Get your tickets and gird your loins.
GayFest is upon us.
That’s the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival of Kansas City, for the uninitiated, and it gets underway Friday, June 24 at the Tivoli Theatre in Westport.
I’ve been able to pre-screen several of this year’s titles; what follows is one guy’s picks of the best of the fest:
“BEGINNERS” (6:30 p.m. Friday, June 24): Full disclosure: Advance screeners of this film were not available, but based on reviews from the Coasts, this looks to be not only the perfect film to open GayFest but also a title that will be in contention at Oscar time.
Mike Mill’s cinematic memoir was inspired by the late-in-life coming out of his father, who waited until his wife died to announce his gayness. Mills’ comedy-drama has created a huge buzz for movie vet Christopher Plummer (that’s right…Captain von Trapp) as the newly liberated septugenarian, and Ewan McGregor as his struggling-to-understand son.
I’ll be there Friday night to introduce the film and take it in for myself.
“GUN HILL ROAD” (7 p.m. Saturday, June 25): Technically it’s not a “gay” movie, but Rashaad Ernesto Green’s gritty evocation of a ex-con’s homecoming to his Bronx neighborhood is an insightful and quietly heartbreaking look at a family coming apart.
In this Sundance entry Esai Morales is Enrique, a one-time gang banger fresh out of prison and eager to resume his life with wife Angela (Judy Reyes of TV’s “Scrubs”) and their high schooler son Michael (Harmony Santana). But his transition into “normalcy” is anything but easy.
For starters, in his long absence Angela has been having an affair with a neighbor who has become Michael’s de facto father. In fact the kid distrusts and dislikes Enrique and isn’t about to reveal to the old man his life as a transexual performer saving up for a sex change operation. While Michael’s “situation” is accepted by Angela and her beau, Enrique is anything but sympathetic. And the more angry and frustrated Enrique becomes, the more in danger he is of slipping back into the banger life and violating his parole.
“Gun Hill Road” feels absolutely real, thanks to terrific performances, especially young Santana, who strikes just the right tones of vulnerability and defiance.
“LEAVE IT ON THE FLOOR” (9 p.m. Saturday, June 25): Original musicals are rare enough. Good ones are a miracle.
“Leave It on the Floor” follows the misadventures of Bradley (Ephraim Sykes), who’s thrown out of his mother’s home for being gay and washes up at a club where every weekend sees a fierce voguing competition fought out by various “houses.” It’s kind of like a rivalry between college fraternities only, you know, different.
Think of it as a gay, Los Angeles-centered variation on “Oliver Twist.”
The film is crammed with eccentric characters and good humor. And the musical numbers are killer…which is what you’d expect of pros from Beyonce’s pool of creative geniuses. Songwriters Kim Burse and Glenn Gaylord dish all sorts of styles, everything from disco to house to romantic ballads, hard rock and a dash of rap. We’re talking genuinely hummable tunes. The choreography — by Frank Gaston Jr. is a pure hoot.
“WISH ME AWAY” (5 p.m. Sunday, June 26): Here’s another one for which screeners weren’t available…in fact, festival organizers are yet to see this one. But the subject matter of this documentary was enough to land the film a slot at GayFest.
The subject is country star Chely Wright, born in Kansas City and raised in Wellsville KS (you pass it heading south on I-35) where she developed her country singing style and managed to hide her lesbianism from her very Christian family and friends.
For most of her life Wright prayed to be straight while realizing her destiny lay elsewhere. And she worried that her flourishing career might hit a wall of Nashville prejudice if the truth came out.
It’s a homegrown tale of struggle and triumph.
“FISHNET” (6 p.m. Tuesday, June 28): Imagine a mashup of “Some Like It Hot,” “Happy, Texas” and “The Full Monty.”
That’s “Fishnet,” in which gay girls Trixie and Sulie (Rebekah Kochan and Jillian Easton), the stars of an L.A. neo-burlesque revue, get into a shootout with mobsters and flee to Sulie’s hometown in Texas. Once there they stir up the good ol’ boys and recruit some misfit local gals to participate in yet another burly-Q show.
Uh…maybe that’s not such a good idea when you’re hiding from gangsters.
Brian Pelletier’s comedy is lightweight fun but can’t quite overcome that certain whiff of amateur hour. Still, it has its moments.
“MAKING THE BOYS” (8 p.m. Tuesday, June 28): Never heard of “The Boys in the Band”? You’re not alone. Early in Crayton Robley’s fascinating documentary, contemporary gay icons (like “Project Runway” champ Christian Seriano) draw a blank when asked to identify “Boys.”
It only goes to show that like most Americans, gays don’t know squat about their history.
Mart Crowley’s 1968 play and the William Friedkin-directed movie based on it were a very big deal…the first Off Broadway show and the first studio film to examine the gay experience without prejudice.
Well, without homophobia, anyway. One of the provocative things about “Boys” was its use of gay stereotype. Gay playwright Edward Albee called it “a highly skillful work that I despised.” Others dissed it for doing serious damage to the burgeoning gay respectability.
But when it hit the boards in Manhattan in the late ’60s, “Boys” — in which eight gay men show up for a friend’s birthday party — was a huge comedy hit that played for several years and spawned two national touring companies. For all the controversy it spawned — more among gays than straights — “Boys” made homosexuals visible in a whole new way.
The film examines the life and career of Crowley and allows us to go star-watching via wonderful old home movies of Roddy McDowell’s Malibu Beach weekends. There are interviews with the play’s detractors and supporters, many of the original cast members (few of whom had long careers as actors), Friedkin and many others.
Perhaps the final word is provided by Carson Kressley, who opines: “If a younger generation can only see something to be ashamed of in ‘The Boys in the Band,’ they need to get a sense of humor.”
For GayFest tickets, trailers of all the films and more detailed information visit www.kcgayfilmfest.com.
| Robert W. Butler
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