Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Smelling It (the infamous "gay sensibility")

We'll be talking about Almodóvar when we discuss Emanuel Levy's Gay Directors, Gay Films? — but in the meantime for those of you who have seen the movie (not I) of the book we read (not Pedro), this extract from a recent New Yorker article may be of interest.

This did not stop him [Almodóvar] from playing with the question of whether there was such a thing as a gay sensibility in film. “The furious aesthetic of my films has to do with a liberation that is connected to sexuality,” he said. But, he noted, gay people don’t always make gay art. He offered Truman Capote by way of example: “In ‘In Cold Blood’ there’s no trace of the person who is Truman Capote. But Holly Golightly in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is a predecessor of all the drag queens of the nineties. She’s a transvestite. You probably have to be gay to see it.” He went on, “And the role of George Peppard? He’s a hustler, and his clients aren’t women—they’re guys! You get this. You smell it.”

(And please, people, start trying to get the accent of his name right.
  Hint: the syllable accented is the syllable with the accent mark!)

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