abbott and Costello of Baker Street. For those of us who love Sherlock Holmes, it seemed like a blasphemous idea, but the result was fun and more than a little clever, showing the old boy in a new light and in a style more in keeping with modern movie audiences.

It was a gigantic hit, so naturally there had to be a sequel, and you’ll find that sequel right now in a theater near you, “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.”

Once again Robert Downey, Jr. gives his tongue-in-both-cheeks interpretation of the Great Detective, even if his British accent sounds at times more like a nightclub comedian’s imitation than anything you’d hear around Regent’s Park. Jude Law is more restrained as Watson, and therefore wears better over the 129 minutes.

Noomi Rapace, the original “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” from the Swedish version has just a tagalong role, but she handles herself well in her first English-speaking part. Jared Harris gives the most subtle performance as Holmes number one nemesis, Professor Moriarity, the original super-villain who’s the model for most of the James Bond archenemies. What plot there is revolves around Moriarity’s attempt to get into the arms selling business by creating a war that will create a demand for his warehouses of lethal products.

Guy Ritchie seems to feel that everyone is suffering from ADD, so the movie is a true potboiler, overcooking every scene, allowing nothing to simmer. The forward rush in his first Sherlock Holmes movie worked, but here it comes across as more frantic, manufactured, and a little desperate, not unlike what Madonna’s stage shows became.

One doesn’t go to a James Bond or Indiana Jones movie expecting credibility, but if the implausibility is piled on too much, it does break your involvement in the story, i.e. Shia LaBeouf swinging through a CGI jungle like a monkey on speed in the last Jones movie.  There are several moments like that in this film.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did make Holmes an excellent boxer, but Ritchie turns him into Bruce Lee on the Thames, and he gives Watson some medical skills that wouldn’t be developed until years later. The logical deductions of Holmes in the stories and most of the previous films are turned more into wild guesses, coincidences, the stupidly of your adversaries, and the fact that Downey has read the script and knows what the other characters are going to do.

tIt’s either Ritchie’s strength or pandering weakness that he realizes the majority of today’s movie audience doesn’t want to think, but to be titillated, that when it comes to box office, bombast is more important than brains.

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By WARREN DAY

“The Descendants” with George Clooney has the mixed-blessing of being an Oscar front-runner for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and will probably get nominations in other categories, such as Best Supporting Actress.

Why is such a thing a mixed-blessing?

It’s a rather common hiccup in the award season – where we’re now entering the home stretch – that the movie that gets the big buzz too early grows stale with too much chatter and the voters turn to something fresher on their radar. This happened two years ago with another Clooney film, “Up in the Air,” and it happened last year with “The Social Network.”

It would be a great shame if this befell “The Descendants,” because it achieves something far more special than multi-million dollar special effects could ever do. It’s as funny as life can be at its messiest, and as emotionally moving as it can be at its best. It isn’t so much a movie you watch as a story you live. And how often can you say that?

A disheveled George Clooney plays a work-obsessed lawyer in Hawaii who’s also the sole trustee for a family trust that owns 25,000 acres of pristine beach property due to the fact he’s a direct descendant of one of the first white landowners (who also married a princess of the once Hawaiian royal house). It’s a fortune-for-the-taking and a group of wide-eyed cousins are pressuring him to cash in.

It’s also one of the reasons he’s been a neglectful husband and father, calling himself “the backup parent, the understudy.”

And then, at the beginning of the movie, his wife is involved in a boating accident off Waikiki beach that leaves her in a coma, and he must deal with two daughters and a spouse that it turns out he barely knows or understands. What follows is both one of the best comedies and one of the best dramas of this or any year.

“The Descendants” is a movie about fractured connections in our past and in our present, situations we allow to continue because either we’re distracted by other things, or more likely, because we’re at a loss to know what to do about them. Then something happens and we are forced to reach across gaps that have grown between those we love and those for whom we bear some responsibility. Almost none of us have been big landowners in Hawaii or anywhere else, but most of us have been involved with broken connections to one degree or another.

The majority of today’s movies give us highly exaggerated versions of both heroes and villains, so it can come as something of a shock (and a welcomed relief) to see genuinely real people in real life situations. Or have we become so desensitized by the bombast of action movies and frat-boy comedies that we can’t respond to a life-size story?

You may not notice how great a performance Clooney is giving until you realize how different a character he’s playing from himself – a bewildered parent and cuckold husband who’s totally inept in dealing with females of any age.  Hollywood usually rewards more showy roles, but it’s the subtleties and shadings that demand the best acting and here Clooney really delivers.  He doesn’t tell you what he feels, but rather his face and body language shows you what’s going on inside his character with all its complexities and contradictions.

And it’s a performance that fits into a talented ensemble cast, with the wonderful Shailene Woodley as his rebellious 17 year-old daughter, whose acting reminds you how seldom you see an authentic adolescent in the movies. It’s the kind of story where the characters break out of their stereotypes and surprise you, as so often happens in real life.

And Hawaii itself breaks out of its stereotype, for Alexander Payne, the director and co-writer, shows you not only the picture postcard side, but also the traffic jams, the crowded Honolulu skyline, the rainy overcast days, and the tacky restaurants.

Whereas most Hollywood movies are filled with big moments that in the end mean little – explosions, car chases, trucks transforming into robots, teenage hunks turning into werewolves (the latter two with much the same result), and frantic battles to the death with magic wands — Alexander Payne has a talent for finding the little moments that have big meanings to his characters and to anyone in the audience with an ounce of empathy. His movies are road trips of the soul.

The very last scene in “The Descendants” is a simple and ordinary one, but in the context of this ever-deepening story with its ever-developing characters, it’s a wallop to the heart that leaves you lifted and hopeful.

In the most emotional moments neither Payne nor Clooney go for sentimentality, but instead for a saving grace, and that’s as amazing in a movie as it is in life.

Photos courtesy, Ad Hominem Enterprises

Send your comments and questions to AgendaReviews@aol.com

By WARREN DAY

The keeper of the nation’s secrets, had dark secrets of his own.

Two weeks ago I wrote a review about why straight critics were giving better notice to the gay movie “Weekend” than the gay critics were. Now I’m faced with a new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover that could be the exact reverse. What seems contradictory and confusing about the life of a deeply closeted man to straights may make far better sense to gay men and lesbians.

Hoover was not only one of the most powerful and influential American figures in the 20th century (see separate box), but also one of the most enigmatic, an ever-churning stew of great achievements and great wrongs. Someone about whom you could write a biography that mentions only positive things, and then turn around and write an entirely different book of the same length about his shortcomings and transgressions.

Few individuals present so daunting a task in turning their comprehensive life into a comprehensible film. With “J. Edgar,” the result is 2011’s most ambitious and adventuresome movie–one that’s directed and produced by the indelible Clint Eastwood. It’s a life and a film filled with improbabilities.

The devise the writer uses to cover this complex and capacious life is to have the elderly Hoover dictate his memoirs to a series of FBI agents (all of them seemingly picked by him for their looks as well as their typing skills), and we then see in flashbacks the events that shaped him, and even more so, the many events he shaped for others. As it is in the nature of memory, his reminiscences jump back and forth, switching from one decade to another as his mind wrestles with what his life was like and how he desperately wants others to think his life was like.

Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the original screenplay, is an openly gay man who also won an Academy Award for writing “Milk,” and he believes that once you realize Hoover was a deeply closeted and conflicted homosexual then he becomes more understandable and even elicits a little sympathy.

In what has to be the most chilling scene of fear and self-loathing afflicted onto a gay son by his mother, the dominating Mrs.

Hoover mocks J. Edgar for not wanting to dance with women. She reminds him of his boyhood friend Daffy (short for Daffodil), who had a fondness for dressing in girl’s clothes, a “perversion” that led to his total disgrace and suicide.  “I’d rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son,” she adds in her steely soft voice.

With that kind of upbringing and with the stark homophobia of his day, it’s no mystery, except to some straight critics, that Hoover:

• felt he had to do everything better than any other man, a real overachiever

• became obsessive about other people’s secrets, particularly those for whom there were gay rumors, such as Eleanor Roosevelt

• crushed those who suggested he might be gay and carrying on a relationship with his deputy Clyde Tolson (widely rumored in his lifetime)

• worked hard to cultivate a macho image, encouraging movies and comic books to depict him as a gun-toting hero

• demanded that all FBI agents be clean cut, All-American men, no blemishes on their character, and in excellent physical shape. In other words, ultra-straight looking and acting

• was a control freak about every aspect of his public life, which is often true of people who fear their inner life and desires may not be so controllable

• when asked why he hadn’t married, he said he was married to his job of protecting American citizens

You can’t make an honest film about a man with great flaws without having some of those same flaws in the film itself. The movie “J. Edgar” has both strengths and weaknesses, noble goals and ignoble means, disjointed at times, emotionally reticent, and it doesn’t wrap things up in a neat package at the end.  Eastwood has given us a movie that’s very much like what Hoover was like himself. The form and the content are one. That may not always be easy for the moviegoer to follow, but it is brilliant moviemaking.

Leonardo DiCaprio is equally brilliant as Hoover, capturing Hoover’s contradictions in a nuanced performance spanning from age 24 to 77. It’s a tour de force that will be Oscar nominated. As Clyde Tolson, Arnie Hammer (“The Social Network”) proves he has acting chops as well as good looks, in a performance where he has to always suggest more than his words can say. The wonderful Judi Dench plays the not-so-wonderful Mama Hoover.

Hoover and Tolson were inseparable colleagues and companions for 42 years. They had lunch and dinner together almost every day.

They took their vacations together (often to Miami Beach). They had adjoining offices at the FBI. They even dressed alike. At Hoover’s funeral, the American flag that draped his coffin was folded by the military guard and given to Tolson. Whether they had a sexual relationship the film leaves somewhat up to you, but it’s clear that the closest thing each man had to a marriage was the relationship they had with each other.

Hoover is buried in Washington’s Congressional Cemetery with Clyde Tolson’s grave only a few feet away, but it’s Hoover’s mother who lies by his side within their own fenced-off area. After all, closeted stories never have Hollywood endings.

J. Edgar Hoover

1895 – 1972

Served as the nation’s
“top cop” for 48 years
under eight presidents
from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon

Director of Bureau of Investigation
1924 – 1935

Founding Director
of the FBI
1935 – 1972

Longest serving head of a major Federal agency in American history

Pioneer in the use of
forensic science in the
solving of crimes

Never married

By Warren Day

In “Weekend,” we finally have a well-received 2011 movie where the love story at the center is between two people of the same sex. Not where it’s a sidebar, as  it was with the excellent “Beginners” that opened in July. And this British independent film is receiving even better reviews, particularly from straight critics. Now why would straight reviewers react more positive to it than gay ones? And why should that bother me or you?

What is undisputed is that Great Britain has given us some of the best gay-themed movies ever made – “Maurice,” “My Beautiful Launderette,” “Prick Up Your Ears,” “Wilde,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “The Crying Game,” “Beautiful Thing,” “Another Country,” “Velvet Goldmine,” and many others. Also fifty years ago it was a British film, “Victim,” with Dirk Bogarde, that was the first major release to ever say the word “homosexual” and to deal with homosexual persecution. So “Weekend” is a part of a distinguished lineage, even if its working-class British accents can be a little hard to understand.

It tells the contemporary story of Russell, a lifeguard for a community pool in Nottingham, England, a place most Americans probably haven’t heard mentioned since a certain sheriff was chasing a certain guy in green tights through Sherwood Forest. One Friday night, he attends a potluck dinner thrown by some straight friends whose happy relationships and contented lives make him even more aware of the loneliness in his own.

Somewhat in desperation, he stops off in a non-descript gay bar on the way

home and is ignored by Chris, the one guy who seems to interest him, but then when Chris can’t score with the guy he wants, he decides he’ll settle for Russell and a one-night stand. Since this isn’t an opportune beginning and since there’s no expectations beyond a fleeting hook-up, they’re less on-guard with each other, less concerned with projecting a calculated image. Over the first 24 hours, they become more honest and open than usual – the result of which is they catch themselves developing some mutual feelings, feelings that are intensified when it’s discovered, for a reason I won’t reveal here, that the relationship cannot continue beyond the weekend. Is a 48-hour weekend time enough to know someone well enough that you’re willing to walk away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the hope you’ve found your once-in-a-lifetime love?

This film has been rightly praised for the naturalistic way in which their small disclosures and small discoveries about each other leads to something that seems both real and rare, and how the movie’s ending seems genuinely unforced and realistic. To critics who’ve long ago OD’d on the cutesy and predictable formulas of Hollywood romantic comedies (think Jennifer Aniston), this naturalism in both story and acting can be very enticing.

So while this difference from usual rom-com movies may give an understandable cause for straight critics to praise “Weekend,” the fact that it deals with a situation many gays have known either personally or from the experiences of their friends, may give it a tired and ever-so-familiar ring. While on the other hand, seeing two gay men in this situation may provide a fresh spin to straights that it won’t have for us, because you can hear this story being told almost any night in almost any gay bar.

Harvey Fierstein, who wrote and starred in both the play and movie-version of “Torch Song Trilogy,” said that when straights told him they felt his story wasn’t really a gay story, but a universal one, he would protest, saying he’d spent decades transferring heterosexual romances into terms he could understand, and he wasn’t willing to have his gay story homogenized into something generic. There are too few gay stories, Fierstein said, to have them tailored into one-size-fits-all. And as he further stated, he’d be offended if someone claimed that “Schindler’s List” could just as well be about some WASPs in Grover Corners, New Hampshire.

Good stories do have some universal truths, but not at the expense of its particular characters and their often unique struggles.

What I’d like to do is what critics should do more often and say you should probably ignore any reservations I’ve expressed here; chances are you’ll be glad you saw “Weekend,” and will find it to be that rare movie that expresses gay life in a non-exaggerated and non-cartoonish way. The fact that this film may remind you of similar incidents in your own life will make it personal and that will make it powerful.

The year-round Caldwell Theatre Company in Boca Raton is an A-1 class act.

By Warren Day

The class shows in the challenging plays they perform, and not the endlessly-repeated comedies and classics that compose the repertory of many a theater company. The class shows in the sets, which are not only beautifully designed, but also add meaning to the characters and the story. It also shows in the theater building itself, the Count de Hoernle Theatre, one of the most effective and pleasant performing spaces in all of Florida. And usually, the class shows in the high-quality of the acting, with their casts filled with professional talent who’ve earned their Actors Equity union cards. Under the creative leadership of Clive Cholerton, it’s simply one of the best theatre companies in the Sout

Their premiere production for the 2011- 2012 season, “After the Revolution” by Amy Herzog, hits the mark on most of its high standards and speaks well for the season ahead.

First of all, the play was picked by the New York Times as one of the ten best of 2010. It deals with a situation and a theme that has an importance and an appeal outside of its own historical context. What do you do when you discover that the pride of your family, someone who you’ve emulated in your personal and professional life, turns out to have a secret that reveals a much darker side to his character? To some degree, we all need heroes in our lives, but it can be quite dicey to have a family member as one, because if anything should go wrong, the fallout can extend into so many relationships.

In “After the Revolution,” the pride of the family is the grandfather, a kind of Alger Hiss character who achieved fame in the 1950s by not naming names at the McCarthy hearings and for being a spokesperson against the witch hunts of the times that treated every person on the far left as a traitor. The play takes place in 1999, 18 months after the grandfather has died. His granddaughter Emma has just graduated from law school and started a legal defense fund to promote his ideals. Her dreams, values, and career are tied up with the heroic image of her grandfather, and then she learns he wasn’t who he seemed to be.

It’s a dilemma that’s been faced by other families, such as the televangelist who’s caught paying for the services of a male prostitute, the politician who highly embellishes his military service or family background, or the father who everyone thought was a genius businessman but instead has been running a ponzi scheme, and, of course, the lesser and more common experience of finding out at sixteen that your parents simply aren’t as perfect as you once thought they were at six.

The drama and the comedy of “After the Revolution” is in how Emma reacts to learning about her grandfather’s unsavory past, a past about to be revealed to the world in a new book. And it’s also where the play (and casting) runs into some trouble. Emma is not a sympathetic character because she suffers from the same fault of almost everyone on the far left or far right – she’s filled with self-righteousness. The fault is partly in how she’s written, and even more so in how she’s played by Jackie Rivera, who goes more for the anger than the hurt, more for the petulance than the vulnerability. You begin to feel sorrier for her family and boyfriend than you do for her. The rest of the cast find more shadings and nuance in their performances, such as Gordon McConnell as her father, Nancy Barnett as her stepmother, and particularly Howard Elfman as a kindly and wise benefactor who learned long ago that the bigger the man, the more likely, the bigger the fault.

“The Ides of March” – “Moneyball” – “50/50”

By WARREN DAY

Photo: Brad P itt

Three of the best films of 2011 are in theaters right now, three films that deserved to be seen by the widest audience possible, and yet they stand in danger of being sidelined by one off-putting word that might keep you and others from seeing them.

For “The Ides of March,” it’s the word “politics;” for “Moneyball,” it’s “baseball;” and for “50/50,” it’s the scariest word of them all, “cancer.” To say these three excellent movies are about those three words is like saying the movie “Titantic” is about drowning.  They may have as their backgrounds those three things, but what they are actually about is something far different and of a much bigger interest to the average moviegoer.

“The Ides of March” is a psychological thriller about the high-stakes games people play when they want power and when they feel threatened in their efforts to obtain it. It takes place during a highly-contested presidential primary, but it could take place in Wall Street, a network news division, the company where you work, or any place where the selection of one person could make or break other careers. It stars Ryan Gosling as someone who’s torn between his conscience and his ambitions (most of us have been in that situation to some degree). Along with “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” “Drive,” and now this movie, Gosling is having one sterling showcase of a year.  George Clooney also stars as the flawed Democratic candidate, and he also directed, produced, and co-wrote the screenplay. He does all of those things admirably. My qualm is that this movie feeds too easily into our cynicism that all politicians (and their staff) are shady  characters – but in the present national mood, many Republicans, Democrats, and even those who are apolitical, would say “Amen” to that.

“Moneyball” is from the bestselling, non-fiction book by the same author who wrote “The Blind Side.” It’s also an inspirational story about someone who decides that the way a certain business has been run, a major league baseball team in this case, is wrong and sets about breaking all the cherished rules. Brad Pitt as the real-life Billy Beane is mesmerizing, and Jonah Hill almost steals the movie in his first  dramatic part. The always good Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the beleagued team manager (he’s also in “Ides of March”). You don’t have to know baseball (any more than you have to like politics with “Ides of March”) to really enjoy watching an underdog go up against an entrenched establishment. It’s the kind of David and Goliath story that we never get tired of, particularly when it’s as well done as this one.

No other movie of this or any recent year walks so many tightropes as successfully as does “50/50.” Like “Moneyball,” it is based on a true story, and it contains laughs and insights that could only come from a writer who’s lived it. “50/50” is one of the funniest films of the year, and yes it is about a 27-year-old (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who has cancer. The laughs (and the tears) come from how he, his best friend (Seth Rogen in his finest role), his girlfriend, his therapist, and his mother (Anjelica Houston in a comeback role) react to that situation. It’s as emotionally moving as it is funny and one of the movies where you leave the theater feeling that sometimes the good guy does indeed finish first.

One thing all three of these films have in common is that they contain some of the best acting to be seen on the screen this year. Brad Pitt and Joseph Gordon-Levitt deserve nominations for Best Actor, and George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill and Anjelina Huston warrant strong consideration in the Best Supporting category.

And these films remind us to be cautious whenever someone tries to sum up any movie, person, or idea in a single word, because we all know how wrong that can be when one word has been applied to ourselves–whether that word is gay or straight, young or old, white or black.

If you want to see a really depressing movie, then see the ridiculously bad “Abduction” with Taylor Lautner, but if you want an exciting and fulfilling evening at the movies, make your way now to “The Ides of March,” “Moneyball,” and “50/50.”  Your mind, your soul, and your funny-bone will be glad you did.

Send your questions and comments to AgendaReviews@aol.com. All email will receive a response.

Tampa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, October 6 – October 16, 2011

Fort Lauderdale Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, October 13 – 16, 2011

By Warren Day

One law rules Hollywood: the films that are most likely to get made and to appear in a multiplex near you are the films with the biggest appeal to the biggest demographic in order to obtain the biggest boxoffice. Keep in mind that the majority of films lose money in their theater distribution.

Under that bottom-line type thinking, it’s not only hard to get gay films financed, but to also get them shown in enough theaters to earn their money back. My hometown has over 120,000 population, and yet not even “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Kids Are All Right” were shown in any of its theaters. And in that regard it’s not unique, for it is estimated that movies with a dominant GLBT plot will not play on 70% of American movie screens. Even in gay-friendly Fort Lauderdale we’ve seen a recent shrinkage of such films due to a change in ownership of the Gateway Theater.

For that and other reasons, gay and lesbian film festivals serve an important purpose in allowing us to see GLBT movies from around the world, movies we wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to see.

The Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is running October 6 through October 16, and the Fort Lauderdale Festival is October 13 through October 16. The 13th Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival was held April 21 to May 1 of this year. Orlando use to have a GLBT film festival, but it ceased two years ago.

In the Fort Lauderdale and Tampa film festivals this year several of the same movies will be shown.

“Dirty Girl” (Tampa Oct. 7, FtL Oct. 13) Danielle is the dirty girl in her high school in Norman, Oklahoma. She’s sent to a remedial class where she’s paired with Clarke, a shy closet-case with no friends.  The cast features Mary Steenburgen, Tim McGraw and William H. Macy.

“So Hard to Forget” (Tampa Oct. 9, FtL Oct. 14) deals with the life-changing loss of a partner.  Julia, a professor, loses her girlfriend when she falls for another, and Hugo, her best friend, loses his male partner in death. (Brazilian film with English subtitles.)
“Going Down in La La Land” (Tampa Oct. 8, FtL Oct. 14) is an old-fashioned love story, except this one is done with rent boys and sit-com celebrities, set against the San Fernando Valley gay porn industry and ever-so-gay West Hollywood.

“Tomboy” (Tampa Oct. 12, FtL Oct. 15) When ten-year old tomboy Laurie moves to a new neighborhood, the kids mistake her for a boy, a mistake she does not correct, even when Lisa develops a crush on her.  A delightful and touching film. (French with sub-titles)
“Hit So Hard” (Tampa Oct. 8, FtL Oct. 15) A documentary about the life and near death of Patty Schemel, the openly gay drummer of Courtney Love’s seminal band Hole, featuring home movies with Kurt Cobain and shockingly candid interviews with Courtney.

“Kink Crusaders” (Tampa Oct. 8, FtL Oct. 15) Well-made documentary that chronicles the 33-year history of the annual international Mr. Leather contest in Chicago, in what has been called the world’s oldest kink/fetish contest.

“The Green” (Tampa Oct. 8, FtL Oct. 15)  Fascinating and provocative drama about two men who leave the concrete of NYC for thegreen of an idyllic Connecticut village. Michael (played by Jason Butler Harner of “Law & Order”) is a drama teacher at a
private high school who takes a strong interest in one lonely student who ends up making charges against him for “inappropriate behavior.” His partner Daniel (played by Cheyenne Jackson from “30 Rock”) comes to have doubts about his innocence once the investigation reveals a secret in Michael’s past.

The Green

“eCupid” (Tampa Oct. 9, FtL Oct. 15) Love and temptation in the age of the Internet. Marshall is in a seven year relationship that has settled into a routine as has the rest of his life. At age 30 he’s having a mid-life crisis (as he says, in the gay world 30 is middle-age), which leads him to a mysterious app called eCupid, where fantasies are only a mouse click away. One of the better films being shown in the two festivals, it stars handsome newcomer Houston Rhines, and features Morgan Fairchild as the waitress who dishes out strong advice with the strong coffee.

eCupid

“Wish Me Away” (Tampa Oct. 11, FtL Oct. 16) Chely Wright seemed to have it all – Academy of Country Music Awards, #1 singles, popular music videos, and a high-profile relationship with superstar Brad Paisley, but she knew she was hiding her true self. A powerful and courageous documentary about the first major country/western star to come out of the closet (she kept a video diary of the month leading up to the public announcement). Her song “Wish Me Away” deserves to be a gay anthem.

Wish Me Away

For information on showtimes, ticket cost, venue locations, and all the other films in the festivals, go to their respective websites online at www.tiglff.com and www.flglff.com.

While the Tampa Festival will be using two movie theaters and the city’s Museum of Art, the Fort Lauderdale Festival, outside of opening night, will be showing the other 15 films at The Manor on Wilton Drive, where they will turn the two biggest rooms into theaters with high definition projectors and large screens. The FLGLFF opening night will be at Cinema Paradiso in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and will include a reception before the film.

These are once-a-year events offering films that most gays and lesbians in America won’t get a chance to see. For the personal benefits we receive and for the support they offer to our GLBT community, we should take full advantage of and give full support to such festivals. For these are our stories, the films about the unique and common experiences of our sexual orientation, and how that impedes and empowers our own life journeys.

And Now the Good (and GLBT) Movies Will Come Out to Play

Photo: Rooney Mara in “The Girl with  the Dragon Tattoo”

By Warren Day

For at least a couple of decades, the movie year has divided itself into three basic seasons.

The first four months of the year – January, February, March, April – is the Dump Season. The major and critically-acclaimed films having been packed in toward the close of the previous year (to qualify for awards), now give way to the also rans. The new films that are left are largely the ones in which the studios have little faith, so they dump them into these winter months when theater attendance is at its lowest ebb.

Next we have the Blockbuster Season – May, June, July, August. This is when the studios pile on the heroic, comic-book, pre-sold sequels and R-rated comedies to ensure they will keep the theater seats and their coffers full. In this third of the year, studios will earn over 55% of their annual boxoffice. For counter-programming, there are usually one or two adult films released in August. This year, it was the wildly-successful, “The Help.” That film cost only $30 million (compared to other summer films with budgets around $175 million), yet “The Help” is likely to earn $150 million—domestically alone.

Finally, we have the Award Season, which stretches over the last four months of the year, from September through December. It kicks off with three, very high-profile film festivals where the studios test the critical and award-worthy waters, namely the Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival.

All three of these have just finished, and among the hundreds of movies on display were most of the key ones expected to pull in the honors from the critics and award groups (of which the Holy Grail is the Oscar® Awards). Only three films released in the first eight months are expected to have a chance to be nominated in the major Oscar categories: “The Tree of Life,” “Midnight in Paris” and “The Help.”

Colin Firth in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Already among the critics, industry-insiders, and would-be opinion makers, there’s a growing consensus on what films stand a chance for the top ten lists, and who will be making acceptance speeches at the Kodak Theater in February.

Of those ten, four have GLBT-related content, so this is truly the season when the movies come out.

First up, October 7, is “The Ides of March” with George Clooney and Ryan Gosling. Here, I’m making the assumption that the studio wouldn’t be courting the gay press so much if there wasn’t a gay connection. The plot does revolve around a scandal that threatens an attractive presidential candidate (Clooney) and how an idealistic staffer (Gosling) struggles with the moral and political implications.

It was seen at all three film festivals I mentioned and received kudos for being a taut thriller that could easily take place in other areas of American life.

Ryan Gosling in “The Ides of March”

Then on November 9, we have “J. Edgar,” Clint Eastwood’s film about J. Edgar Hoover who headed the F.B.I or its predecessor for 48 years, welding great power over the secrets of this country, but in his lifetime squelched any rumors he was gay (and maybe a cross-dresser). Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hoover, and Armie Hammer, who played the Winklevoss twins in “The Social Network,” plays Clyde Tolson, his deputy and supposed lover. Eastwood has said this is “not a film about two gay guys,” but the original script was written by openly-gay Dustin Lance Black who won an Oscar for writing “Milk.”

On December 9, we have the movie theater version of John Le Carré’s great novel, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” starring some of the best actors working today: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Among these male spies, there are two who’ve had a fervent affair that greatly affects the outcome of the story. Previously dramatized in 1979 as one of the most highly-acclaimed TV mini-series (with Alec Guinness), the filmmakers have seemingly been successful in making a 127-minute version of this complicated story. Premiering in early September at the Venice Film Festival and already showing in England, the reviews have been through the roof and the movie is being heralded as a sure thing for several Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor.

Leonardo DiCaprio in “J. Edgar”

Finally on December 21, the English language version of Stieg Larsson’s worldwide best seller, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” reaches theaters. Directed by David Fincher, one of the best directors working today, the advanced word is this may be even better than the well-liked Swedish film version. Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, the investigative reporter, and Rooney Mara plays Lisbeth Salander, a bisexual who is also a brilliant computer hacker, and one of the most fascinating fictional characters to emerge in many a year. It may be the first mainstream film to feature a bisexual as its protagonist.

The other movies being touted for best of the year include: “The Descendants” with George Clooney (some are already predicting this will win Best Picture), “War Horse,” Steven Spielberg’s version of the book and play, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Clear,” with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, and “The Artist,” a silent film (with music and sound effects) that has charmed critics and already won some awards.

So far this hasn’t been a sterling year for movies (“Green Lantern” anyone?), but as usual the best have been saved for the Awards Season, and from the advanced reviews and buzz, we have some excellent ones coming in the final three months.

And it appears, at least as of now, that 40% of the best films of the year will have some GLBT content, a fact that will further convince the right-wing fundies that Hollywood is a liberal bastion of iniquity. To which I say, thank God it is!

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By Warren Day

Whether it’s on Broadway or at a local community theater, putting on a successful play is a crapshoot. In Douglas Carter Beane’s comedy “As Bees in Honey Drown,” the Rising Action Theater in Fort Lauderdale has produced one of their best productions and given us one of the best reasons to see current live theater in south Florida. For that to happen, many different variables have to come together in just the right way.

First of all is the play itself. You want it to be a really good play, but not one that has been widely available to local theater- goers before or made into a film that can be easily seen on cable or DVD. The Obie winning “As Bees in Honey Drown” certainly fits the bill, providing a sparkling evening of laughs, wise observations, and fascinating characters, a frothy mixture about the dangers of frothy mixtures. It is that rare play where the second act is stronger than the first.

Secondly, you want the production to enhance the script, not encumber it. The director Avi Hoffman has an impressive list of credits, giving the play a professional pace and polish, and makes the best utilization of the theater’s space at Sunshine Cathedral that I’ve seen. The set is also imaginative, with a clever use of ever-changing panels that resemble a honeycomb.

Finally, the overall acting is quite good. Four of the six actors play various denizens of Manhattan, and seldom has a local ensemble added so much to the final result. The most effective acting from the beginning to the end belongs to Andrew Wind who plays the young naïve gay writer with a well-received first novel, but who hasn’t set the world on fire, something he desperately wants to do. It’s what he does in small moments that make his acting so memorable, such as the scene where he’s trying on his first expensive suit at Saks. When he stares out into the audience, but is supposed to be gazing into a mirror, you genuinely believe he’s seeing his reflective image.

The central character around which the whole story revolves is a daunting figure with the daunting name of Alexa Vere de Vere, a life-force of a woman who’s one part Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” one part Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret,” and a big hunk of Rosalind Russell in “Auntie Mame.” She’s a glittering con-artist who has the uncanny ability to tell you the very things about yourself that you so desperately want to believe. She perfectly understands that so many of us have become fame whores, either in seeking it for ourselves or by being fascinated by those who have it.

Some of the wittiest lines in the play belong to Alexa: “Art is eternal, but eternal isn’t as long as it used to be.” “In England everyone is gay, so when you say ‘Queen’ you have to specify.” And what is almost the mantra of the play: “You’re not the person you were born. Who wonderful is? You’re the person you were meant to be.”

This Queen Bee is played by Actor’s Equity member Amy McKenna, who often approaches this larger-than-life role with an over-the- top consonance that lacks the nuance and variety

to carry the evening. We reviewers usually see a play in its first or second public performance, so the highly-experienced Ms. McKenna will probably settle into the proper zone for Alexa by the time you see it.

It’s part of the richness of Mr. Beane’s delightful comedy that he takes a somewhat familiar character, the Auntie- Mame type, and shows how destructive such divas can be. From afar, they can be quite entertaining, just the answer to a bland life. But up close they can mess you up in ways that last a long time.

And the gullible gay writer is ripe for such manipulation, because he buys into our celebrity-mad culture, and nothing is as vain as the love of fame.

It used to be that fame was the indirect result of doing something exceptionally well. But now, it’s often the means and the end, becoming so fashionable that there are those who eagerly buy it even when it’s a rip-off of the real thing, thus confusing being widely-known with being wildly-successful. Kim Kardasian is one. Meryl Streep is the other.

And in this play, the playwright suggests that when fame becomes the wherewithal of our existence (or culture), we can be destroyed by the very thing we have made… or to put it another way, as bees in honey drown.

Plays through October 9, Fri. and Sat. at
8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35
at www.risingactiontheatre.tix.com
or call 1-800-595-4849. Rising Action
Theatre is located at Sunshine
Cathedral, 1840 SW 9th Ave, Fort
Lauderdale 33313.

Send any comments or questions you have to AgendaReviews@aol.com.

By Warren Day

Contagion” may be the scariest movie you’ll ever see. Not in a vampire or werewolf kind of way, because deep down you know you’re never going to meet one of those in real life (especially one that looks like Robert Pattinson or Taylor Lautner).

What makes director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film so frightening is that it deals with something that not only could happen, but also has actually occurred in the past and is widely predicted to happen again – a new virus that is resistant to all treatment, resulting in millions of deaths. You may jump out of your seat at more traditional scary movies, but this one will probably give you more nightmares.

Soderbergh has a talent for gathering a stellar cast, as he did in “Ocean’s 11,” “12” and “13,” and here he does it again. In “Contagion,” the stars include Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Laurence Fishburne. The casting is one of the strengths of the film (no star can play everyman better than Damon, and Fishburne has the gravitas to play the head of a large government agency). Since you have some feelings already for these well-known stars the director doesn’t have to spend much time making you care about what happens to them. But the casting is also one of its weaknesses since he wasn’t able to find A-listers for all the major parts, it can be somewhat jarring going from scenes with Damon and Paltrow to a couple of unrecognizable actors with equally sized parts.

From the beginning, Soderbergh gives the movie a documentary feel that makes the events seem quite feasible, and since this virus is airborne and highly contagious, he instills a sense of doom in ordinary occurrences – someone coughing on a crowded bus, blowing on dice for luck, two hands reaching into the same peanut bowl. After seeing “Contagion,” you may find yourself scared to touch another doorknob.

If you think this film exaggerates what can happen in a pandemic, remember that in 1348, the Black Plague hitchhiked a ride to China with traders (the virus in this film also starts in China), and in just two years 30 to 60% of the population of Europe was wiped out. Less than a hundred years ago, 1918 – 1919, Spanish Flu killed as many as 100 million worldwide, including 675,000 in the USA (my great grandfather was one of those). As this film demonstrates, with people and goods constantly flowing across continents today, what used to take two years to develop can now take place in a single month.

The trouble with this kind of story is where do you go

with it? Besides anxiety, what is the audience suppose to feel or think? We’ve always had sound-thealarm movies, but usually they deal with some peril over which we can, if willing, take steps to reduce the threat – proliferation of nuclear weapons, ruining our environment. What can you do against an unknown virus that could already be entering someone’s blood stream, someone who’s about to catch a plane to an airport near where you live?

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