Mr. Manly Action Star

RIDDICK-superJumboA few weeks ago, I was having lunch with a friend of mine who has been working at a large Hollywood studio. The conversation came around to closeted actors and actresses, and my friend repeated what another friend told her, “Vin Diesel? Oh, she a lady.” I laughed, not because it would be funny if Diesel were gay and closeted, but rather that he’s done something to lead to such a camp pronouncement. His screen persona is solidly and profoundly macho, complete with roided muscles and a deep voice that rarely utters any words with more the one syllable, and if it turned out that he was actually a big old queen, well that’s some good irony. Maybe he is a great actor, at least in one role: manly action star. Maybe that character, Mr. Manly Action Star, is a bad actor. Maybe he’s not only a terrible actor, but also a retrograde chauvinist. Maybe Mr. Manly Action Star is just an overcompensation for being a self-hating homosexual. Continue…

A lady of the canyons

The-Canyons-Lindsay-Lohan-James-Deen3To say the least, it’s rare that a movie with a budget of $250,000 becomes the subject of a 7,600 words article in The New York Times Magazine. It makes a little more sense, when you know that The Canyons was directed by Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and directed American Gigolo and Affliction. More sense when you know the movie, a psychological sex thriller about LA bottom feeders, was written by Bret Easton Ellis, the gay novelist who gave us Less Than Zero and the infamous American Psycho and whose obnoxious Twitter feed sends many people into fits of rage. And they cast the troubled and troubling Lindsay Lohan and the porn superstar James Deen as their leads. Among the unsurprising revelations was that Lohan was incredibly difficult to work with; among the surprising was Schrader directed a sex scene in the nude to convince her to do the scene without clothes. When the movie was finally released in a handful of theaters and on demand, critics arrived with freshly sharpened knives. Many of the reviews have been savage, even cruel, while a few reviewers, like Variety’s Scott Foundas, gave both Lohan and the film raves. I don’t think it deserves either derision or too much applause. It’s beautifully shot, Lohan is good, but Deen isn’t, and Ellis’s screenplay is limp, lacking insight or taste. Continue…

Please, queer the movies

superman_gayb1For the last few weeks, I have been passing movie theaters advertising Before Midnight, the third in the series of talky romances starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. I’ve heard that it’s fantastic, the best of the three; and the other two are considered minor classics. But I didn’t go. I am so sick of having to wait three or four years between serviceable, let alone good, movies about gay relationships, and I am also sick of never seeing gay characters, plots, or even subplots in Hollywood features, just punch-lines or sight gags (like half the jokes in This Is the End) or blink-and-you-miss-it Easter eggs (like Catwoman’s line-less, barely there girlfriend in The Dark Knight Rises). TV has a long way to go, too, but there are rich, interesting LGBT characters everywhere on the small screen, on the networks and on cable. But Hollywood seems terrified of queerness in the movies, and I don’t know why. Continue…

Hello, darkness

187442The first question I was asked after I walked out of Star Trek Into Darkness was not, “Was it good?” but rather “How good was it?” After 2009’s glorious reboot of the iconic sci-fi series Star Trek, with JJ Abrams directing Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock, the expectations for the sequel were high. Very, very high. Over the previous decade, Star Trek had wandered into the darkness: the original cast and movies of the 60s, 70s, and 80s (with William Shatner as Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock) had given way to the celebrated TV series “Next Generation,” and the less so “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager,” and “Enterprise.” The movies based on the “Next Generation” cast started out fine, and then not so much, and the last one, 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, was a dud, earning $67 million, a sixth the box office of what JJ Abrams’s reboot did. Abrams, who co-created Lost, Fringe, and Alias and has been tapped to – gasp! – reboot Star Wars, is a great science fiction filmmaker; his Star Trek was thrilling, gorgeous, epic, and perfectly cast, particularly Quinto as Spock. So, how good was it sequel? Very, very good. Continue…

Cumming is released

film2_anydaynowA_02Alan Cumming is best known nowadays for his smart, snarky, and subtly camp performance as Eli Gold in The Good Wife, the best show on network television. But he originally became famous for playing the MC in Sam Mendes iconic revival of Cabaret in the late 1990s; he won a Tony and legions of straight and gay fans. He is a song and dance man, but not in the chipper, jazz hands Glee way; he is mischievous, sly, sexy, and sardonic. And very, very funny. In Travis Fine’s gay-parenting drama Any Day Now, Cumming plays a drag performer in 1970s West Hollywood who becomes a father to an abandoned teen-aged boy with Down’s syndrome. Both his Broadway skills and his (somewhat) more tempered dramatic skills are on display, and in his greatest screen role, Cumming makes the film, despite its missteps, memorable and moving.

Rudy (Cumming) is the lead of a trio of drag queens who perform at a WeHo bar. One night he picks up a patron, handsome assistant district attorney Paul (Garret Dillahunt), and it is him Rudy calls when he discovers that his junkie neighbor (Jamie Anne Allman) has disappeared, leaving her developmentally disabled son Marco (Isaac Leyva) alone. Paul balks at first, but when Marco escapes the foster home where he’s been sent and Rudy and Paul find him, they quickly become a family. In order to make that happen, however, they have to lie to a judge about their relationship. Paul’s boss figures it out what is actually going on, and since it’s the late 70s, gay parenting goes on trial. Literally.

Fine’s screenplay is structured a bit too much like a Lifetime issue-of-the-week movie, and, particularly during the courtroom scenes, some of the scenes are cartoonish. Gregg Henry, who plays the homophobic opposing lawyer, is a stereotypical monster. Fine’s direction of his actors inside Rachel Fine’s beautifully colored cinematography makes up for some of the clunky writing. But the movie is held together by Cumming’s broad, versatile, deeply sympathetic performance as Rudy. (His only flaw is his wonky Queens accent, which is a bit inconsistent.) His musical performances are key; when he sings “I Shall Be Released” over the last few images, it’s heartbreaking.

Any Day Now
Directed by Travis Fine
Written by Travis Fine and George Arthur Bloom
Starring Alan Cumming, Garret Dillahunt, and Isaac Leyva
Rated R
On DVD and Amazon.com