GAYLETTER

Opening this week at the Museum of Modern Art, Jason and Shirley is director Stephen Winter’s fictionalized retelling of Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Shirley Clarke’s 1967 film Portrait of Jason. In the original film, Clarke brought Jason Holliday, a charismatic black gay hustler and aspiring nightclub performer, into her penthouse at the Chelsea Hotel for a marathon film session that climaxed in Holliday’s intense onscreen breakdown. Winter’s politically charged reimagining stars the New York queer performer Jack Waters as Jason, and the downtown doyenne of art and politics, Sarah Schulman, as Shirley. Both performances are phenomenal, and Jack conjures and channels Jason’s spirit uncannily. In addition, the film is a visual treat, shot on vintage Super VHS and edited to perfectly evoke a druggy, frustrating, 12-hour film shoot. Be prepared for a searing reversal of the original film’s invasive focus on Jason’s life that asks important questions about exploitation, art, and power.  —Patrick

We’re not trying to jump on the bandwagon for the sake of jumping on the bandwagon, but sometimes that bandwagon is full for a reason. As you may of heard, Roland Emmerich, the director of such classics as The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day has turned his attention to the genesis of the modern day gay rights movement — the riot at the Stonewall Inn in downtown NYC that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Unfortunately he has completely re-written the history of that event in an apparent attempt to get white straight people to watch his movie. Instead of focusing the story on the trans women of color (who actually started the riot) he has instead decided to revolve the film around a white boy from middle America, a poverty tourist, who at the end of the film heads uptown to start school at Columbia University. Is it 2015 or 1985? The reaction to this movie has been swift, and vicious. And rightly so. When members of our own community are so out of touch they think it’s totally cool to whitewash our history to sell movie tickets, there’s something terribly wrong. So whatever you do, please don’t buy a ticket to this movie, if you must watch it (for the sheer angry thrill of it) find a way to do so without putting money into the pockets of the director and studio that released this trash.  —tom

The brilliant photographer and documentarian, Yann Arthus-Bertrand has created a new film that tells the story of all of us. Well maybe not all of us, but pretty damn close. The film has 3 parts, each 90-minutes long, featuring incredible interviews with hundreds of humans from around the world. Each person speaks directly to camera in front of a black background (so you focus on the person, not their surroundings). This egalitarian technique works, you have less to grab onto, less to make judgements about, their essential humanness comes through faster and you are forced to listen to their words and explore their faces. There’s factory workers in China, people from slums in Rio, celebrities from America (Cameron Diaz — one of the least interesting people) the ex-president of Uruguay (one of the most fascinating). Human premiered on Saturday (Sept. 12) at the refurbished United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York City. It’s now available on YouTube. You can watch the individual interviews (all 2000 of them) but I recommend you watch the 3 parts in full. As a complete package it is an impactful document of the ruling inhabitants of this planet. One race ya’ll, the HUMAN race.  —tom

This is a pretty cunty event, one of those “only in New York City” type of things. It’s a screening of Casablanca with the two daughters of Ingrid Bergman, who will discuss the Swedish actress’s most famous role and what it was like growing up in the spotlight with one of the world’s most beautiful and famous women as their mother. Isabella Rossellini has obviously lead a unique and big career as an actress, her half-sister, Pia Lindstrom, has had a long career as a television journalist and was apparently greatly affected when her mother left her father (Swedish neurosurgeon Petter Lindström) for the Italian director Roberto Rossellini. I imagine the sisters’ conversation will be filled with some fascinating insights about their mother and also the filming of Casablanca. Hopefully they don’t hold back!  —tom

Pixar doesn’t make bad movies. I know that’s an obvious statement but it bears repeating. They put such time and effort into making movies they rarely miss a step. Every time I see a Pixar movie, I promise myself I’m not going to cry, but god dammit they get me every time. Wall-E is a particularly big achievement for the animation company in that it features barely any dialogue and instead relies on the body language and expressions of a trash collecting robot from the future to propel the story forward. Thursday night you have the chance to see this mesmerizing film on the big screen, outdoors, in a very unusual setting. As part of their seventh annual Summer Movie Series the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, which is actually a massive former Navy aircraft carrier, is screening the movie on their flight deck, overlooking the Hudson River on one side and the New York City skyline on the other. This should be self-evident, but get there early to get a good spot. While the flight deck is obviously humongous, you can be guaranteed that plenty of people will show up to this. And remember to take your litter home with you, don’t let Wall-E down!  —tom

I came across an Indiegogo campaign for this film sometime last year. I watched their pitch video and instantly wanted to do everything I could to help. Just the other night I was looking through Netflix when I saw that the completed film has been added to their library. An Honest Liar is a full length documentary about magician and bullshit-buster, James “The Amazing” Randi. Randi started out as a magician in the 1950’s, but made a name for himself in the 60’s by publicly debunking those who claimed to have paranormal, occult, or supernatural powers. His biggest adversary was Uri Geller, a Russian asshole who was able to convince a bunch of idiots that he had psychic powers by bending spoons on live TV. Randi would follow Uri around the country appearing after him on TV shows to show how his stupid spoon bending tricks were done. An Honest Liar focuses most of its attention on Randi’s life-long (he’s now in his late 80’s) quest to unmask all kinds of charlatans from TV evangelists to self-proclaimed psychics, but it takes an unexpected twist in the last 20 minutes when we discover that Randi’s male partner of the last 25 years has been living under a stolen identity since moving to the US from Venezuela at the age of 18. I won’t spoil how it all ends, but it gets juicy. An Honest Liar is a wonderfully made documentary, it’s well-paced and well edited, and well worth 92 minutes of your time.  —tom

I’m pretty sure I came out of the womb gay. As soon as I could walk I was all up in my mother’s clothes and make-up, my sister’s dolls and Easy Bake oven etc. To add to the mix I had a horrible lisp! To remedy the situation I went to speech therapy for 3 years in public school and I successfully “remediated” the “s” sound but it did nothing for my burgeoning love of cock. So when I heard about the new documentary, “Do I Sound Gay?” opening in NYC at the IFC this Friday, I was more than interested in checking it out. Everyone from cute and charming David Sedaris  to Tim Gunn, Margaret Cho, sex expert Dan Savage and a slew of speech specialists chime in on the subject as filmmaker/protagonist David Thorpe attempts to seek therapy to sound less gay. There’s fascinating material with gay guys who sound straight (and make me hard) and straight married guys with children who sound super gay featured. Scientific, social and societal breakdowns of speech patterns that lead to the inevitable “gay voice” universally perceived as classically homosexual are put under a microscope. This is such a potent, touching and powerful subject for our community. I lived in morbid fear of being called a faggot as a youth and I knew my voice was a dead giveaway. “Sally sells seashells by the seashore” I must have said that 5,000 times in an effort to fix my gay voice. Msssssss Thing, don’t even question it, this is a must see!  —Gayletter

I kept hearing over and over again on NPR radio this week about the exclusive Netflix documentary titled, “What Happened, Miss Simone?” I thought, wow, this must really be something if NPR is pushing so hard... and it really is. It’s an extraordinary documentary about the life of one of the greatest (and first black classically trained) pianists and interpretive jazz singers of ALL time. Sure enough, half through we find out this brilliant but troubled soul got the shit beat out of her by her brutish ex-police officer turned manager husband. Sound familiar? Ike and Tina? There are touching and telling excerpts from Simone’s diaries shared throughout the film as poor town southern black Nina crossed the train tracks as a young girl growing up in Jim Crow-era North Carolina to get classical piano training from a white woman, all the way through to her revolutionary civil rights work and tunes including a rendition of the now infamous Mississippi Goddam. “Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream” quips Nina in this tough-love tribute, meticulously researched and directed by Liz Garbus. Whether you’re a Nina Simone fan or not this film speaks volumes about political activism, domestic violence, artistry, mental illness and the like…it is not to be missed.  —Gayletter