So last week was a lot of moving house and not much else. Sorry about that!
In this final week of Pride I'm going to focus on some queer-themed films, as always looking for a little something something that we can add to our own bags of tricks.
Everything I’d read suggested SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE... is a very sad film about the widespread self-hatred of queer people in the 1970s. And there’s definitely plenty of that in the film, which is set on Christmas Eve in a gay bar and follows maybe 20 different characters through that night together at the bar.
You've got Jimmy, the wild man who drinks too much, embarrasses the partner who so clearly loves him and eventually goes crazy on Karen when he realizes she's transgender in the film's wrenching climax. You've got the waiter Philip who hasn't told the blind date coming to the bar that he's a man, and then is so afraid of being rejected he leaves the date there the whole night without introducing himself. We've got the ad exec whose mother shows up and shames him into coming home, the married man who just can't bring himself to leave his wife, the shy man who leads the carols and falls for Karen, only to have her run off. It goes on and on.
On paper it really is a pretty sad film.
But the sum really is so much greater than the parts. Putting these stories and a bunch of others together, what's made clear is simultaneously the rich diversity of this community of people and the fragility they share, the human vulnerability, no matter how they might initially present. It's brought out in lots of different ways, from the endearing insecurity of Philip to the combination of horror and helplessness with which everyone in the bar reacts to Jimmy attacking Karen. That sequence is profoundly disturbing, and yet in ripping off Karen's clothes Jimmy ends up exposing everyone's humanity, including his own, as fucked up and broken as it is.
The singing of Christmas carols which takes place at the midpoint functions much the same. The normal affairs of the bar stop for carols followed by Helen, an older straight woman who seems to serve as a kind of den mother to the men who frequent this bar, thanking the entire group for being there for here in her convalescence. It's such an unexpected sequence, completely off the track of the individual stories, but both elements--the singing and the thank you--build a sense of this group as a real community.
And as a result, in the end rather than feeling like a dark and depressing tale of what it was like to be gay in the 70s, you feel like you've seen something profoundly touching. To me it's kind of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS for queer people. The fragility in each character's stories is very much akin to Charlie Brown's tree, making it all so beautiful.
I was trying to think what exactly the writing takeaway is, beyond go watch this film (which is available for free on YouTube). Maybe it's the power to be found in telling a bunch of different stories together. When you're dealing with a group as diverse as the queer community, it's so helpful to offer a range of stories and characters.
Or perhaps it's the importance of the midpoint and climax speaking not only to the ongoing plot but to the bigger themes of the piece. The midpoint really has nothing to do with the ongoing stories of the film, and yet thematically it is essential.
I think for me the most important takeaway is that if you keep your stories and your characters honest, it doesn't matter if some things might seem depressing on the surface. The deeper beauty and truth will shine through.
