TOM FORD - FURTHER UNFORTUNATE COMMENTS

Further to the item below, a profile of Tom Ford in the last "Sunday Times", "31st Jan.) states "Ford is apt to object to being called gay.  He claimed to have slept with girls from the age of 15 until he was 25.

'I guess I'm gay because I've lived with a man for the past 23 years. But if you siad give me 10 words to describe yourself, gay would not be one of them.'

As my old headmaster used to say "Silly fellow!"

CONTROVERSIAL COMMENTS ABOUT " A SINGLE MAN" FILM

We were looking forward to the film of Christopher Isherwood's novel "A Single Man".

However, talking to Ryan Gilbey about his film  in the Sunday Times Culture magazine, director Tom Ford felt it necessary to say “ it’s not a gay story, he just happens to be gay.“

Why do film directors feel the need to add these qualifications to works about gay characters?  “A Single Man” was written by Christopher Isherwood, a very out gay man, and the main character George is gay. The film’s star Colin Firth was then quoted as saying  “ ...when he’s asked not to come to his lover’s funeral – that could be any secret or inappropriate lover.”  This ignores the fact that the film is set in the 60’s, and until the introduction of the Civil Partnership Act in 2005, the fear, of being barred from the funeral, or hospital bedside of a lover was a very real threat, and in many cases a fact, for all gay people.  These comments diminish the problems that faced the LGBT community at that time, together with the battles they had, and still do have, to gain true equality   

Film directors do not feel the need to say that their heterosexual films are not heterosexual stories, or that their characters “just happen to be” straight.  Lessons are still to be learned.

January 2010

A good starting point - 3Sixty Magazine's "Ten Gay Movies That Changed the World" (Feb 2009).

1961 Victim

1969 Cowboy

1970 The Boys in the Band

1985 My Beautiful Launderette

1986 Parting Glances

1991 My Own Private Idaho

1994 The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

1995 Beautiful Thing   

2005 Brokeback Mountain

2008 Milk 

What would your choices be?

Those of you who saw "Milk" might like to get the DVD "The Times of Harvey Milk", which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1985. The way things were....

OUT Magazine recommends the DVD "Were the World Mine". "Imagine High School Musical as re-imagined by the late queer auteur Derek Jarman and you'd be close to the odd, camp and slightly surreal 'Were the World Mine' ".