Thursday, January 19, 2012
ON TRACK
Today's gay film was The Trip (2002)
This is an old favorite of ours. It is melodrama, it is a little cheesy and it is a little awkward here and there. It got bad reviews. But it resonated with us and a lot of other gay men who were in the closet.
This guy is so far in that he is a republican and straight. He writes an antihomo book but it is not published.
It only comes out after five years, long enough for him to meet and get connected with a militant gay activist who brings him out. They have a four year relationship and then, the evangelicals on the retreat, Anita Bryant and all, they bring the book out anonymously and someone turns him in as the author.
The relationship goes into the shitter and our republican gay man seeks shelter with an older man, the one who turns him in to get him, actually.
When he hears that his partner is sick with AIDS and in Mexico he goes to get him and bring him back home.
Yeh. It is very cheesy in the telling. I guess you have to see it.
A lot of these films that we will be seeing are targeted to a very typical gay audience and they become beloved in spite of themselves.
There are some very good pieces in this. Some funny, some angry. The span of time is from Stonewall to the Reagan administration. We see newsclips and there are some "real" people in it like David Mixner and old gay firebrand.
I liked it again and had forgotten enough to enjoy the "new" stuff. I lived during this period so it speaks quite specifically to guys like me. I too was homophobic in a weird way to keep people off my back and I was even, for about a year, a republican.
Have I ever told that story?
I was in lust for politics and when I moved to the suburbs I got involved in local politics. They happened to be GOP and I went along because I wanted to get involved in the business. Not the ideology.
Oh. The movie. It is a very dear momento for me. I will, no doubt, see it again.
