Read Good Shit On Musings: musings

By Yasmina Tawil

From ‘An Early Frost’ to ‘The Normal Heart’: The Shifting Sands of the AIDS Narrative on Film by Craig J. Clark

By Yasmina Tawil

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“People are dying so fast that it’s like what I imagine being in a war would be like.”
–volunteer nurse Hedy Straus in the 1987 documentary short Living With AIDS

By the time Ronald Reagan deigned to mention AIDS publicly for the first time in a press conference on September 17, 1985, it was known in some circles that the virus that causes it had been ravaging the gay community for more than four years. In the interim, while the medical and scientific communities scrambled to get a grip on the epidemic and fought for the government funding needed to do so properly, gay writers and filmmakers responded to the health crisis in their own way—by creating plays and films that humanized its victims and had the potential to educate the American public about the need for compassion and swift action.

One of the most immediate of these responses was Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart, which the outspoken writer/activist—a founding member of Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1982, when the disease was still known as GRID, or Gay-Related Immunity Disease—started writing in 1983 and saw staged to great acclaim at New York City’s Public Theater in the spring of 1985. Another project with a similar gestation period was the pioneering TV movie An Early Frost, broadcast by NBC that fall after co-writers and partners Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman—who later went to develop Queer As Folk for Showtime—went through 15 drafts with the network over a year and a half. And first-time filmmaker Bill Sherwood’s low-budget indie Parting Glances was shot in 1984—as evidenced by the new releases lining the wall in one scene set at a trendy record store—but didn’t get released until early 1986. Snapshots of a time when there was a great deal of misinformation about AIDS and the people it affected, all three remain urgent dispatches from the front lines of the struggle. But to keep them straight, it’s helpful to take them in the order they reached the screen, touching on a few other milestones along the way.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome.”

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For all its good intentions, An Early Frost wasn’t the first feature film about AIDS. In his seminal text, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality In The Movies, Vito Russo gives that distinction to Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.’s Buddies, and he’s supported by Raymond Murray’s Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia Of Gay And Lesbian Film And Video. According to Murray’s book, however, Buddies was never released on video and it continues to be unavailable to stream or purchase, which has rendered it as invisible today as AIDS sufferers were to the general public three decades ago. By contrast, An Early Frost was put out on DVD in 2006, complete with a commentary by Cowen, Lipman, and lead actor Aidan Quinn, plus the documentary short Living With AIDS, which was filmed by producer/director/editor Tina DeFeliciantonio in 1985 and broadcast on PBS a couple years later. A huge ratings-getter, An Early Frost beat out Monday Night Football to be the top-rated show of the night, capturing one-third of the total viewing audience when it premiered. Today, it takes viewers back to a time when AIDS was a death sentence for nearly everyone who contracted it and effectively outed those who were still in the closet.

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By Yasmina Tawil

Too Big a Fail: Cannes Insta-Flops and the Festival Economyby Mike DAngelo

By Yasmina Tawil

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Cannes Film Festival, 2014. Among the films competing for the Palme dOr is The Search, Michel Hazanavicius highly anticipated followup to The Artist, which had won the Best Picture Oscar three years earlier (after itself debuting at Cannes). Its pedigree is flawless: based on an Oscar-winning (Best Story) 1948 drama of the same title, which had starred Montgomery Clift; a cast featuring former Oscar nominees Brnice Bejo and Annette Bening; weighty subject matter involving the Second Chechen War. When the press sees The Search, however, they rip it to shreds. A grueling, lumbering two-and-a-half hour humanitarian tract that all but collapses under the weight of its own moral indignation, Variety calls it, in one of the kinder reviews. Hazanavicius recuts the film slightly for its tour of the fall fest circuit, but it’s largely ignored, thanks to the toxic word out of Cannes. Today, over two years later, there is still no indication that The Searchwhich, lets just note again for the record, is the successor to a major box-office hit that won Best Picture, Director, and Actor at the 2012 Oscarswill get any sort of U.S. release.

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Cannes Film Festival, 2015. Among the films competing for the Palme dOr is The Sea of Trees, a drama about an American man who flies to Japan with the intention of killing himself in Aokigahara, the infamous forest (see: The Forest; nah, dont see that) where locals commit suicide in alarming numbers. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, who had won the Academy Award for Best Actor just two years earlier (for Dallas Buyers Club); its director is Gus Van Sant, a previous Palme dOr winner (Elephant, 2003). Expectations are highuntil critics just about hoot The Sea of Trees off of the screen. One review accurately deems it “sub-Nicholas Sparks tripe,” a phrase that one wouldn’t generally anticipate when skimming the buzz from the world’s most prestigious film festival. Roadside Attractions, in conjunction with Lionsgate, had picked up the U.S. distribution rights in advance of the world premiere, but wound up sitting on the movie for over a year before finally selling it to adventurous new distributor A24. The U.S. trailer, released just this week, mentions the Cannes selection, but features no critical blurbs at allan almost unprecedented circumstance for an art film that premiered at a festival. (A24s trailer for The Lobster, which they picked up from financially troubled Alchemy, includes six blurbs from major critics.) Evidently, theyre hoping nobody will notice.

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By Yasmina Tawil

Too Big a Fail: Cannes Insta-Flops and the Festival Economy by Mike D’Angelo

By Yasmina Tawil

image

Cannes Film Festival, 2014. Among the films competing for the Palme d’Or is The Search, Michel Hazanavicius’ highly anticipated followup to The Artist, which had won the Best Picture Oscar three years earlier (after itself debuting at Cannes). Its pedigree is flawless: based on an Oscar-winning (Best Story) 1948 drama of the same title, which had starred Montgomery Clift; a cast featuring former Oscar nominees Bérénice Bejo and Annette Bening; weighty subject matter involving the Second Chechen War. When the press sees The Search, however, they rip it to shreds. “A grueling, lumbering two-and-a-half hour humanitarian tract that all but collapses under the weight of its own moral indignation,” Variety calls it, in one of the kinder reviews. Hazanavicius recuts the film slightly for its tour of the fall fest circuit, but it’s largely ignored, thanks to the toxic word out of Cannes. Today, over two years later, there is still no indication that The Search—which, let’s just note again for the record, is the successor to a major box-office hit that won Best Picture, Director, and Actor at the 2012 Oscars—will get any sort of U.S. release.

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Cannes Film Festival, 2015. Among the films competing for the Palme d’Or is The Sea of Trees, a drama about an American man who flies to Japan with the intention of killing himself in Aokigahara, the infamous forest (see: The Forest; nah, don’t see that) where locals commit suicide in alarming numbers. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, who had won the Academy Award for Best Actor just two years earlier (for Dallas Buyers Club); its director is Gus Van Sant, a previous Palme d’Or winner (Elephant, 2003). Expectations are high…until critics just about hoot The Sea of Trees off of the screen. One review accurately deems it “sub-Nicholas Sparks tripe,” a phrase that one wouldn’t generally anticipate when skimming the buzz from the world’s most prestigious film festival. Roadside Attractions, in conjunction with Lionsgate, had picked up the U.S. distribution rights in advance of the world premiere, but wound up sitting on the movie for over a year before finally selling it to adventurous new distributor A24. The U.S. trailer, released just this week, mentions the Cannes selection, but features no critical blurbs at all—an almost unprecedented circumstance for an art film that premiered at a festival. (A24’s trailer for The Lobster, which they picked up from financially troubled Alchemy, includes six blurbs from major critics.) Evidently, they’re hoping nobody will notice.

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By Yasmina Tawil

Truly Inconvenient Truths: The Island President and Issue Doc AestheticsBy Andrew Lapin

By Yasmina Tawil

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We like to say that documentaries can change the world. But the manner in which they change it matters. Ten years ago, when Davis Guggenheims An Inconvenient Truth sounded the alarm bells on man-made climate change, its aesthetic mission was clear: Al Gore, on a stage, flipping through slides.

An Inconvenient Truth wasnt trying to be a movie, at least not in the way we were used to seeing one. This was information, delivered in as no-frills a manner as possible, and distributed via movie theater. But it was valuable information, and that made the film culturally significant, a world-changer. An Inconvenient Truth grossed nearly $50 million worldwide, won two Oscars, and was instrumental in convincing millions of people around the globe of the urgent threat to our planet. It spawned dozens of imitators, issue docs that used a lot of charts and graphs to get a point across.

We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything except political will, Gore says at the films conclusion. In what would become standard procedure for all documentaries distributed by Participant Media, the end credits came packaged with a list of things you, the viewer, can do to help: recycle, drive hybrids, and, of course, get other people to watch An Inconvenient Truth.

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But is this style really the best way to communicate pertinent issues to the masses? Im talking about cinematic value here, but Im also talking about the way humans absorb information. Our very human-ness compels us to crave more than facts on a screen. We need narrative, characters, scope, stakes, and indelible images, laced with a touch of humor and a whole lot of pathos. We need, in short, cinema.

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By Yasmina Tawil

Truly Inconvenient Truths: ‘The Island President’ and “Issue Doc” Aesthetics By Andrew Lapin

By Yasmina Tawil

image

We like to say that documentaries can change the world. But the manner in which they change it matters. Ten years ago, when Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth sounded the alarm bells on man-made climate change, its aesthetic mission was clear: Al Gore, on a stage, flipping through slides.

An Inconvenient Truth wasn’t trying to be a movie, at least not in the way we were used to seeing one. This was information, delivered in as no-frills a manner as possible, and distributed via movie theater. But it was valuable information, and that made the film culturally significant, a world-changer. An Inconvenient Truth grossed nearly $50 million worldwide, won two Oscars, and was instrumental in convincing millions of people around the globe of the urgent threat to our planet. It spawned dozens of imitators, “issue docs” that used a lot of charts and graphs to get a point across.

“We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything except political will,” Gore says at the film’s conclusion. In what would become standard procedure for all documentaries distributed by Participant Media, the end credits came packaged with a list of things you, the viewer, can do to help: recycle, drive hybrids, and, of course, get other people to watch An Inconvenient Truth.

image

But is this style really the best way to communicate pertinent issues to the masses? I’m talking about cinematic value here, but I’m also talking about the way humans absorb information. Our very human-ness compels us to crave more than facts on a screen. We need narrative, characters, scope, stakes, and indelible images, laced with a touch of humor and a whole lot of pathos. We need, in short, cinema.

Read more

By Yasmina Tawil

The Amazing Adventures of Mel Gibson, Action DirectorBy Noel Murray

By Yasmina Tawil

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When Mel Gibsons Braveheart won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director in 1996, longtime Oscar historians registered the victories as easily explained and largely insignificant. They were partly the product of an organized and depressingly reactionary fan campaign, and partly due to Hollywoods tendency to reward both expensive epics and actors who step behind the camera. In the two decades since, Gibson has suffered through personal scandals, and highly publicized controversies over his subsequent directorial efforts The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto. Given all that, and given that 1996 was also the year of Toy Story, Before Sunrise, Exotica, 12 Monkeys, Apollo 13, Sense And Sensibility, Seven, Safe, Heat, Casino, Crumb, and Babe, the Braveheart triumph today looks all the more hollow.

Or does it? Compared to the more cutting-edge and culturally significant films released in the mid-90s, Braveheart does seem like a fluky anomaly: an entertaining throwback that was inexplicably elevated to Greatest Of All Time status. But the film is also fascinating in the context of the directorial career of Mel Gibsona movie star whos done some of his best work behind the camera, on films that have yet to get their critical due.

Lets clarify one thing up front: Of the four movies Gibsons directed, three are deeply flawed, and only one is a masterpiece. But because 2006s brilliant Apocalypto is the most recent, it casts a long shadow back over a lot of what came before. In retrospect, its as though Gibson had been going through a process of trial and error, working his way toward making a classic.

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It was never a straight road. Gibsons 1993 directorial debut, The Man Without a Face, is a more typical actor-turned-director project: a clumsily earnest melodrama with minimal commercial appeal, which Gibson was allowed to helm only if he agreed to double as the star. He plays a small-town recluse with a charred face and body, who becomes the reluctant mentor to an awkward adolescent (played by Nick Stahl), and then gets accused by the community of being a pedophile. The storybased on an Isabelle Holland novelis a simple outsider versus the small-minded morality play, with the added wrinkle that its set in 1968, and the villains are mostly hippie aesthetes and academics. The loner hero, meanwhile, favors discipline and old-fashioned values. (In the book, its suggested that he also may actually have had sex with his student, but Gibson and screenwriter Malcolm MacRury dont take it that far.)

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By Yasmina Tawil

The Amazing Adventures of Mel Gibson, Action Director By Noel Murray

By Yasmina Tawil

image

When Mel Gibson’s Braveheart won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director in 1996, longtime Oscar historians registered the victories as easily explained and largely insignificant. They were partly the product of an organized and depressingly reactionary fan campaign, and partly due to Hollywood’s tendency to reward both expensive epics and actors who step behind the camera. In the two decades since, Gibson has suffered through personal scandals, and highly publicized controversies over his subsequent directorial efforts The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto. Given all that, and given that 1996 was also the year of Toy Story, Before Sunrise, Exotica, 12 Monkeys, Apollo 13, Sense And Sensibility, Seven, Safe, Heat, Casino, Crumb, and Babe, the Braveheart triumph today looks all the more hollow.

Or does it? Compared to the more cutting-edge and culturally significant films released in the mid-‘90s, Braveheart does seem like a fluky anomaly: an entertaining throwback that was inexplicably elevated to “Greatest Of All Time” status. But the film is also fascinating in the context of the directorial career of Mel Gibson—a movie star who’s done some of his best work behind the camera, on films that have yet to get their critical due.

Let’s clarify one thing up front: Of the four movies Gibson’s directed, three are deeply flawed, and only one is a masterpiece. But because 2006’s brilliant Apocalypto is the most recent, it casts a long shadow back over a lot of what came before. In retrospect, it’s as though Gibson had been going through a process of trial and error, working his way toward making a classic.

image

It was never a straight road. Gibson’s 1993 directorial debut, The Man Without a Face, is a more typical actor-turned-director project: a clumsily earnest melodrama with minimal commercial appeal, which Gibson was allowed to helm only if he agreed to double as the star. He plays a small-town recluse with a charred face and body, who becomes the reluctant mentor to an awkward adolescent (played by Nick Stahl), and then gets accused by the community of being a pedophile. The story—based on an Isabelle Holland novel—is a simple “outsider versus the small-minded” morality play, with the added wrinkle that it’s set in 1968, and the villains are mostly hippie aesthetes and academics. The loner hero, meanwhile, favors discipline and old-fashioned values. (In the book, it’s suggested that he also may actually have had sex with his student, but Gibson and screenwriter Malcolm MacRury don’t take it that far.)

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By Yasmina Tawil

No Exit to Brooklynby Ryan Wu

By Yasmina Tawil

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In the opening scene of Westminster, Trinh, a Vietnamese shopgirl, tells her boss that shes moving to California to work at a nail salon. She explains that her prospects in Vietnam are bleak, and that however despondent she is to leave her beloved mom and sister behind, she has their blessing to seek a better life. Then, after enduring an arduous journey across the Pacific aboard a container ship, she settles in a cramped boarding house above the nail salon. She makes fitful efforts to befriend the vicious gossips who perform mani-pedis alongside her, but mostly she feels alienated and alone. Then, while in line at a boba shop, Trinh meets Joon, an earnest Korean-American dental student. In the midst of their cross-ethnic courtship, Trinh is summoned back to Vietnam

Westminster, of course, doesnt exist. However, the Irish version of the same story, Brooklyn, found purchase with critics and arthouse audiences alike, grossing $61 million in North America (on an $11 million budget) and nabbing three Oscar nominations. If success begets imitators in the movie business, why does a 200-screen release of Westminsteror Pico-Union, another hypothetic feature but about an El Salvadorian nafs struggles in urban Americaseem so improbable?

And what does it say about America in Annus Trumpilis that the only migrant story widely screened over the past year features a blonde Irish lass? After all, only 11% of American emigres in 2014 hail from Europe. A far greater number of new immigrants, representing 30% of the total in 2014, come from Asia, with another 24% from Central and South America. If the upcoming election supposedly pits an emerging diverse America against the Make America Great Again crowd of white nostalgia, Hollywoodor maybe the moviegoing publicwears a red cap.

For all the noise of #oscarsowhite, the discordant note struck by feting Brooklyn slipped completely under identity activists radar. To be sure, we shouldnt expect (or want) art to speak directly to the topic du jour, no matter how hotly debated. It would be churlish to begrudge the existence of a lovely, if imperfect, film like Brooklyn that graced us with Saoirse Ronans radiant Eilis. But its striking that Eiliss core dilemmathe agonizing choice between a young, confident America of infinite possibility and the comfort and joy of the old countryspeaks primarily to contemporary viewers who look nothing like her. As a child of immigrants, its hard not to conclude that the yearning and struggles of my parents only make it on screen when theyre embodied by a young blonde.

But what I found most disappointing about Brooklyn, at least on a first viewing, isnt so much its whiteness as its conventionality. Aside from Eiliss bracing opacityshe seems at once precisely drawn and fundamental unknowablethe film had the feel of a prestige product by the numbers.

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