GAY FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM

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The What, Where, & When of Gay Buffalo
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In Memory
Of

Mike Maffei
3/20/53 - 12/28/06

Mike was a beloved figure
in Buffalo's local folk music/coffeehouse scene. Mike lived for almost 17 years with AIDS. His activism was widely admired and to know Mike was to feel inspired.

more

Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Milk, seems to have been busy this past year. Aside from playing muse to fellow out filmmaker Gus Van Sant, he also contributed the screenplay to another biopic: Pedro, the story of The Real World's Pedro Zamora. In 1994, the producers of MTV made a bold and ground-breaking decision when they chose an openly gay, HIV-positive Cuban-American to be one of the housemates on their reality show, The Real World. Pedro's tenure on The Real World brought a face to the AIDS crisis as an entire generation of kids embraced the first gay person that they could identify with on television. Pedro used the show as a forum to raise awareness; he even married his boy friend while the cameras rolled.

If ever there was a case to be made that somebody's sexual identity is an integral part of that person's art, look no further than Samuel R. Delany, the subject of a new documentary, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions Of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. Professor Delany is both African American and gay. His science fiction is noted for its unconventional mix of mythology, linguistics and deconstructed gender politics. What will interest queer audiences, who are unaware of the man's work, is the frankness in which the writer discusses his legendary sex life. His notorious two part essay about Manhattan's adult theaters, Times Square Red Times Square Blue (1999), can be enjoyed as both a sociological dissertation and as out-and-out porn.
It took a long time for Kiss Of The Spider Woman to finally come out on DVD but it was worth the wait. Two men, of vastly different demeanors and ideologies, share the same cell in a brutal South American prison. Louis Molina (William Hurt) is a flamboyant homosexual window dresser who is imprisoned for corrupting a minor. His cellmate is Valentin Arregui (Raul Julia), a journalist jailed for his leftist political activities. To alleviate the day-to-day drudgery, Molina entertains Valentin by retelling the stories of his favorite movies.

According to popular legend, playwright Tennessee Williams underwent psychoanalysis in 1957 to "cure" his homosexuality and the play Suddenly Last Summer was the result. This is inaccurate; the truth is much more complicated than that. Many view Suddenly Last Summer, especially the film version, as being one of the ultimate artistic expressions of a self loathing queer. The inclusion of a negatively portrayed homosexual is hardly proof of this; Williams' fiction is populated with far more grotesque examples of heterosexuals.

Edwardian England was not a good time to be gay. The climate was so bad that noted novelist E.M. Forster began writing a book with a homosexual hero in 1913 that he never published in his lifetime. That book, of course, is Maurice and, in 1987, Merchant Ivory Productions adapted the book to the screen. The film features superb performances and a meticulous attention to period detail. It is a rich filmgoing experience and one of the most beautiful films in all of queer cinema.

CLICK HERE TO READ MICHAEL D. KLEMM'S 1998 INTERVIEW WITH EMANUEL FRIED