Band of Thebes

Born May 19: Daniel Guérin

Ah, France, where strange bedfellows make good politics. Born in 1904, the upper class Parisian Daniel Guérin became an ardent leftist and socialist in part by having sex with tough guys. He said, "It was there, in bed with them, that I discovered the working class, far more than through Marxist tracts." In the 1930s he became a political and union organizer after hating the colonialism he saw during his travels in Southeast Asia and the Mid-East. In the late 1940s he lived in the United States and was appalled by the treatment of black Americans and, back in France, he fully supported the Algerian drive for independence. Of his many books best known is Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, published in 1965, with later editions carrying an introduction by Noam Chomsky. He did not begin his activism on behalf of gay rights until the 1970s, especially as part of the Front Homosexuel d'Action Révolutionnaire [FHAR], a group from which he later broke. People discouraged by today's apolitical comsumerist gays may do well to remember that a quarter-century ago Guérin was disgusted by the apolitical hedonist gays whose "superficial pursuit of pleasure" was "a million miles from any conception of class struggle." Which is not to say he became anti-sex in his later years. Mais non, pas de tout! His last significant relationship was with a man sixty years his junior. He died at eighty-three in 1988.

The Secret Speech, Tom Rob Smith's Sequel to Child 44

Tom Rob Smith is gay and I believe The Secret Speech, on sale tomorrow, has some lgbt subplots. Even if international thrills aren't your thing, at least read the sentences I bolded from this Kirkus rave review. His previous book was a monster bestseller and longlisted for the Booker.

From Smith (Child 44, 2008), an intense thriller set in the Soviet Union during the tumultuous days that followed the death of Stalin. When Khrushchev delivered a speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, admitting to the paranoid excesses of his predecessor Stalin's regime, he did much to loosen the bonds of fear that kept Soviet society in line. However, in this novel, the speech also triggers a wave of vicious reprisals against secret policemen who were responsible for some particularly brutal acts during Stalin's reign of terror. Among those in danger is Leo Demidov, the reformed security officer with a conscience who tracked down a serial killer in Child 44. In order to redeem his brutal past, Leo has leveraged the official attention he received from catching the child killer to create a specialized homicide unit, something that would have been unthinkable under Stalin. After investigating the death of a former prison guard and having a conversation with a terrified former colleague who also winds up dead, Leo begins to put the pieces together, eventually realizing that those targeted are connected to the case of a dissident priest, a case to which Leo himself was intimately connected. When the danger expands to include the patchwork family Leo has been trying desperately to hold together, he must confront the terrible mistakes of his past to save his adopted daughter. Smith's ability to summon the paranoia and tumult of the post-Stalin period in all its dingy glory is truly astounding, as is his detailed knowledge of both the Soviet-era bureaucracy and its underworld. His characters, from the relentless Leo, to the petty criminals who populate the underworld, to a lonely guard aboard a frozen prison ship, are perfectly formed. His depiction of dismal Soviet society feels uncannily real, and his taut plot barrels onward like a loaded prisoner train headed for the Gulag. Finally, Leo is a fantastic creation: relentless, decent and wonderfully complicated. A superb thriller, full of pitch-perfect atmosphere.

Born May 18: Don Bachardy

Once and for all, Don Bachardy isn't just Christopher Isherwood's much younger partner. His sketches of famous friends are nuanced and revealing. Among his oil paintings, his official gubernatorial portrait of Jerry Brown hangs in the California State Capitol. He is the thoughtful star -- discussing his life as an artist and the power imbalances of a 30+ year relationship that began when he was southern California teenager and his new English bf in his late forties was already internationally lauded -- of the documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story, which received great reviews from every critic tabulated here. Today he turns 75.

Open Loop's Interview with Jamie O'Neill

To save me from becoming an all-Toibin all the time site, the literary lads at Open Loop sent me Carlin Wragg's interview with Jamie O'Neill. It's grand. The author of At Swim, Two Boys even does a podcast for them. Please click over and read this wonderful exchange between two poetic minds.

Friday's Eurovision Song: Ukraine

Saved by far the best video for last.

Dear Svetlana Loboda,

Thank you for inviting me to be your valentine. Before deciding about your kind offer, I have a few questions. Is the Speedo-clad hand drummer part of your valentine package? In America, we have a tradition of giving something called a Whitman Sampler. Named for our greatest poet, who had insatiable appetites, this is a way for the non-committal man to try out many, many different tastes guilt-free and without ever having to choose a favorite. (Whitman used the word "comrades" which may be a fraught term for Ukrainians. What do you use with your half-clad back-up singers?) Obviously you're way ahead of me on this, as your video shows you dipping your entire body in chocolate.

Upon further reflection, I see that only yesterday a Ukrainian court banned this weekend's pride festival. Amnesty reports the same thing happened in Latvia, where Riga canceled Baltic Pride. On top of Moscow's horrendous record, this is triply upsetting. Please use your appearance at this weekend's Eurovision Song Contest to show your support for the region's awesomely brave lgbt community.

I regret that I cannot be your valentine. Besides, I would rather dance with my boyfriend.

Born May 15: Jasper Johns

After serving in the army, Jasper Johns returned to New York in 1953 and worked in a bookstore while trying to decide whether he wanted to be a poet or a painter. Within two years he had created iconic images such as Flag and White Flag, and three years after that four of his paintings were in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. From 1955 to 1961, widely considered to be the period of his greatest work, Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were lovers. Although they never spoke about their relationship, they were invited everywhere as a couple. (Despite the anti-gay atmosphere of the McCarthy era, the 1950s saw a great flowering of art by men whose orientation was an open secret: Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, George Hoyningen-Huene, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, James Merrill & David Jackson, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Lincoln Kirstein, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Langston Hughes, Philip Johnson, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean.) According to Jonathan Katz, Johns’ and Rauschenberg’s relationship was the deepest of their entire lives and “the after-effects were so powerful that both artists left New York for their native South, changed their pictorial styles radically, and neither saw nor spoke to one another for a decade or more.” Indeed, Johns has never talked about it, though Rauschenberg finally discussed it with Interview magazine in 1990. Johns exhibited new work in 2005; Rauschenberg died a year ago this week.

Reynolds Price's Third Memoir, Ardent Spirits, a "Coming Out Party"

 

Even though the renowned Southern novelist Reynolds Price is 76 and has published two memoirs previously, apparently it is only in his third memoir, Ardent Spirits, covering his life from 22 to 28, that he writes openly and at length about being gay. The NYT times critic likened the new book, released this week, to "a boisterous coming-out party."  Evidently Price avoided gay questions in the past.

From a NYT magazine interview in 1987:

Price does write about erotic love, both heterosexual and homosexual, because, he says: ''It's the most powerful single force in human life. If you eliminate that, then you eliminate the electricity from your universe.'' But he refuses to talk about his own sexuality.

''I've only once in my whole career ever had a person stand up in the audience and ask me if I was gay. And it was a guy, in Florida, and I said, 'Why? Have you fallen hopelessly in love with me?' And the guy just fled from the room.'' Price laughs and continues. ''I have always felt that my private life was private. It's the property of me and the people who've been good enough to be intimate with me. A knowledgeable reader of my work can make whatever deductions he or she wishes to make. All that I wish to say about my life is said in my work.''

NYT on Tuesday:

American readers can be forgiven if... they have not noticed that Reynolds Price himself is... a gay American. Over the course of his long career and across his jumbo-size output (38 books of fiction, poetry, plays, essays and other nonfiction), Mr. Price has deployed gay characters only sparingly.

He is far better known for being a native of North Carolina, where much of his fiction is set, and for his probing interest in religious faith. Mr. Price hasn’t exactly hidden the fact that he is gay; he is simply a private person who hasn’t tattooed this information, in curly script, on one of his biceps.

Mr. Price’s reluctance to write about gay life makes Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back feel like a boisterous coming-out party. The book details six years in Mr. Price’s life, 1955-61, when he was in his early 20s, and it is, for sure, about many things beyond his sexuality — namely his years at Oxford and his beginnings as a writer. But the book seems most alive when it details what it was like to be young and gay and on the prowl — Mr. Price at one point describes himself as “a sexual wolverine” — in the buttoned-down 1950s.

For the record, a writer named Dwight Garner is responsible for the notion that out writers truthfully working on a literature of our lives = curly scripted bicep tattoos.

Publishers Weekly degays the book while admiring it:

In this new memoir, award-winning novelist Price (Kate Vaiden) takes up where his 1989 Clear Pictures left off-with a young Price heading for England on a Rhodes scholarship, a young man lighting into new and unfamiliar territories and the lessons he learns about literature, life and love. Covering the years 1955 to 1961, Price chronicles the challenges of living in a strange place, his emotional insecurities and his anxieties about his ability to complete the thesis on Milton, his adventures in Europe with a close friend and his eventual return to his alma mater, Duke University, to teach writing and literature. Along the way, Price recalls his friendships with Stephen Spender, Cyril Connolly, W.H. Auden and his brief encounters with Jean-Paul Sartre and J.R.R. Tolkien. Price's memoir also displays the tenacious desire with which, after warm encouragement from Eudora Welty and William Styron, he embarks on a round of writing that produces his first novel, A Long and Happy Life, published to acclaim in 1962. Although the detail can be tiresomely meticulous, Price, as usual, powerfully articulates the strength of memory in shaping our lives and gracefully draws us into a literary life lived fully.

Library Journal reports more inclusively:

Two underlying streams in this memoir are Price's homosexuality and the beginning of his first novel, A Long and Happy Life, which he refers to as his "pregnant-girl story." Price's true friendship with an Oxford classmate, Michael Jordan, and his intimate relationship with Matyas, a British academic, reveal Price's personal growth during his studies.

Donnerstag's Eurovision Song: Germany

Patriotic Americans will want to get behind Alex Swings Oscar Sings because Oscar, the vocal half of the duo, comes from southern California. If he weren't playing with his chest and abs the whole song, you might have time to notice the lyrics don't go with the video. When he's introducing Miss Kiss Kiss Bang the video only cuts to Alex, even when Oscar says, "We're like Mr. and Mrs. Right / so I'll give you my heart tonight." Despite the atypical freezeframe above, it's an all-male video until 1:25. Even after the women show up, Oscar seems more interested in the camera.

Sarah Waters Discusses Ghosts, Class, and the "Lesbian Label"

The Guardian runs a long profile of Sarah Waters on the British publication of The Little Stranger. Go ahead and indulge your UK envy because I don't think a US newspaper is likely to connect the dots and discuss literature in terms of lesbian legacies and heirs.

As polar opposites, Winterson and Waters define two utterly contrasting literary lesbian identities. In the past, the literary grandes dames of the 20th century were larger-than-life figures as complex as Radclyffe Hall and Djuna Barnes or as frankly posh and exotic as Daphne du Maurier. Waters, who has the potential, and perhaps the appetite, to achieve a du Maurier audience, is not like that. She is at pains to stress her ordinariness. "I think I'm an unhysterical person," she says. "I do see myself as normal." Everything about her situation here advertises normality. "But," she goes on, "I think that what's behind normality is very interesting."

The interview also includes this passage, which you may have heard before:

"All my neuroticism goes into the books," she says. "I've always thought of myself as a writer," she adds, "but I'm happy with the lesbian label. I think it's important to be visible." But not flamboyant. Waters's life in sunny Lambeth is discreet, unassuming and contented. She lives with two cats and her partner of seven years, Lucy Vaughan, who works for a TV listings company and has, she jokes, "far more readers than I do".

Doing what she can for lesbian visibility, Waters also recently spoke with The Wall St Journal, Now magazine in Toronto, After Ellen in New York, and Bay Windows in Boston. To her immense credit, she answers the same questions in a fresh way each time.

Adding to that UK envy, BBC2 announced it will adapt Waters' fourth novel, The Night Watch, into a 90 minute film. All three of her exclusively lesbian novels before that have already been televised to critical and popular acclaim; two of them were three-part miniseries. Now name an American writer whose entire output of gay books has been broadcast in prime time. (Tales of the City was adapted by the UK's Channel 4, not PBS, which caved to protests and bailed on the sequels, later done by Showtime.)

Born May 14: Mangus Hirschfeld

The next time people claim the gay rights movement is a recent invention or that you’re anachronistically imposing a modern concept on a pre-Stonewall era that could not possibly have supported the idea, remind them of Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1896, he wrote and published a pamphlet on homosexual love called Sappho and Socrates. The next year—112 years ago—with the leaders of the gay journal Der Eigene, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, whose motto was “Justice through science.” Their first goal was to overturn the notorious 1871 German law Paragraph 175, criminalizing male homosexuality. Not only did they campaign openly and publicly, they urged prominent people to sign their petition to repeal the law. Among the 5,000 signatories were Einstein, Tolstoy, Mann, Hesse, and Rilke. When the bill to repeal came before the Reichstag in 1898, it failed, and, infuriated by their hypocrisy, Hirschfeld contemplated outing various members of parliament who had voted against it. Undaunted by the defeat, the committee continued to get the bill reintroduced repeatedly over the next decades.
        Thirty-four years before Kinsey, Hirschfeld collected detailed information about sexual behavior in surveys from 10,000 people and published the results in his 1914 book Homosexuality in Men and Women. Extending his push for gay rights into other media, in 1919 Hirschfeld wrote and acted in a movie called Different from the Others starring Conrad Veidt, whose character comes out to thwart his extortionist gay ex-lover but then loses his job and kills himself. That same year, the government gave Hirschfeld a former royal palace in Berlin to house his Institute for Sexual Research, which offered medical and psychological consultations, marriage counseling, contraception, sex education, and promoted women’s emancipation and rights for gay and transgender people. The institute’s ongoing success inevitably drew the attention of the Nazis. One of the Nazis' early actions, on May 6, 1933, was to ransack the archives and confiscate names and addresses. On May 10, the Nazis returned to hold a massive book burning in Opernplatz on Unter den Linden, destroying the invaluable collection of 20,000 volumes and 5,000 images depicting “deviants” and ideas that were “un-German.” Hirschfeld was on a lecture tour of the United States and never returned home. In Nice in 1935, on his sixty-seventh birthday, he had a heart attack and died, survived by his partner, colleague, former student, and heir, Li Shiu Tong, who lived until 1993.

Wednesday's Eurovision Song: Hungary

Not gay enough? Give this one till 1:06 when Zoli Adok dances with a fleet of very happy sailors. (Did Magyars invent ADD? The video has eight different vignettes.)

Angels in America Producer To Be Nominated as NEA Chairman

The White House is poised to nominate Rocco Landesman as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. At first glance it sounds like good news that the fiery producer of Angels in America is going to head the government's most powerful arts agency. It's hard to imagine the opinionated Landesman caving to grandstanding politicians opposed to gay or avant garde artists. Yet is it slightly odd to think of this important nonprofit being taken over by the man who pioneered the $480 per seat VIP ticket for The Producers? He has zero experience running nonprofits, but he does own racehorses, two minor league baseball teams, and five Broadway theaters.

The appointment of Landesman, who is married to a woman and has three children, inspired Tony Kushner to tell the NYT:

“It’s potentially the best news the arts community in the United States has had since the birth of Walt Whitman. He’s an absolutely brilliant and brave and perfect choice for the job."

Others were less certain. Robert Brustein, the founding director of the American Repertory Theater and Landesman's former teacher at Yale, said, "It's an odd choice."

Colm Tóibín and Andrew Sean Greer at Tenement Talks

 

Speaking about his new novel Brooklyn last night at the Tenement Museum, Colm Tóibín said he hates the word timeless and complained it would have been "so clunky" to put in the book that it was 1951, even on the flap copy. Readers know the period is post-WWII and, if they must, they can calculate the exact date from Eilis and Tony seeing Singing in the Rain during her second year in America.

(I read it last weekend, bowled over by its purity and sustained power.) 

As for his protagonist, Tóibín said he wanted Eilis to be "ostensibly passive," someone "who would soak in the world like blotting paper, rather than trying to control it." Succeeding in keeping almost all of the disdain out of his voice, he added, "I didn't want a 'get up and go' figure, who would arrive and 'take the city by storm.'" He had been reading a lot of Jane Austen and admired her characters' "inwardness, something that almost glowed in them" and how surprised they are when they're noticed. 

Introducing Tóibín, Andrew Sean Greer was extremely funny about the similarities between their novels. Next week he goes to Italy where The Story of a Marriage competes for the Premio Vallombrosa against books by Jhumpa Lahiri, Richard Ford, Deborah Eisenberg, Ingo Shulze, and David Albahari. (Last year Peter Cameron was a finalist for Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You.) Three days after the award ceremony, he will open the Roma International Literary Festival with a reading at the Forum.

Too bad I didn't take pictures so you could see the cut of Greer's pale gray suit, the subtle detailing on his shirt's placket, and a pair of boots that were sex itself.

New Yorkers who read should bear in the mind the series of free talks at the Tenement Museum. At the same time, please take a moment to support the museum workers who have formed a union, as yet unrecognized by the unyielding management.

Born May 13: Bruce Chatwin

A contemporary heir to Patrick Leigh Fermor's genius in travel writing, Bruce Chatwin's literary talent was matched by his personal panache. So brilliant, so handsome, so acclaimed, so willing to buck British convention, yet so tormented by his own prejudices. Unable to accept that he was gay, he married a woman, Elizabeth Chanler, in 1965, when he was twenty-five, and exclusively pursued men throughout their fifteen years of marriage. (She didn't mind, although she did ask for a separation in 1980.)

Chatwin's reflex for making up cover stories appears to have extended into his nonfiction. The local people of his marvelous travel books like In Patagonia and The Songlines disputed the accuracy of some of his writing, claiming he embellished or created characters and conversations described as fact. Many episodes in those essays only make sense if you realize he is sleeping with the men he meets. Although there's nothing outright gay in his much loved first novel On the Black Hill, it concerns two long-time bachelor brothers who sleep in the same bed for decades. Even when he was dying at forty-eight in 1989, he remained so closeted he said he had a rare, fatal blood disease contracted in China from a bat bite, rather than say he had aids. One of his lovers was Jasper Conran; Chatwin died in the South of France in a house owned by Jasper's mother, Shirley Conran, and his ashes were scattered near Leigh Fermor's home in the Peleponnese. 

Tuesday's Eurovision Song: Montenegro

Do you see what the antigay Russian officials are up against? Despite the yellow tank top and knee-high green soccer socks, he's not Borat Bruno. Andrea Demirovic, 23, is the first woman to represent Montenegro.

So typically neutral, the Swiss-based Eurovision does not choose host cities. Whichever country wins the contest, becomes the next year's host. Which is to suggest, based on the above, they won't be broadcasting from Podgorica in 2010. (Though wouldn't Apple go bananas with iPodgorica?)

Holy Multi-Hyphenates! Perry Moore's HERO Now in Paperback

Forget It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman! Try He writes! He surfs! He exec produces! Meet Perry Moore. The man who got Narnia to the big screen wrote his first book to redress the lack of gay superheroes in YA fiction. Hero is the story of high school basketball player Thom Creed who keeps his sexuality and his emerging supernatural abilities a secret from his father, himself a disgraced former caped crusader. As a secret apprentice to a league of heroes, Thom saves lives and battles villains. As a teenager, he's benched by a hostile coach and his first anonymous hookup stops with a kiss. Circumstances demand he come out publicly but more trouble awaits. No longer in the league, he starts his own group of would-be heroes and overcomes additional struggles on his way to an affirming ending. (Perry Moore plans a sequel.)

School Library Journal said, "...once the action picks up, Hero becomes a real page-turner that is worth the wait." Stan Lee raved, "Wow! This totally original, can’t-put-it-down page turner is more than a terrific read, it’s an unforgettable experience—not to be missed!" 

A movie of Hero is said to be in the works. Moore's next novel is about triplets who are werewolves. His extreme disappointment with Wolverine being a lunchbox role model even though he slaughtered Northstar, Marvel's token gay superhero, is just one compelling reason to read this interview. Another reason:

I have always been enthralled with comic books and superheroes, and I've always believed there should be a gay superhero. Not as a joke, not as a supporting character, not as a victim, not as a token, but as a real front-and-center hero. I've always been surprised by how few gay heroes there are in comic books, and I decided I would write the definitive coming-of-age story of the world's first gay teen superhero. I was very surprised by the low number of gay characters in comic books. Every other barrier has been broken in comics: race, gender, class, physical challenges. But gay characters remain few and far between. Too few and far between to be killed off so regularly, without bringing attention to some rather ugly publishing trends.

Lesbian Becomes First Female President of So Cal's Board of Rabbis

Big week for West Hollywood's synagogue, Congregation Kol Ami. Saturday was their "Totally Awesome 80s Gala" featuring Tiffany, not kidding, (tickets were $275 - $500), and last night their founder, Denise Eger, a 49 year-old out lesbian, was installed as the first woman to be president of southern California's 300 member Board of Rabbis. She is a longtime outspoken advocate for human rights, especially on lgbt issues. Fifteen years ago she married her partner Karen Siteman, now 56, and they were married again last October. Needless to say, they were huge opponents of Prop 8, a position shared by 85% of the congregations. Only 8% of southern California's congregations are orthodox, according to the Los Angeles Times. She told the newspaper,

"I believe that injustice, when it is present, demands Rabbinic addressing."

As for leading a vast number of religious people in southern California, wouldn't you rather have heard her give the invocation at the inauguration?

Moscow Bans Pride May 16, Ensuring Gayest! Eurovision! Ever! May 16

 

Does anyone know how to sing Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" in Russian? Last week, Moscow city officials yet again rejected Nikolai Alekseyev's permit application for a gay pride march on May 16. But that night the Russian capital is hosting the 54th Eurovision Song Contest finals (the World Cup of pop music and, officially, the second gayest show on Earth). Even the Swiss-based Eurovision spokesman was unsympathetic to their hosts' homophobia, refusing to comment on the local law but saying, "It's not a secret that we have a large gay audience and we respect everyone's backgrounds."

As he has annually, human rights hero Alekseyev said he and other gay activists would march anyway, braving beatings from ultranationalists, police brutality, and prison. He has also asked Eurovision participants to show their support for gay pride. You better believe sequins are ruffled and the indignation is already hotter than the spotlights. The Dutch group, an all-male trio who are wishfully? ironically! totally named The Toppers, have threatened to boycott.

The calls for justice are coming from more than pop acts. In March the European parliament sent a letter to Russian officials criticizing the government's banning of 167 public gay events since 2006. Even the State Department recently condemned Russia's continued outlawing of gay pride in their report on global human rights violations.

To support the hot backup dancers global community, I'll post an original Eurovision song each day this week. Forty-two nations are competing. Some are dismal, many look and sound like SNL spoofs. A few are really fun. Last year's winner was Dima Bilan.

Obviously, the first entry has to be by The Toppers. You won't be able to take it all.

Colm Tóibín on Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

If since last October you've been hoping for a sterling mind to to walk you through the 928-page Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, your wait is over. The current London Review of Books has an essay by Colm Tóibín at his wisest and wryest. You won't find a lovelier sketch of two great artists than this:

The letters make clear that Lowell was a cross between a fox and a puppy dog. He knew many small things, and was often filled with hope for his poems, his plays, his friends, his wives and children. He did a great deal of physical and intellectual gallivanting. Bishop, on the other hand, was a cross between a hedgehog and a snail. She knew, or tried to become acquainted with, one large thing; she left silvery and ambiguous traces.

In 8,100 words, Tóibín's cinemascope vision captures everything. Mainly he focuses on the poets' mutually absorbing long-distance friendship, their blind spots, and their competitive streaks. He also touches upon Lowell's time in an asylum where Bishop's mother spent years (Elizabeth was four the last time she saw her); Bishop's partner Lota de Macedo Soares, her role in the political life of Brazil; and the difficulty of mining Bishop's mysteries because she hid her feelings and because so many of her other letters were destroyed (the implication being to cover her or the recipient's lesbianism). Despite the wounds, Tóibín can still find shades of humor:

Unless Lowell was exceptionally thick-skinned, which he was not, her letter must have been difficult to read. On the other hand, since there is no joy greater than correcting someone else’s French, it must have been a pure pleasure for Bishop to write.

Make time for this essay, and do read his new novel, Brooklyn.

Outrage, Little Ashes, Rudo y Cursi Underwhelm in Debut Box Office

The gay movies released Friday failed to attract sizable audiences in their debut weekend.

Outrage grossed an estimated $7,000 per screen in five cities. (Kirby Dick's previous documentary, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, grossed $15,332 per screen its opening weekend.) I think moviegoers were either repulsed by the subject matter or felt it was old news that has been done better by Michelangelo Signorile, Mike Rogers, et al.

The Garcia Lorca - Dali romance Little Ashes grossed $6,416 per screen. Middling reviews, a lack of star power, and indifference to the figures and story must have hurt attendance.

And yet the entirely, chest-thumpingly straight and with two big international stars, Rudo y Cursi did worst of all, grossing a paltry $3,009 per screen. (Seven years ago, before most Americans had heard of them, the stars' Y Tu Mama Tambien opened with $10,412 per screen.) Why? The stars got old and less cute? Or the movie wasn't gay enough?

The official stance is to blame Star Trek, but everyone knew that was going to be huge and counter programming often works.

Because art house movies open only where studios perceive demand for them, opening weekend per screen averages for indie films can be very high. For example, Brokeback Mountain opened on five screens with a $109,485 average. In March, the Valentino documentary opened with a $21,726 per screen and in its third week, when it expanded to four cities, its per theater gross was still over $14,000. Last month, even the Chorus Line documentary, Every Little Step, earned $8,563 per screen in its debut.

The current weekend numbers above are estimates. When final numbers are posted later, I will update.