12 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE February 8, 2002

It's a hard job

But the Cleveland Cinematheque does it

The Fluffer

Chop Suey

by Anthony Glassman

The last couple of decades have seen major upheavals in the world of the cinema. Multiplexes with dozens of screens rose to prominence while smaller theaters and artfilm houses struggled and often died ignominious deaths. Now the multiplexes with their high ticket prices, higher concession prices and steady streams of mass-market pablum are the ones fighting for their lives.

In this world, there has been one constant, however: the Cleveland Cinematheque.

Operating under the aegis of the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Cinematheque, which turns 17 this year, brings in the most astounding array of films for oneto three-day runs. The films run the gamut from cutting-edge foreign films with little or no distribution in the United States to complete retrospectives of the works of a single director.

What the Cinematheque does best, however, might be finding and playing LGBT films that its larger cousins ignore. In January, they showed The Monkey's Mask, a thriller with Susie Porter playing a lesbian detective who becomes involved with Kelly McGillis, the professor of a missing girl Porter is trying to find.

At the beginning of February, they gave Iron Ladies, a Thai docudrama about the transgendered volleyball team that won a national championship, its Ohio debut. The

film was based on the 1996 Thai champions, and is thus far the highest-grossing film in its country's history.

Now the Cinematheque is debuting The Fluffer, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's dysfunctional love story about a man who starts working in porn films to be near the "star" with whom he has become infatuated.

Sean McGinnis (Michael Cunio), an aspiring filmmaker, brings home Citizen Kane one night from the local video store, only to discover that the film inside is a pornographic send-up of the Orson Welles classic, Citizen Come.

In it is the most beautiful, mesmerizing man he has ever seen, porn icon Johnny Rebel (Scott Gurney). Sean winds up as a cameraman at Janus Films, the com-

pany that produces Rebel's smut. While filming, however, Rebel seems to have trouble making the soldier salute, and suddenly Sean is asked to extend his duties from filming to fluffing.

For those that are not familiar with the term, a fluffer is someone who ensures that the male actors in adult videos have sufficiently upstanding citizens to continue with their activities.

Sean soon finds himself in a metaphor for any relationship full of neglect, as the only time Rebel pays attention to him is when Sean is fluffing him. Any other time, Rebel is either with his girlfriend or on massive amounts of drugs.

Sean is torn between weaning himself off of Johnny Rebel or trying to win Rebel, neither of which appears an easy task.

The Fluffer will play at the Cinematheque February 8-10. It is awaiting a free screen in the Drexel theaters in Columbus and at the Esquire in Cincinnati, both of whom expect it to play no earlier than March.

This brings up one of the biggest differences between a nonprofit art theater like the Cinematheque and even the most progressive commercial theater: The Cinematheque can play films for as short or long a time as they wish, while commercial theaters have films run in week-long blocks. This limits the number of films they can show and creates logjams around Oscar time or when a film does better than is expected, like The Closet or The Crying Game did.

The film is part of the January to April series "Lou Gianetti Presents," selected and introduced by Case Western Reserve University professor and author Lou Gianetti. It will play on February 18 at 7 pm.

On February 23 and 24, A Matter of Taste will please the palate of filmgoers.

In it, a businessman hires a waiter to become his food taster, and the relationship that forms between the two of them mirrors the Pygmalion tale.

Among the cinematic cornucopia being

“A witty giddy ATOMIC CAFE of archaic screen lesbiana!" – VANIER

History

LCFCONS

The Drexels need to find a time to work in The Fluffer, while the Cinematheque may bring it back for an encore presentation later, if it is successful enough in its run.

In the rest of February, in addition to a retrospective of Robert Altman's films from the 1970s, the Cinematheque will also play The Fourth Man, a 1983 Dutch film from Robocop and Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven. The film deals with a bisexual author (Jeroen Krabbe) who becomes involved both with a lovely hairstylist and her handsome boyfriend. The only real problem-other than a lack of fidelity—is that the stylist's three former husbands all died horribly, and neither Krabbe nor his male paramour want to become the title character.

BANDARA HAMMER

presented by the Cinematheque in March and April (their schedules are bimonthly, and the January-February schedule had 46 films) are Chop Suey, Bruce Weber's cinematic autobiography, and Barbara Hammer's History Lessons, using vintage film footage from dozens of sources to paint a picture of pre-Stonewall lesbian America.

The Cleveland Cinematheque is located inside the Cleveland Institute of Arts at 11141 East Blvd at Bellflower. They can be reached at 216-421-7450, or online at http:// www.cia.edu/cinematheque.