NPR's Stt Simon talks wh Pl Bettany about his starrg role Uncle Frank, a road movie about a gay man who travels home wh his niece for his father's funeral.
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WARM ‘UNCLE FRANK’ OFFERS GLIMPSE OF GAY LIFE HALF A CENTURY AGO
In 1973, teenaged Beth Bledsoe (Sophia Lillis) leav her ral Southern hometown to study at New York Universy where her beloved Uncle Frank (Pl Bettany) is a revered lerature profsor. She soon disvers that Frank is gay, and livg wh his longtime partner Walid “Wally” Naem (Peter Macdissi) -- an arrangement that he has kept secret for years. After the sudn ath of Frank's father -- Beth’s grandfather -- Frank is forced to reluctantly return home for the funeral wh Beth tow, and to fally face a long-buried trma that he has spent his entire adult life nng away om. * gay movie uncle frank *
Uncle Frank is gay and livg New York Cy. He’s always wanted to meet a member of Frank’s fay, but whenever they’ve vised, they’ve been met by Charlotte (Brt Rentschler), a lbian whose specialty is posg as the “slutty girliend” of her gay BFF’s. “I’ve never met a gay person before, ” says Beth.
The trailer for “Uncle Frank” mak look like “The Help, ” except this movie’s straight girl is spired and changed by the sufferg of a Magil Homosexual. That forbidn love ends the kd of tragedy rerved for gay characters s Amerin cema. This film ends by basilly sayg “sure, the homophobic, relig bigots ma my life a livg Hell before makg a half-assed motn to tolerate me after a ath, but they’re still my fay and I should ntue to put up wh them.
A great st and good tentns n't overe Alan Ball's shed, th story about a closeted gay man returng to his South Carola hometown 1974. * gay movie uncle frank *
She soon disvers that Frank is gay, and livg wh his longtime partner Walid “Wally” Naem (Peter Macdissi) -- an arrangement that he has kept secret for years.
* gay movie uncle frank *
Uncle Frank isn't the story of that fay, 's the the story of the olst son (Pl Bettany) who long ago fled , orr to pursue a reer as an amic — and a life as an openly gay man — the New York Cy of the 1960s. Ball's tenncy to over-salt the melodramatic stew this way isn't new — rell Chris Cooper's character om his script for Amerin Bety, who wasn't simply an abive father, but also a snarlg homophobe, a closeted gay man, and, not for nothg, probably a Nazi.