Manuel here kicking off a mini-series of sorts focusing on HBO's decades-old commitment to telling quality LGBT stories. I spent much of this spring recapping Looking here at The Film Experience and as polarizing as many (both here and elsewhere) found the show, it remained the sole American television show centered on the gay male experience to air last year. As we all know, shortly after the season 2 finale, HBO understandably pulled the plug; the show garnered a mere 0.298 million viewers for that episode, a mere pittance when compared to their Westeros-set hit, but also nearly half of what Lena Dunham’s show metered that same evening. And so, to fill the void and build up to a very gay-friendly upcoming HBO film roster (Queen Latifah’s Bessie, that rumored Matt Bomer/Montgomery Clift biopic, the Looking wrap-up film), we’re diving headfirst into a crafting an oral LGBT history of the network that gave us Patrick, Richie, Kevin, Agustin, and Dom, but which had clearly paved the way for such a show with a long storied list of LGBT stories even before it became the ratings giant it is now.
To say HBO, as a cable provider, as a television network, and as an independent film producer, has changed the media landscape is perhaps a bit of an understatement. Its long-running tagline, “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” spoke to the core of what has made HBO such an institution. Despite various attempts at replicating its successes, HBO remains staunchly and idiosyncratically itself. Netflix and Amazon may be sniping at its heels but with a bucket load of Emmys, a gigantic and zeitgesty fantasy series on hand, and its new streaming service (anyone sign up for HBO Now, yet?), the cable giant is showing no signs of aging.
[Angels in America and Your Requested Participation after the jump...]
As a brand, HBO remains unparalleled; the static noise intro that greets all HBO productions (already a relic of a time gone by and the subject of a recent Playboy article!) works to let us know that what we’re about to witness is, not TV, of course, but perhaps, mediated reality itself. From The Sopranos to Game of Thrones, from Sex and the City to Girls, from The Larry Sanders Show to Veep, its television brand has long become synonymous with “quality” while nothing quite spells prestige like an HBO TV movie or mini-series (John Adams anyone?). It’s also been quite an LGBT friendly network, not only featuring sexually diverse characters in their programming (Chris Keller on Oz, Mickey on The Comeback, Pam in True Blood, Shakima Greggs in The Wire) but supporting out writers and directors like Mike White (Enlightened), Allan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood), Todd Haynes (Mildred Pierce), Lisa Cholodenko (Olive Kitteridge) and Michael Patrick King (Sex and the City, The Comeback). Indeed, its two season commitment to Michael Lannan and Andrew Haigh’s Looking is what got me thinking about HBO’s legacy in these terms.
Since this is The Film Experience and since HBO has long been a mini-major when it comes to film production despite eschewing theatrical release in favor of the convenience of at home viewing, I figured we’d try and trace this history by looking at all the films (and miniseries) that HBO has produced which feature prominent LGBT representation, from Tidy Endings in 1988, an adaptation of Harvey Fierstein’s AIDS one-act play of the same name, to The Normal Heart in 2014, Ryan Murphy’s star-studded adaptation of Larry Kramer’s AIDS play. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of variety in between, though that pivotal 1980s decade is a recurring motif throughout and may perhaps end up standing as HBO’s greatest contribution to a communal remembrance of the earliest days of the “gay plague.”
The crowning jewel of HBO's LGBT roster
Next week: Tidy Endings, written by Feinstein and co-starring none other than Stockard Channing herself. It’s a hard film to find (shh don't tell anyone I sent you here) but I hope you’ll all catch it before next week
As we’ll only be making slight detours to television series, I was hoping you’d all help me out singling out specific LGBT moments you remember from the long list of HBO shows that might help flesh out this history of HBO we’ll be writing together. What’s your favorite LGBT character in HBO’s history? Do you have a scene from Sex and the City or Oz or Six Feet Under that you return to again and again for its portrayal of gay, lesbians and bisexuals (we’ll soon find out that trans representation remains meagre at most)?