APRIL 4, 1997 GAY PEOPLE's Chronicle 25

EVENINGS OUT

TV film shows the dark side of 'gay gene' research

The Twilight of the Golds Directed by Ross Marks Showtime

Reviewed by Kaizaad Kotwal

While TV networks and mass audiences have been waiting with bated breath for Ellen's coming out, there is a much larger and infinitely more significant battle raging within the family at the center of Showtime's film The Twilight of the Golds.

Twilight is based on the play of the same name by Jonathan Tolins. The film revolves around bioethics, and whether a 'gay gene' might be used against gays and lesbians. At the center of the story is Suzanne Stein, whose husband Rob works for a biotech firm, mapping the human genome in order to determine all the traits of a child before they are born.

Suzanne and Rob subject the fetus to such testing and discover that their new son will probably be gay. Suzanne's parents, Phyllis and David Gold, are upper middle class, while Rob's parents are Orthodox Jews. Against this background the conflict of an unborn gay child is obvious. What really pulls all these people into a trial by fire is that the Golds' only son, Suzanne's brother David, is gay.

On the surface, this is the pro-life and religious right's worst nightmare: While homosexuality is undesirable and should be curbed, in their view, shall this be achieved by aborting the fetus? Underneath it all is a potent view of social and human responsibility in the face of these new biotechnologies.

ANNE FISHBEIN

Brendan Frasier is the Golds' gay son.

The stage version of Twilight was popular in Los Angeles, but critics' harsh reviews ended its run in New York. The film seems to succeed despite some of the inherent cliches in such a conflict, and it does so largely due to a marvelous cast and Ross Marks' unobtrusive directing debut.

Brendan Frasier (whose past work includes another persecuted youth in School Ties) plays David perfectly. Frasier brings to this role a subtelty of force and a quiet conviction. There are no hysterics or clichés in Frasier's portrayal of a brother, son and lover trying to make sense of what his family's decision to abort the gay fetus means to him

as a gay man. Fraiser allows David to quietly expose the hatred and ignorance of those about to destroy an innocent life, and in doing so he reaffirms the lives of himself and those around him.

Gary Marshall and Faye Dunaway (seemingly odd casting) are strong in their roles as the parental Golds and their journey from hatred to conditional acceptance is touching and believable. A luminous Jennifer Beals plays Suzanne with all her contradictions and inner turmoils. She becomes the platform through which everyone debates their position in this contentious debate, and Beals allows us to see all sides with genuine emotion. Jon Tenney as her husband has a thankless role but fills it well.

Rosie O'Donnell is charming as Jackie, Suzanne's confidante and co-worker. As David's lover Steven, Sean O'Bryan turns in an unaffected performance, touching in its simplicity and compassion. While this film doesn't break any major ground in the physicality of a healthy gay relationship, the film allows us to see genuine love, affection and caring between David and Steven. Some of the film's most touching moments are when David comes to Steven as his refuge and seeks the comfort and strength of an understanding glance, a familiar touch and a healing embrace.

The film's discourse is set up through a metaphor presented in Wagner's “Ring" opera, which David is producing and directing.

This opera is about trial by fire quite literally as characters search for their identity by being forced through soul-searching and lifeshattering events. The protagonist of the the opera, Seigfried, much like David in the film, can only find true love (from self and others) by "walking through the magic fire.” And as David tells us, the trick is to come out unsinged since "every human being is a tapestry," beautiful and valuable, yet delicate and fragile.

The ending of the film is different than that in the play. In many ways this works well because it's not the end result that is as important as the presentation of the gray areas surrounding humans trying to "do God's work."

Even though the technology in the film is still fiction, the recent bruhaha over cloning should lead us to contemplate that in the future, in the wrong hands, such technologies will lead to ghostly echoes of similar work done during Hitler's reign and at other points in history. Here's the true dilemma for some gay activists: While there is a search to prove that gayness is as genetically inherent as hair and eye color, once proven it opens up Pandora's box in allowing certain people to modify and eliminate such traits.

This film is a must watch for its story and bravura perfromances. Rob, the geneticist and father to be, defends his work by screaming that "Knowledge is neutral, it's what bad people do with it that's wrong!"

If only one could find the gene for what makes people bad, we might journey from our collective twilights of ignorance and bigotry to a global dawn of harmony and understanding. ♡

Diver's story doesn't go far below the surface

Breaking the Surface

The Greg Louganis Story Directed by Steven Hilliard Stern USA Network

Reviewed by Kaizaad Kotwal

To scratch the surface takes some amount of chutzpah. To actually break the surface and venture beyond takes courage, moxie and dignity.

Olympic diver extraordinaire Greg Louganis wrote about his past abusive rela-

infamous moment at the 1988 Seoul Olympics where Louganis hit his head on the diving board. As Louganis plunges into the deepness of the pool, his hands clutching the gash on his head, the turbulence begins as the movie flashes us back to his childhood.

The movie reduces everything to tiny episodes and convenient sound bites because there is so much to fit in. And yet in trying to get a lot in, the movie barely manages to skim the surface. We learn of Louganis's tortured childhood as we see the other white kids on the block call him a "nigger" (because of his

MICHAEL GRECCO

Jeg Louganis gives diving tips to Mario Lopez.

Jonships, his homosexuality and his HIVsitive status in his memoir Breaking the urface. The USA network has moved Juganis' story from the page to the screen an effort that is admirable, yet doesn't go uch further than the surface.

The film starts with a recreation of the

Samoan origins) and his father watches the abuse and walks away, leaving his adopted son to fend for himself.

There's plenty of abuse in this film, making David Helfgott's father in Shine look like Santa Claus in comparison. There are lots of evil patriarchs, from Greg's first coach to Tom, his lover of many years. We watch Louganis battle with his constant condition of being an outcast and how he uses his diving as a refuge.

The first forty minutes of the film are unrelentlessly bleak. But, as Louganis begins to find his strength and starts to come into his own as a man, the movie becomes more interesting and much more complex. The most finely-defined relationships in the film are between Greg and Ron O'Brien, Louganis' Olympic coach as well as the friendship between Greg and Megan Neyer, a fellow Olympic diver.

Mario Lopez (of Saved by the Bell fame) looks very much like Louganis and plays him fairly competently. While most of the cast is fair, the standouts are Bruce Weitz as Ron O'Brien, Megan Leitch as Megan Neyer, and Rafael Rojas III as the 9-year-old Greg.

Weitz plays the only "good father,” with quiet strength and tough compassion. Leitch truly shines in a small yet very complex role,

guiding Greg to eventually come out via his memoir. And Rojas tells of Greg's pain as a young boy through great subtlety in his face and eyes, telling us that Louganis lost his youth before most around him had barely begun theirs.

The movie treads gingerly around maleto-male contact. In the case of Greg and his father, who were unable to share any physical compassion with each other, this works. However, when Greg's relationships with his lovers seem as physically sterile as the one with his dad, the movie and its characters begin to seem shallow and cowardly. Television and sponsors may have run away if two men had kissed. However, while all the abuse between the lovers is shown in all its honesty-with warnings at the end of commercial breaks-and there is no love of any depth to be seen, it only reinforces societal assumptions that gay relationships are merely dysfunctional and sexual. In this regard the surface has not even been scratched, let alone broken.

FOOD

The films most poignant and believable moment comes at the end, in an epilogue that shows us the real Louganis signing copies of his book. We see a father and son walk up to Louganis, and while the father has trouble expressing himself, the son tells Louganis that he gave his father the book as his coming out to him. It's a touching moment that speaks volumes despite its brevity.

The value of the courage of Louganis (and others like him who have come out publicly) is that such visibility helps others begin to break the surface of their own lives and start the process of coming to terms with being gay in a world that is in complete contradiction to the deep calm and beauty at the bottom of the diving well.

USA Network will rebroadcast Breaking the Surface several times. While a life as great as Louganis' deserved a better film, this movie in its own way begins to raise the audibility and eloquence of those voices in search of equality, openness and understanding.

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