torch song trilogy

Bonus Features: Torch Song Trilogy (1988)

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Our current Movie of the Month, 1988’s Torch Song Trilogy, is Harvey Fierstein’s big-screen adaptation of his own stage play about a drag queen’s life, loves, and heartbreaks in 1970s New York.  The film’s greatest accomplishments lie less in its queer political advocacy than they lie in its dramatic approximation of a full, authentic life for Fierstein’s protagonist – something gay men were rarely afforded onscreen at the time, even the cis white ones.  By all accounts, the original stage play version of Torch Song Trilogy approximated an even fuller, more authentic record of gay life in 1970s NYC, since it was twice as long as its movie adaptation.  One of the producers’ only contractual obligations for Fierstein’s screenplay was that the movie could be no longer than two hours, which meant a lot of tough-choice editing of a play that ran for four.  Instead of narrowing in on a few key moments in his life (through the fictional avatar of Arnold Beckoff), Fierstein decided to maintain the full breadth of the play’s story for most of the runtime, so that an inopportune bathroom break means that you could miss a half-decade of love & loss.

Torch Song Trilogy was unique but not alone in its no-big-deal dramatization of everyday gay life for a 1980s audience.  In general, independent filmmaking was a relatively robust industry in that era, which means there were plenty of gay filmmakers in that era who were eager to flesh out representation for their own demographic on the big screen.  If you’re curious to see other 1980s dramas about gay life in the big city, here are a few more titles to check out in addition to our Movie of the Month.

Buddies (1985)

Torch Song Trilogy is notably one of the few gay 80s classics that doesn’t touch the communal devastation of AIDS, since it’s set before the darkest days of the epidemic.  It opens with a shot of a graveyard at the outskirts of New York City that visually acknowledges how cultural circumstances had changed between the film’s 1970s setting & 1980s production, but the mission of the story that follows is mostly to show an adult gay man living a full, healthy, normal life . . . filtered through the wry humor of Fierstein’s hyper-specific personality.  Arthur J. Bressan’s 1985 landmark Buddies does not sidestep the horrors of its time in the same way, but it does take similar interest in fleshing out its central characters’ lives & personalities, so they don’t register only as statistics.  The opening credits of Buddies scroll over a computer printout of deceased AIDS patients’ names to establish the scope of the illness’s death toll, but it then focuses on just two onscreen characters to humanize those names as full, real people.  Everyone else with a speaking role is a disembodied voice, heard from just off-screen.  The only people who matter are a man dying of AIDS-related health complications and a volunteer “Buddy” who’s been assigned to keep him company after he’s been left to die alone by family & friends.

Self-billed as “the first dramatic feature about the AIDS crisis”, Buddies has all of the furious politics of a Tongues Untied presented with the endearing tenderness of a Torch Song Trilogy, almost cleanly split between its only two onscreen characters.  Geoff Edholm stars as the dying man: a gay-rights activist whose commitment to communal advocacy proved to be no match to his community’s fear of transmission in the early, hazy days of AIDS research.  David Schachter is his assigned, volunteer buddy: a shy assimilationist who’s content to live a quiet domestic life with his boyfriend without any public acknowledgement of his sexuality.  Through lengthy stage-play conversations voicing their opposing views, they reluctantly learn from each other and become vulnerably intimate despite their opposing politics and lifespan expectancy.  It’s a painfully emotional watch, of course, especially after you learn that the actors’ real lives almost exactly mirrored the respective arcs of their characters.  Bressan’s own personality as an auteur is also just as clearly visible in the picture as Fierstein’s in Torch Song Trilogy, given that his two central characters bond by watching his earlier films together in a hospital room (from the political activism documentary Gay U.S.A. to the age-gap porno Forbidden Letters) and that Bressan himself soon lost his life to the AIDS epidemic as well as Edholm.

Parting Glances (1986)

Released just one year after Buddies, 1986’s Parting Glances offers a tempered middle ground between Bressan’s confrontational politics and Fierstein’s heart-on-sleeve melodrama. Unlike Torch Song Trilogy, it does contend with the unignorable presence of AIDS in contemporary urban gay life, but unlike Buddies it relegates AIDS to being just one aspect of modern gay life, not the totality of it.  Steve Buscemi plays the HIV+ character who bears the burden of that vital representation: a new wave musician with a once bustling social life who’s been shunned by his own community out of knee-jerk fear & stigma.  He remains defiantly playful & energetic despite being treated as if he were already dead by his chosen family, quipping his way through cramped-apartment cocktail parties and video-art recordings of his will.  Curiously, though, he is not the main character of the film; that designation belongs to his happily-coupled bestie who lives the quiet, assimilated domestic life that Fierstein craves in Torch Song Trilogy and Schacter starts to question in Buddies.  Both characters bounce their understandably jaded world views off friends, neighbors, and potential sexual partners while hopping around NYC social spaces, living a full life.  The contrast in the way they’re received by that community is drastically different, though, depending on their disclosed HIV status.

I may not have spent decades living in the big city like Harvey Fierstein, but I can name at least two things that were beautiful in 1980s NYC: the independent filmmaking scene and Steve Buscemi.  Parting Glances can’t help but feel a little restrained watching it so soon after its more confrontational precedent in Buddies, but every scene featuring Buscemi as a defiantly sardonic man with AIDS is electric. It says a lot that he’s not the main character but he’s the only face on the poster, affording the film the kind of strong, singular personality Fierstein impressed on Torch Song Trilogy and Bressan impressed on Buddies.  Like with Buddies, its open, honest discussion of AIDS during the violent silence of the Reagan regime only gets heavier knowing the history of the artists involved who also died of AIDS-related illnesses, including promising young director & playwright Bill Sherwood in this case, who did not live to make another film.

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

Believe it or not, not all urban gay life in the 1980s was confined to New York City.  They even had gay men across the pond back then, as dramatized in 1985’s My Beautiful Laundrette.  While gay men in America were fighting to survive Reagan, gay men in England were fighting to survive Thatcher, and the cultural circumstances on either side of that divide were remarkably similar.  So, My Beautiful Laundrette has to dig a little deeper into cultural specifics in order to stand out among gay independent cinema of its era, notably doing so here as the only film on this list with a non-white lead (albeit a closeted one).  Gordon Warnecke stars as a young Pakistani man who works his way up his uncle’s small-scale crime network until he can carve out a money-maker of his own by running one of the mobsters’ few legitimate businesses: a kitschy, old-school laundromat.  In order to help with the day-to-day operations (and to manufacture opportunities to have sex in the back office), he employs a childhood friend & potential future lover played by Daniel Day Lewis, who has betrayed their intimate bond by joining the ranks of some racist, fascist street punks. 

My Beautiful Laundrette takes so long to establish its premise that you forget you’re watching a Gay Movie until the leads start making out.  Decades later, it still feels remarkable to see a drama that treats that identity marker as background texture instead of it informing every single character decision & line of dialogue. There were infinite hurdles to surviving Thatcher; being a gay man was just one of them.  In that way, this is the film that best lives up to Torch Song Trilogy‘s presumed mission to depict a gay character with a full, fulfilling life.  It’s not exactly a healthy life, though, given that he has to navigate the racism of his community, the homophobic violence of the crime world, and his own internal questions of identity as a second-generation immigrant whose family hates the “little island” where they’ve raised him.  That doesn’t mean the movie is shy about his sexuality though.  If anything, it has the hottest sexual dynamics of any film listed here, with Daniel Day Lewis’s punk reprobate licking his employer’s neck, spitting champagne into his mouth, and playing into a class-divide role play dynamic that touches on all of the film’s hot-wire political issues at once. 

-Brandon Ledet

Movie of the Month: Torch Song Trilogy (1988)

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Every month one of us makes the rest of the crew watch a movie they’ve never seen before, and we discuss it afterwards. This month Brandon made Boomer and Britnee watch Torch Song Trilogy (1988).

Brandon: On a recent vacation to San Francisco, I found myself in the Haight-Ashbury location of Amoeba Music, digging through the LGBTQ section of the record store’s used Blu-rays & DVDs.  There were plenty of obscure gems in there, as you might expect, and I took home copies of the surrealistic drag-queen freak show Luminous Procuress as well as the punk-and-junk porno chic documentary Kamikaze Hearts.  However, my biggest score that day was a used copy of a film distributed by Warner Bros subsidiary New Line Cinema, something much more mainstream than the other standout titles in the bin.  1988’s Torch Song Trilogy has been commercially unavailable since I first watched it on the HBO Max streaming service back in 2021, when it caught my eye in the platform’s “Leaving Soon” section.  Since then, it has only been legally accessible through used physical media, as it is currently unavailable to rent or stream through any online platform.  The Streaming Era illusion that everything is available all of the time is always frustrating when trying to access most movies made before 1990 (an illusion only made bearable by the continued existence of a public library system), but it’s especially frustrating when it comes to mainstream crowd-pleaser fare like Torch Song Trilogy.  This is not the audience-alienating arthouse abstraction of a Luminous Procuress or a Kamikaze Hearts; it shouldn’t feel like some major score to find a copy in the wild. It’s more the Jewish New Yorker equivalent of a Steel Magnolias or a Fried Green Tomatoes than it is some niche-interest obscurity.  I have to suspect it’s only being treated as such because it’s been ghettoized as A Gay Movie instead of simply A Good Movie, which is a shameful indication of how much progress is left to be made.

Torch Song Trilogy is Harvey Fierstein’s big-screen adaptation of his own stage play about a drag queen’s life, loves, and heartbreaks in 1970s New York.  It might be one of the few 80s & 90s gay classics that doesn’t have to touch the communal devastation of HIV/AIDS, since it’s set before the darkest days of the epidemic.  The opening shot of a graveyard at the outskirts of New York City feels like visual acknowledgement of how cultural circumstances had changed between the film’s setting & production, but the mission of the story that follows is mostly to show an adult gay man living a full, healthy, normal life . . . filtered through the wry humor of Fierstein’s hyper-specific personality.  There’s a little hangover Boys in the Band-style, woe-is-me self-pitying in Fierstein’s semi-biographical retelling of his own love life, but he remains delightfully charming throughout as he recalls his two great loves: one with a strait-laced, self-conflicted bisexual (Ed, Brian Kerwin) that was doomed to fail and one with a perfectly angelic partner (Alan, Matthew Broderick) that only failed because of violent societal bigotry.  The major benefit of the film’s strange distribution deficiencies is that owning it on DVD means you can also access Fierstein’s lovely commentary track and double the time you get to spend with his unmistakable voice & persona; it’s like becoming good friends with a garbage disposal made entirely of fine silks.  Loving the movie means loving his specific personality, from his adorable failures to flirt graciously to his fierce defenses of drag queen respectability and the validity of monogamous homosexual partnership.  His stage performances as Virginia Hamm are classic barroom drag that feel like broadcasts from a bygone world (one I last experienced first-hand at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in San Francisco), but a lot of his observations about seeking traditional love among strangers who are just cruising for sex still ring true, especially as modern dating rituals have been re-warped around the de-personalized window shopping of hookup apps.

There’s something about how complicated, interwoven, and passionate every relationship feels here that reminded me of Yentl of all things, except transported to a modern urban setting I’m more personally connected to.  Structurally, there are some drawbacks to Fierstein’s insistence on covering decades of personal turmoil & interpersonal drama in a single picture, but the movie’s greatest accomplishment is ultimately its approximation of a full, authentic life – something gay men were rarely afforded onscreen at the time, even the cis white ones.  By all accounts, the original stage-play version of Torch Song Trilogy approximated an even fuller, more authentic record of gay life in 1970s NYC, since it was twice as long as its movie adaptation.  One of the producers’ only contractual obligations was that the movie could be no longer than 2 hours, which meant a lot of tough-choice editing of a play that ran for 4.  Instead of narrowing in on a few key moments in his life (through the fictional avatar of Arnold Beckoff), Fierstein decided to maintain the full breadth of the play’s story for most of the runtime, so that an inopportune bathroom break means that you could miss a half-decade of love & loss.  It isn’t until the final sequence that he really slows the story down to stew in the drama of one key event: a home visit from his loving, homophobic mother (Anne Bancroft).  After so many sweeping gestures covering long stretches in Arnold’s life, there’s initially something jarring about stopping the momentum cold to depict a heated bicker-battle between mother & son, but that’s also where a lot of the strongest, most coherent political arguments about the validity of gay life & gay romance are voiced in clear terms.  Boomer, what did you think about the lopsided emphasis on the drama of the final act and how it relates to the broader storytelling style of earlier segments?  Was it a meaningful dramatic shift or just an awkward one?

Boomer: There’s something important to note here about the original staging that contributes to this: each of the three segments were meant to be done in different styles, so much so that it’s almost a miracle that they work when smashed together into the veritas of the screen. In the first segment, International Stud, the story is told in fragments between Arnold and Ed, with the two actors kept apart on stage and the narrative being relayed through a series of phone calls (staged like this), while Fugue in a Nursery, which is the play in which Alan and Arnold visit Mr. and Mrs. Ed, is staged with all four actors in one giant bed (see this image from the 2018 revival). It’s only the final segment, about Arnold and his mother, that the style is more naturalistic and less surreal, in an effort to make the pain of those moments all the more visceral and meaningful. That carries over into the film, and in all honesty, it ought to. Joy can be fleeting, especially for those in the queer community (as we see all too gruesomely with Alan’s death at the hands of a band of bigots, who are seen standing around at the scene even after the ambulances arrive, watching with impunity as their victims are carted away while they remain free men). When you’re happy and in love, it really can feel like three years pass in the blink of an eye, while pain, especially that which comes from intolerance, ends up taking up much more room in our memories than our happiness. 

There’s verisimilitude in that, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t get to spend a long time in sympathetic happiness with Arnold and his loves during the good times, too, and the dilation of unhappy times isn’t merely realism for its own sake, it gives us time to really ground ourselves. This is a piece of fiction that’s about gay people but was breaking out of the mold at the time by not being simply for gay people as well. We see this in the difference between Arnold and his brother Phil, who understands his brother better than their parents do but whose life is clearly one with very few stumbling blocks and in which he can simply saunter without much trouble. The straights in the audience are presumed to be of the same cloth and thus need to have the portrait of what it’s like to have to deal with one’s (loving and beloved) mother also behave in a manner that’s dismissive, cruel, mean-spirited, and bigoted toward her own son, and they need to look into that portrait long enough to get it. Even if the need to provide some socially conscious “messaging” has dimmed in the intervening decades, this scene is also still the tour-de-force segment that makes auditioning for the role of “Ma” worthwhile, enough to attract an actress of the caliber of Estelle Getty (as in the original staging) or Anne Bancroft (as in the film). While I agree that it changes the timbre, I’m not sure I’m fully in agreement that it changes the momentum, as it still feels like it’s barreling through, helped along by the frenetic energy that the desperate-to-please soon-to-be-adopted David brings to the proceedings; he and Ed never seem to really sit still, so it creates the illusion of motion even if the subject matter at hand is heavy and slow. 

One of the things that I really loved about this one was that it wasn’t (and felt no need to be) a “message” picture. With the first cases of HIV being diagnosed in the summer of 1981, the triptych of plays first opened less than two weeks after the January 4th establishment of GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis), the first U.S. community-based AIDS service provider, on the fifteenth of that month. As such, there’s really no room in the narrative for the specter of HIV/AIDS to loom large, and although the intervening years between the play’s premiere and the release of the film were haunted by that epidemic, it’s still banished from the narrative. That’s because this is a story about queer . . . well, not queer “joy” exactly, but one in which the omnipresent shadow of social inequality, potential violence, and familial rejection is outshone by the light of authentic living, easy intimacy, and finding the humor in things. As such, although it may be telling the audience something they might not know or understand about the way that gay people are treated by their families, it doesn’t feel the need to educate them about those broader social issues, the way a lot of other queer films of the time did. 

Britnee, given that this was originally a (series of) stage production(s), there’s a lot of room for more sumptuous, lived-in set design in a film adaptation, as well as the opportunity to do a little more visual storytelling. One of favorite bits of this is how Arnold shows us that the ASL sign for “fucking” is to make two rabbits with your hands and bang them together, and then we see that Arnold’s decor is more rabbit centric than your local grocery store in the lead up to Easter. Another is the change that we see in Ed’s farmhouse between Arnold’s first and (possibly) last visits there, that tell us how much time has passed as Ed has had the time to repair the steps and put up proper supports on the porch. This, more than the change in tempo, is what stands out to me about the final scenes with Mrs. Beckoff, as they are heavier on dialogue (read: argument) for exposition and character work, as those last few scenes of the two of them feel more like a stage play than any other part. Are there any visual flourishes or touches of visual storytelling in particular that stood out to you? 

Britnee: Torch Song Trilogy has been on my watchlist for years. I didn’t have much knowledge of what the film was actually about or based on, but I knew that Harvey Fierstein starred in it. That’s more than enough to pique my interest because he is such a gem. I had no idea that it was based on a play that Fierstein wrote himself! Like Brandon, it reminded me so much of Steel Magnolias, which was also a film adapted from a play with a personal, auto-biographical touch. Both films have loveable characters, witty dialogue, and create a feeling of intimacy between the audience and characters. I felt like I was Arnold’s confidant, following him throughout his journey. Of course, that intimacy with the audience is very typical of a stage play, but it doesn’t always translate to film as successfully as it does in this one.

Until you mentioned it, Boomer, I didn’t notice the rabbit connection! I was admiring the rabbit tea kettle among all of the other rabbit trinkets of Arnold’s, but I had no idea that it was in reference to the ASL bit. There are just so many layers to discover! If I had to highlight any other the visual storytelling touches, there is only one that really stuck with me. I adored the opening sequence of a young Arnold playing dress-up in his mother’s closet, which then transitions to adult Arnold in his dressing room before the first drag performance. There were so many important moments that occur in his dressing room, and to remember one of his earliest crucial moments occurred in his first makeshift dressing room (his mother’s closet) really touched my heart. The ultimate sacred space. 

Lagniappe

Brandon: I’m glad to hear y’all were also delighted by the overbearing rabbit theme of Arnold’s home decor.  I’ve obviously only seen this movie a few times so far, but with every watch my eyes are drawn to more rabbit decorations that I didn’t catch previously.  They’re hopping all over the frame, and yet the only acknowledgement of them (besides the ASL connection) is a brief moment when a hungover Alan quizzically examines a rabbit-themed mug Howard hands him with breakfast before noticing he’s surrounded by them.  Otherwise, it’s just one of many small touches that makes Arnold feel like a full, real person instead of a scripted character and a political mouthpiece.  

Britnee: The dramatic relationship between Arnold and his mother gave us some powerful moments, but I kept wondering about the relationships Arnold had with his brother and father. We do see these characters interact with each other and there’s some dialogue referring to each in various conversations, but I would have loved to see their relationships explored more. Since the play is twice as long as the movie, I’m curious to see if they’re more explored there and were cut for time.

Boomer: Because I always want to recommend it to everyone, especially because it’s one of the few musical theater adjacent texts that I, a musical agnostic, enjoy, I want to call attention to the fact that Tovah Felspuh is totally channeling Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Beckoff in her introductory scene in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, beyond just cashing in on some of the same character tropes. Secondly, as a film that is filled with countless quotable lines, the one that has resounded around in my skull the most since the screening is “He used to be a euphemism, now he’s just a friend.” And finally, I find it funny that Brandon should mention the apps in his intro, since I watched this film in a way that I hope Fierstein would appreciate: lying on a bed in a Denver hostel, swiping away app notifications as they attempted to grab my attention and cover the top half of my screen. 

Next month: Boomer presents Notorious (1946)

-The Swampflix Crew