A screen, pitch black. A letterbox opens, two eyes peering through all gloryhole curious. Pull back, sharply yanked. The door caves kicked in. Trilbied police thunder through. “Dear oh dear oh dear. Somebody here’s been playing silly buggers” smirks a suave D.C. surveying the still warm corpses of playwright Joe Orton and his murdering, then suicidally jealous lover Kenneth Halliwell. Prick Up Your Ears. Stephen Frears’s 1987 film of the same name was an assault on all senses and sensibilities.
John Lahr’s biography of Orton was first published in 1978 but it was the twin pronged late 1980’s arrival of the unexpurgated paperback of The Orton Diaries and Frears’ motion picture that shifted the emphasis from Orton’s plays to the surly, nascent Queer aesthetic of his life itself. The Diaries’ cover with it’s Pop Art oils of Orton’s smirking, naked torso carried the simple nine word review “Buy two copies; one is sure to be stolen” and made for dangerous, knee trembling teenage purchasing in Guildford W.H.Smiths. After 5 years of clumsy AIDS terror ad campaigns, of Red Wedge and Bronski Beat, complimentary condoms and having to explain to well meaning, caring adults what rimming was before you’d even had The Sex, Orton proved to be an intoxicating, lawless and brutally sexy icon. Overnight he became the poster boy for tight T’s, indigo Levis with 6 inch turnups, converse baseball boots. Oh yes, and Cottaging. Lots of it. The film told not only this, Joe’s story but managed to evoke a battered Post War London more anti-vivid in it’s muted greys and mossy greens than any Pathe newsreel.
from the film version of ‘Carousel’ (1956)
Directed by Henry King
Music by Richard Rodgers
Book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein
Starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones
Based on Ferenc Molnár’s play ‘Liliom’ (1909)
it’s this way, man:
drop in a film,
get yourself a flashcube,
pop it on.
take one!
take two!
take three!
take four flash pictures (!) without changing bulbs.
in color of course.
Photographer Katie Hawkins has undertaken an ambitious three-part project in an effort to promote marriage equality and to raise awareness about issues affecting LGBT families.
Through exhibitions of LGBT family portraits, a book of photographs and family stories plus a documentary, Hawkins aims to “help people view their previous conception of family through a new lens of acceptance and understanding rather than difference and discrimination.”
The documentary follows Hawkins herself and her struggle to create a family against society’s forces, as well as a twenty-something straight guy whose parents are gay.
Have a look at The New Face of Family to follow the project or to participate by striking a pose with you and yours.
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going — North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying — elbows stretching — fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless — eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning—sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming — air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea — beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.
