Thursday, July 19, 2012
ICONOCLAST
Today's gay film was the documentary and NYTimes Critics' Pick
Paul Goodman Change My Life (2011)
Because he did. I read Growing Up Absurd and was transformed. I benefitted from his work with gestalt therapy. I read a lot of his books.
Little did I know he was also radically gay and a serial seducer.
I missed that part.
He is almost forgotten today but he was a big deal from the forties on into the mid sixties when he mourned and criticized the direction and waste of the "movement" and lost his audience.
This is probably not to everyone's taste but it is a very good doc and covers a lot of ground about the period, the ideas that were the period's foundation and the life that inspired many intellectuals to become more practical, pragmatic in their leanings.
Featured are fellow gay and composer Ned Rorem wh oset some of Goodman's poems to music, and many of his family and colleagues. Now almost gone.
I will rate it as a strong 3. I won't be watching it again but I am glad that I did.
