#parting glances

[girlstevebuscemi]

Steve Buscemi for the New York Times / shot by Finlay Mackay, 2007

[affogonellamarmellata]

I should have been a dyke

[dare-g]

Parting Glances (1986)

[mrmousetolliver]

Parting Glances (1986) directed by Bill Sherwood. Parting Glances is one of the first films to deal frankly and realistically with the subject of AIDS and is considered by many critics to be an important film in the history of Gay cinema.

The film was directed by first time director Bill Sherwood, who also edited and wrote the screenplay. It is also the first major roles for Steve Buscemi. Janet Maslin of the New York Times said "It is to both his and the film's credit that the anguish of AIDS is presented as part of a larger social fabric, understood in context, and never in a maudlin light." Bill Sherwood died in 1990 of complications from AIDS. In 2006, Outfest and the UCLA Film and Television Archive announced that the film would be the first to be restored as a part of the Outfest Legacy Project. The film is available for streaming on Tubi.

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Bengiyo Queer Cinema Syllabus

Not to sound repetitive but, I had a busy couple weeks, but finally had a second to return to @bengiyo’s queer cinema syllabus. I am currently working my way through Unit 4: Heartbreak Alley, the totally light-hearted, definitely not agonizing section of the syllabus where I get to watch countless acts of violence be committed against queer people. Thank fuck I have Lesbians waiting for me at the end of this unit. The films in Unit 4 are: Bent (1997), Strange Fruit (2004), Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Parting Glances (1986), Philadelphia (1993), The Living End (1992), Holding the Man (2015), Jeffery (1995), and Boys on the Side (1995).

Today I will be talking about

Parting Glances (1986) dir. Bill Sherwood

[Run Time: 1:30, Available: tubi and fubo, Language: English]

Summary: As Michael and Robert, a gay couple in New York, prepare for Robert's departure for a two-year work assignment in Africa, Michael must face Robert's true motives for leaving while dealing with their circle of eccentric friends, including Nick, who is living with AIDS.

Cast: 

John Bolger as Robert

Richard Ganoung as Michael 

Steve Buscemi as Nick 

__

Well, I have to say this was very much not what I was expecting for the first AIDS related movie of the syllabus. After some pretty hefty violent deaths of queer characters in the first half of Unit 4, I was very much anticipating the heart wrenching tragedies to continue immediately once I hit the AIDS epidemic portion. But Parting Glances very much subverted my expectations of what I was walking in to, because honestly…so much of it was lovely. 

It’s not that tragedy is not a part of this movie, it is, it’s just hidden under the layer of friendship, community, and love that feels like the core theme of the film. I am thinking about the party at Joan’s and how much happiness and celebration was happening there, with community abound, and yet how Michael kept telling people they should call Nick because he would appreciate it, showing just how much Nick has lost of his own community since his HIV/AIDS diagnosis. 

I really loved how real these relationships to one another felt, the way that Michael and Robert were playful with each other, the way that Nick sat on Michael’s lap so casually for a few minutes when Michael cooked him dinner, I loved the conversation Robert had with his ex-girlfriend, the young and hopeful queer boy who wished to live forever. I just loved watching the queer community be a queer community. 

Even in the moments that get a little dour, where Michael gets especially weepy with Nick, those scenes did not make me sad, did not destroy me the way other films in this syllabus have, because that is just grief. Grief is a mighty and terrible thing, but I find beauty in it as well. I find beauty and loveliness in the fact that those tears came from Michael finally admitting to Nick that he loved him, that Nick got to hear himself that he was loved, especially when so many people seemed to have fallen away from him after his diagnosis. I find comfort in the conversations about death that Michael and Joan have together, because those are conversations I’ve had, they feel familiar, they feel like a natural part of life, perhaps they should not have to feel those points so soon, but Nick himself is right, living forever is the only thing none of us can do. 

I really loved that we saw Nick when he was at a stage in his illness where he was simply being careful, but was still full of life, energetic, that he was able to be a support system for Michael and was not only being tended to. We know what is coming, but we are not made to see it. I was really in to what the film did with it’s use of ominous backing track, that Nick could hear it, that it felt like the progression of his illness, that it felt like a sense of impending doom, a cloud that hangs over Nick. 

Throughout a lot of this film I found myself thinking about The Inheritance Part One & Part Two, a play written in 2016 based off of the book Howard’s End by EM Forster. I saw this play a few years back and was lulled in to a false sense of security that this would not be a play about AIDS because it was set in the relatively modern day with a focus on younger queer characters, but ohhhhhhh how wrong I was. Towards the end of the first part, we hear a story from a character named Walter, an older gay man that lived in the same building as the main characters, and he recounts the story of his life, how his husband, Henry, built a farm outside of New York city for the two of them to live in…right around the time that AIDS started decimating the area. How that distance still was not good enough for Henry so he would leave on business trips, because his fear of catching AIDS was so strong. 

Walter tells the story of when he went back in to the city for the first time, and ran in to a friend he used to know, who had acquired AIDS and was on the brink of death. He talks about how when Henry was away, he brought that kid to the farm Henry had built to hide from AIDS, and Walter cared for that boy until he died. Walter talks about doing that again and again and again and again, dozens of times, he would go in to the city, bring a friend back home, and care for them until they passed. 

^[sidebar: I very much do not like Robert]

Part of the play ends with Walter being asked what it was like at that time, Walter asks the main characters to name someone they know, they give a name, he says “they’re dead. Give me another name, he’s dead”. For what felt like minutes, name after name after name is called and name after name after name is dead. When I saw that scene I broke down in the theater, I cried for the entirety of the walk back to the train station, I was brought to the brink of tears at the thought of that scene for a month after I saw the show. 

I mention this because it was all that I could think about while watching Robert and Michael interact with one another, while seeing this plot unfold. Robert fleeing New York while Michael stayed to care for his dying friend. Knowing that Walter and Henry stayed together after all was said and done, after Henry had stopped running from reality, and the death rates had slowed; then seeing Robert decide not to go to Africa, and how Michael did not show any signs of planning to break up with Robert knowing, despite knowing how Robert felt too settled, how Robert had chosen to go, despite knowing that Robert was running from loss, and running from being a support for Michael when the love of his life finally dies. 

So despite the fact that Parting Glances didn’t evoke the same feelings, though I felt like overall it was a relatively upbeat, uptempo, gentle film, the current underneath it all, the dying underneath it all, the tragedy is right there but it is just out of reach. 

Favorite Scene 

I think my favorite scene is when Joan and Michael are laying in bed together, holding stuffed animals at Robert’s going away party while they just casually talk about death and dying. It just felt very much like a conversation I have had with my best friend on multiple occasions, especially lately because we've had a number of deaths happen in our lives recently. And yes, my friend and I both match the type of conversation part this scene, and also the beating each other up with stuffed animals part of this scene.

Obviously we do not spend enough time with the other characters at the party to know exactly what is going on in their lives, and there is not doubt many if not all of them have lost loved ones to AIDS, but we know that Joan and Michael are really the only two people who go and visit Nick, and it feels so symbolic of the weight that they are shouldering caring for their dying friend to have the only two people who have not cut themselves off from Nick be sitting together, in another room away from all the other gay attendees, discussing, speculating, joking about death. 

Favorite Quote

We all know the real right answer is: “Straight men are jerks. Gay men are jerks. Straight women are jerks. That leaves lesbians and they are off in their ivory towers laughing their heads off at the rest of us. I should’ve been a dyke” 

But I am going to go for the more serious:

“...look at the others, waiting, wondering if some innocent moment of pleasure long past can set them up with the ultimate form of [German word my subtitles did not state]...  I’d like to stage a piece in which all of the performers are people who are terminally ill, can you imagine the intensity, the concentration, the purpose”

This is said off-handedly in a conversation between Joan and a heterosexual male artist who was attending the party. I put it here for two reasons: a) the first half is a very succinct commentary on the state of the queer community (at least who were at the party) and feels like general commentary about the movie’s premise as a whole. Especially because Nick talks about how he didn’t realize how long the gestation period of HIV was, and by the time he started taking protective measures it was already too late. b) because the second half is just the most pretentious, absolutely mindless, careless, and shitty thing to say to someone who is actively losing a friend to a terminal illness. This fucking hetero artist came in to a room full of queer people and decided that dying people would be great to put in to his next project for ~The Vibes~ and I love that comment so much because first, it shows how much he Does Not Get It, and second because of how much disgust is baked in to Joan’s “Excuse me” as she leaves before he can finish his thought. 

Because to say that to someone who is watching loved one after loved one after loved one die before their eyes is an absolutely disgusting thing to do (in my opinion). 

Final Score

8/10

Up next, Philadelphia (1993)

[sapphireshorelines]

Lesser known LGBTQ+ movies I love

memento Mlmori (1999)

fried green tomatoes (1991)

parting glances (1986)

murmur of youth (1997)

his (2020)

[thinasadlme]

I am the number one Parting Glances fan

[bellsmess]

tragic gays you'll always mean so much to me

[chvryyluvr]

young stevie b <3

[girlstevebuscemi]

Portrait of Steve Buscemi, 1989

[my-holy-hour]

Steve Buscemi in Parting Glances (1985)

[queerinfilm]

Steve Buscemi’s Queer Roles:

🎥 Parting Glances (1986)

Nick is struggling with HIV, and his ex-boyfriend, Robert, comes to comfort him.

🎥 Love In The Time Of Money (2002)

(Technically not gay (per say) but this does happen, so…)

[hinamie]

morning glory

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Bengiyo's Queer Cinema Syllabus

Oh hello again everyone! Apologies to the three people who are probably interested in this syllabus journey for falling off the face of the earth for the last few months. Had a lot of life changes and travel going on and have not been falling desperately behind in all of the things I have been watching. Now that I am back home for more than two days at a time, I figured I should get back into the swing of things with @bengiyo’s queer cinema syllabus.. With this post I am officially wrapping up Unit 4: Heartbreak Alley and will get to reap my reward with Lesbians and Gems for Units 5 and 6. As a reminder the films in Unit 4 are: Bent (1997), Strange Fruit (2004), Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Parting Glances (1986), Philadelphia (1993), The Living End (1992), Holding the Man (2015), Jeffery (1995), and Boys on the Side (1995)

Today I will be talking about:

Boys on the Side (1995) dir. Herbert Ross

[Run Time: 1:55, I watched it through Plex, Language: English]

Summary: Robin shares a ride in her car with Jane from New York to Los Angeles. They stop at Jane's friend Holly's place in Pittsburgh and take her with them west, making a long stop in Tucson. The three very different women become close friends.

Cast:  - Whoopi Goldberg as Jane - Mary-Louise Parker as Robin - Drew Barrymore as Holly

___

OKAY. Shout out to me for getting through the final film in Heartbreak Alley without crying! 

A trend I have noticed throughout the sad films in this section is that the vast majority of them hold the sadness until the end, which is super fair, but also something I would consider to be rather kind. Maybe it’s just me, but seeing Mysterious Skin so early on in this syllabus really altered my perception of what a difficult movie looked and felt like. The movie that compromised me the most in this unit was far and away Strange Fruit, which sits in the Mysterious Skin camp of being great and also something I will struggle to ever watch again. By comparison, a lot of the Heartbreak Alley films were fine. 

I liked how much Boys on the Side was about the bonds between women and the importance of found family. I love a movie where the premise is: girls do crime and then hit the road together. I like how expertly this film was able to pull back the layers on Robin, until you hit the reveal of her HIV diagnosis. When we first meet her, she’s just a kind of put together, somewhat annoying and anal white woman that wants to hit the road for god knows what reason, and you (and Jane) roll your eyes a little at how often she is sanitizing things. 

And then she vomits, and you can kind of just dismiss it as the allergies she says it is. 

And then Jane leaves the car to go see Holly and Robin uses that moment alone to take some medication, and things start to unravel. She goes to bed really early, she looks haggard the longer they are endurance testing their driving on the road. Something is definitely wrong with her, and BOOM, she’s collapsed and is hospitalized, and you find out she’s HIV positive. 

I liked how distinct all three of the main characters felt, and I liked their friendship with one another. The full blown, silent conversations that can pass between them. I like the little moments in a slice of life, the birthday parties, the dancing, Jane making Robin shout “Cunt” because she feels uncomfortable referring to her vagina. I liked that having HIV was just a detail in her life, and that the movie itself didn’t feel like An AIDS Movie. 

Even though Robin is surrounded by red the whole time, something which I usually associate with AIDS itself because of blood and red ribbons. Robin’s car is red, the lighting in her first hospital room is read, the list of plumbers and landlords she leaves on the fridge at her old apartment in New York is red, they settle in Tuscon, they live in a house made of red clay. But she is never the one that is painted in it. She never wears red, she is not the one painted by it. Jane is the one that bleeds in this film, Jane is the one washed in the red lights of the hospital. But the bigger instances of red: the car, the house contains an entire life inside it. A friendship. Happiness, sadness, anger, joy. You barely even notice that it’s there. 

When Robin’s initial case of pneumonia was resolved, the doctor wasn’t worried about it, and even though Robin did pass by the end of the film, the movie itself wasn’t about her dying of AIDS. It was about the friendship between Jane, Robin, and Holly. At least that’s how it felt for me. 

Definitely my favorite part of this film was that Robin was allowed to be absolutely pissed and to kick Jane out of the house when Jane revealed her status to the man Robin liked. Jane was just trying to be helpful, and the man himself was very chill and totally fine with her status. But Jane didn’t have a right to disclose that information. 

I want to know more about the writers of this film, because I liked that the person in the movie who had AIDS was not the former drug user, or the queer person, but the heterosexual, cisgender, white real estate agent. That it seems to have been a little bit of time since she got her diagnosis, and she’s got a handle on how she is dealing with her grief. She doesn’t pity herself, once Jane and Holly know about it, she’s very casual with her references to the blood tests she needs, etc. 

Even if AIDS is a death sentence still in a movie like this one, I still think the film itself is kind about how they portray it. Robin can still be there for the people she cares about. She can get a very violent situation under control, she can fly across the country and testify to try to help Holly, she brings Jane happiness, music, fun. She doesn’t want a funeral, she wants a big party in the house they shared. She makes it long enough to tell Jane she was loved, to go home and meet Holly’s baby. 

We don’t have to watch her die, and even though the last scene of the film itself is an empty house, the understanding that Robin is dead, we don’t have to see her mother, who already lost her husband and her son, mourn her, we don’t have to watch her die. And we are immediately handed the end credit title cards that are just a compilation of the happy moments between Jane, Holly, and Robin. They don’t make you sit in the emotions there for very long. You get the sad scene of Robin seeing the visage of her dead brother, telling Jane what she wants to happen after she’s passed. And then it is immediately followed with a birth, with happiness and humor. You get the happiness of the baby shower when Holly gets out of prison and then the sadness of a shared song and an empty house, and Jane painting her nails in the car as she continues on her journey. And then you get Robin’s face, smiling away, laughter, chaos, joy at all these little moments in the film. 

A good movie to end this section on, both as a wind down piece and as an appetizer for Unit 5: Lesbians. 

Favorite Moment

I think my favorite moment of the film was when Jane and Robin meet Abe for the first time. Mostly because it is absolutely fucking hilarious to watch the paragraphs of silent, judgemental conversation they are having with each other while simultaneously trying to process that Holly who accidentally murdered a guy is dating a cop. It was truly such an expert portrayal of the psychic connections you forge between close friends. 

Favorite Quote 

“Everyone go potty, we don’t want to have to stop,”

I know what you are thinking. “Wen, why the fuck is that your favorite quote of the film?” It’s because of the context. Picture this, you have entered an apartment that is not your own after seeing through the window that the person who responded to your newspaper ad looking for a road trip buddy is in a fight with a random guy. The apartment you enter is a mess and your road trip buddy and her friend are bleeding at the hands of an abusive, drug dealing, asshole. You have managed to get the situation under control once already through sheer force of reasonable suggestion, only to have it ruined when this woman you do not know hits the abusive fucker over the head with a baseball bat. 

THEN because you don’t want to murder him, but you also don’t want him to catch up to you, you and these two women you barely know, tie this man to a chair with rope and duct tape. You have thought through the timing of how long it will take him to break through the binds and have thought about the noise and found a music disc that will last long enough to give you one hell of a head start. You are standing next to this guy who just beat up two people you barely know, who you have hog tied, and who is bleeding from his temple, and in the flattest, most mother telling her child to do a simple task way, you suggest that everyone uses the potty before they essentially enter a getaway car and escape from the scene of this assault. It was just so fucking funny to me. 

Score 

8/10 

I enjoyed the movie, but I think I wanted a little bit more attention and depth on Jane and less on Holly. I think there were a few too many threads going on, and that some of the set up was unnecessary. But I had a good time. 

And that’s it! I have finished Unit 4, I have so many more films to watch, but I inch ever closer to getting to rewatch Big Eden so onward I charge!

[lorillee]

most important thing you can do as a tumblrina is get into some media almost none of your followers know about or have engaged with in any form so you can make long untagged posts complaining about peoples bad takes to an audience of 3 total people. second most important thing you can do as a tumblrina is get obsessed with some ugly guy from said media and start posting about him with captions such as "so cuties forever 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖" so your mutuals can give you a polite golf clap like while attempting to withhold their mildly scathing judgement

[swampflix]

Bonus Features: Torch Song Trilogy (1988)

Our current Movie of the Month, 1988’s Torch Song Trilogy, is Harvey Fierstein’s big-screen adaptation of his own stage play about a drag queen’s life, loves, and heartbreaks in 1970s New York.  The film’s greatest accomplishments lie less in its queer political advocacy than they lie in its dramatic approximation of a full, authentic life for Fierstein’s protagonist – something gay men were…