This is a review for my second ever doc. Pretty damn cool TV REVIEWS : PBS Profiles Prominent Gay Writers June 23, 1993|KEVIN THOMAS Email Share Armistead Maupin and Larry Kramer, two of the best-known gays in America, are profiled on PBS tonight in separate hourlong programs produced by the BBC. Brian Skeets Larry Kramer (9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15) is infinitely superior to Kate Meynells Armistead Maupin Is a Man I Dreamt Up (8 p.m. on KCET, KPBS and KVCR-TV Channel 24) but, in fairness, the abrasive Kramer provides lots more sure-fire material for a documentary than the gentle Maupin. What makes Skeets documentary so affecting, however, is that it allows us to see the thoughtful, reflective side of Kramer, co-founder of the Gay Mens Health Crisis and ACT UP and surely the most caustic and outspoken gay activist in the country, a man who nevertheless backs up his fire-and-brimstone speeches with a carefully thought-out agenda. Even before the AIDS epidemic broke out, Kramer, in his 1978 novel Faggots, criticized the promiscuity unleashed by gay liberation as psychologically damaging. Three years later, when the first 41 cases of what became known as AIDS were reported, Kramer became one of the first writers to prophesy an impending epidemic if the disease was not addressed quickly and decisively. Such foresight has taken its toll, for Kramer has had a longer time than most to be consumed with rage over governments and societys indifference to a malady that has so easily, if inaccurately, been dismissed as a gay disease. Not only has Skeet succeeded in persuading Kramer to open up his heart--revealing, among other things, that hes still looking for love--but the filmmaker also got Kramers mother, older brother and sister-in-law to speak candidly about him. Skeet even got two favorite Kramer bete noirs, former New York Mayor Ed Koch and National Institutes for Health AIDS expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, to admit a grudging admiration for their vociferous adversary. Skeet then rounds out his portrait of Kramer with scenes from his autobiographical plays, The Normal Heart (1985) and the current Destiny of Me, along with other writings. Instead of concentrating on Maupin and his life, Meynell devotes so much time to Maupins Tales of the City novels that the entire program plays like a promotional piece for work that is in fact no longer news. Once were informed--or reminded--that Maupins series of novels grew out of a daily serial he started writing for the San Francisco Chronicle in the mid-1970s--and that it was the first of its kind in a newspaper in some 30 years--we want to know more about the man. Instead, we meet a string of real-life counterparts for some of Maupins fictional creations, only a few of which contribute much thats substantial or enlightening; indeed, the film at times takes on aspects of a Chamber of Commerce travelogue for San Francisco. Only toward the end does Maupin get to discuss AIDS and how it has affected him and his writing--hes HIV-negative, his lover is HIV-positive but in good health. Pleasant and plain-spoken, Armistead Maupin deserves a far more in-depth appraisal than he receives here.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 17:01:44 +0000
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