FilmMonthly » Sawyer Lahr

Mark Deklin Plays Gay on GCB

Sawyer Lahr — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:07:47 +0000

Receiving my call one afternoon, Mark Deklin pulls over to the side of the road in his car to park. I commented that he was working on the fly, and he said that’s LA for you. Deklin is the only male series regular on GCB (Good Christian Belles) and playing the gay ex-husband of Cricket Caruth-Reilly in Dallas, TX. The new ABC series starring Kristin Chenoweth, formerly known as Good Christian Bitches, is based on the eponymous book by Kim Gatlin optioned by Darren Star (creator of the HBO series Sex and the City) who attached writer Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias, First Wives Club) to script the pilot. After Starr and Harling were separated from each other during production of the pilot episode, executive producers Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts were hired after the pilot to help Harling. Bobby, as Deklin affectionally refers to the writer, has worked closely with him to develop Blake’s character arch including a relationship with a character named Booth Becker (Denton Blane Everett, Lone Star).
The ever-handsome and smiling Deklin has a recurring role on CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 as the new husband of Scott Caan’s ex-wife, and the lawyer Kirk Stark on Hot in Cleveland. He is also known for his series regular role on the critically acclaimed, short-lived Fox series Lone Star, in which he starred as Jon Voight’s son, as well as a recurring role on Desperate Housewives in which he played the love interest of Eva Longoria. In addition to his work on the small screen, Deklin has held starring roles on Broadway including roles in “Sweet Smell of Success” alongside John Lithgow and “The Lion King” in which he played “Scar.” Deklin sketched out his character for Go Over the Rainbow before it’s premiere in place Pan Am on Sunday, March 6 at 10/9c.
Full interview available on our sister site Go Over the Rainbow.

Making the Boys

Sawyer Lahr — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:25:25 +0000

For the full review, visit our sister site Go Over the Rainbow.
Celebrated playwright and television writer, Mart Crowley survives to tell his artistic struggle leading up to the making of his best known work, The Boys in the Band, produced for the stage by Richard Barr (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) and directed by Robert Moore. The opening nights of the groundbreaking 1967 play at the Playwrights Unit was attended by Jackie Kennedy, Barbara Walters, and Marlena Dietrich and other major public figures drawn by the brave new Off-Broadway production about how a group of gay men react to an uninvited guest at a birthday party. It is credited with being the first play to show gay men “as they are,” which ironically become dated a few years after the Stonewall riots. Director Crayton Robey’s behind the scenes story, Making the Boys, (now on DVD from First Run Features) is a continuation of the 1970 film and stage-play featuring exclusive interviews with the talent who brought the play and film to the screen.

Urbanized

Sawyer Lahr — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:15:07 +0000

Stringing together insights from architects, urban planners, progressive mayors, academics, and social workers, director Gary Hustwit captures the essence of each city he visits with his camera crew in tow. 300 hours of footage later, the producer behind Helvetica and Objectified as well as notable music documentaries (I Am Trying to Break Your Heart), has now completed Urbanized, the last in a trilogy of design films that drew a full-house of environmentally-conscious Chicago cyclists, designers, and architects at an advanced screening in October at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago.

The advance screening was presented in association with Coudal Partners, IDSA Chicago, AIA Chicago. Some of the rarely interviewed famous players featured in Urbanized are iconic architects Oscar Niemeyer, Sir Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas.
During the Q&A, Benet Haller, City of Chicago Coordinating Planner for Planning & Urban Design spoke on behalf of the city’s foreseeable projects including an expansion of our rapid transit system similar to the TransMilenio system in Bogota, Columbia, which offers rapid bus service in dedicated lanes. He also said the Bloomington Trail project is a go and cited the success of the recent Kinzie street protected bike lanes between Milwaukee Avenue and Wells Street.

Director Hustwit suggests that urban planners and architects do not make a city great, but, rather, it is the city dwellers who must participate in the design process, a concept the design research field has been innovating for years (see IDEO, Conifer Research). As Yung Ho Chang (Atelier FCJZ) says in the film, cities do not have to be designed poorly because they are built quickly.
Population growth, climate change, water quality, and social conflict are colliding as we live and breath but the urban planner may be the agent to not lead cities into the future. The final words delivered in Urbanized are resounding; Edgar Pieterse (African Centre for Cities) Director and South African Chair in Urban Policy says that brick and mortar will not change cities for the better; it will be an idea.

Modern Family: Season 2

Sawyer Lahr — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:38:09 +0000

Full of more than just gags and pratfalls, Emmy Award-Winning, Outstanding Comedy Series, Modern Family: Season 2, is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. This year, its unsurprising five Emmys have proven the show is a Prime-time television mainstay. Julie Bowen as Claire and Ty Burrell as Phil took the cake as outstanding supporting actor winners. The laugh-out-loud-funny writing by Steven Levitan and Jeffrey Richman and the acute directing talents of Michael Spiller received awards in their respective categories for a Comedy Series.
Notable for its guest stars, this season features James Marsden (X-Men, X2) as the beefy transient stranger discovered in Cam’s and Mitchell’s hot tub, Jami Gertz (Still Standing) as one of Phil’s witchy clients, and Nathan Lane (Birdcage, The Producers) returns as Cam’s and Mitchell’s flamboyant friend, Pepper Saltzman. Deleted scenes, testimonials, a gag reel, and a music video make the DVD worth every dollar. This season continuously tops itself in every memorable episode.
In “That Old Wagon,” Claire apologizes for crying when memories start flooding back while the family sorts out their dusty old station wagon. In his typical awkward fashion, Phil tries to show sympathy, “Don’t apologize. I love you when you’re human.” Claire is the same bossy know-it-all who’s always right from the first season, but she has her tender moments. Claire finds little Luke’s “jar of sunshine” from a beach outing, and in one the Modern Family’s heartwarming, mystical moments, the jar lights up on the dark walk home after the wagon rolls off a cliff. Finally, Gloria’s son Manny reminds us what an emotionally intelligent boy he is, insisting to wear his burgundy suit jacket to dinner with Kelly from school.
In the mainstream media storm of gay characters and story lines this millennium, Cam and Mitchell are the unrivaled, funniest gay couple on television. Their lovable stereotypes are at the butt of every joke rather than the real people they represent. While some have taken offense, I prefer to think that stereotypes exist because they are sometimes true. They come from somewhere, but they’re called stereotypes because they are extremely narrow characteristics of marginalized people – exactly what Modern Family celebrates. Writers Levitan and Richman prove that gays aren’t exactly politically correct either. Cam is terrified of Mitchell’s mishandling of power tools; “If an accident happens,” says Cam, “I hope it kills me…because I don’t think I would be a very inspiring disabled person.”
The clean comedic sketches and keen writing is up to date with contemporary cultural references, but harkens back to good-old fashion fast-pace comedies like I Love Lucy or the Dick Van Dyke Show. In Modern Family, you either get a punch line the first time or else you’re hit with another seconds after. There’s an equal portion of physical and verbal comedy stringing together multiple scenes as we enter in and out of each family’s private quarters. Irreverent gestures from the actors in the hysterical one-on-one testimonials are to be savored. Families at home know that part of getting along with a stubborn relative who has strong opinions is to agree to disagree.
Starring Ed O’Neill as Jay, Julie Bowen as Claire, Ty Burrell as Phil, Sofía Vergara as Gloria, Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Mitchell, Eric Stonestreet as Cameron, Sarah Hyland as Haley, Nolan Gould as Luke, Ariel Winter as Alex and Rico Rodriguez as Manny. The series is produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television in association with Levitan Lloyd Productions. Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd are executive producers/creators.

The Debt

Sawyer Lahr — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:37:24 +0000

Adapted from the 2007 Israeli film of the same Ha-Hov, The Debt is an espionage thriller that feels unconsciously based on the real-life Mossad espionage story about bringing Nazi war criminal, Karl Adolf, Eichmann to trial. Much like unequivocally evil “surgeon of Birkenau” in The Debt, many Third-Reich doctors performed “scientific” experiments on Jewish women and children who were prosecuted shortly after the war during the Doctor Trials. Eichmann oversaw the death camps and deportation of Jews and was later brought to justice by Israeli-secret agents in 1961 long after the The Nuremberg Trials.
Director John Madden (Proof, Shakespeare in Love) wittingly places our sympathies with the Hungarian Mossad agent, Rachel Singer, played respectively by Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life, The Help) and Helen Mirren who returns to the spy genre after Red (2010). Chastain captures the soft but skilled young Rachel who casually falls in love with David (Sam Worthington, Avatar, Clash of the Titans) while coincidentally getting pregnant with Stephan (Marton Csokas, The Lord of the Rings, Dream House). Ciarán Hinds (There Will Be Blood, Stop-Loss, Munich) as older David and Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom, Michael Clayton, and Shakespeare in Love) as older Stephan, are perfectly cast against the younger versions of themselves. The secret agents adjust uneasily back to civilian life and must live with the lie they told their country and family years ago.
These three agents have only one mission: to kidnap Nazi surgeon Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) and put him on trial in Israel for the world to pay witness. The story experiments with what would have happened if one of these targets were not brought down; as if the state of Israeli could possibly bring every Nazi war criminal to justice.
Like a good thriller, the grossly terrifying villain plays psychological games with his captors by digging at their emotional wounds from the war. There is a fetid air of vengeance in the espionage plot much like another contemporary Israeli film Walk on Water (2004) directed by gay filmmaker Etyan Fox.
Focus Features distribution bring us another cathartic Nazi-bashing film that appears to open more wounds that it heals. It’s still a little less abrasive than Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010) which hammers you over the head with incessant visceral flashbacks of frozen piles of Jews at deportation facilities. The pain is obviously greater than any film can portray. As it’s been said before, as long as there are filmmakers who make holocaust films so well, more will be made.

Gay producer Theodore James

Sawyer Lahr — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 21:29:35 +0000

Sawyer J Lahr interviewed openly gay documentary producer of the HBO Documentary Superheroes. Theodore James (I Owe USA, Wordplay, Square Roots: The Story of Sponge Bob) answered some tough questions about being an openly gay documentary producer who makes movies for everybody.

Why make I Owe USA, Wordplay, and Superheroes instead of say a coming age gay melodrama?
The reason I decided to work in documentaries and not do the gay melodrama is because I wanted there to be a way to showcase gays in a way that would get to the mainstream. Wherein Wordplay, one of the contestant we profiled, Trip Payne, was gay and we profiled him and his boyfriend. It’s always great to showcase someone within the gay community alongside someone who’s straight. It captures a wider audience – not just the gay community who is going to see a film because it’s gay themed anyway. This [Wordplay] goes to a much wider audience. The same with Superheroes. When I discovered that Zimmerman was an openly gay real life superhero and I read a quote that said I don’t do anything in costume because it’s too much like being in the closet. I said this guy seems like a really interesting character – I’ve got to include him in my film. So I try to include members from the gay community, but I don’t try to force them in. I think it’s really nice to have their presence in a very normal, mainstream kind of way. Anybody who likes superheroes is going to watch the film, but the gay melodramas – it’s a very small audience.
James paused to talk about his upcoming project following the Transgender community of Tennessee in the aftermath of the Duanna Johnson police brutality case.
It’s in development right now. I’m going to Memphis. I’m leaving at the end of this month to do some filming. It’s about the transgender community there and the struggles they go through with a backdrop on Duanna Johnson. She was a transgender arrested for prostitution back in 2008 and was brought in to the police station where she was beaten by one of police offers for not going over to get her fingerprints. He [the police officer] called her he-she and faggot, and she was just like “I’m not going to go over there until you call my Grandma Dee,” and he [the officer] forcibly attacked her with metal handcuffs, pepper-sprayed her, and it was really terrible. The footage was leaked to the media in 2008 and became this huge sensation, and the two cops were eventually both fired. Then she was murdered six months later very mysteriously, and it’s a cold case now. So I am trying to do some more gay themed pieces.
Is a gay superhero any different from a straight superhero?
There’s no difference whatsoever. You would never know that Zimmer was gay unless he said. He is proud to be who he is. There really is no difference between him and other superheroes. There are big differences between real life superheroes in general, but nothing that separates him from any of them because he’s gay.
How do you see yourself among other documentary producers and other queer filmmakers in the fiction realm as well?
I’ve never really thought of myself of as a queer filmmaker. I mean, I am, but I’ve always thought of myself as a documentary filmmaker. Just because I happen to be also gay – it doesn’t carry over to my work unless it fits to the subject when it makes sense to include, but I’ve never really looked at myself and thought I was a queer filmmaker. Eventually, I want to get into narrative films. I would like to continue to make mainstream films that include some sort of character or gay theme, but I don’t think I’ll ever make a film that’s specifically marketed to the gay community. I don’t think it’s where my interests lie. I would much rather make a big film that a lot of people see but also has positive gay messages. The main characters may not be gay, but there are some stories that include that and are seen by a larger audience. Hopefully by doing that, it’s showing that it’s normal in the film and it slowly changes reception in different parts of America.
Who would you name as significant queer filmmakers or filmmakers in general as your influences?
I don’t really watch too many gay films. I don’t know of anyone off hand, but I’m sure they do terrific work. The whole reason I discovered the love of film was watching Jurassic Park. I think I was 10 or 11 when that came out and I knew ever since then that this is what I wanted to do. It wasn’t until I moved to LA that I realized that documentary films were more interesting to make because you have the power to spotlight an issue that gets hardly any attention or no one really knows about and get it out there to the mainstream. There are so many people I look up to in the documentary world. Morgan Spurlock is a huge influence and so is Errol Morris – two really terrific filmmakers I admire and look-up to and respect the work they do that I try to emulate in some way.
When I look at gay documentary filmmakers, I don’t see many films in their filmography. I think it’s wonderful you found a way to integrate gay people and gay subject matter into your documentaries without relegating them to gay topics.
Thank you. That’s definitely something I’ve spent a long time to figure how to do in the right way.

Superheroes

Sawyer Lahr — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 23:10:10 +0000

When everyone is hero, no one is, which is why the self-proclaimed real-life superheroes in director Michael Barnett’s debut feature documentary are vigilant do-gooders in costume. Director Michael Barnett follows theses ten average people, inspired by their favorite comic heroes/heroines, who go out at dark to find evil, but wind up acting as EMT, philanthropist, and sometimes bait danger.
Barnett weighs the testimonies and intimate portraits of the real and often times transgressive “characters” he follows with expert talking heads, police Lieutenant Sandra Brown, and psychologist Robin S. Rosenberg, author of Superhero Origins. Comic legend Stan Lee (Creator of Superman and Captain America of the Fantastic Four) can’t image people acting out their superhero fantasies to face real danger. For him, the characters in his stories are strictly an art form.
These real-life superheroes don’t think of themselves as heroes with supernatural super powers. They believe they are real-life equivalents of their favorite comic book stars like Green Lantern, Batman, or one of their own making. The serious hobby of superhero patrols start after their other responsibilities end. When they’re not playing their superhero roles, they are a stay home dad, teacher, security guard, or martial arts instructor. The call to duty is for many inspired by a past trauma, addiction, or criminal offense, which plagued them before they recovered. Some might ask, have they or will they ever fully recover?
The nature of disguise is to mask identity, but gay super hero Zimmer chooses not to mask his face because it reminds him too much of being in the closet. Zimmerman is a member of The New York Initiative, probably the most organized real-life superhero collectives in Barnett’s film. While Mr. Xtreme and Master Legend certainly have unmistakable personalities and superhero fantasies, they don’t make contact with much criminal activity or reality, but they do good in spite of those who don’t recognize their sincerity and commitment to the cause and costume.
A prescient question and also concern for these well-intentioned vigilantes is whether they can do anything about actual crime? The answer is double sided. They are more a deterrent than cape crusaders. From what Barnett presents, the superheroes skirt danger to intimate, bait, and trap criminals, but the result is often reporting the incident to the police. In other instances, the evil doer is poverty and homelessness, but the ultimate enemy each superhero confronts is the apathy.
A Theodore James Production. In association with Freestyle Filmworks and O’Malley Creadon Productions. A Film by Michael Barnett. Edited by Doug Blush, Derek Boonstra, Jeff Chen. Associate Producer Ian Christy. Consulting Producer Peter Tangen. Music by Ceiri Torjussen. Illustrations by Titmouse, Inc. Animated by Syd Garon.

Adua and Her Friends

Sawyer Lahr — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:01:33 +0000

In May, RaroVideo premiered Antonio Pietrangeli’s Adua and Her Friends on DVD, starring then world famous Oscar-winning actress Simone Signoret (Room at the Top, 1959). Following the Merlin law of 1959 in Italy that put bordellos out of business and left women unemployed, Adua (Signoret), leads a pack of former prostitutes trying to make good by opening up a trattoria in the country. Featuring two French and two Italian actresses including sexy Signoret, Sandra Milo (wife of Adua producer Moris Egras), Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959), and Gina Rovere. Adua and Her Friends makes a bold feminist statement that exposes sexual hypocrisy in Italian men and government.
The opening of the film finds a brothel full of women lamenting their last night in business and discussion of what they’ll do now that their livelihood is gone. A few are more optimistic than others, but the family they had isn’t bound to die just because they aren’t allowed to operate as prostitutes. These bantering Italian women try to conceal the obvious fact that they’re sex workers making a go at operating a trattoria without getting caught for their real business upstairs selling sex after Italy outlaws bordellos. A procession of men carrying a coffin leave wreaths outside the brothel doors, foreshadowing an inevitably tragic end to this unforgettable female cast.
After Adua is denied a business license for being a prostitute, she seeks out a shady business man, Erocli, who tells her she needs to get her head checked – that she could never do this on her own. He asks for one million lire a month for him to take care of the deed to the land, rent, protection and the license.
The foursome is so busy running the restaurant and living relatively conventional lives, going back to their old ways seems impossible. Adua falls for a desperate lonely bachelor, Piero (Marcello Mastroianni, La Dolce Vita, La Notte, 8 1/2, Divorce, Italian Style), who is desperate to go to bed with her, but he’s a cheating playboy. She mistakenly makes herself vulnerable and available, and feels shy around the bachelor. Adua adjusts her outfit and spits out her gum at the race track, realizing that without a companion, she looks more like a brothel madam.
Like Adua, Lolita gets tempted to leave the pack by handsome yet hustling musicians and performers. Caterina’s favorite customer, Emilio, eats liver frittatas just to please her. Marilina embraces parenthood by bringing her son to the country to stay at the trattoria and then baptizing him. There is a priceless moment when the boy won’t take communion, so Marilina tells him its sugar.
Italian film historian Maurizio Poro introduces the film in the DVD’s bonus features where he discusses Pietrangeli’s love of actresses and keenness in capturing the many conflicting emotions which the women express the best on film: heartbreak, sexual intrigue, seduction, fragility, fear, temptation, infatuation, neurosis. Poro also mentions the directors stint as second unit director for Luchino Visconti’s Osession, an Italian Postman Always Rings Twice. Earlier Italian films about the life of female prostitutes were Behind Close Shutters (1951), Nights of Cabiria (1957), and The World Condemns Them (in which Pietrangeli was crew).
Pietrangeli tragically drowned while filming his last movie in 1969, but his musicality, melancholy, and supreme screen direction are worth returning to for the pure joy of intimate angles, sharp dialogue, and a one-of-a-kind ensemble of characters.

Patty Hearst

Sawyer Lahr — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:49:24 +0000

Patty Hearst feels like a movie made in the seventies when it is set, but its self-awareness grounds it in 1988 based the real life kidnapping of Patty Hearst in 1974, played tirelessly by Natasha Richardson. Writer Nicholas Kazan and director Paul Schrader capture an essence of social unrest, which defined the late 60s and early seventies. It is flooring how Patty, the nimble University California Berkley student and granddaughter to William Randolph Hearst (Ermal Williamson), is enlightened after being arrested as an accomplice to her own captors. Her last profane lines are resoundingly ironic as she faces the harsh reality from which she will be never be recused. Rightfully, her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was later fully pardoned by outgoing President Bill Clinton. Though she survives captivity, she is punished for cooperating. Patty is punished for the crimes of her captors.
19 year-old virgin Patty Hearst is kidnapped from her apartment, is locked up ransomed, and raped. But this turns out to be the least of the crimes against her when she reveals that she cooperated with her captors for basic survival. The idea that surviving rape and torture is worse than dying at the hands of captors is a frightening reality, one that clearly inspired this psychological first-person kidnapping story that questions the justice system and the morality of oppressed people forced to choose a social death or join their oppressors. The microcosm here applies to WWII Germans Nazis sympathizers, North Koreans, Iraq under sudden Hussein, Rwanda, Darfur, and South Africa where, if you don’t take a side, one will be chosen for you.
Bojan Bazzelli’s camera work captures a prisoner’s eye view as Patty who is blind-folded and kept in the dark closet. When the door is opened, the anonymous back-lit captors remain faceless and terrifying in the shadows, wielding automatic rifles and combat uniforms. Surreal imaginings of the space outside the closet quarters are staged like dreamscapes. The exterior room are lit through pigeon holes in the wall illuminating the black African-American body leading the pack of unidentified “soldiers.” The dark is meant to conceal racial prejudice, but Patty quickly analyzes their elasticities by voice and characterization. Before Patty’s blind fold is removed, the unknown becomes her worst fear. When the blindfold comes off, the captors remain covered with ski masks, and she can only assume the worst intentions.
After almost eight weeks of captivity. the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) holding her prisoner invites her to join or be released back to life. This turning points raises questions about whether her release would cause her a literal, psychological, or social death as a misunderstood victim. Though joining the SLA might seem like the only route to survival, Patty boldly takes on a new Afro-inspired name, Tonya and is trained to see all white people as “pigs” who pose no more threat to a free society than the militant SLA leader Cinque (Ving Rhames).

Christopher and His Kind

Sawyer Lahr — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:21:19 +0000

A straight adaptation of any material into fiction film is never useful or fanciful because movies must be made from the stuff of dreams. Adapting author Christopher Isherwood’s memoir is like trying to remake Cabaret (1972) with Rene Zellweger, which was rumored to be in the works in 2005. While autobiographical adaptations can be refreshing, It should only be done so many times. A perfect example was In Cold Blood (2005) and and the star-studded Infamous (2006) with Toby Jones which never competed in the same arena of accolades or box office because Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote was already soldered to pop culture consciousness and movie-goer memory.
Instead of an attempt to capture the true “Berlin Stories,” its better to see this new BBC production as an adaptation of a memoir rather than a stand alone story. Directed by Geoffrey Sax (Frankie & Alice, White Noise) and starring Matt Smith (Doctor Who), His Kind is narrated by Isherwood (Smith) as he is penning his memoir. Toby Jones, who played gay Capote in Infamous also makes an appearance here as a queeny Brit named Gerald Hamilton with a fetish for being dominated. The lovely Imogen Poots plays Jean Ross, a tamer but still free-wheeling Sally Bowles character. The plot of His Kind follows along with Cabaret very similarly, but, in this adaptation, Sally’s rich german lover never becomes a source of jealousy – he never sleeps with the Isherwood character as implied in Cabaret.
Because Minnelli was the primary focal point in Cabaret, the Isherwood character played by Michael (Michael York) became more bisexual to accommodate the expansion of Bowles’ story. Whereas Sax portrays a very active homosexual lifestyle exploring his romance with Heinz and his unrequited relationship with English poet friend, W. H. Auden.
I was curious how Sax would envision the cabarets and underworld of Berlin in the 30s. His vision of pre-war Nazi Germany during the rise of Hitler isn’t nearly as gritty as Bobe Fosse’s but it gets close to it during scenes when Christopher explores the queer underbelly, a maze below-grade tunnels and viaducts steaming from boiler pressure and humidity gripping the air. The steam creates a vail of anonymity where gay men freely associate, images that Cabaret wouldn’t have dared show even in the ’72 if it expected to be considered Academy-Award worthy.
Every queer film made now not in theatrical distribution is faced with the challenge of appearing too sexually charged and motivated because few viewers are accustomed to seeing gays unabashedly having sex on screen. Where many queer filmmakers go wrong is by framing gay sex too bleakly and inartistic. Sax chooses to shoot sex scenes very directly and unromantic when appropriate the nature of Isherwood’s relations. Sax keenly leaves out lovemaking scenes between Isherwood and Heinz to preserve the legitimacy of their bond. His Kind continues to justify adaptation Isherwood material including award-winning Single Man (2009).
From BFS Entertainment, Christopher and His Kind goes on sale June 28th.