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Cancer bulletin: nothing relives the doldrums of my birth month like a good laugh. Good luck finding anything resembling that at the movies; sure, it’s air-conditioned but “rom com” beware. The term alone guarantees the absence of wit, or for that matter, anything resembling human behavior. Which means us humor-mongers must reach back to the…
Continue readingThe leaving is the hardest part. Call me complacent, or merely a homebody—whether departing for Rome, Beijing or even upstate New York, a mourning state comes over me whenever I must leave Manhattan. Maybe it’s always hard because I can’t forget that this was where my life truly began, which means that all its signposts—its…
Continue readingIn the powerful revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, villains abound: there’s institutional homophobia fed by a conformist über-het society; New York’s red-tape bound local government led by a bachelor mayor rumored to be gay (Ed Koch, though never mentioned by name—oh, those pesky libel laws); the gay community adrift in a sexual roundelay…
Continue readingAlvin Baltrop took the long view. I relish his head-spinning panoramas of places that no longer exist; Baltrop’s camera captured the looming gilders inside abandoned hangars and the wide expanses of wooden piers along the Hudson in the West Village, ones that hadn’t seen a ship’s arrival in many a moon. But look closely, and…
Continue readingGlenn Ligon, Malcolm X Like Stonewall, the art revolution of the 1980s was a coming out as explosive as the times required. Many of the artists who broke out were gay: Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujur, Catherine Opie and Keith Haring marched into our consciousness with forceful works that expressed an era’s glittery…
Continue readingBurlesque (Steven Antin, director and writer). Disparities (an aspiring showgirl plot whose high suspense turns on air rights!) and derivatives abound in a movie geared to capitalize on the blockbuster glow of a trend spurred by Chicago, and killed by its cousin, Nine. Burlesque gleefully rips these films off while scavenging every other small-town-girl-searches-for-big-city-fame trope…
Continue readingI Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale (Richard Shepard, Director, HBO). His was one of the great cinema faces of all time. His eyes were key though, registering menace and melancholy, while hinting at unfathomable depths. All was anchored to a towering, unsung talent: in this documentary Cazale’s family, colleagues and fans–some of whom…
Continue readingPhilip Roth, Indignation (Houghton Mifflin, 256 pgs). The moment when you cease to see eye to eye with your folks; the overwhelming shock of college campus life; the initial sexual encounter: Philip Roth turns his unerring eye on Marcus Mesner, a “straight A student” buckling under the constraints of his father, a smotheringly vigilant Newark…
Continue readingThe Story of a Marriage, Andrew Sean Greer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). An African American woman wrestles with her husband’s mysterious past when a white man shows up on her doorstep—and reveals that he was once the husband’s lover. Set in 1950’s San Francisco, Greer’s novel is a kind of Sophie’s Choice filtered through the…
Continue readingSolange – Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams (Geffen Records). Toss in a dollop of Diana Ross, a spritz of Erykah Badu with just a hint of Nina Simone to make it sexy, and you’ll get a sense of Solange’s new release. Fun, funny, autobiographical, it’s retro without cynicism, Motown grooves and grownup beats from…
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