Dorian Awards TV Winners!

by Nathaniel R

FIRE ISLAND © Searchlight wins the Dorian

GALECA, the Society of LGBTQ+ Entertainment critics have been busy of late, launching the theater wing of their Dorian Awards, and this week announcing their annual TV Dorian Award winners (which multiple members of The Film Experience vote on). HBO and HBOMax or Max – whatever you want to call them – led the nominations in a landslide with The Last of Us, Somebody Somewhere, Succession, and The White Lotus all scoring in a big way. HBO’s nomination tally was literally more than double any of its competitors. 

The big winners were Succession, Abbott Elementary, last summers great streaming romcom Fire Island. The complete list of winners and nominees (plus a few comments) are after the jump... 

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Queering the Oscars: "Heavenly Creatures" for Best Original Screenplay

For Pride Month, Team Experience is looking at LGBTQ+ related Oscar nominations...

by Nick Taylor

Hello! Are you an enterprising young queer and/or MILF lover fresh off the newest season of Yellowjackets looking for another story of dangerous, imaginative, mentally unwell young women starring THE Melanie Lynskey? Would you like it to focus on an obsessive life-bond so intense it has almost no choice but to be queer? What if this one was based on a true story? Then have I got a film for you! Try your hand at Heavenly Creatures, the restaging of the infamous Parker-Hulme murder case in 1954 New Zealand about two pubescent girls so wrapped up in the fantasy world they’ve created over two years of isolating friendship that the only way the can imagine protecting each other from life’s unsustainable realities is to kill Mom.

Heavenly Creatures was directed by Peter Jackson, an inspired, imaginative artist whose soul would soon be held hostage by The Shire for decades. The film brought Jackson to international attention for the first time in his career, and netted an Original Screenplay nomination at the 1994 Oscars for himself and his writing/life partner Fran Walsh to boot. This is the sort of Screenplay nomination I deeply admire the Academy for making, even if I wish this pocket of support could have somehow translated to love for the direction, the actresses, the cinematography, and every technical element necessary to bringing Borovnia to life...

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Queering the Oscars: Best Actor "A Special Day"

by Eric Blume

Marcello Mastroianni’s 1977 Best Actor Oscar nomination for Ettore Scola’s film A Special Day was one of the first examples of a straight actors being recognized for playing a gay role.  Prior to that, we’d only had Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday and Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, and neither of those actors had such an entrenched persona of the “macho lover” as did Mastroianni.   

A Special Day gives us not just one Italian cinema icon playing against type, but two...

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Doc Corner: 'Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie' is a big Emmy contender

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

Even if Michael J. Fox wasn’t American television royalty, including being a five-time Emmy Award winner, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie would probably prove to be quite popular with the television academy. However, as a three-peat winner for Family Ties (“I feel four feet tall!” he said from the stage), a winner once more for Spin City, and a regular nominee in the guest acting category for just about anything he would take time to appear in (including Curb Your Enthusiasm; The Good Wife five times; and Rescue Me, another winner), I feel pretty confident that Davis Guggenheim’s moving biographic documentary will do well at this year’s Emmys.

And rightfully so...

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Queering the Oscars: Bruce Davison in "Longtime Companion"

by Cláudio Alves

As nominees, presenters, and other attendees arrived on the red carpet for the 63rd Academy Awards, they were met with righteous commotion. ACT-UP members picketed the ceremony, holding banners decrying universal inaction when over 102,000 people had already died by the modern plague of AIDS. During the festivities proper, activist David Lacaillade, who had found his way to the audience, stood up and shouted invective against the proceedings, demanding action and calling those who do nothing hypocrites. AIDS Action Now! Sadly, there seemed to be very little in the way of open solidarity inside the Shrine Auditorium.

Earlier, protestors offered button pins emblazoned with "SILENCE = DEATH" to the folk walking the red carpet. Most people declined to wear them, but Bruce Davison was one of the few to don the message. He was also the rare example to wear it all ceremony – some people took them down before the opening monologue was through. Davison was present as the sole nominee from Longtime Companion, the first mainstream feature to depict the effects of AIDS in the gay community. Walking into the Oscars, he felt a heavy responsibility pressing down on his shoulders. In his own words, the actor was "carrying the torch for the people represented in this film"... 

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