Out In The Mountains : Arts - Queer Cinematherapy Misses Its Mark

      Cinematherapy is the notion that movies "are more than entertainment... they're best friends and a form of therapy that can help us cope with everything from a coming-out crisis to the home-alone-homo blues." Beverly West has co-authored a catalogue of Cinematherapy books, including Cinematherapy for Lovers: The Girl's Guide to Finding True Love One Movie at a Time and Advanced Cinematherapy: The Girl's Guide to Finding Happiness One Movie at a Time. Now she has teamed up with her best fag friend, Jason Bergund, ("a real live Will and Grace!" their publicist exhorts) to pen Gay Cinematherapy: The Queer Guy's Guide to Finding Your Rainbow One Movie at a Time.
      Right from the start we know we're in trouble: I don't know any queer guys who are "looking for their rainbow." I doubt I know any queer guys who even know what that might mean.
     This self-proclaimed film guide for gay men is divided into ten chapters, including "Coming Out of the Closet Movies," "Drama Queen Movies," "Me and My Girl Movies," and "Finding Yourself Movies." Finding myself? The truly essential film guide for gay men would direct us to films in which we would find not ourselves but James Franco in a leather thong, Jude Law in a warm bath, or Ewan McGregor in, well, nothing at all. Flash a little Johnny Depp flesh and I'll have no trouble finding myself, you can rest assured.
     Where are the chapters entitled "Full Frontal: A Guide to Kevin Bacon's Shower Scenes," "Tony, Danny, and Vincent: Travolta Dances," "Men Behind Bars (or in Alleys beside Bars)," or "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: The Essential Film Musicals"?
     As it stands, Gay Cinematherapy doesn't cut it as a film guide for gay men. The authors' contemporaries - men of a certain age (we know who we are) don't need this book. We have seen these movies, and we don't need help deciding which ones we want to slip back into the DVD player. Gay and questioning youth - guys perhaps less likely to have seen some of these films - won't relate to the authors' declarations of what is hot (does anyone under 30 have any interest in Madonna's movies? Is our younger generation breathlessly awaiting Liza's next comeback? No, not Lizzie - Liza!). The book is not intended to help long-time film fans discover overlooked or new gay titles and it seems unlikely to speak to younger gays who are not yet familiar with camp classics like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Sunset Boulevard, and All About Eve.
     The book is intended to be dishy, campy, and fun. It might have been better if it had a protagonist - a Libby Gelman-Waxner (the nom-de-plume of gay humorist Paul Rudnick when he writes his legendary movie reviews for Premiere magazine) of its own - to dramatize each new cinematherapy emergency. It would also benefit from some re-editing: although I've seen all but one of the movies referenced in the first two chapters, I could hardly recognize some of them from the plot synopses provided (I'm still scratching my head at this take on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf: "From the very first gin rickey Martha is sipping her way toward a peach of a bun that's certain to shock the neighbors." A peach of a what?).
     If you are interested in gay- and lesbian-themed movies but are struggling to find fresh titles, subscribe to Netflix. Netflix has an impressive library of gay and lesbian films, and you can scan their offerings by title, star, director, or genre. The people who have watched the films before you have rated them, so you benefit from the collective sensibilities of a broadly based, like-minded audience. You can quickly load your rental queue with a couple of hundred gay and lesbian movies from around the globe (pick of the week: check out Happy Together, about a pair of gay Chinese expatriates living in Buenos Aires). In the words of Libby Gelman-Waxner, the best cinematherapy is discovering something new, if you ask me.

Bennett Law lives with his chef-husband and raises pigs in Bethel.

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