GLR November-December 2023

Andrey whispered: “I’m afraid I love you.” Nothing had prepared Alexey for this declaration, though in his heart he knew he felt the same toward Andrey. Through long walks, tram rides, and discussions, Andrey’s ideas about literature, music, and culture flooded Alexey’s mind. At graduation, they joined a summer tour of Moscow, Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam. Encouraged by Andrey to run off and remain in the West, seeking asylum as members of a sexual minority, Alexey balked at the idea: he could not do it. Returning to Siberia alone, Alexey wondered what happened to his friend Andrey: did his dream come true? Meanwhile, he intently studied English. A national contest to write a best essay in English offered the prize of a year’s study in New York City. Alexey met the challenge and won a place. He was confident now on his own pathway out of Russia. He would immerse himself in writing, finding a way to stay in the West, never to return to Siberia. J OE R YAN MOVIES THAT MADE ME GAY by Larry Duplechan Team Angelica Publishing 380 pages, $21.99 Celebrated author Larry Duplechan ( Blackbird and the Lambda Award-win ner Got ‘til it’s Gone ) has written a trippy tour through film history, specifically films that have shaped his gay sensibility. Duplechan’s book reads like an inspired recommended screening list, featuring his often hilarious riffs on various movies and TV shows. Many of the films he included won’t be a shock, coming from a queer Black writer, films such as Maurice , My Beautiful Laundrette , and Paris is Burning (a film he says he’s addicted to), but others might surprise, such as DieHard 4 . The book is sprinkled with poignant au tobiographical notes. The author was close friends with Vito Russo ( The Celluloid Closet ), who’s described as “the Jesus of gay movies.” and recounts the joy he felt when Russo wrote a glowing blurb for the book cover of Blackbird : “I felt as if I had won an Oscar.” Equally gripping is the au thor’s frank account of watching the film versionof Blackbird , given that he had no hand in writing the screenplay as it had been adapted by someone else. This pas sage is equal parts bitter and sweet, the words of an author torn between elation over someone making a movie out of his book with the disappointment over so many shifts and changes from the source mate rial: “So we’re clear,” he pronounces, “I think Blackbird is a good little movie. I just

don’t think it’s a very good adaptation of my book. ... I can’t help wishing [film maker Patrik-Ian Polk] had trusted it a bit more.” Movies That Made Me Gay is a mash-up of memoir and film criticism that is as informative as it is emotionally charged. Film buffs will swoon. M ATTHEW H AYS WHO DOES THAT BITCH THINK SHE IS? Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag by Craig Seligman PublicA ff airs (a Hache tt e imprint) 342 pages, $29. Born in 1952 in Manly Vale, an ironically named suburb of Sydney, Australia, Philip Clargo Mills began frequenting drag bars in his late teens. By the early 1970s, he was performing in the same bars as Doris Fish, a member of a performance troupe called Sylvia and the Synthetics. Their transgressive and sometimes drug-fueled performances—which included singing, dancing, and pelting the audience with everything from whipped cream to dead fish—were influenced by San Francisco’s famous Cockettes. After several visits to the Bay Area, Doris Fish relocated to San Francisco, where he became involved in the city’s al ternative art scene, appearing with the well known rock band The Tubes and becoming a drag superstar. He sometimes supported himself with sex work, but never in drag: “I could pick up gorgeous men in drag, but then they’d mess your makeup, tear your blouse—I mean, it’s just dreadful.” Fish gathered a circle of likeminded drag queens and artists who performed with him on stage and in his magnum opus, the feature length drag science fiction film Vegas in Space (1991) . The film has garnered a cult following among later generations of drag queens. Fish also modeled for a popular line of comedic greeting cards and ap peared on several talk shows around the country. Author Craig Seligman was a San Fran

cisco journalist and peripherally involved in Fish’s circle, a connection that gives the book a warm, familiar tone. Doris Fish died of complications from HIV in 1991, and although Seligman addresses the AIDS epidemic, the book is joyous and often funny, focusing on Fish’s creativity and the community he built. P ETER M UISE THE QUEER FILM GUIDE by Kyle Turner Smith Street Books. 208 pages, $19.95 Wisely avoiding the trap of attempting to list “the greatest” gay and lesbian films of all time, which would undoubtedly have provoked quibbles (or worse) from read ers, this delightful guide sidesteps the issue by merely asserting that these are “100 great movies that tell LGBT stories.” Another feature of The Queer Film Guide is the way in which author Kyle Turner discusses queerness, even asserting that the very fluid term “queer” can include movies without any explicitly LGBT characters. In unusually perceptive profiles and analyses of each film, Turner makes a con vincing case for works not usually in cluded in such lists, such as Yentl and The Fly . He also provides useful recommenda tions of other films not fully discussed, and shows that he’s done his homework by in cluding some lesser-known early silent movies with queer content. In addition to the usual contenders like The Boys in the Band or Torch Song Trilogy , it’s nice to see that art house and foreign films like Look ing for Langston , WildReeds , and Yossi and Jagger made the list. Even so, there are a few surprising omissions, such as Beautiful Thing , Boys Don’t Cry , YTu Mama Tambien , and Call Me By Your Name . Organized chronologically, there are interesting facts and essays on every page, which makes for a reference source that’s both useful and fun. D ALE B OYER

&BOOKLOVERS READERS ATTENTION Tim’s Used Books 242 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA timsusedfilms@gmail.com | 508-487-0005 | Open year-round. Are TIM’S USED BOOKS of Provincetown has been traveling throughout the Northeast since 1991, buying book collections, large and small. Scholarly, gay interest, the arts—all genres. Immediate payment and removal.

November–December 2023

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