From tortured lawyers, drag queens and cowboys to Mickey Rourke — on the Fiftieth anniversary of Victim the film that started it all, a concise history of the birth, boom, and bust of the big gay movie by Mark Simpson A tortured, bequiffed Dirk Bogarde, backed into a corner by… Read More »The Last Gay Picture Show
By Mark Simpson (shorter version originally appeared on Guardian CIF, June 2009) ‘The more things a man is ashamed of’, wrote George Bernard Shaw, ‘the more respectable he is.’ Gays must now be terribly respectable since, forty years on from the Stonewall riots started by drag queens, hustlers and homeless… Read More »Respectability is the New Closet
By Mark Simpson (Originally appeard on Guardian Unlimited, 28 Jan 2009) ‘If a bullet should enter my brain, let it destroy every closet door.’ So says Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the gay activist who became California’s first openly gay public official. Any concern that this may be a slightly… Read More »Milk Toast: How Van Sant Cut Off Harvey’s Balls