Straight Men Can’t Camp: The Polics of “Too Gay” Behd the Canlabra Ben Kger-Robbs / Universy of Texas at At – Flow

Contents:

• HBO’S ‘BEHD THE CANLABRA’ LOOKS BEYOND GAY PIANIST’S LEGENDARY FLAMBOYANCE
• BEHD THE CANLABRA PROV : OUR GREATT ROMANC ARE GAY
• 'BEHD THE CANLABRA' IS 'PRETTY GAY,' SAYS DIRECTOR STEVEN SORBERGH OF LIBERACE BPIC
• QUE(E)RI: IT WAS AN IMPRSIVELY GAY CANN, BUT ‘BEHD THE CANLABRA’ END UP HAVG LTLE TO DO WH THAT
• STRAIGHT MEN CAN’T CAMP: THE POLICS OF “TOO GAY” BEHD THE CANLABRA BEN KGER-ROBBS / UNIVERSY OF TEXAS AT AT
• 'BEHD THE CANLABRA,' LIBERACE MOVIE WH MICHAEL DOUGLAS AND MATT DAMON, DEEMED 'TOO GAY' BY STUDS: DIRECTOR
• STEVEN SORBERGH SAYS ‘BEHD THE CANLABRA’ WAS REJECTED BY HOLLYWOOD STUDS FOR BEG “TOO GAY”
• SORBERGH’S “BEHD THE CANLABRA” IS ON HBO AND NOT THEATERS BEE IT’S TOO GAY

HBO’S ‘BEHD THE CANLABRA’ LOOKS BEYOND GAY PIANIST’S LEGENDARY FLAMBOYANCE

Stt is utterly shocked Las Vegas when a iend tells him no one knows Liberace is gay; the entertaer keeps a heterosexual appearance wh beards such as figure skater Sonja Henie. In a gay bar he meets Bob Black (Stt Bakula) who tak Stt to a Liberace ncert (his first exposure to the mega-star) and to meet Liberace afterwards.

What is tertg is that the film, which was ma for HBO bee was "too gay" for mastream cematic release, has turned out to be "both hilar and heartrendg" (The Playlist), an "timate love story" (Thompson on Hollywood) and Sorbergh's "most emotnal and touchg work" to date (Hollywood Elsewhere). Before that, you have to go back to the mid-neti, to The English Patient (1996) and Clt Eastwood's The Bridg of Madison County (1995), although by 2011 even Clt had sensed the zegeist shift, jumpg ship to squeeze a tear om the fal reel of J Edgar, one of a small raft of films om the last or so – cludg Boys Don't Cry, Of Gods and Monsters, Brokeback Mounta, Milk, I Love You, Philip Morris, A Sgle Man, Weekend, and now Behd the Canlabra – which have taken as their subject the knotty, semi-submerged tsle that is matag a gay relatnship a straight Liberace's se, the weird lengths he went to, which clud plastic surgery and adoptn, were partly a functn of his celebry.

BEHD THE CANLABRA PROV : OUR GREATT ROMANC ARE GAY

') But as the hard-won tenrns of the film's fal moments suggt, homosexuals also have the right to end their relatnships as ceremonly as they beg.

'BEHD THE CANLABRA' IS 'PRETTY GAY,' SAYS DIRECTOR STEVEN SORBERGH OF LIBERACE BPIC

There's a reason, other than Hollywood liberals' self-admiratn, why Sean Penn, Col Firth and Heath Ledger have eher won or been nomated for Osrs for playg gay. In 2010, reviewg the tearjerkers Eloise and Prayers for Bobby at London's Gay and Lbian film Ftival, Dee Rubeck asked: "Why aren't there more feelgood gay films?

" Earlier this month, Sorbergh revealed that his much-anticipated Liberace bpic, which stars Michael Douglas as the flamboyant piano legend and Matt Damon as his longtime lover Stt Thorson, had been emed "too gay" by multiple movie studs spe an all-star st. " Jokg that producer Jerry Wetrb has emed the film "'La Cage x Foll' on steroids, " Sorbergh add, "It's pretty gay, but 's also pretty entertag. Played by 30-year-old nm2933542, Cary-Jam was also only 18 when he met a January 2013 terview wh the New York Post, director Steven Sorbergh said that the film was origally tend for theatril release, but was ultimately produced by and aired on HBO stead bee the story was seen as "too gay" by all of the major Hollywood studs: "Nobody would make , we went to everybody town.

One askg whether the film uld have succeed as much as did if featured two men stead of two women, and the other suggtg s Palme w was a polilly motivated rponse to the anti-gay prottg simultaneoly occurrg Paris (where 150, 000+ people were prottg the recent legalizatn of same-sex marriage France). ” Clearly much lighter (and ls sexy) than the aforementned, ’s based on Gallienne’s own upbrgg, growg up as a female-intified boy who everyone thks is gay (Screen lled “somethg of a one-man La Cage x Foll”).

QUE(E)RI: IT WAS AN IMPRSIVELY GAY CANN, BUT ‘BEHD THE CANLABRA’ END UP HAVG LTLE TO DO WH THAT

So after 11 days of readg awe about this tr of French films, anticipatg they will all be among the first films I n to when they likely have their North Amerin premier at TIFF this fall, I fally got to have my own ltle dose of Cann Film Ftival’s gay ntent: Steven Sorbergh’s “Behd The Canlabra, ” the only LGBT film that screened at Cann that didn’t seem to w an award, and the only one I n now speak hontly about.

STRAIGHT MEN CAN’T CAMP: THE POLICS OF “TOO GAY” BEHD THE CANLABRA BEN KGER-ROBBS / UNIVERSY OF TEXAS AT AT

They meet 1977, when Bob Black (Stt Bakula) fds the young Thorson at a gay bar and brgs him to one of Liberace’s shows. All three, far om ndid self-portras, are extensns of Liberace’s stage act, prentg a theatril versn of his reer path and opulent liftyle scbbed ee of any signs of nflict or homosexualy (“‘wonrful’ is, ‘private’ at, ” wrote John Waters when he reviewed the third book for Vogue 1986).

Sorbergh’s adaptatn is, that sense, le wh nventnal reprentatns of gays and lbians the movi and on televisn today (The Kids Are Alright, Morn Fay), albe wh sex scen that are slightly more Game of Thron than Glee (Sorbergh has said that his film land at HBO bee movie studs nsired “too gay”). But the film’s foc on Liberace’s gay domtic life mak a strangely normalizg portrayal of an entertaer whose onstage self-prentatn was plited, divisive, and arguably que subversive precisely bee wasn’t openly gay.

The former ma him a surge of the post-Stonewall gay rights movement; Thorson wr his book, echog the sentiments of other gay wrers and activists of the time, that he felt Liberace’s nial of his homosexualy and his disease “had set the entire gay movement back a . ” The homophobia here is thly veiled (Liberace won the su), but, if you watch old footage of the showman today, the hostily toward his brand of entertament is unrstandable: more than anythg, Liberace’s act seemed preposteroly, repellently phony.

'BEHD THE CANLABRA,' LIBERACE MOVIE WH MICHAEL DOUGLAS AND MATT DAMON, DEEMED 'TOO GAY' BY STUDS: DIRECTOR

And yet Liberace que obvly didn’t seem like a straight man onstage: The cric David Ehrenste, his 1998 book Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998, wrote that Liberace’s “every word and gture was crafted to raise the qutn of his sexual inty the mds of his adorg fans, only to stave off their actually brgg up earnt at the last mute. ” Liberace’s lawyers seized upon that le, particular, as evince of the thor’s tentn to imply that their client was gay. The wrer and filmmaker Bce LaBce nicely highlighted the puzzle of Liberace’s imprsn upon viewers an say prented last year at a nference on mp: when he broke down mp performers to subtegori, LaBce clud Liberace on the lists of both “Classic Gay Camp” and “Bad Gay Camp” figur.

The pot is that Liberace was not simply a gay man on stage — he was a straight man, a transvte, a grandmother, a queer ltle boy. And Sorbergh's charmg domtic drama, the tensn between his queerns and his closetedns is lost, even if the timate tails of his gay life are fully — and fabuloly — exposed. Douglas, now 68 and nearly half a century to his own reer, dons all manner of nightgown and sequed su and toupee, and os at Damon’s h-faced Thorson, fully relishg the opportuny to play gay at a time when he’s likely to be celebrated for dog so.

STEVEN SORBERGH SAYS ‘BEHD THE CANLABRA’ WAS REJECTED BY HOLLYWOOD STUDS FOR BEG “TOO GAY”

But Douglas’s skillful impersonatn of a gay man, an sential piece of the story is lost: that Liberace was, throughout his reer, a gay man peculiarly ept at impersonatg a straight man. Taylor Ksch and Mark Ruffalo play gay activists tryg to raise awarens of the AIDS epimic the early 1980s HBO's film adaptatn of The Normal Heart.

Ruffalo's openly gay ma character Ned Weeks is based on playwright Larry Kramer while Ksch plays closeted vtment banker Bce Nil. Ruffalo rells: “I said to Ryan [Murphy, who directs], ‘Aren’t we at the age when a gay actor should be playg this?

In this remake of the 1978 French film La Cage x Foll, Williams plays the gay owner of a South Beach drag club, whose newly engaged son asks him to pretend to be straight orr to imprs his fiancée's ultra-nservative father (Gene Hackman), an Oh Republin senator. After the ath of his wife, Hal (Plummer) out to his son (Ewan McGregor) and, spe his advanced age, begs to explore his life as an openly gay man, while simultaneoly retablishg a relatnship wh his son. Frank (Dennis Quaid) is a succsful advertisg exec 1950s suburban Connecticut, whose wife (Julianne Moore) disvers that Frank is havg several homosexual extramaral affairs.

SORBERGH’S “BEHD THE CANLABRA” IS ON HBO AND NOT THEATERS BEE IT’S TOO GAY

After his release, Mola is eventually shot and left for ad by a homophobic police chief, who believed Mola to be a member of a leftist revolutnary group.

This 2008 bgraphil feature se Penn play real-life polician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who 1977 beme the first openly gay person to be elected to California public office. Andrew Beckett (Hanks) is an associate at a rporate Philalphia law firm who, spe livg wh his long-term partner, is not open wh his -workers about his homosexualy or his AIDS. Smh plays a real-life, gay n artist David Hampton, who ns an Upper East Si fay to believg that he is a close iend of their Ivy-league children.

“I jt fd repulsive, ” he sps to a tillated Liberace (Michael Douglas), aptly providg a summatn of the film’s attu toward gay sex. ” Sorbergh’s portrayals of gay sex as somethg ugly and aberrant, I ntend, work to unrme the queer potential of his “gay” project and rema nsistent wh unrhandly homophobic prs disurs surroundg the film’s heterosexual stars and director. Furthermore, suatns that straight artists rema superr judg of gay sensibili lead me to crique the film on the basis of not only s pictns of gay sex but also on s risn of mp stylizatn.