Thank you for this movie
It has introduced me to so many films I had no idea about.
shareDitto. Another good one to see is "The Celluloid Closet". That was a documentary made around 1996 so it has none of the more recent movies in like "Fabulous" did. However it does look further at the older films and ones that have always held a lot of subtext for a gay audience etc. Very good movie. That will introduce you to some of the more classic films that weren't mentioned much in "Fabulous".
I love both documentaries though. They're so helpful if you're not sure about what films to see because there's so many and also of course if you have an interest in the history of gay cinema. I hope there's a follow-up made soon because I love these types of pieces.
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle!
Yes this film was quite interesting. I missed the beginning but the years the film covered that I saw I was curious why it omitted some of my favourites until someone mentioned it focused on independent films. Though it did cover Brokeback Mountain which was distributed via Focus Features whose past projects included The Texas Chainsaw Massacre which I don't think was an 'independant film'. I suspect though prior to that, certain prejudices at film studios forced the majority of gay films to independent cinema so the focusing on 'gay independent cinema' by this documentary is probably redundant. They may as well just referred to 'gay cinema' and left it at that - we know in the early years they were independent anyway.
For this reason I was disappointed that arguably the more popular and successful films like the class Torch Song Triology[1] and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert[2] were omitted. If they were mentioned it may have been during one of those sequences in the documentary where they just flash up movie names during a montage.
In any event, there was a certain theme to the majority of films in this documentary. They seemed fixated on sex. I like films on this subject just as much as anyone, but when you have films created by a minority group whose subject matter is just sex, no wonder other groups start to wonder about you. It does not help their image.
[1] Incidently TST's production company was New Line Cinema whose recent project was Lord of the Rings
[2] Yes I know, PQotD was an Australian film but it was also a film about gays. As I mentioned, the documentary could have broaden its scope
[edit] - updated annotations
The beginning of this film covered the same ground as "The Celluloid Closet," so if you've seen that there's nothing new here. I was very pleased that this film focused more on the '80s to the present, because the previous eras have been covered.
"Torch Song Trilogy" was mentioned by Wilson Cruz, I believe, in the bonus features, but not in the main film. "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" was not mentioned at all. That word "independent" is problematic because a lot of the "indie" studios are owned by the major studios -- or is "indie" a spirit rather than a ownership issue?
I guess the challenge in making a documentary like this is you're always going to focus on certain film at the expense of others. If you include "Priscilla," would you then have to include "To Wong Foo" and "The Birdcage"? Are drag films really breaking new ground after "La Cage Aux Folles" anyway?
As for the focus on sex here, my experience with gay films is they are extremely fixated on sex, often at the expense of other plot themes. For every "Broken Hearts Club," you have a dozen "Tricks." Anyway, I think this documentary gave a good sampling of what's out there, and it makes no pretense of being all-encompassing or presenting a laundry list of titles.
As for the focus on sex here, my experience with gay films is they are extremely fixated on sex, often at the expense of other plot themes.
No more so than similar films about people with other sexualities. How many mainstream movies don't have subplots - or even major plots - that concern sex? Damned few.
Thing is, most heteros have a huge blind spot about how much their own films (and books and songs and artwork and advertising images) dwell on sex. They take it for granted, and only start to notice it when it's a different kind of sexuality from theirs that's being talked about.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
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