Band of Thebes

The Danish Girl Now Starring Kidman and Paltrow as MTF and Wife

Readers of David Ebershoff's first novel The Danish Girl will be the luckiest members of the audience when the film adaptation is released in 2011. They will already have absorbed the true story of Einar Wegener, a Danish artist who in 1930-31 became the world's first man medically transformed into a woman, Lile Elbe. PW said of Ebershoff's book, "That it comes off triumphantly is a tribute to his taste and restraint and to the highly empathetic quality of his imagination." Although the project was originally announced with Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie, Shopgirl), now the movie will be directed by Tomas Alfredson who rocked everyone with his Let the Right One In. The other change is worse: Charlize Theron has been replaced by Gwyneth Paltrow as Greta, the wife. Why couldn't it be Emanuelle Devos, Emmanuelle Béart, or Samantha Morton? Or even Naomi Watts here? Kidman will play Einar.

Veterans Day 2009: DADT To Be History by Veterans Day 2010?

This statue of two naked men illustrating "military instruction" brightens the park across the street from the White House. Barney Frank now says Don't Ask Don't Tell will be repealed as part of the 2011 defense budget bill which will be approved next fall. He's right in saying the budget is the place to do it, not a separate up or down vote. Repealing DOMA is one hundred times more important.

More "Single" Than Ever: Colin Firth Loses His Gay Lovers

Just like a supergerm, Hollywood's de-gaying of film advertising is mutating more rapidly and successfully than predicted. Tom Ford's trailer for A Single Man has been replaced by the Weinsteins' completely straight version which edits out the names of the actors who play his lovers. Peter Knegt reports:

"The new trailer essentially is altered to suggest the core of the film is the relationship between Colin Firth and Julianne Moore’s characters, even removing from the end of the trailer the names of both Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult (who play Firth’s love interests). Moreover, in the first trailer, we see Firth’s character kiss both Goode and Moore, in the second we just get Moore.  There’s also a sequence of shots in the first trailer which crosscuts Firth, who plays a professor in the film, staring into the eyes of both a female student and a male student. In the second, as you might guess, we only get the female (in a telling twist, instead of cutting to the male eyes, the trailer cuts to a quote from Entertainment Weekly saying '[Firth’s] performance is bound to win attention in this year’s Oscar race')."

And then there's the Guccification of Isherwood's classic gay novel: so wrong but so pretty.

Born November 10: Roland Emmerich

Three days from now Roland Emmerich's eighth movie 2012 opens and by next week he'll have grossed $1 billion in domestic ticket sales. Already his over the top popcorn spectaculars have taken in $2.46 billion worldwide, making him the eighteenth most successful director of all time. Nobody brings the wow like Roland. The fifty-four year old was born in Stuttgart and, with his sister Ute, runs Centropolis Entertainment, responsible for Stargate, Godzilla, The Patriot, The Day After Tomorrow, and 10,000 BC. He also co-wrote, co-produced, and directed Independence Day, which Hollywood considers the gold standard of contemporary disaster flicks (at one point it was the number two highest grossing film of all time) but which you think of as Harvey Fierstein's widest exposure. (Until he was killed by the Empire State Building toppling onto him. Alas.) Emmerich says he has witnessed plenty of racism in Hollywood (the studio did NOT want to cast Will Smith; nor did they want an interracial couple in TDAT) but no homophobia. An early Hillary Clinton supporter, he is a big donor to lgbt and anti-global warming causes. If you think his movies are an assault on the senses, take this tour of his 1830 townhouse in Knightsbridge. The bank vault door and the airplane wing furniture are nothing compared to the massive Chinese and Russian propaganda murals, not to mention the life-sized wax pope reading his own obituaries or the middle finger Princess Diana portrait. But, really, watch the 2012 trailer for some bizarrely balletic beauty. 

Brokeback at #17 Is Highest Gay Film on Times' Top 100 of Decade

Long before Prada (#100), Emily Blunt was a teenage lesbian in My Summer of Love (#47).

The film critics at the Times of London have compiled a list of the the best movies of the decade, and though their rankings are screwy they've included a lot of favorites: Yi Yi, The Beat that my Heart Skipped, Amores Perros, In the Mood for Love, City of God, Gomorrah, Downfall, Under the Sand, Mulholland Drive, The Incredibles, The Queen, Casino Royale, and the gay or Almodóvar films below.

17. Brokeback Mountain

22. Far from Heaven

47. My Summer of Love

53. Milk

56. Volver

75. Talk to Her

Obviously, lots of unforgivable, lunatic omissions. (I know, you can't believe ______ isn't here! Or _____ !!) Also, they've decided to be flagrantly provocative with their top five. Don't fall for it.

1. Cache

2. Bourne Supremecy & Bourne Ultimatum

3. No Country for Old Men

4. Grizzly Man

5. Team America: World Police

(Thanks to Brian Mulligan for tipping me to this list, since he knew I had NO IDEA another decade was ending.)

Peter Tatchell on Malcolm X and the Lack of Black LGBT Icons

Blasting the UK's Black History Month for excluding lgbt heroes and de-gaying the few who are mentioned, Peter Tatchell wonders where all the black lgbt icons are. He writes:

"Malcolm X's bisexuality is more than just a question of truth and historical fact. There has never been any black person of similar global prominence and recognition who has been publicly known to be gay or bisexual. Young black lesbian, gay and bisexual people can, like their white counterparts, often feel isolated, guilty and insecure about their sexuality. They could benefit from positive, high-achieving role models, to give them confidence and inspiration. Who better than Malcolm X? He inspired my human rights activism and was a trailblazer in the black freedom struggle. He can inspire other LGBT people too.

"Right now, there is not a single living black person who is a worldwide household name and who is also openly gay. That's why the issue of Malcolm X's sexuality is so important. Having an internationally renowned gay or bisexual black icon would do much to help challenge homophobia, especially in the black communities and particularly in Africa and the Caribbean where homosexuality and bisexuality are often dismissed as a 'white man's disease.' "

Malcolm X might be a complicated choice for bi pride because all evidence suggests he never again had sex with men after joining Nation of Islam and getting married. Tatchell argues, "Abstaining from gay sex after his marriage does not change the fundamentals of his sexual orientation." Current Nation of Islam leaders angrily disagree. 

Do you notice anything odd about Tatchell's list of black lgbt people? Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, Luther Vandross, Bessie Smith, Langston Hughes, Johnny Mathis, Alice Walker, Bayard Rustin, Ma Rainey, Alvin Ailey, Josephine Baker, Greg Louganis, Little Richard, Angela Davis, Tracy Chapman, and RuPaul? Every one of them is American.

Born November 9: Anthony Asquith

Everyone knows that Anthony Asquith's father was Prime Minister during WWI but remember too that years earlier he was the Home Secretary who signed the "gross indecency" arrest warrant against Oscar Wilde, so it's lovely, isn't it, that his youngest son should be gay and best known for directing Pygmalion and The Importance of Being Earnest. After graduating from Oxford, Anthony went to Hollywood not to struggle but to live in high style as a houseguest of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. for six months. Later, back in London, he directed his first feature, a romance called Shooting Stars set among actors at a movie studio. That success launched a career spanning forty films, including three Shaw adaptations and ten collaborations with Terence Rattigan, among them French Without Tears, The Winslow Boy, and The Browning Version. Asquith was at ease in many genres -- war movies, comedies, costume dramas, thrillers -- and directed actors as diverse as Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, John Mills, Dirk Bogarde, Rex Harrison, and Richard Burton. Closeted but not shrinking, he was widely believed to be the man in the mask at the orgy in the Profumo affair. That person's "theatrical display of masochism" crystallized the public's notion of the Empire in decay and a government run by degenerates... basically, the gross indecency trial of its day. He remained president of the film technicians union from 1937 to his death from cancer in 1968. The British Academy Award for best music is named in his honor.

Sarah Waters Beats Dustin 'Milk' Black for Stonewall Writer of the Year

Last night the UK's leading gay rights group Stonewall presented their annual awards, naming Sarah Waters "Writer of the Year" for her straight novel The Little Stranger. It's her third consecutive Man Booker finalist. She beat Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and Geraldine Bedell, Paul O'Grady, and Nicholas de Jongh. In sports, motorbike star Michael Hill triumphed over the Hot Scots Football Club, the Kings Cross Steelers RFC, world billiards champ Allison Fisher, and soccer coach Hope Powell.

The awards are only in their fourth year and garner major mainstream coverage, more than the multi-city GLAAD ceremonies now in their twenty-first year.

• Hero of the Year - chosen by Stonewall thousands of supporters – Reverend Scott Rennie. The Church of Scotland’s first openly gay minister was inducted in July in the face of shrill opposition from some quarters yet backed by his own Aberdeen congregation.
• Broadcast of the Year – Corrective Rape in South Africa. Samira Ahmed’s special report from Johannesburg focused on a horrific phenomenon emerging in South Africa – the targeting of lesbians for ‘corrective rape’. The judges singled out the report as a ‘shocking piece of television, which cast a light on discrimination suffered by lesbians, all too often overlooked in the media.’
• Entertainer of the Year – Boyzone. The Judges noted the huge influence that boy bands have on young people in particular. Stephen Gateley’s brave decision to come out was an important step and the band made pop history with their video featuring a same-sex couple a year ago.
• Journalist of the Year  – Johann Hari and Joan Bakewell. The judges described Joan Bakewell as ‘an institution, who has supported us for decades.’ Johann Hari was described as ‘a force to be reckoned with. He’s quickly established himself as a leading commentator.’
• Politician of the Year – Ben Bradshaw MP. The first person ever elected as an openly-gay politician to reach Cabinet rank, Ben Bradshaw won and held on to his parliamentary seat in the face of strong homophobic opposition.
• Publication of the Year – g3. The leading free magazine for gay and bisexual women g3 this year celebrated its 100th issue.
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• Stonewall Sports Award – Michael Hill. This year saw Michael achieve a season best of sixth place in the British 125cc Motor biking Championship.
• Writer of the Year – Sarah Waters. For her fifth novel, The Little Stranger , which impressed fans and critics and was short-listed for the 2009 Man Booker prize.
• Stonewall & Barclays Community Group of the Year – Allsorts youth project, based in Brighton. Winner of a £5,000 cheque presented at the ceremony.
• Bigot of the Year – Father John Owen (voted by thousands of Stonewall supporters) and Jan Moir. Father John Owen claimed on BBC One’s The Big Questions that the majority of child abuse was carried out by gay men. Jan Moir became a late entrant to the award, following unprecedented requests from Stonewall supporters prompted by her Daily Mail piece on the death of Stephen Gately.

The Hero, Bigot and Community Group of the Year Awards were voted for by 6,000 Stonewall supporters across Britain. All other categories were chosen by a judging panel including Evan Davis, Sue Perkins and John Amaechi.

Born November 6: Michael Cunningham

Surefire prediction: One of the highlights of 2010 will be Michael Cunningham's sixth novel, Olympia. If you didn't get a chance to read the excerpt in Electric Literature this summer, listen up: knockout. After the brave if wobbly experimentation of Specimen Days, he returns to his bedrock themes of A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood, brotherly love and rivalry, furious mothers, sexual frustration, gay life. Peter and Matthew Harris grow up and grow apart in Milwaukee in the 60s and 70s; one of them is dead by 1982. Luxuriating in his versatility, The Hours author is finishing two screenplays: a slasher flick called Beautiful Girl and the Dusty Springfield biopic starring Nicole Kidman. Fifty-seven today, he's still the best person to see outside Spiritus after the bars have closed.

Last week the Free Press published Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives. Cunningham discusses Virginia Woolf. Other gay contributors are Edmund White, who will transfix you with his account of the monstrous Harold Brodkey; and Alexander Chee, who writes about his teacher Annie Dillard.

The Maid by Sebastian Silva

Why didn't the media crown 2009's Sundance the Year of the Grand Jury Gays? Winning the Grand Jury Dramatic prize was the lesbian-inclusive Precious directed by openly gay Lee Daniels, and the winner of the Grand Jury World Cinema prize was The Maid directed by openly gay Sebastian Silva who co-wrote the screenplay with his ex-boyfriend Pedro Peirano. Precious is very good and fairly inventive but overplays its hand. The Maid is spectacular precisely because its touch is so subtle. Forty-one year old Raquel has spent twenty-three years working for an attractive Chilean family of six. Just as the maid's favorite children are growing up and slipping away from her, their mother wants to ease Raquel's burden by hiring a second maid. Threatened on all sides, Raquel is a passive aggressive volcano straight out of a Claude Chabrol film. She burns through the first two helpers; the third one is utterly different. The movie takes a wonderful, believable turn. And amazingly, through it all, upstairs and downstairs, city and country, age and youth, Silva steers clear of every cliche. If you can handle his careful pace and lack of soundtrack, you'll see a marvel. Slate and The Washington Post gave it perfect scores. IndieWire interviewed Silva last month. Trailer below.

A New Literary History of America

To kill time until Larry Kramer finishes his monumental history The American People (said to be twenty years in the making and ranging from the Stone Age to the present) you can read this just published 1,128 page anthology of over 200 all new essays, A New Literary History of America, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Spanning 1507 to 2008, topics cover Spanish explorers, the Salem witch trials, and Jefferson's first inaugural address to Alcoholics Anonymous, Malcolm X, and Maya Lin. Obvious icons get their due: Huck Finn, Henry Ford, Jay Gatsby, Mickey Mouse. Essays on Melville and Henry James avoid their sexuality, but Angus Fletcher does acknowledge the homoeroticism throughout Walt Whitman's work. I read the four gay essays, each of which was particularly smart.

Camille Paglia on Tennessee Williams

William J. Mann on Some Like It Hot

Maureen McLane on Adrienne Rich

Sarah Bynum on Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story

Because this is a literary history of America rather than a history of literary America, the absence of Stonewall or Aids is glaring. The ratio of essayists is more balanced but their subjects skew too male. And the index is unhelpful; it's more of a concordance. The entry for "Jews" lists exactly five pages excluding most of the Jewish authors discussed like Saul Bellow. Despite the excellent essays above, there's no entry for lesbian or gay or homosexuality or sexuality. Included, but hard to find.

You can read the editors' introduction here.

Scientific Reminder as Maine Repeals Gay Marriage Law

Plenty of recaps and outrage today. National Geographic brings the facts:

"In general sexual intercourse between married partners expends only 25 to 50 calories, about the energy it takes to walk up two flights of stairs."

Born November 4: J.R. Ackerley

At prep school Joe Ackerley was so extremely good looking he was nicknamed Girlie, and decades later he named the love of his life, his Alsatian, Queenie. So why is his classic book called My Dog Tulip? Because the editors of the magazine that bought first-serial rights worried that Queenie would inspire jokes about Ackerley's homosexuality and they insisted he change her name. Other revisions went the right way. In 1952 (after his parents' deaths) he rewrote and expanded his 1932 memoir Hindoo Holiday to be more open about gay exploits in India.

Earlier he had served in two tours of duty in WWI, including two serious injuries, nearly two years as a prisoner of war, and surviving the death of his older brother who had been their father's favorite. Later, he became editor of the BBC magazine The Listener, where he could promote the works of many nascent gay writers including Auden, Isherwood, Larkin, King, and Spender. 

More out than millions after him, Ackerley pined for a longterm relationship with what he called an Ideal Friend. Failing that, he paid for sexual encounters with young guardsmen, laborers, and sailors. E.M. Forster, who had gotten Acklerley his job in India, told him, "Joe, you must give up looking for gold in coal mines," but it was through one of these rough trade lovers, Freddie Doyle, that Acklerley at 49 inherited Queenie (as Doyle was being sent to prison for burglary). Ackerley tells their story in his only novel, We Think the World of You. An animated film version of My Dog Tulip voiced by Christopher Plummer, Isabella Rossellini, and Lynn Redgrave screened at Toronto this year to strong reviews. Trailer below.

Amazon's Best 100 Books List Lacks LGBT Lives

Unfurling Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility over gay books, Amazon's editors released their list of the best 100 works of 2009 which offers only one title primarily about lgbt lives and that's a biography of the miserably married and closeted John Cheever. At number four is openly genius Colm Tóibín's superb novel Brooklyn, a straight love story set in 1950s Ireland and New York. Steig Larsson's seventh ranked Swedish crime thriller The Girl Who Played with Fire again features Mikael Blomkvist and his ex Lisbeth Salander, who this time has a girlfriend; when she's framed for three murders the media hypes her as a “psychotic lesbian SM Satanist.” In ninth place is David Small's desperately bleak graphic memoir Stitches about his botched vocal chord operation leaving him mute at fourteen under the care of his "tyrannically stingy and excessively scolding" mother, a repressed lesbian, and his doctor father who dosed him with so much radiology it gave him cancer. No doubt some lgbt characters appear in other books, but a first look at the top 100 shows a disturbing lack of titles about openly queer lives.

Amazon's Top Ten Books of 2009:

1. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
2. Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
4. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
5. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
6. Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival by Norman Ollstead
7. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson
8. The City & The City by China Mieville
9. Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
10. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba

Click to see the full top 100 or Amazon's 100 bestselling titles of 2009 (through October).

Born November 2: Luchino Visconti, k.d. lang

Born a count in one of northern Italy's six richest families, Luchino Visconti was adrift until he was thirty, when Coco Chanel decided he should work in movies and got him a job as third assistant director on a film by Jean Renoir. His own debut as a director came after seven years, during which time he learned the trade and dated the photographer Horst. Of his twenty films, most praised are The Leopard, which Twentieth Century Fox butchered in its English version, The Damned, which earned him his first Oscar nomination, The Stranger, based on Camus' classic, Rocco and his Brothers, with its open subplot of the boxing coach who pays young fighters for sex, and Death in Venice, from Thomas Mann's number one ranked novel on Publishing Triangle's list of the 100 best lgbt books. At sixty-nine, Visconti died of a heart attack in Rome, survived by his partner of more than ten years German actor Helmet Berger, who appeared in four of Visconti's films, most notably The Damned and Ludwig. (And here bare.) Berger later took a role on  Dynasty and in 2007 earned a special Teddy for lifetime achievement at the Berlin Film Festival.

Before Melissa, before Ellen, before George Michael, before Adam Lambert, k.d. lang came out way back in 1992. Although that was fairly groundbreaking at the time, her coming out did nothing to hinder the sales of her multi-platinum album Ingenue, nor did it prevent her from winning another Grammy, being made an officer of the Order of Canada, or getting named to VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock n Roll and CMT's 40 Greatest Women in Country Music. In fact, she sparked a much angrier backlash in rural areas by supporting an vegetarian campaign called Meat Stinks. From 1997 to 2000 she took a break, fell in love with The Murmurs singer Leisha Hailey, moved to Los Angeles, and came back with her happiest album ever, Invincible Summer, quoting Camus: In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. Three years later she won her fourth Grammy for her collaboration with Tony Bennett and also released an album of covers of songs by Canadian composers. In February 2008 she released Watershed, her first album of original material in eight years.

Peter Knegt on How "Oscar's Gay Tendencies" Are All White

IndieWire's Peter Knegt devotes his new column to A Single Man and how three out gay men could be nominated in this year's best director category: Lee Daniels (Precious), Tom Ford (A Single Man) and Rob Marshall (Nine). Of Daniels he says:

If he gets nominated for best director, it would be much more monumental because he is African-American than it would be because he is openly gay.  And this opens up a completely different can of socially injust worms than this article is prepared to properly contexualize.

But in brief, the 2000s have seen scores of African-Americans take home acting Oscars.  Six wins and seventeen nominations - with a good likelihood of additions coming this year.  In terms of wins, this is more than was received in total prior to this decade. Quite disturbingly, “Precious” would be the first best picture nominee ever directed by an African-American, and Daniels only the second black best director nominee. Gays, on the other hand, have received nearly a dozen best director nominations.  But let’s keep in mind the fact that all of them have been white men. In fact, there have been more nominations for gay men for best director than all non-male and non-white people combined. 

...t’s a complex set of politics to simplify in a sentence, but I think it’s reasonable to suggest that in the Hollywood power hierachy, as long as you’re a white male (and let’s face it, straight-acting), being gay is not as much of a disadvantage as say, being female or black.

A Single Man opens in six weeks. Make sure you've read Isherwood's brief novel before December 11.

Marathon 2009

In Queens, around mile 14, a man standing with his child held a sign saying "Run Like a Fat Kid to a Cupcake." That, and the way gentrified Brooklynites encroached several feet into the narrow street to get a better view were among the day's few low points. The highs were many and frequent, especially the Herricks High School band, the djs in the Bronx and Harlem, the guy handing out bakery cookies leaving Brooklyn, the 10 year-old holding a sign with the red circle and slash cross-out symbol over the word "wall," the people holding the sign that said something like "Nadim Rahjama You Can Still Win This!" at mile nine, the mature gay couple waving a large rainbow flag in Sunset Park, the 24 year-old shirtless twins whom I beat by twelve minutes, and the silence on all five bridges as the only sounds were hundreds of very soft footfalls and the papery shuffle of race numbers. 

Crossing the Queensboro Bridge I passed a man about fifty who had lost one leg below his knee and the other leg mid-thigh. He ran without physical assistance though two guides flanked him. For a different kind of inspiration, you might consider Dean Karnaze's books Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner or his 50/50 about running fifty marathons in fifty consecutive days in each of the fifty states. Or try openly gay Chris Bergland's quotation-filled The Athlete's Way: Sweat and the Biology of Bliss which PW called, "both a comprehensive plan and an encouraging partner for longterm, life- changing fitness goals."

The NYT's main pre-marathon stories this year were runners who cheat and runners who die. Safe to say, the number of lgbt runners out of 43,475 finishers far exceeds those who took illegal shortcuts or had heart attacks, but again we weren't mentioned. Nevertheless, a great day.

The International Friendship Run

Standouts among the thousands of foreign runners in yesterday's International Friendship Run were the dozen or so firefighters from Paris. They all wore these red lycra shorts, which said NYC Marathon 2009 on the front. Distracting. A prince from Holland reminded the crowd that 2009 is the 40th anniversary of the marathon and the 400th anniversary of the Dutch sailing into New Amsterdam Bay.

Born October 30: Néstor Almendros 2

Like so many great artists, Néstor Almendros did not follow a straight path to his genius. Born in Barcelona in 1930, he became disgusted with Franco's Spain by age eighteen and followed his father to Cuba, then went to film school in Rome, tried and failed to work in New York, left for France, was ready to give up at thirty-four, and got an absurdly lucky break: He happened to be on set the day the director of photography quit a short project with Eric Rohmer. From there Almendros became one of the world's  greatest cinematographers, carefully composing each frame and using natural light like a painter on over fifty films, including, in order, Two English Girls, Chloé in the Afternoon, The Story of Adele H., The Marquise of O., Days of Heaven for which he won an Oscar, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Blue Lagoon, The Last Métro for which he won a Cesar, Still of the Night, Sophie's Choice, Pauline at the Beach, Places in the Heart, Heartburn, Imagine: John Lennon, and Billy Bathgate.

For anyone seriously interested in cinema, his book A Man with a Camera is essential reading. Not only does he clarify how the director of photography differs from the cameraman but he devotes a brief chapter to each of forty films. He describes the challenges and innovations of working with directors (again and again it's Rohmer, Truffaut, or Robert Benton) to decide which colors they want the costume and set designers to use and how Almendros will light and shoot each scene. They usually start with fine art. Their initial inspiration for Kramer vs. Kramer, set on the Upper East Side of the 1970s, was Piero della Francesca, with a little Hockney and, for the child's bedroom, Magritte. For The Blue Lagoon, he concentrated on Gauguin. For the Meryl Streep - Robert DeNiro psycho-thriller Still of the Night, he looked to old Fritz Lang movies and Edward Hopper. Remarkably generous with the secrets of his working trade, his autobiography completely ignores his private life. And yet, even though he was closeted, when he had the opportunity to direct his own movie in 1984, he chose to make a documentary about Cuba's persecution of gay men, Mauvaise conduite [Improper Conduct], which won the audience award at Frameline. He also shot ads for Calvin Klein and Armani. He died of aids in 1992 at age sixty-one. Human Rights Watch gives an annual film award named in his honor.

Office Spinoff Song: "You Look Gay... Hope You Get Killed..."

Kelly and Erin, two of the more appealing characters from The Office, have formed a band called Subtle Sexuality and today released their first single, "Male Prima Donna." Though the subject is ripe to skewer, the lyrics are unfortunate. The lead-up to the second chorus ends:

You look gay in your skinny tie!
I hope you get killed in a drive-by!

Not to be humorless the day the after the hate crimes bill was signed into law, but NBC would never allow the juxtaposition of any other minority group [e.g. You look Jewish / Tamil Hindu / Irish / etc.] with the wish "I hope you get killed." Evidently, everyone involved thought this version was appropriate and funny. Kelly is played by Mindy Kaling, Dartmouth '01, who directed the video and writes many Office scripts. Erin is played by Ellie Kemper, Princeton '02, who writes for The Onion and McSweeney's.

A.S. Byatt at the Strand

Last night at the Strand, A.S. Byatt read from her novel The Children's Book and spoke about her evolution as a novelist. Whereas she used to write "twenty or thirty drafts" when she was younger, she writes "one draft now," after strenuous concentration. She said she "might think for a week about one chapter even though I know most of what will happen." She developed her Russian doll style of text within text while writing her Booker Prize winning Possession because she was "at a period in my life when I couldn't go on with straight realism." It was her way of saying, "Look, this isn't the only way of telling a story. There are myriad ways." 

She said again that one of the seeds of this novel was her thinking about how many great writers of that golden age of young people's fiction raised children who eventually committed suicide. She remarked that two of her ruling metaphors this time were gold & silver and going underground. The name Wellwood, she admitted, was "the surgeon who saved my life."

She said using her initials rather than her given name was "more dignified and more private." She agreed with T.S. Eliot that "the writer should be impersonal."

Answering a question about whether or not her novels are pagan, she replied, "I think my novels are slightly anti-Christian, which I suppose one shouldn't say." Explaining that ever since childhood she was always more interested in the Norse gods, she said she was "not a believing pagan. In fact, I'm an unbeliever. I'm a reasonable person."

Revisiting her dust-up about adults who exclusively read Harry Potter, she said she thought J.K. Rowling was a good writer for children and her "own addiction, and it's just that, an addiction, is Terry Pratchett."

Mild spoiler alert: I asked her about Julian's shift from his obsessive attraction to other boys to his proposing to a woman. This led us to a longish discussion of Lytton Strachey, his letters, and how "they were all gay, and they all got married." She didn't feel Julian had gone straight. Coming back to it a moment later, she said, "And I think Julian still thinks he's gay."

Proving that even brilliant writers can be fallible, The Children's Book was originally titled The Hedgehog, the White Goose and the Mad March Hare. Her next two books are a retelling of Ragnarok, the Scandinavian myth of the end of the world, and a novel about the Surrealists and the psychoanalysts.

(I love this photo by Ozier Muhammad/NYT. Last night photography was prohibited, a shame because she wore comfy red slip-on shoes.)

Scholastic Book Fairs Reverse Ban of Book with Lesbian Moms

Last week, the Scholastic school book fairs banned Lauren Myracle's Luv Ya Bunches for one of its four schoolgirl protagonists having two moms. The author agreed to clean up language such as "geez," "sucks," and "oh my god," but she refused to heterosexualize the lesbian mothers into a straight couple. Scholastic announced they would not sell the title at their book fairs because it failed "to meet the norms of the various communities that host the fairs," according to spokeswoman Kyle Good.

Myracle said, "A child having same-sex parents is not offensive, in my mind, and shouldn't be 'cleaned up. I find that appalling. I understand why they would want to avoid complaint letters — no one likes getting hated on — but shouldn't they be willing to evaluate the quality of the complaint? What, exactly, are children being protected against here?"

Well, Change.org took up the cause and in 48 hours collected more than 4,000 signatures demanding that Scholastic reverse their draconian policy. Yesterday, the company announced the book will appear in their spring book fairs.

Despite this happy ending, the overall principles guiding the book fairs seem confused. They still won't include the gay penguin picture book And Tango Makes Three, but they released a statement saying "we are committed to a review process that considers all books equally regardless of their inclusion of LGBT characters and same sex parents." Luv Ya Bunches was always available in the Scholastic Book Club catalog, and Tango is available on Scholastic's website.

The hair-trigger touchiness is evident at the school level, too. Last year, a Vancouver, Washington school district discontinued the book fairs after one parent complained The Golden Compass was anti-Christian.

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt

Her finest achievement since Angels & Insects and Possession, A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book begins in 1895 in the V&A museum where its first spoken words are, "I said I'd show you a mystery." Although the novel overflows with perplexing objects, that first mystery is a runaway urchin, Philip Warren, who lives hiding in the museum in order to sketch its treasures. The speaker is Julian Cain, the son of the museum's director, who shows his discovery to Tom Wellwood, whose fertile mother Olive is a successful writer of children's books. How their three sprawling families interact, intermarry, and rebel, over the next twenty-five years with one another and with the Fludds, strange potters to whom Philip is apprenticed, forms the bulk of this ravishing 675-page novel. Its major themes of parenthood and childhood, the cost of storytelling and the loss of innocence, both personally and globally, inevitably culminate on WWI battlefields.

Easily traversing all class lines, in settings from London and Kent to Paris and Munich, Byatt immerses the reader in every sensation of the era. Her three dozen (!) main characters are Fabianists, capitalists, anarchists, artists, suffragists, servants, and soldiers; her historical figures include Emma Goldman, Sarah Bernhardt, J.M. Barrie, and gay icons Edward Carpenter, Rupert Brooke, and Oscar Wilde. Among her chief areas of expertise here are fairy tales, pottery, puppetry, poetry, jewelry, theater, commerce, the emancipation of women, and the primal importance of work. And the sex lives of teenagers. When vagabond Philip has a bed all to himself for the first time in his life, "He lay back, and took himself in hand, and worked himself into a rhythm of delight, and a soaring wet ecstasy." Julian at 15 frankly assesses the sexual merits of Tom at 13, and still lusts after him well into college. After a long description: "He was the sort of beautiful boy, quite unconscious of his beauty, who was much discussed and courted both in Julian's prep school, and at Marlowe. Julian had asked himself whether Tom was pretty, or a possible object of passion, and had seen that, in theory, he certainly was. Pretty boys at school became rapidly self-conscious... Tom expected to be full of love and lust, and consequently usually was." Girls' desires are treated just as naturally.

Byatt's compulsive layering of detail is excessive, yet always brilliant. Not content to dazzle readers merely with her own output, she can't stop herself from including selections of works by her characters. But it's essential to see how Olive's fairy tales steal from her children's lives. Or how the intricate narratives of the German puppet shows are pregnant with meaning in the book's broader plot. Julian's wartime poems are so good that one of them, Trench Names, was published in The New Yorker last April.

The Children's Book is an instant favorite. Treat yourself.

Walt Whitman Is the New Brooke Shields / Miley Cyrus

Not being a television user, I had no idea Walt Whitman has become a jeans spokesperson. Yes, that's his rich voice reading "America." Everything that's wonderful about his delivery above is absent below in a didactic interpretation of "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" Nevertheless, a good day for bare chested gay poetry "...full of manly pride and friendship."

Gay Neo-Nazis Top Rome's Film Festival Prizes

Former fashion photographer Nicolo Donato, 35, has won the Rome Film Festival's top prize for his first feature, Brotherhood, about two Danish anti-gay neo-Nazis who fall in love. The jury, headed by Milos Forman, honored the gay drama which had its world premiere at the festival:

"Lars leaves the army and joins a group of neo-Nazis, which organises ruthless raids against Arabs and homosexuals. Apprenticeship to the 'brotherhood' is tough and Lars is supported by Jimmy, who acts as his mentor, charged with testing his trustworthiness and the preparation of fundamentalist far right texts in the style of 'Mein Kampf'. Unforeseeably, a passionate affair ensues between the two men. A love lived in secret, until the group's racist and violent rules end up forcing the pair to face the inevitable quandary: to betray their ideological 'brothers' or betray their lover other and their own feelings. Whatever the choice, it will lead to violence one way or another, whether physical or mental."

IndieWire comments:

"Same-sex relationships were a big theme in this year’s Rome lineup, though the other films were not as successful as Brotherhood in balancing the intersection of love and need for drama. Argentinean film Plan B, the feature debut of Marco Berger, comes off as an amateurishly filmed, written and acted take on the need of two token straight guys to explore their feelings for one another (think a two-dollar amateur Humpday remake as posted in not necessarily connected episodes on YouTube), while the only intermittently fiery local period drama Sea Violet by Donatella Maiorca is a Sicily-set tale of Sapphic desire that necessitates cross-dressing to set things, well, straight."

The ceremony Friday night also honored Helen Mirren as best actress for her role playing Tolstoy's wife in The Last Station. She and Donato (hatted) charm in one television clip; Meryl Streep winning a lifetime achievement award appears in another. Click through the choices.

Political Postcard from Virginia: The Coming Fall

 

Spending an otherwise glorious weekend in Rappahannock County, Virginia, I saw that political posters nearly outnumbered the autumn leaves and, sorry to say, the signs are not good. Next week, to replace their outgoing Democrat governor Virginia is going to elect by a wide margin a Republican theocrat anti-feminist homophobe. The White House and Congress will take this as a bellwether of next year's midterm elections. Recent HuffPost headlines warn "Independents Shifting Away from Obama, Democrats." Those unhappy returns in 2010 are going to terrify Democrat incumbents about their 2012 re-election prospects. While it's very hard to see how this is going to make them more liberal, it's easy to envision them becoming increasingly, desperately centrist.  In the rustling wind you can already hear the excuses that "now isn't the time" for a wedge issue like Don't Ask Don't Tell or that "the country just isn't there yet" on gay marriage. Bolstering that view will be our losing one or both marriage referendum next week. Rather than actual leadership that educates and changes views, we'll get cowardice "pragmatism." In short, the administration's most progressive days are already behind us. After the Hate Crimes Bill signing this week, a sharp fall is coming.

Amelia, Still Missing

Mira Nair's Amelia isn't half as bad as critics are saying, and it isn't a quarter as interesting as it ought to be. One of the few times Hilary Swank gives her character any subtlety is a scene suggesting Earhart's bisexuality, as she vocally admires another woman's legs in a mellow late night bar. It's also a pleasure to see out lesbian Cherry Jones play closeted lesbian Eleanor Roosevelt (though the voice is wrong and she's a either a tad bumpkinish or tipsy from champagne). The young actor playing 10 year-old Gore Vidal nicely criticizes Amelia's choice in wallpaper and wishes she would marry his father, with whom she has a long affair. Ewan McGregor, playing Gene Vidal, is the best of the primary cast, but everyone -- actors and audience alike -- suffers from Ron Bass's script. As ever, it's the most he can do to find the edge pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. Interiors are beyond him. The movie grossed only $4 million in this, its first weekend.

Try one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books, Susan Ware's Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism.

Gay Sex Panic, the Movie: 1950's Men Locked Up for Being Gay

Queer as Folk actor Peter Paige will direct his third feature, an indie adaptation of Neil Miller's harrowing nonfiction book Sex-Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s. No casting has been announced for the drama, which will be produced by Funny Boy Films, makers of Latter Days, Adam & Steve, and Naked Boys Singing! Paige told the Hollywood Reporter, "We're thinking of this film in the vein of 'Capote,' 'Milk' and 'Girl, Interrupted.' It's an intense, dramatic exploration of a dark period in our history."

The book recounts the mass panic in Sioux City, Iowa following the 1955 killing of an eight year old boy. Even after the murderer was caught and convicted, public hysteria was rampant. Authorities arrested twenty middle class gay men completely unconnected to the crime but were labeled "sexual psychopaths" and imprisoned in a mental asylum until "cured." They remained locked up for "prolonged periods of time," treated by the same staff who gave the actual murderer large doses of LSD to help him remember the killing.

Yes, gay history is essential. And yes this is yet another gay movie perfect for Debbie Downer date night.

Born October 23: B.D. Wong, Emma Donoghue

A fourth generation Chinese-American, B.D. Wong made his Broadway debut in 1988 in M. Butterfly, for which he became and remains the only actor to win the five major theater prizes for the same role. But it was not enough to convince David Cronenberg to cast him in the movie five years later, when he chose John Lone instead. Wong starred with Margaret Cho in her much praised, quickly canceled series All American Girl, then played a priest on Oz, and a psychiatrist on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He had a sixteen year relationship with Richie Jackson, an agent, and is raising his son named Foo, the surviving one of two twins born extremely prematurely. Wong wrote a book about the experience called Following Foo.

The youngest of eight children of literary critic Denis Donoghue, Dublin-born Emma Donoghue is one of The Four, contemporary U.K. lesbian novelists, with Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson, and Ali Smith. In her novels she is equally at home in the present (Stir-Fry, Hood) and the 1700s (Slammerkin, Life Mask). Her novel Landing, about a long-distance love affair between two women in Ireland and Canada, mirroring her own life: She lives in Ontario with her partner Chris, their son Finn, and their daughter Una. Donoghue’s most recent novel, about an adulterous wife of a Vice-Admiral in a divorce trial and her feminist best friend in 1860s London, is The Sealed Letter. A Lammy-winning bestseller, it earned grand reviews, like PW saying it "has style and scandal to burn." Next May, Knopf Canada will publish Donoghue's book of criticism, Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature. Never shy in truth telling, Donoghue posts among the recommended reading on her website a list titled "Proofs That Lesbian Fiction Need Not Suck."

Gore Vidal at B&N: "Whores Have Their Own Honor"

You know he's a provocateur, a Scrooge, and a towering figure in American Letters, but did you realize Gore Vidal at 84 is still a precise mimic? Discussing his new photo memoir book Snapshots in History's Glare with Leonard Lopate on stage at Union Square's B&N last night, Vidal adroitly channeled Bush, Joe Alsop, Tennessee Williams, JFK, and Kenneth Tynan. Amid rambling memories he made these statements:

On the gushing praise from the right and the left upon Bill Buckley's death, "Whores have their own honor."

JFK complained to Vidal, "The people I meet are rich and powerful and famous but they have no interest in the country."

"The [American] empire is a total failure. And we are dead broke."

"Harry Truman decided to keep us at war forever."

Commercialism is "to do well what should not be done at all."

Warhol was "endlessly charming," Ben Hur was "dreadful," and Charlton Heston "lies that we never met, so I included this picture of us in the book. He was always strangling me with great manly hugs."

Vidal paid tribute to his partner of fifty-three years, Howard Austen, who died in 2003 and had collected most of these five hundred photos with the intention of creating this book. Some of the other photos were provided by Dick Cavett who sat in the front row with Susan Sarandon. The overflow crowd was nearly six hundred people and, remarkably, they all were good sports about Vidal not signing books after the interview.

Born October 22: Derek Jacobi, Bill Condon

A working class bloke who won a scholarship to Cambridge, Derek Jacobi became one of the university’s best actors and soon after graduation Laurence Olivier asked him to be one of eight founding members of the National Theatre, where his debut role was Laertes to Peter O’Toole’s Hamlet. Thirteen years later, in 1976, he reached his greatest fame with the title role in the BBC’s I, Claudius. As a result, he was able to tour his Hamlet in Sweden, Egypt, Japan, China, and Australia. Renowned for his impeccable performances in productions of the Bard by the RSC, the BBC, and Kenneth Branagh, Jacobi lampooned himself on an episode of Frasier in which he played the world’s worst Shakespearean actor, for which he won an Emmy. Earlier this year, he won best actor at the Olivier Awards for his portrayal of Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Among his numerous other roles are Alan Turing in Breaking the Code, Gracchus in Gladiator, and several characters from Dickens.  Knighted by the monarchs of Britain and Denmark, Jacobi is married to Richard Clifford, his partner of thirty years.

Quick, what did Bill Condon direct immediately prior to winning an Oscar for his adaptation of Christopher Bram’s novel Gods and Monsters? That’s right, the horror sequel Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh. Since then he has also directed the overlooked Kinsey and the overhyped Dreamgirls. Next up, his biopic of Richard Pryor now starring Marlon Wayans who replaces Eddie Murphy.

The Hour Between by Sebastian Stuart

Sebastian Stuart freshens a familiar prep school story of senior year secrets and self-discovery with likable characters and a quick pace in his quietly insistent new novel, The Hour Between. Expelled from Collegiate, Arthur McDougal transfers to a small, alternative academy in Connecticut where he becomes best friends with Katrina Felt, the daughter of a movie star. If the mix of wealthy offspring, lost souls, drugs, sex, and Hollywood exiles sounds like Less Than Zero, don't worry; the damaged rich kids and beautiful people's mental fragility are more reminiscent of Tender Is the Night.

Emboldened by Katrina's manic glamor and outsized personality, Arthur pushes himself into his first gay affair and comes out to his sophisticated Manhattan family. His bravery is more poignant because it's 1967-68, but that era also means teenagers occasionally speak like this, "Power, baby, with a healthy dose of class rage tossed in the mix. He's a bumpkin with a chip on his shoulder the size of Elsie the cow." Even the endearingly uncertain 17 year-old Arthur sometimes lapses into language such as, "Her orgasm's ecstatic timber came crashing down the hill toward us, causing the overgrown grass itself to undulate -- the cherub's smile took on a satyr's glint." Or, "I walked down to the lake -- its surface was alive with dancing raindrops and the wet of the earth and air seemed to merge with the lake, enclosing me in a watery dream." 

Stuart, who turns 60 this year, is particularly deft in his characterizations of older women. My favorite sentence in the book is from Mrs. McDougal, who opens a scene with "Arthur, that is the most absurd idea since Bucky Fuller wanted to put a dome over Manhattan!" Katrina's mother, the smaller than expected movie star, is also perfectly drawn with a delicate understanding of actresses offscreen lost without direction. As Katrina fights to overcome past demons and auditions for the lead in a Broadway musical, the novel delivers spot-on cameo scenes with Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol.

Strict hair-splitters may be disconcerted to see a character studying Maurice early in 1968 (before Stonewall, before Forster's death) although actually the novel could not be published until 1971, posthumously. More forgiving readers should enjoy this heartfelt story of friendship and sex, coming out and growing up. Anita Shreve calls it, "charming, hilarious, effervescent, and dead serious."

British PM Wants Civil Partnerships Performed in Parliament

As part of today's discussions on the equality vote, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will "commit his party to trying to ensure there are 120 female Labour MPs in the parliamentary party after the next election" and he will recommend that civil partnership ceremonies "should be allowed to be held in the Palace of Westminster as a symbol of parliament's commitment to gay marriage and tolerance." Currently the ceremonies are banned from churches, so unlike straight MPs, peers, and their families, gays cannot use Westminster's Chapel of St. Mary. The Telegraph reports

"Mr Brown will instead suggest that other locations in the Palace of Westminster can be used for civil partnerships. One option would be to use Speaker’s House, which is one of the most ornate parts of the Commons, and has the Thames as a backdrop.

"The Prime Minister does not have the power to push through a new measure but can offer suggestions. Senior Labour politicians, including Mr Brown, have often cited the law on civil partnerships as one of the party's proudest achievements.

"Several MPs have entered into civil partnerships including Angela Eagle, the Labour minister, Ben Bradshaw, the Culture Secretary, and Nick Herbert, a member of the shadow cabinet."

Meanwhile, the White House won't say categorically their positions on Maine's Question 1 and Washington state's Referendum 71. Their recent "clarification" remains generic: 

“The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples, and as he said at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, he believes ‘strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away.’ Also at the dinner, he said he supports, ‘ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country.’"

Born October 19: Robert Reed, Divine

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone had always known America’s #1 television dad, Mike Brady, was gay? Although much loved on the set, especially by the child actors, Robert Reed grew increasingly unhappy and resentful that his defining role was beneath his talents as a classical, Shakespearean actor. He fought frequently with the show’s creator, Sherwood Schwartz, which is why he was written out of the series’ finale, although he did return for the reunion shows. He died of aids in Pasadena in 1992, five months shy of his sixtieth birthday. Related: Maureen McCormick (Marcia), says in her memoir Here's the Story that she made out with her tv sister Jan. You may recall Greg’s memoir Growing Up Brady, which described his affair with his tv mom Florence Henderson. Quite the family.

Proving there is order in the randomness of the universe, in high school Divine lived six houses away from John Waters. In movies like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Polyester with Tab Hunter, Waters gave Harris Glenn Milstead starring roles and helped create his immortal drag persona. Divine released several disco songs and albums, but his greatest fame came with Waters’ original Hairspray. After that breakthrough role he was cast as Uncle Otto on Married... With Children, but his obesity caused a heart attack, killing him at 42 in 1988. Among Divine’s many legacies, he was the inspiration of Ursula the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid. 

A Single Man's UK Premiere in London

Tom Ford and three of his actors prettied up the London Film Festival this weekend at the UK premiere of his take on Isherwood's classic gay novel, A Single Man.

Price Wars: Wal-Mart, Amazon Fight for Book Buyers

Usually, bestselling titles enjoy a maximum discount of 40%, because stores traditionally pay publishers 50% of the list price. So it's remarkable that Wal-Mart plans to sell its top ten pre-order book titles for $10 each and give free shipping. For titles that are $29 (Palin) or $28 dollars (Crichton) that means 66% or 64% off list price, not to mention their lost cost of shipping. Better news for literary readers, the chain also will offer its top 200 titles at "50% or more" off the list price.

Also last week, Amazon said they're launching a same day delivery program in seven cities. For a $15 surcharge, you can order a title in the morning and have it delivered before 8:00pm. (Manhattan residents already get this service from B&N.com, and it's free on purchases over $25.) Amazon's cities are Baltimore, Boston, Las Vegas, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington, DC.

Of course you should first try to support your local independent bookseller. Especially after seeing the better than expected Capitalism: A Love Story. Among the many outrages -- Why does your local sheriff's office do the bank's job of evicting people from their foreclosed homes? Why do so many pilots have to get second jobs? -- Michael Moore names the companies that buy secret life insurance policies on their employees and make money off their deaths. Wal-Mart earned over $80,000 on a lowpaid cake decorator who died in her twenties of severe asthma after 18 months on the job. Her family incurred $90,000 of healthcare costs and paid $6,000 for her funeral and got nothing. A latina widow in Houston discovered her husband's bank earned $5 million from his early death from cancer. This is a genuine profit center at the companies, and they lament that they're missing their target death rates of their own people.

Far more blood curdling is Citicorp's memo about the world's "plutonomy" a system by and for the rich that has replaced democracy. Read it if you dare.

Born October 17: Montgomery Clift, Rob Marshall

Montgomery Clift's life was defined by two crashes. After a charmed childhood of long vacations in Europe and the Caribbean, his financier father lost nearly everything in the stock market crash of 1929. The family moved to a modest house in Sarasota, and there Clift discovered acting. By the time he was thirteen he was on Broadway and by the time he was seventeen he was a star on stage. Hollywood wooed him for years and he finally agreed to make his film debut in Howard Hawks' Red River opposite John Wayne, when he was twenty-eight. His second movie, The Search, earned him his first Oscar nomination. He followed that with The Heiress opposite Olivia de Haviland, then was nominated for another Oscar for his scorching pairing with Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun, and nominated yet again two years later for From Here to Eternity, the same year when he starred in Hitchcock's I Confess. He turned down Hitchcock's Rope, uncomfortably about a gay couple who kill a boy, and also turned down the starring roles in East of EdenSunset Boulevard. While filming another movie with his best friend Elizabeth Taylor, Clift drove into a telephone pole and nearly died, eight months after James Dean was killed in a similar crash.  Much has been made of Clift's downward spiral after the crash, often called "the longest suicide in Hollywood," but he starred in eight movies before the accident and eight movies after. His fourth and final Oscar nomination came for his seven-minute role in Judgment at Nuremberg. Addicted to alcohol and pain pills, he died of a heart attack at forty-five, bitter and unemployable. Yes, he is the inspiration of R.E.M.'s song "Monty Got a Raw Deal."

A five-time Tony nominee for his choreography, Rob Marshall stormed Hollywood with first feature, Chicago, winning the Academy Award for best film of 2002. His third movie, Nine, is coming in December and it's wall to wall Oscar winners: Daniel Day Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, and Sophia Loren. Will any character penetrate this much dazzle or won't it matter? Marshall is 49 and longtime partners with John DeLuca.