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Post by I Love Melvin on Jun 6, 2023 13:44:41 GMT
This seems to be all that's available by way of early promotion, but it's enough to get me very excited about this project. It's based on a 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon, who specializes in capturing historical eras and issues through the eyes of peripheral witnesses. In this case it involves a relationship forged in the context of the McCarthy hearings about Communists and "sexual subversives" (The Lavender Scare, as it came to be called) in government and, because the two main characters are gay, the subsequent arc of gay history up to and including the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's. It involves a State Department official and a senatorial staffer who come to realize that they personify what is being hunted so mercilessly and the twists of their relationship reflect those relentless outside forces. The story has the kind of heft and scope which made it a natural subject for an operatic adaptation, which debuted at Cincinnati Opera in 2016, with subsequent productions in other cities. This is a big story about a shameful part of American history and here's hoping that Showtime does it justice.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jun 6, 2023 14:11:53 GMT
For anyone interested, here's a promo for the Minnesota Opera production.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Sept 16, 2023 12:53:09 GMT
Considering that it premieres next month (October 27), Showtime is still being awfully coy about releasing more than just these brief snippets. Another selling point for me is the presence of Allison Williams in the key role of a co-worker and friend of the Matt Bomer character, the State Department worker who becomes sexually involved with a younger senatorial staffer played by Jonathan Bailey, best known for playing the lead on the second season of Bridgerton. The three characters form a bond which lasts decades and sees them through many changes in their lives. I just reread the book in anticipation so I'm ready. Can't wait.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Sept 26, 2023 23:23:11 GMT
This is the latest (though still meager) info that Showtime has released, a "sneak preview" which consists of a scene (or part of one) in which Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy are referenced. The rise and fall of McCarthy were woven into the book so I'm assuming the film (mini-series) will do the same. It's particularly galling from a modern perspective what a hand those two, aided and abetted by J. Edgar Hoover, had in creating such misery and ruin for gay men during their "Lavender Scare" crusade, considering what history has taught us about the personal proclivities of all three. Thomas Mallon specializes in creating fictional scenarios using real people and events as background; in Fellow Travellers he uses Washington D.C. in a time of particularly corrupt and destructive political "shenanigans"...Sound familiar? Showtime seems to be leading with the sexy stuff in these promos, but there's a lot more to it, trust me.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Oct 11, 2023 23:36:57 GMT
Here's the trailer, finally. They're using the lie detector test to frame it, but that came and went pretty quickly in the book; it's good for heightening the dramatic suspense in a brief preview though, so I get it. One thing I liked about the book was that it didn't seem to be promoting modern attitudes and ideas, so hearing a character say: "It's not who we sleep with; it's who we love." sent up a bit of a red flag. It sounds a little like contemporary sloganeering, but it's also true, so hopefully nothing for me to fret about. Forget I said anything.
Something else I'm unclear on now is the role of Allison Williams. I've been expecting to see her in the role of Bomer's co-worker at the State Department who is a source for him of clear-headed advice and constructive criticism and who has a knowledge of his affair with the younger senatorial aide but keeps his trust then and for all the years after. In the book Bomer, the character Hawkins (Hawk), does marry but to a character who is basically anonymous for the purposes of the story. These clips make it seem that he's offering jewelry and marriage to the Williams character, which would totally change her role vis-a-vis the two men, potentially changing it to adversarial from supportive and sympathetic. In the book the c0-worker character has her own (disappointing) romantic trajectory with an entirely different character, keeping her free to observe the relationship of the two men dispassionately. I hope I'm misreading those signs. Also, what's with the scene of a roomful of bare-chested men with good hair all dancing together, looking like a gay club on a Saturday night? That was so far outside the realm of possibility in the early-to-mid 1950's as to make it a ridiculous depiction of anything approximating gay life at the time. The book does feature periodic updates through the decades until the 1980's, but that kind of club scene didn't emerge until the 1970's and both characters would have been way too old by that time. Before I was merely excited to see it but now it seems I have some questions.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Oct 24, 2023 14:07:09 GMT
My excitement has turned to trepidation since there seem to have been major changes while adapting it to the screen. This confirms that Allison Williams is playing the wife of the Matt Bomer character, someone who was basically only referred to in the book and not a full character, and not the co-worker Mary Johnson, who doesn't even seem to come up in the discussion here but who was a constant presence throughout the book and an, I thought, essential component of the story. They may be going on the theory that a "wronged" wife presents more dramatic possibilities than a woman who was Hawkins' (Bomer's) only straight confidante, but I'm not yet convinced. And the mention in these clips of the "parallels" to today make me fear that it may be falling victim to a tendency to look at those times through a "modern" lens, something which the book was able to not do. On that note, another character, a political operative whose savvy and diplomacy allowed him to bridge normally discrete factions of D.C. society, seems to have disappeared, at least according to the cast list. If the character of Marcus in these clips, a black man, is meant to be him, it seems unlikely that such a thing would have been possible in the 1950's. It's still a big story and they could still pull it off, but I'll wait and see.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 11, 2023 0:21:49 GMT
I've gotten over most of my early trepidation about the departures, some of them significant, from the story as played out in the novel. The smaller story of the relationship between the two men has been expanded outward into a much larger social and historical context, sometimes in ways which are truly stunning. A simple scene of Bomer being followed outside by his mother after a contentious moment with his dying father was an invention new to the series but one which beautifully intuited the conflicted emotions of a woman caught between an autocratic husband and a secretive son. The series is full of inventions both large and small and it's still playing out, with two more episodes to go. My biggest reservation at this point is that its goal seems to an all-encompassing summation of a period of modern gay history, specifically 1950's to 1980s, using the two men in ways which can't be always be justified; they're locked into specific age brackets which don't necessarily match up with timelines. And we see them naked enough well into the 1970's to know that twenty years have taken no toll on their buff bodies, though Bomer has supposedly been seriously abusing alcohol in the meantime. Their story is also now paralleled by the story of the black journalist Marcus and his on-and-off-again partner, a somewhat anachronistic 1950's drag performer turned into a worker for social justice and a political activist for gay causes, furthering the writers' ambition to touch all the bases by having them pop up Forrest Gump-like at historically significant moments. So far none of them has attended Woodstock or landed on the moon, but the scope has so been so widened that the original story of the Blacklist and purge of gay men in government has faded into the background, maybe lessening its impact and Mallon's original intent. It could be that the story has gotten too big, but since it still has a way to go I'll wait and see. Anyone else watching?
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