GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE December 5, 2008

www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

CONVERGENCE-CONTINUUM

It ain't cows they're pokin'

Spooky (Tom Kondilas) and Timothy (Geoffrey Hoffman) prove that it's not necessarily the cowboys who suffer when they fall in love in ConvergenceContinuum Theater's world premiere production of Tom Hayes' Lord of the Burgeoning Lumber.

Spooky and his mercurial partner Timothy are camping out in the wilderness, enjoying the full range of characters that live in Timothy's head, when a park ranger (Tyson Douglas Rand) stumbles across their naughtiness.

As power shifts back and forth between the ranger and Spooky, Timothy finds his allegiances torn. Or does he?

Adding to the manic humor and confusion, director Clyde Simon cast two heterosexual men as the lovers and a gay actor as the homophobic ranger, possibly out of his gleeful love of making straight boys kiss each other. As Mel Brooks might have said, it's good to be the director!

Lord of the Burgeoning Lumber plays Thursdays through Saturdays until December 20 at the Liminis, 2438 Scranton Road in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood. Tickets are $15, $12 for students and seniors. For tickets or more information, call 216687-0074 or go to www.covergence-continuum.org.

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Services are funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Information provided by: The Cuyahoga Regional HIV Services Planning Council.

Milk

Continued from page 8

[Penn] together. We both thought that Sean was the perfect person to bring Harvey to life. I sat through all the casting sessions with Gus. Pretty much, we knew it when we saw it."

"[Van Sant] knows the story so well too because he had been wanting to make it forever. So we both had a strong sense of who these people were in real life and I think it was important to him that these people were portrayed as accurately as possible," Black continued. "Sean Penn came in the room and nailed it. It happened every single time with every role. Even in the supporting roles. Alison Pill playing Anne Kronenberg some of the people really embodied these characters. Obviously, Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones... it is really shocking how exact his performance was. We would have the real Cleve on the set and Emile would start walking and talking in character and it was pretty amazing. You would watch the real Cleve Jones start giggling like a schoolgirl because he saw himself transported back to 1976.”

If the trailers for the movie are any indication, Milk does a fantastic job of transporting the audience back to 1970s-era San Francisco, where Milk eventually settled after leaving New York City.

"The movie starts in the early 1970s, right as Harvey is moving to San Francisco," Black said. "He's already an adult and lived through quite a bit of his life at that point. The story goes through to his assassination. So the idea was always to tell the story of Harvey Milk. It's a very personal biopic portraying his San Francisco years. Hopefully, because the goal was to make it an intimate portrait, you find out a lot about who the man was before he moved to San Francisco."

Black said that a lot of inspiration and the visual aesthetic for the film was drawn from the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, which went on to win an Academy Award.

"It is one of the things that I saw out of many in my bibliography of research," Black said. "There were about 2,300 sources. It was probably the third thing I saw or heard about Harvey, the first being first-hand stories from some of the folks I was working with in the theater world up there. Rob Epstein, one of the filmmakers, was incredibly helpful once we started making the movie because there is archival footage from the film. Some of it we did source from The Times of Harvey Milk. Others, Rob was very helpful in finding stuff that wasn't in The Times of Harvey Milk. But certainly that movie help to set the stage so that enough people knew the story of Harvey Milk and we could get out there a pitch about Harvey."

The archival footage turned out to also have a profound effect on casting: In particular, a conservative figurehead should best be left to portray herself.

"That idea started with the inclusion of Anita Bryant in the movie," Black said. “I was concerned as a writer that even if we quoted her directly into the film, the things she said and the way she said them were so outrageous to today's audience that I feared people would think we were caricaturing her and that there was no way someone could have said the things she said and meant. Early on, Gus and I discussed using the real footage of Anita and letting Anita play herself, because in that way, you never question it and we are letting her speak for herself. That philosophy sort of blossomed. Gus sort of ran with it and decided to include more archival footage in the film."

Black's hope is that mainstream audiences will see the parallels between the political struggles for gay civil rights in 1970s-era California and the struggle for gay equality around the country today, including the passage of the Proposition 8 marriage ban in November.

"A big portion of this movie is about California exactly 30 years ago... and the gay community fighting Proposition 6, which would have made it illegal to be gay and teach or work in a public school. For Californians, it's almost literally reminiscent."

Black added that some might see another parallel between Bryant and another former

beauty queen turned outspoken anti-gay right-wing mouthpiece.

"I had a few friends call me up and say, 'Wow, it's so amazing to see [Sarah] Palin running as vice president because she's beautiful, an ex-beauty queen, a mother, well-spoken and there something about her that is so reminiscent of Anita Bryant exactly 30 years ago," he said. "I think some people will pick up on that. I also think the gay community has made progress in the last 30 years. The pendulum has swung back in certain cases but I think kids who are born gay and lesbian today are still receiving a message that they are less than heterosexual children and they have less rights. I still think they remain in crisis and are abused, if not physically then verbally. The Gay and Lesbian Task Force reported that 26 percent of gay and lesbian youth come out to their families are told to leave home. That message is still out there, that they are 'less than.' I think that was always Harvey's fight: to let the kids out there in these small towns know that they are equal to heterosexual youth and that they can do wonderful great things. So in that way, Harvey's message is still needed and important."

Milk may have a Hollywood budget and all of the commercial expectations that come with it, but Black is more concerned about the cultural impact of the film than how many tickets it moves at the box office.

"I'm excited about it right now, about the fact that it is getting so much attention in a mainstream way," he said. "It's really a credit to Harvey. Thirty-five years ago, he didn't win political power in San Francisco by just courting the gay community. He got the really straight community. He got the union guys, the Teamsters, the firemen, the teachers, the seniors, the Chinese vote, the Latin vote, and he was able to cross over into a wider audience and a very unexpected audience. To me, it's a testament to the film that it is already starting to cross over in that way. Sean is very masterful in bringing Harvey back to life on the screen and I think straight people are not going to be able to resist him. He's very charming. I'm hopeful that there is this anticipation for a film with this message."

Black said that he expects gay audiences, especially the ones keeping a watchful eye on historical narrative, to be just as charmed with the movie that he helped craft.

"I think the people in the Castro will look at it with a critical eye," he said. "I hope they do. We worked very hard to be very, very accurate. I hope they are surprised at how well we did. I think the far right, who aren't supportive of the gay movement, they are going to look at it with a real critical eye. But I hope they find something universal in it." information, see

For

www.milkthemovie.com.

Larry Nichols is a Philadelphia writer and comedian.

Curl up

Continued from page 9

couple of documentary features, and episodes from three other Showtime series: The Tudors, Californication and Dexter.

Now, to really engage the senses, we have to duck a little below the belt...

Yes, it's an adult novelty (ahem). OhMiBod's Naughtibod, also called the Naughtinano depending on when the specific box shipped, is a fairly simple rippled vibrator with a twist: It plugs into the headphone jack of an MP3 player with a cord that also allows a headphone to be connected, so you can hear and, um, feel the music.

It might be a good idea to make sure the death metal is off the playlist before plugging in.

In addition to using it with an iPod, Walkman, laptop or other device with a 1/ 8" socket for headphones, it can also be used without the music, coming with three constant speeds or four additional preset programs of varying speeds.

Oh, and it comes in four pleasing colors as well: blueberry, licorice, bubblegum and green apple.

That is definitely not your mother's vibrator.