The Celluloid Closet (Special Edition)
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Actor: Armistead Maupin, Arthur Laurents, Lily Tomlin, Susie Bright, Tony CurtisBrand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; French (Dubbed)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-05-29
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of The Celluloid Closet (Special Edition)
DVD Review: Hollywood's Homophobia Exposed
Summary: 5 Stars
In his groundbreaking book, The Celluloid Closet, gay activist Vito Russo argued that Hollywood's past harbored an abysmal record of portraying gay people on screen. Images of GLBT people in countless films of the classic era have subtly or not-so-subtly managed to malign, condemn, or misrepresent gay people in a manner that, in retrospect, is utterly mind-boggling. Using interviews and especially film clips, Mr. Russo's basic argument is well supported in this excellent 1996 film adaptation of his book.
The documentary includes in-depth interviews with screenwriters Jay Presson Allen, Arthur Laurents, Gore Vidal, Paul Rudnick, Barry Sandler, Mart Crowley, and writer / actor Harvey Fierstein, as well as actors Tony Curtis, Shirley MacLaine, Antonio Fargas, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks, Whoopie Goldberg, Harry Hamlin, writer Quentin Crisp, director John Schlesinger and others.
The film begins by demonstrating the early prominence of the Hollywood "sissy". Shirley MacLaine observes that, "The sissy made everyone feel more manly, or more womanly, by occupying the space in between". But the relatively innocuous sissy soon gave way to Hollywood's penchant for presenting GLBT culture as a shadowy world of villains, subversives, and the mentally ill. The best we could hope for was that some sympathetic director might tone down the images of gays as sick and evil, a rendering that was more or less dictated by the censorship codes that were in force for much of the first hundred years of Hollywood history. By the late 1940's, Hollywood's version of gay people was as unrealistic and damaging as any propaganda ever wielded against any minority, anywhere, and the film proves that Hollywood maligned, marginalized and demonized an already disenfranchised minority. As Lily Tomlin says early on in the narration, "Hollywood, that great maker of myth, taught straight people what to think about gay people, and gay people what to think about themselves".
The powers that be were not content merely to ridicule us with the Franklin Pangborns and the Edward Everett Hortons of the art deco era. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Hollywood "grew up" and allowed "more realistic" depictions of gays and lesbians - which meant that for the next twenty-five years or so, we were portrayed as deviates, murderers, child molesters, or - if we were lucky - just plain seedy characters living on the fringe, almost always menacing, and never to be trusted. This period was followed by the "breakthrough" films of the late sixties - including such controversial attention-getters as The Killing of Sister George and The Boys in The Band. Meanwhile, lesser-remembered but influential films like Walk on The Wild Side, Advise and Consent, and The Detective continued to present us as pathetic and self-hating, occasionally benign but almost always sick. The most sympathetic storylines could be expected to paint us as hopelessly unhappy and maladjusted "problems of society," instead of simply showing us as what we are - people. One of the more brilliant sequences in the film employs a lengthy string of film excerpts to show how the word "faggot" has been casually bantered about the silver screen, in a manner that would have brought outrage had Hollywood dared utilize such a pejorative term in such a pervasive manner for any other minority. During this same period, Great Britain had a slightly better track record, with such genuinely sympathetic films as Victim and The Trials of Oscar Wilde.
The first light at the end of this bleak tunnel began in the 1970s with the emergence of more daring independent productions. In the past thirty-five years, hundreds of "Indy" GLBT films have catered to an ever-growing audience of gay people, who refuse to accept the malignant depictions that mainstream films have shoved down our throats for the better part of a century. Instead, GLBT viewers flocked to see more accurate representations of themselves than ever before, in films such as A Very Natural Thing, Making Love, Beautiful Thing, It's My Party, Jeffrey, It's In The Water, Parting Glances, Bargirls, The Watermelon Woman, Claire of the Moon, The Laramie Project, and Ma Vie en Rose.
For a while, Hollywood responded to our newfound and respectable popularity by producing a few movies that tried not to offend GLBT people and, at the same time, hold on to a straight or mixed audience. Frequently, it was the results that were mixed, not the audience. GLBT audiences went hoping to finally see accurate depictions of themselves, and straight audiences stayed away in droves. The big budget "gay" Hollywood films sometimes worked fine (Wilde, Philadelphia, Gods and Monsters, Personal Best, and, well, The Celluloid Closet all spring to mind), but, as often as not, Hollywood's attempts to woo a gay audience while holding the interest of heterosexuals just didn't work at all. The Birdcage, Stonewall, Kiss Me Guido, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, In and Out and Flawless were all either too bland, too banal, too full of stereotypes, or too patronizing. Many were as insulting as the "sissies" of days gone by. For a while, it didn't seem possible to make a gay film that could manage to entertain straight audiences yet not insult its gay audience at the same time. Many of us began to demand more. The formula for GLBT entertainment had to be able to appeal to everybody, or what good was it? And how can the GLBT community ever reap the benefits of accurate portrayals of our lives on film, if we are the only people who see them?
As if in answer to these questions, since the release of The Celluloid Closet, an even more radical trend has emerged, that is, the inclusion of positive gay images in otherwise mainstream heterosexual movies. It started subtly; such films as Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Color Purple, Personal Best and As Good As It Gets finally arrived at a place we needed to be all along, presenting realistic, positive images of gay people, carefully integrated into the plots of otherwise heterosexual movies. This has been supplemented by gay movies that, thanks to their critical acclaim, have reached a wider mainstream audience (The Wedding Banquet, Swoon, The Living End). Now that the floodgates are open, I believe that this trend will be unstoppable. We have already had an Academy Award winner for Best Picture (American Beauty) that managed to present realistic gay people while condemning homophobia, and all within the context of a predominantly heterosexual plot. And the Academy's snub of Brokeback Mountain didn't keep a largely heterosexual audience from seeing it, loving it and, most importantly, learning from it.
This past year has seen even more gay characters inserted into otherwise heterosexual plotlines; Capote, Quinceñera, Shortbus, Infamous, Running With Scissors and The Night Listener all had gay characters who were central to the plot. Hopefully this trend will continue, and as GBLT people integrate themselves more fully into society, so too will their images be seamlessly added to American cinema.
Description of The Celluloid Closet (Special Edition)
CELLULOID CLOSET - SPECIAL EDITION - DVD MovieAuthor Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City) wrote Lily Tomlin's narration for this superb documentary, based on a book by the late Vito Russo, about Hollywood's treatment of homosexual characters in the 20th century. Never pointing a finger at anyone in the film community, The Celluloid Closet presents clips from more than 100 mainstream features (including The Children's Hour, Advise and Consent, The Boys in the Band, and The Hunger) that speak loudly in their respective images of gays and lesbians. The film makes a persuasive case for patterns of sexual mythology in Hollywood, such as presenting homosexuals repeatedly as tragic, helpless figures redeemed only through death or as back-street monsters cavorting in the shadows. Things change, of course, and clips from more recent films by gay and lesbian filmmakers suggest a more vital, diverse, autobiographical approach. There are lots of great interviews with screenwriters (Gore Vidal), filmmakers (John Schlesinger), actors (Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg), and others to enunciate the major themes. --Tom Keogh
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