THEGAYUK

Day: 22 July 2017

  • DVD REVIEW | Interior Leather Bar

    ★★★ | Interior Leather Bar

    Director William Friedkin claims that he had to take his notorious movie Cruising about the gay S&M subculture to the US Ratings Board on 50 occasions before they would give him a ‘R’ certificate that permitted it to be shown in cinemas. Whether that is totally true or not is part of the myth around the over-rated but little seen psychological thriller released in 1980 to great controversy. The gay community was its fiercest detractors, but the critics slammed it too.

    To appease the censors Friedkin was forced to cut 44 minutes of what one assumes from his inference were graphic sexual acts. We will never be sure how accurate that is and gay filmmaker Travis Mathews and actor James Franco never bothered to check with Friedkin when they set about trying to reimagine what the footage may or may not have contained to make this curious new documentary.

    Heterosexual Franco has a growing reputation for his limitless fixation with gay culture and he used his celebrity to pull this very spurious event together. On a day and a half, he and Travis gathered together a bunch of actors – some gay and some straight – stuck them in a warehouse with a script treatment and told them very vaguely to simply get on with it. Franco himself copped out of recreating the main role played by Al Pacino in the original movie and instead persuaded Val Lauren (who has just starred in Franco’s directorial debut ‘Sal’, about yet another gay figure Sal Mineo). Lauren was either alarmingly nervous about playing gay, even for pay, or just following a script, we never really know. But he was uncomfortable to watch, and like others annoyingly kept repeating that he had only agreed to the project because of James!

    The gay members of the cast had joked that they had only agreed to take part in the hope of seeing Franco naked, but that wasn’t going to happen. He pontificated excessively before the shoot intellectualising about sex, but on the day itself, he part filmed a scene where a couple of guys are going full at it, before totally disappearing. Incidentally, most of the hour long running time is taken up with all the behind the scenes angst than the actual ‘missing footage’.

    This is not the first vanity project by Franco, He made an experimental film from scraps that Gus Van Sant cut from My Private Idaho, and the main question I can only raise about his intentions with all of this, and the making of this film is, WHY?

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Twilight Song, Park Theatre, London

    ★★ | Twilight Song

    THEATRE REVIEW | Twilight Song, Park Theatre, London

    You know a show doesn’t make much sense, when, after seeing it, you and your friends don’t agree on what you’ve all just seen. To say Twilight Song is a bit confusing is putting it mildly.

    Now playing at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, is the late British playwright Kevin Elyot’s final play. Elyot, who wrote the award winning and very successful play My Night with Reg: (which was turned into a film in 1997), died in 2014, finishing Twilight Song right before he passed away. But the play itself is not a very good testament as a cap on his career – it’s a show muddled with characters and storylines that go back and forth in time that unfortunately raises more questions than answers in a play that’s a very very short 75 minutes.

    Most of Elyot’s plays have direct gay themes or gay undertones (My Night with Reg was very similar to the groundbreaking 1969 film Boys in the Band), and Twilight Song is no exception. In a nutshell, it’s a play about a middle aged man Basil (Paul Higgins) who lives in a North London terraced house (with an unfinished balcony) with his mother Isabella (Bryony Hannah) in the present day. Flash back to 1967 and Isabella is pregnant. But in both the present and the past (to and including a scene set in 1961), the family has secrets, secrets that they keep to themselves, and even secrets that they do not want to admit to themselves. Basil (Paul Higgins) pays an estate agent (Adam Garcia) money, not for a real estate transaction, but for sex, which happens too suddenly and out of the blue and out of character. Then Isabella unrealistically falls into the arms of the gardener (Garcia again). Meanwhile her uncle Harry (Philip Bretherton) pines for Charles (Hugh Ross), but Charles is broke because he is being swindled by a hustler (Garcia again). Twilight Song takes us all too rapidly through this family’s 50-year history too quickly. Throw in some cock talk, the unknown origin of blood on the sofa, and a very very short running time, and it doesn’t leave us much time to get to know the characters and their motivations. Director Anthony Banks gets excellent use of his actors who all give fine performances, and a set design that’s true to its time (though an annoyingly loud refrigerator in their kitchen really serves no purpose and destroys the play’s tension), but it’s the storyline that doesn’t add up, and it’s shame because it is Elyot’s last work, and it’s being poorly received.

    Another one of Elyot’s plays, Coming Clean, will have a revival at the King’s Head Theatre later this year, so perhaps hold out for that one if you can.

     

    Twilight Song plays at the Park Theatre until 12th August 2017 

  • Celebrity Big Brother 2017 has a launch date

    The Channel 5 bods have announced a Celebrity Big Brother launch date and a rather snazzy new eye logo.

    The Big Brother house is undergoing a complete redesign ready for its new star guests. It will become a high-end retreat inspired by celeb hotel hang-outs.

    But while the celebs kick back and let their hair down, Big Brother never takes a day off – after all, he wants to ensure that the celebrities will have an experience that they will NEVER forget!

    Celebrity Big Brother’s Bit On the Side will return weeknights with Rylan Clark-Neal. Joining him will be a variety of celebrity panellists, talking heads and an audience of CBB fans to debate hot topics, reveal exclusives and go behind the scenes of the main show.

    The new show launches on the 1st August at 9PM Channel 5