The Indianapolis News from Indianapolis, Indiana • 35

Friday, Moy 24, 1996 THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS MOVIE REVIEW Hollywood's gays step out of "The Celluloid Closet9 ill I The Celluloid Closet Tto Cast Appearances by Tom Hanks, Shirley MacLaine, Susan Location: GC Castleton Square. Rating: Not rated; nudity, lesbian love-making, male kissing, adult themes. Star ratings: 4 excellent 3 good, 2 (air, 1 poor. By Bonnie Britton STAFF WRITER elieve it or not: Ben-Hur was gay. That according to The and gays drew their self-percep-' tlon from what they saw on screen.

In one scene, the parallel is drawn between a gay character in 'Suddenly Last Summer, being chased by a mob, and a "monster" being chased by an angry mob in an early horror classic. Gay author Armistead Maupin recalls watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies In Hudson's private screening room with': a group of gay men. and laughing a't all the gay in-jokes. Biggest Joke of all was that Hudson, who was a closet gay. played a straight man pretending to be gay in Pillow Talk.

Confesses gay screenwriter Barry Sandler: "Growing up in the '60s. all we had were images of unhappy, suicidal, desperate gay people." r. Though the movie is fairly thorough, showing subtle gay subtext in everything from The Maltese Falcon to Calamity Jane to more open portrayals, like those In The Boys in the Band, it is light In recent films. cotts by the Catholic Church and its Legion of Decency. Despite pressure, gays never left the screen.

Instead, they were made harder to find or turned into villains, vampires, murderers and victims. Screenwriter Jay Presson Allen states that the men who ran the Production Code office weren't rocket scientists, and it wasn't that difficult for a clever director to get around the censors. Alfred Hitchcock's movie Rope was based on gay psychopathic murderers Leopold and Loeb, but its screenwriter, Arthur Laurents, is sure the censors didn't have a clue. Movies of the 1950s, when sexual conformity was preached, showed tough lesbians behind bars Caged), characters accused of being gay (Tea and Sympathy) or characters like Mineo's Plato in Rebel Without a Cause who seemed to be gay. When filmmakers couldn't change the rules, they wrote between the lines, according to The Celluloid Closet's voice-over narration.

Interested audiences learned to watch movies that way. als and story lines in movies. Mainstream moviegoers might not remember Oscar-winner Sarandon in The Hunger, doing a lesbian love scene, Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean kissing in Making Love, and Mariel Hemingway as an Olympic athlete competing with her lesbian lover In Personal Best. They're more likely to recall Sal Mineo's confused (and gay) teenager in Rebel Wtthout a Cause; Joe E. Brown In Some Like It Hot, telling Jack Lemmon that "nobody's perfect" when Lemmon tries to convince him they can't marry because Lemmon is really a man; and Al Pacino in Cruising, which portrayed the gay subculture as a dark and dangerous place.

The Celluloid Closet, told ly in chronological order, opens with a primitive test made at Thomas Edison's studio in 1895. showing two men dancing together while a third plays the fiddle. There's no, evidence that the film had any more to do with homosexuality than it did necessity (no women around to It does show that there can be more than Celluloid Closet, an entertaining and often incisive movie about homosexuality in films. Writer Gore Vidal talks about discreetly inserting some romantic tension between Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd in the Ben-Hur screenplay, and says director William Wyler wasn't about to tell Heston, because he'd have a fit. Instead, they let only Boyd in on the secret.

The Celluloid Closet, by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is based on the book of the same name by the late Vito Russo, author and film historian, who approached the filmmakers in the mid-1980s about making a movie version of his work. Published In 1981 (and updated in 1987 to Include films of the 1980s), the book is touted as the first to chronicle how gays and lesbians have been depicted on screen since movies were first Sony Pictures Classics CONFESSION: Shirley MacLaine (left) confesses her love for Audrey Hepburn in The Children's Hour (1962). societal pressure has often dictated how openly and in what role. Interspersed with footage from more than 100 films are actors (including Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg and Harry Hamlin), writers, producers and directors, who are seen on camera; talking about their own films and the history of homosexual portray shown publicly 100 years ago. Russo died of an AIDS-related illness in 1991.

Various sources came through with funding for the film, including Lily Tomlin, who spearheaded a direct-mail campaign. From sissy to villain, veiled to outrageous, gay characters in films have always been there, but one interpretation of the same footage. The Celluloid Closet gathers steam as it travels through Hollywood screen gays as a source of humor and the sissy as stock character; self-censorship of the industry, and the threat of boy she's not proper, she's not fitting, she's not British, but to Jack A J. she's a breath of fresh air. General C7 Cinema Gl ALL CINEMAS EQUIPPED BARGAIN MATINEES TILL 6 PM DAILY 8HOWTIMES FOR TODAY ONLYt n.u'.'HH::i.mi;nn All FRIDAY STEREO tAST tlai ST, I MAN 80A0 595-6234 Robin Williams SPY HARD 11:30 1:30 4:40 7:10 M0 PS13 DOW Gens Hacfcman Nathan Lane Olanne West irdcaae MISSION IMPOSSIBLE ON FIVE SCREENS P813 11:30 11:10 11:40 1:50 1:30 3:10 4:15 5:00 5:35 6:50 7:30 8:00 9:15 9:55 10:30 411 Show, In Html imiO Soumll FLIPPER ON TWO SCREENS PG STEREO 11:10 1:30 1:40 3:45 5:10 6:45 7:15 9:00 9:30 WILLY WONKA 1:00 3:15 6 S1IRE0 TWISTER on 3 mm ALL Skm in HUM I SmiO Scmd! 11:50 11:50 1:15 3:30 4:50 5:306:40 7:40 8:30 9:20 10:15 PG13 Ihrth About CATS DOOS 6:30 9:00 PG13 STEREO 7:30 richard e.

grant MULH0LUND samantha mathis MISSION IMPOSSIBLE ON THREE SCREENS PG13D0UT 11:30 1:15 1:00 3:00 4:00 4:45 5:30 6:50 7:30 1:00 9:10 9:55 WILLY WONKA 1:30 3:50 D01IV STEREO HEAVEN'S PRISONERS 11:40 3:30 6:20 9:10 Truth About CATS A DOOS 1:15 4:30 7:15 9:30 PG13 FALLS pryTnTTiyT'T I -347i FRANK A OLLIE 3:00 4:30 7:00 9:30 PG JACK A SARAH 1:30 4:00 6:30 9:00 1 CELLULOID CLOSET 1:45 4:15 6:45 9:15 It jacrfarah WCKNOLTTi MELANIE GRIFFITH JOHN MALXOVICH 7:50 NORTHEAST PARKING LOT PRIMAL FEAR 1:15 4:00 7:00 9:40 KURT RUSSELL EXECUTIVE DECISION 945 an unexpected romantic comedy TWISTER on 2 13:45 3:10 5:55 8:30 PG13 BOUT THE CRAFT 1:30 4:15 7:10 9:30 IN THE MALL: USE ENTft. No. 5 SPY HARD 1:00 4:10 7:00 9:15 PG13 Wlir FLIPPER 1:45 4:30 6:45 9:00 PG TWISTER 2:15 4:50 7:25 10:00 PG13 KMT 61986 ORANADA FILM PotyGraiTI PAMELA ANDERSON LEE. MAINSTREAM SA. IN THE MAU it t.Tt a ratyQram company lv rate fo SUNSET PARK 4:30 9:10 MX8T BONY TMt AT OENCRAL CINEMA RUMPLESTILTSKIN 1:10 4:40 7:10 9:30 OMIT ONCE UPON A TIME WHEN WE WERE COLORED 1:00 7:00 PG SOUTHEAST PARKING LOT THE POSTMAN III Pootlno) 1:00 4:45 7:00 9:15 PG ORIGINAL OANuSTAS 2:15 5:00 7:30 9:45 ATMnUMBotwMnLovoAHate GENERAL CINEMA CASTLETON SQ NO.

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