Joe Mantello and The Boys in the Band - Oct. 1, 2020

October 1, 2020

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Contents

DON’T STOP THE MUSIC

Music venues nationwide are pleading for financial support.

Congress isn’t listening.

By Doug Rule

JOE & THE BOYS

Since directing The Boys in the Band, Joe Mantello sees Mart Crowley’s landmark gay play in a whole new light.

Interview by André Hereford

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MS. AMERICA

A postcard-pretty portrait of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Julie Taymor’s The Glorias fails to deliver.

By André Hereford

SPOTLIGHT: AFI’S LATIN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL p.5 COME ON DOWN: AMERICAN DREAMS p.7 SHAKESPEARE EVERYWHERE VIRTUAL GALA p.9 SOLAS NUA p.10 JÓNSI: SHIVER p.12 LENNY KRAVITZ WITH NATALIE MAINES p.18 OCTOBER AT THE BIRCHMERE p.19 JANE FRANKLIN DANCE: LIVE AT THE ATHENAEUM p.21 SPIT DAT AT WOOLLY MAMMOTH p.22 SAVOR: BLUEBERRY CREAM CHEESE PIE p.24 DACHA OKTOBERFEST p.26 SUNDAY SUPPER FUNDRAISER p.27 THE FEED: ‘DUMPSTER FIRE’ DEBATE p.29 FAMILY FEUD p.31 ACCESS DENIED p.32 ALARMING ALLEGATIONS p.34 DANGEROUS DECISION p.37 FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE p.41 CAMP CLASSIC p.42 RETROSCENE: DUPLEX DINER MARDI GRAS PARTY p.56 RETROSCENE: GREEN LANTERN p.58 LAST WORD p.61

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Washington, D.C.’s Best LGBTQ Magazine for 26 Years Editorial Editor-in-Chief Randy Shulman Art Director Todd Franson Online Editor at metroweekly.com Rhuaridh Marr Senior Editor John Riley Contributing Editors André Hereford, Doug Rule Senior Photographers Ward Morrison, Julian Vankim Contributing Illustrators David Amoroso, Scott G. Brooks Contributing Writers Sean Maunier, Kate Wingfield Webmaster David Uy Production Assistant Julian Vankim Sales & Marketing Publisher Randy Shulman National Advertising Representative Rivendell Media Co. 212-242-6863 Distribution Manager Dennis Havrilla Patron Saint Leonard Frey Cover Photography Courtesy of Netflix During the pandemic please send all mail to: Metro Weekly PO Box 11559 - Washington, D.C. 20008 • 202-638-6830 All material appearing in Metro Weekly is protected by federal copyright law and may not be reproduced in whole or part without the permission of the publishers. Metro Weekly assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials submitted for publication. All such submissions are subject to editing and will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Metro Weekly is supported by many fine advertisers, but we cannot accept responsibility for claims made by advertisers, nor can we accept responsibility for materials provided by advertisers or their agents. Publication of the name or photograph of any person or organization in articles or advertising in Metro Weekly is not to be construed as any indication of the sexual orientation of such person or organization.

© 2020 Jansi LLC.

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Spotlight

Ema

AFI’s Latin American Film Festival

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N ITS 31ST YEAR OF CELEBRATING and showcasing Latin American cinema, the American Film Institute’s Latin American Film Festival moves entirely online, reimagined as a vibrant virtual showcase presenting the region’s prolific and versatile talent during National Hispanic Heritage Month. The 26 films in this year’s selection include seven U.S. premieres and feature everything from award winners to local box office hits to dynamic debuts from the next generation of filmmakers.

Among the highlights are Pablo Larraín’s festival opener Ema, an electrifying reggaeton-infused story of self-discovery starring Gael García Bernal and Chilean actress Mariana Di Girolamo; Mexican filmmaker Fernanda Valadez’s thriller Identifying Features, about would-be illegal U.S. immigrants who go missing, which took home the World Cinema Audience and Screenplay Awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival; Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante's critically acclaimed supernatural thriller La Llorona, based on the folklore legend of the “Wailing Woman,” who drowned her children and mourns their deaths for eternity; Paraguayan writer-director Hugo Cardo-

zo’s micro-budget horror and box office smash Morgue, about a security guard’s paranormal experiences while locked inside a morgue, which is being remade in English by Bird Box writer Eric Heisserer; and Puerto Rican filmmaker Cecilia Aldorando's documentary Landfall, chronicling the aftermath of 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria through the eyes of those rebuilding their lives while dealing with incompetent local government and an uncaring Trump administration.

The festival closes with the U.S. premiere of Ecuadorian filmmaker Alfredo León León's thriller Submersible, starring Terminator: Dark Fate’s Natalia Reyes, about the drug-smuggling crew of a submarine who discover more than just narcotics in the hold while struggling to keep the vessel watertight.

The festival runs through Oct. 7, with individual films available to rent for $12, or a Festival Pass that unlocks every film for $150 (or $125 for AFI members). All films are available until Oct. 7 except for Landfall (Oct 1-3) and Blanco En Blanco and The Moneychanger (Oct. 2-4). For more information and a full schedule, visit www. afi.com/silver/laff. —Rhuaridh Marr OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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Spotlight

Come On Down

Round House spins the wheel on its new virtual season with Leila Buck’s audience-interactive satire American Dreams. By André Hereford

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HIS FALL AND WINTER ARE ALL about exploring new ways to tell stories and interact with audiences,” says Round House Theatre Artistic Director Ryan Rilette.

Stepping lively into that exploration, Round House opens its unprecedented virtual 2020-21

season with a production explicitly designed to make the most of live digital presentation. Leila Buck’s American Dreams, directed by Tamilla Woodard, invites its online audience to participate as viewers of the nation’s “newest game show sensation,” where the ultimate prize for OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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Spotlight contestants is citizenship to the great U.S.A. Three hopefuls, from Palestine, Pakistan, and Mexico, try their luck and test their knowledge, while the live audience decides which of them earns the right to become a citizen. Outlandish as the premise might seem, the game show sharply examines who gets to decide what it means to be a citizen.

“If that were really up to me, what would actually weigh into that decision?” says Buck.

“Because it's easy for me to judge people who I think feel differently than I do about that, right? It's easy to polarize. It's easy to feel very divided along these issues and have a lot of simplified soundbites about it. But in the end, what I wanted to do, and loved doing with Tamilla, is to explore what is that thing that would actually make you have to pause and go, ‘What would I do? Who would I choose and why? And am I even aware of all the things that would go into my decision?’”

American Dreams will pose such questions to an unusually wide audience in its six-week run.

Round House will serve as the play’s D.C.-area kickoff for a virtual tour across the United States, just in time to ride the fervor of one of the most unruly election seasons in recent memory. “It's a national tour for local conversations,” says Woodard of the American Dreams trek, performed with theaters from Arizona and Texas, to New York and California.

“The production is a part of the larger conversation that we hope each of these places is actually having about the importance of having access to vote, first of all, and that your raising your hand actually results in something. And so you should be mindful of your action as a citizen and the privilege that you have to vote. That's 8

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one hand. And then the other hand is that there are folks who hold the American ideal so close to their heart, and so purely, that we sometimes have to listen to the folks on the outside — and these are our hopeful immigrants — to tell us who we really are.”

L e b a nese-A mer ica n Buck recalls learning vital lessons about the American dream from her immigrant family. “I have often said my grandmother was the most patriotic person I knew because she struggled to come here,” says Buck. “She sacrificed a lot. A lot of people sacrificed so much to come here.” The play, while satirizing what our politics and culture might have made of the citizenship process, clearly aims to honor the immigrant experience.

“There's a quote that has been at the top of the script since very, very early on by [writer] Arne Garborg: 'To love someone is to learn the song in their heart and to sing it for them when they have forgotten.' And that is what many immigrants have done for me and for, I'm sure, others in this country.”

Buck and Woodard developed American Dreams — along with actor/collaborators Jens Rasmussen, Imran Sheikh, Ali Andre Ali, India Nicole Burton, and Andrew Aaron Valdez — to reflect, as Woodard points out, “that there's something beautiful when we hear what these characters think of this country, which is probably far better than what we think of this country right now. But it can bring us back to that ideal because we all have to be operating on what's possible rather than simply what is.”

American Dreams performances at Round House Theatre stream live October 5 to 11. Tickets are $30. Visit www.roundhousetheatre.org.

Spotlight

Bassett and Godwin

Shakespeare Everywhere Virtual Gala

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OR THIS YEAR’S ANNUAL GALA, the Shakespeare Theatre Company invites everyone to enjoy Shakespearean performances drawn from around the globe, presented free online. In addition to celebrating the legacy of the Tony Award-winning local theater company, Shakespeare Everywhere will explore the contributions of great Black artists throughout theater history through a combination of live and recorded performances put together by co-directors LeeAnet Noble (STOMP) and Alan Paul (Camelot).

Angela Bassett, Dame Judi Dench, Maureen Dowd, Norm Lewis, Joe Morton, and Courtney B. Vance are among the international stars set to appear in the hour long program hosted by artistic director Simon Godwin. Specific performance highlights include cast members from the company’s recent production of James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner; Biko’s

Manna and Family, a family of musical prodigies from South Africa; operatic tenor Russell Thomas with an aria from Verdi’s Otello; actors from Japan’s Theatre Cocoon in a scene from Hamlet; and actors Gideon Firl and Michelle Mary Schaefer in a scene from Romeo and Juliet in American Sign Language while accompanied by the Antonio Parker Quintet.

Attendees are encouraged to donate to the company during the event as well as to bid on silent auction items, and fifteen randomly selected donors will win a $50 gift card redeemable at any restaurant in José Andres’ ThinkFood Group, from Jaleo to Oyamel to Zaytinya.

Saturday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m., on YouTube (@ ShakespeareTheatreCo) or Facebook (@ ShakespeareinDC). Free. Visit www.shakespearetheatre.org for more information and to RSVP. —Doug Rule OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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Spotlight

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Da’Von Moody and Cormac Elliot

A Digital Theatre World Premiere

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O CELEBRATE ITS 15TH ANNIVERSAry, Solas Nua, the D.C.-based Irish arts organization acclaimed for developing innovative shows in non-traditional theater spaces, has commissioned a series of digital plays from African-American playwright Jeremy Keith Hunter and Irish playwright John King. The company’s new season kicks off with a world-premiere participatory production that blends theater and technology for a humorous exploration into the concept of digital language, showing how it both helps and hinders human communication. It goes by a name comprised of three Emojis: . Calling it a groundbreaking work and “something I’ve never experienced before,� Solas Nua’s Rex Daugherty adds, “The title alone ‘speaks’ to the hybrid of digital theater

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that we are making: Can you even say this title out loud, or does it only exist in its own unique digital language?�

Through the use of WhatsApp as well as Zoom, the 45-minute work is set in a digital language class where the audience members act as students, engaged in an onscreen chat and a “textchain� with their teachers, played by the D.C.based Da’Von Moody and London-based Cormac Elliot. The focus is on helping Elliot find the words, digitally speaking, to explain his relationship with the ex-boyfriend who won’t stop texting. For optimal experience, it is recommended that “students� come to class with both a laptop and a smartphone. Through Oct. 11. Tickets are $20, with all proceeds supporting the artists.

Visit www.solasnua.org. —DR

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BARNABY ROPER

Spotlight

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Jónsi: Shiver

HIS FRIDAY, OCT. 2, JÓNSI, THE GAY lead singer of Icelandic ambient rock band Sigur Ros, drops Shiver, his first solo album since 2010’s superb Go. The new album features guest contributions from the Swedish dance-pop diva Robyn (“Salt Licorice”) as well as Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins (“Cannibal”) and is said to plumb the depths of the human experience and our connection to the natural world.

“It pits the organic and dreamlike qualities of Jónsi against [co-producer] A. G. Cook’s synthetic, sometimes abrasive, and avant-garde experimentalism,” reads the press materials. The

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first single, “Swill,” is a swirl of sound and features a video by Barnaby Roper with animation

by Pandagunda.

The album is said to continue the artist’s “quest to push the boundaries of not just what we consider art, but how we experience it,” building on his forays into visual art with recent solo shows as well as a series of collaborations with renowned visual artists such as Doug Aitken, Olafur Eliasson, Merce Cunningham, and artist and composer Carl Michael von Hausswolff. Jónsi has teamed up with von Hausswolff as the experimental musical duo Dark Morph. Visit www.jonsi.com. —DR

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AUDREY FIX SCHAEFER

Spotlight

9:30 Club

Don’t Stop The Music

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Music venues nationwide are pleading for financial support.

Congress isn’t listening. By Doug Rule

HE OWNER OF THE MINNEAPOLIS club where Prince first got his start reached out to D.C.’s I.M.P. Productions with a specific request. “Hey Audrey, you're in Washington,” Dayna Frank texted I.M.P.’s Audrey Fix Schaefer. “Do you know any lobbyists?

Because we're going to have to lobby the federal government or we're all going to go under.”

A few weeks into the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s independent music venue owners — including Frank of Minnesota’s First Avenue — were beside themselves. Schaefer describes them as an unflappable, seasoned bunch of mavericks who were “always used to doing it on their own [and who] have been able to survive against so many odds in the past.” But with their

businesses forced to close until further notice, they were feeling “very frightened” — enough that they started reaching out to each other for help, most for the first time, asking, “What are you doing about your employees? What about your bills? What about your insurance?”

“To be completely shut with no income, high overhead, and no understanding of when we're going to get to reopen, we figured we better get on it and figure out how to lobby Congress,” Schaefer says. “Otherwise, we can't survive.”

Within days, the first-ever association for independent venues, promoters, and festivals was born. By the end of the first week, the National Independent Venue Association registered 350 members. Today, they’re up to 2,800 from “every OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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Spotlight single state in the union and D.C.,” says Schae- backyard. So they take your property and pay fer, who serves as director of communications you fair market value. Well, this is an instance for NIVA — currently an all-volunteer-run enti- in which, for the greater good, they have taken ty. She works in the same capacity for I.M.P, the our property effectively by shutting us down for nationally-revered local collection of venues that health and safety reasons — which we totally unincludes industry standard-bearer the 9:30 Club, derstand. But they're leaving us hanging out to as well as The Anthem, the Lincoln Theatre, and dry, as though there's some type of a miracle that Merriweather Post Pavilion. will happen to our bottom line that makes us not Shortly after formation, NIVA surveyed its have to pay rent and mortgage and utilities and members about the future, taxes and insurance. But we do and the results were dire but and the overhead is phenome“If [congress] clear: “If the shutdown lasts six nal.” callously and months or longer and there's Through its Save Our Stagno meaningful federal support, es campaign, NIVA has been negligently 90 percent said that they would sounding the alarm about the [doesn’t] pass fold permanently.” need for federal assistance in orMusic venues are not the only der to keep music venues afloat a bill for the businesses struggling to make while waiting out the pandemic. good of the it through the pandemic, of There are other advocates also course. But according to a recent working to drum up industry entire country, survey from the U.S. Chamber of support at the local and state there will be a Commerce, nearly 90 percent of level, including Chris Naoum all businesses originally closed of Listen Local First D.C. and mass collapse as a result of the pandemic have Aaron Myers of the Capitol of independent Hill Jazz Foundation, who are by now reopened, at least partially. “We're not among them,” leading a campaign urging DC music venues Schaefer says bluntly, pointing Mayor Muriel Bowser and DC across the out that Congress has “helped so Councilmembers to provide many other industries” suffering emergency support for local country.” through the pandemic. “So now businesses through a proposed — Audrey Fix Schaefer it's time to focus on us, especialMusic Venue Relief Act. ly since we can be part of the Such support might have economic renewal when it is safe for us to open helped the 18th Street Lounge and Twins Jazz up.” She cites a study released in 2019 showing hold on, but instead both celebrated, decades-old that for every dollar spent at a small music ven- D.C. institutions recently announced that they ue, $12 was generated in economic activity for have shut their doors for the final time. Sadly, area businesses, including restaurants, bars, ho- any day now we’re sure to hear of more closures tels, and transportation providers. if no support materializes, given that we’ve now Unlike restaurants and even many bars, most passed the pandemic’s six-month mark, or the music venues will stay closed indefinitely — ef- benchmark identified in NIVA’s membership fectively at the mercy of the government, and survey. “Venues cannot hold on any longer,” part of most localities’ final reopening phase. Schaefer stresses. “It’s no joke: Venues are closSchaefer likens the situation to that of eminent ing faster.” domain: “When the government decides that Schaefer has been heartened by the level of the highway needs to go through your backyard, support the Save Our Stages campaign has regit's for the greater good for it to go through your istered, among music fans — who are writing 16

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Spotlight letters to their elected officials as well as enlisting their friends and family members in the cause — as well as legislators. NIVA has been instrumental in the development of three pieces of Congressional legislation, including an act named after the campaign and led by Senators John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Representatives Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Roger Williams (R-Tex.). The Save Our Stages Act also attracted a whopping 144 co-sponsors from both parties. And yet, all those bills have been held up for months, the result of partisan squabbling over the details of any future COVID-19 relief package.

“What they need is public outcry to tell them: Do your job!” says Schaefer, struggling mightily not to swear while recounting how the summer played out.

“We were told that, ‘Oh, of course they're going to pass the next COVID bill before they leave for the July 4th break.’ They did not. And then we heard, ‘Oh, of course they're going to pass some-

thing before they leave for the August recess.

They did not. They went on break.” And now?

With each day bringing us closer to the election, passage of any relief before November looks less and less likely. “Every day that they wait, I get another email or three about venues going under across the country.”

Schaefer sighs. “If they callously and negligently don’t pass a bill for the good of the entire country, there will be a mass collapse of independent music venues across the country, have no doubt. This is not a drill. This is reality. And they cannot come back, three months from now, and do it. It would be like if you're on the organ transplant waiting list, and they find a match for you two days after your funeral — it does nothing.” —Doug Rule For more information on the National Independent Venue Association and to participate in its #SaveOurStages campaign, visit www.nivassoc. org or search for @nivassoc on social media.

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Spotlight

Lenny Kravitz with Natalie Maines

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LL THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL AND college, I absolutely, 100-percent believed I was going to marry Lenny Kravitz. Not even a joke,” Natalie Maines revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show during a segment with her fellow Chicks back in March. No doubt she’ll elaborate on that adolescent fixation in a one-on-one conversation with the rockstar himself. But the focus of this P&P Live! Discussion, presented by Politics & Prose in partnership with the 9:30 Club, is on Kravitz’s new memoir, Let Love Rule. Also the name of his first single and debut album, the book reflects on the making of that 1989 album and more generally on the making of Kravitz’s career. The son of Jewish news producer Sy Kravitz and Black actress Roxie Roker (who starred as one-half of an interracial couple on The Jeffersons), Kravitz

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initially grew up in New York but came of age in Los Angeles. His introduction to fame came through the relationship with his first wife, Lisa Bonet (The Cosby Show), who was also instrumental in getting Kravitz the record deal that led to Let Love Rule.

Documenting the journey to finding his voice, the memoir centers on the idea that “love was the force that paved the way and love became my message,” Kravitz says in an official statement.

In a September New York Times profile, Kravitz hinted that a second book is in the works, one that will examine his decades as a celebrity in a way that “will get real messy.”

Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 8 p.m. A ticket, including one copy of the book, is $35 for store pickup or $42 with shipping. Visit www.politics-prose. com and register at www.eventbrite.com. —DR

DAVID MCCLISTER

Spotlight

Marty Stuart

October at The Birchmere

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OT THE ITCH FOR A TRUE IN-PERson live concert experience? If so, you can actually scratch that itch at the Birchmere, which back in July became the first in the area to reopen since the onslaught of COVID-19.

Virginia’s legendary concert hall has continued to present shows in limited number and capacity, and October is shaping up to be the busiest yet at the venue in the pandemic. The Birchmere has enacted various measures to ensure proper social distancing along with enhanced cleaning procedures including, as it touts on its website, the use of “Biocide 100 Fog,” a 30-day treatment reportedly effective against COVID-19.

Highlights among this month’s schedule include “For the Love of Linda,” a concert featuring various artists paying tribute to the music of Linda Ronstadt as a benefit for the Parkinson’s Foundation (Oct. 2); the Prince Tribute Experience featuring Eugene “Junie” Henderson of hitmaking D.C. go-go band E.U. portraying the legendary Purple One and supported by a band

comprised of veteran R&B and rock players (Oct. 3); Start Making Sense, a New York-based seven-piece band that faithfully recreates the music of David Byrne’s Talking Heads including the hits “Once In A Lifetime,” “Burning Down the House,” and “Psycho Killer” (Oct. 9); Samantha Fish, the rising 31-year-old blues/bluegrass singer-songwriter from the heartland (Oct. 1920); Grammy Lifetime Achievement folkie Tom Paxton who will perform with his band the DonJuans for a concert also featuring veteran multi-instrumentalist folkie John McCutcheon (Oct. 25); and “An Intimate Evening with Marty Stuart,” two nights of a solo show featuring the multi-Grammy-winning Country Music Hall of Famer also known from his days as a member of Johnny Cash’s road band (10/30-31).

Doors open at 5 p.m. with the availability of food and beverages. All shows start at 7:30 p.m.

The Birchmere is at 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. Ticket prices vary. Call 703-549-7500 or visit www.birchmere.com. —DR OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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Spotlight

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Jane Franklin Dance: Live at the Athenaeum

ANCERS IN THIS COMPANY GET A rare chance during the pandemic to perform together and share in the energy of moving bodies in the same space. Meanwhile, audience members will watch safely from their own homes as the local dance troupe performs a mixed-repertory program filled with interactive moments and real-time performances from the Athenaeum in Old Town Alexandria.

The bill includes Do Not Touch, featuring a cast of characters acting out an ordinary discussion about the weather that becomes heated (“it’s not just COVID-19 that limits the touch”). Told through movement, words, and images, the non-linear narrative piece puts on display the group dynamics involved in creating compromise.

Another piece, 1X7, consists of seven one-minute solos performed in side-by-side juxtaposition

with artworks from the Athenaeum’s pandemic-centric exhibition Moments in Time...a very weird time. The program is rounded out by two videos: Wire Works, recorded at the Athenaeum in 2018 and showing moving-body interpretations of artworks by Ellyn Weiss, accompanied by spoken-word narration by Weiss, depicting extremophiles, or organisms that live in the most hostile environments on earth due to toxicity, lack of oxygen, or extreme heat and cold, and Fightin’ Words, a dance from the VelocityDC Dance Festival in 2016 described as “a bombastic romp of fist-shakin’ cartoon-carrying-on fun” and set to music composed by American fiddler Patrick McAvinue and performed by Luke Chohany. A Q&A will follow the program. Saturday, Oct. 3, at 7:30 p.m. Suggested donation of $10, with registration required to obtain the Zoom link. Visit www.janefranklin.com. —DR OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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Spotlight

Kim B. Miller and 13 of Nazareth

Spit Dat at Woolly Mammoth

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ILLED AS THE LONGEST-RUNNING open-mike in D.C., Spit Dat is a weekly safe space gathering and showcase for spoken-word and poetry as well as stand-up and song, and a place for “all types to be — to simply be” that has touched down at various venues since 2002. A year ago, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company came on board as a partner and host of a more structured monthly edition loosely organized around a different theme.

Spit Dat: The Spook Who Spat by the Dat is the October virtual offering, inspired by Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door, a provocative novel from 1969 and subsequent film about a Black CIA operative who trains young inner-city Black youth to rise up against the government using the agency’s own guerrilla tactics.

Among such tactics was the study and appreciation of Black poetry, to spur on the creation of artist-activists who “‘spook’ the establishment with the ‘spitting’ of their revolutionary spells.”

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The “cleverlutionary” spells of Kim B. Miller and 13 of Nazareth will be featured next week at Spit Dat Digital. The evening will be co-hosted by founder Drew Anderson, “a science teacher turned teaching artist, poet turned parodist, and marathon runner turned motivational speaker,” and Dwayne “B!” Lawson-Brown, a D.C.-native poet, activist, breakdancer, and fashion designer sometimes referred to as the “Crochet Kingpin.”

There will also be the occasional mystical presence of spirits, such as the infamous one named “Sexual Innuendo.” “Whenever somebody says something that could be taken the wrong way, feel free to point it out and enjoy yourself,” Lawson-Brown said in a March profile in DCist.com.

Monday, Oct. 5. Virtual Lobby opens at 7:30 p.m. followed by the show at 8 p.m. Presented on Zoom as well as Facebook (@woollymammothtc). Free and open to the public. Call 202-3933939 or visit www.woollymammoth.net. —DR

Savor

Blueberry Cream Cheese Pie

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Recipe and Photography by Craig Bowman

HIS DECADENT, NO-BAKE PIE IS wonderful with summer blueberries, but just as good with flash-frozen berries. I made it this time with a sweet shortbread crust, but a pre-baked pie shell or even a graham cracker crust is just as delicious.

Ingredients Shortbread Shell 1 cup softened, salted butter (2 sticks) 2 cups all-purpose flour (use pastry flour, if you have it) 3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract (optional) 24

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Gently mix everything together, press into the bottom of your pie or tart pan and bake for 12-15 minutes at 350º F.

Filling

8 oz cream cheese, softened 14 oz sweetened condensed milk 1/3 cup lemon juice 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups blueberries

Glaze

1 cup sugar 2 tablespoons cornstarch 3/4 cup water 2 cups blueberries 2 tablespoons ginger liqueur (optional)

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You can use any type of pre-baked shell for this pie, but I love a simple lemon-scented shortbread you can bake up in minutes.

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Whip softened cream cheese until fluffy and with the mixer running, slowly add the milk and beat until smooth.

Zest 1 lemon and reserve for the glaze. Squeeze and add fresh lemon juice (never the bottled junk) to the mixer and mix.

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Gently fold in the blueberries and pour into the cooled pie shell.

Chill 2-3 hours.

For the glaze, mix the sugar and cornstarch in a small saucepan.

Add the water and stir to combine.

Crush 1/2 cup of the blueberries with the back of a soup spoon.

Add the crushed berries and the lemon zest to the saucepan.

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Whisk over medium heat until glaze begins to thicken and comes to a boil. Cook for 2 more minutes and add ginger liquor (if using)

Strain the glaze through a fine mesh strainer, pushing with back of a spoon and allow to cool completely

Top the chilled pie with remaining blueberries and then the cooled glaze.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email us at Savor@metroweekly.com.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF DACHA

Savor

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Dacha Oktoberfest

T DATES BACK 310 YEARS, YET THE ANnual tradition known as Oktoberfest is by necessity a different experience in 2020. For example, you can still drink it down at both locations of the gay-owned Dacha Beer Garden in honor of the famous German beer festival, and taps are set to pour Festbier from the oldest brewery in the world, Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan, all weekend long. All of that will transpire with far fewer revelers at any given time and much farther away than usual, in accordance with proper social distancing and other city-mandated measures to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Distancing requirements — and the desire to remain at home — have helped inspire a new twist on the tradition with the launch of Dacha’s Oktoberfest At Home Kits. The offerings start with the DACHNiK, a $149 package that comes 26

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with a standard growler filled with fresh Festbier, a Dacha Boot, an exclusive t-shirt, and an OktoberFEAST spread for four to six people with sausages, pretzels and pretzel rolls, obatzda, sauerkraut, spiced nuts, cheese, cured Black Forest ham, and pickled vegetables. The $599 PREMIER package includes all of the above plus a porcelain Weihenstephaner Oktoberfest Mug, two t-shirts and boots, and VIP perks ranging from a private locker at the Dacha Navy Yards restaurant Jackie and priority entry and seating at both locations. The $999 HON package adds more limited merch plus a standing 15 percent off your check at Jackie.

Dacha Oktoberfest is celebrated through Oct. 4 at the original Dacha Beer Garden in Shaw, at 1600 17th St. NW, and at the new Dacha Navy Yard, 79 Potomac Ave. SE. Call 202-350-9888 or visit www.dachadc.com. —Doug Rule

PHOTO COURTESY OF CENTROLINA

Savor

EMILY CLACK

Amy Brandwein of Centrolina

Bidwell’s Fried Deviled Eggs

Maydan

Sunday Supper Fundraiser

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VER THE YEARS, THE SUNDAY Supper at Union Market has become the primary fundraiser for the James Beard Foundation-run Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Program (WEL), a multifaceted initiative — originally spearheaded by Jodie W. McLean, the CEO of Union Market’s parent company Edens — that strives to boost the number and presence of women leaders in the food industry.

For this year’s ninth incarnation, the event has been reimagined in light of the pandemic as a benefit for participating restaurants as well as WEL’s work in assisting women chefs and owners to expand and grow their businesses. Amy Brandwein of Centrolina, Marcelle G. Afram of Maydan, Toyin Alli of Puddin’, and Tatiana Mora of Serenata are among this year’s

featured chefs. They will prepare special Sunday Supper tasting menus specifically created for small groups of two, four, and six to enjoy at properly spaced tables in the private dining rooms or outside seating sections of their establishments, or as takeout for at-home dining.

Additional participating restaurants with reservations still available at press time include Union Market area restaurants Bidwell, El Cielo, Masseria, O-Ku, Peruvian Brothers, and Stellina Pizzeria, 14th Street’s Bresca and Colada Shop, Shaw’s Espita, downtown’s RIS, and the Wharf’s Officina.

Sunday, Oct. 4, at 6:30 p.m. Tickets range from $250 to $500 per seat but sold only as a set for all participants at a table, or $100 per person for takeout where available. Visit www. sundaysupperdc.com. —DR OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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FOX NEWS

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Trump and Biden

‘Dumpster Fire’ Debate

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President Trump, unhinged and erratic, bulldozes Biden, Chris Wallace, and democracy. By John Riley

RESIDENT TRUMP MADE HISTORY last night, becoming the first sitting president to refuse to denounce white supremacy when directly asked to condemn it.

In response to a question from Fox News moderator Chris Wallace about whether he would denounce white supremacists, militias, or right-wing vigilante groups like the Proud Boys, the president stalled, claiming he'd be willing to condemn anyone but not calling out any specific group.

Instead, he claimed that "almost everything I'm seeing" in terms the civil unrest that has plagued the country in recent months has been

"from the left-wing."

"What do you want to call them? Give me a name," Trump said to Wallace. "Who would you like me to condemn? Who?" "Proud Boys," Vice President Joe Biden offered, referencing the far-right neo-fascist group.

"Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," Trump replied. "But I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a leftwing problem."

Following his refusal to denounce them, the Proud Boys pledged allegiance to Trump, with one known social media account incorporating OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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theFeed "Stand Back. Stand By" as part of its new logo.

The president's refusal to condemn a group that actively supports him, regardless of their problematic past actions or comments, was a feature, not a bug, of an erratic debate performance in which he frequently interrupted both Wallace and Biden, breaking debate rules to which his own campaign team had previously agreed.

Trump ranted about right-wing conspiracy theories, blamed unfair media coverage for his sagging approval rating, recited debunked talking points that serve as catnip to Republican base voters, and lobbed insults at Biden — even, at one point, taking a step that appalled many pundits by knocking Biden's son Hunter for his past drug problems. (Biden responded by looking directly at the camera and saying, "My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem. He's overtaken it.

He's fixed it. He's worked on it. And I'm proud of him.")

The debating styles of the two men were on full display throughout the night. Trump was the aggressor, forceful, belligerent, frequently raising his voice and unleashing inflammatory statements. Biden was resolute, soft-spoken, deliberate in his responses — frequently made directly to camera and the viewers at home — and occasionally cracked a smile and shook his head in disbelief at some of Trump's more outlandish claims.

Throughout much of the ninety-minute debate, Biden tried to avoid acknowledging Trump's more bizarre claims, often circling back to focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic downturn, which he accused Trump of mismanaging.

But even he occasionally showed signs that the president's boorish behavior and frequent interruptions got under his skin, asking Wallace "Will he just shush for a moment?" at one point when Trump interrupted him, and calling him a "fool," a "clown" and even telling the president to "shut up."

Wallace, a Fox News personality who had previously promised not to "fact-check" the candidates in real time, was never able to take command of the debate, which careened out of 30

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control from the very first segment.

Biden's strongest moment was in his secondto-last statement about the legitimacy of the election and the high numbers of mail-in ballots expected to be cast, urging Americans to be calm and patient when awaiting the final vote tallies, to ensure their vote is counted, and, ultimately, to vote.

"Show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of this election. Vote, vote, vote. If you're able to vote early in your state, vote early. If you're able to vote in person, vote in person. Vote whatever way is the best way for you.

Because he cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of this election," Biden said, gesturing to Trump, repeatedly cast doubt on the validity of mail-in ballots.

Reaction to the evening ranged from shock, to exasperation, to disdain from cable news pundits. CNN's Jake Tapper called the debate "a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck," telling fellow CNN personality Wolf Blitzer that it was "the worst debate I have ever seen."

"It wasn't even a debate," Tapper added. "It was a disgrace. And it was primarily because of President Trump."

CNN's Dana Bash offers a more concise analysis, calling the debate a "shitshow."

"Apologies for being a little bit crude, but that is the phrase I'm getting from people on both sides of the aisle via text, and it's the only phrase I can think of to really describe it," she said.

Meet the Press host Chuck Todd put the blame on Trump's shoulders, calling the debate a "“train wreck of the making of one person. We know who did it. President Trump did this. And in some way, it’s the only way he knows what to do. He bulldozed over Chris Wallace, bulldozed and, at times, flustered Joe Biden."

The Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ rights organization that has endorsed Biden, blasted Trump for trying to "bully his way through" the debate, calling him "desperate" and "deranged."

"He could not articulate a single plan for our nation, failed to condemn white supremacists

theFeed our nation and our democracy by treating this debate like a circus. Our democracy is at stake and Trump’s sideshow was a clown show and a mockery of our nation."

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yet again, and proved his strategy is to continue to spread disinformation in order to suppress voter turnout," HRC President Alphonso David said of Trump's performance. "He disrespected

Family Feud

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Mary Trump and The President

Donald Trump’s lesbian niece is suing him for millions of dollars. By Rhuaridh Marr

ARY TRUMP, NIECE OF DONALD Trump, is suing her uncle and alleging that he and his siblings conspired to defraud her of her proper inheritance.

CNN reports that Trump has filed a suit in New York alleging that the President and his siblings committed fraud in order to reduce the amount of inheritance she received following the death of Fred Trump Sr., Donald Trump’s father.

Trump is suing the President, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry, and the estate of Robert Trump, his brother, who died earlier this year, alleging that “fraud was not just the family business — it was a way of life.”

She accuses the Trump siblings of conspiring

with a trustee who acted on Mary Trump’s behalf to provide “a stack of fraudulent valuations” which undervalued the worth of Fred Trump Sr.’s estate, and that her uncles and aunt forced her to sign an agreement that “fleeced her of tens of millions of dollars or more.”

In the lawsuit, she also accuses the family of cutting her from her grandfather’s will because of the death of her father, Fred Trump Jr., alleging that Robert Trump told her that her father’s death from alcoholism and Fred Trump Sr.’s dislike of her mother were the reasons behind the move.

Trump’s lawsuit claims that rather than “protect Mary’s interests,” her uncles and aunt “designed and carried out a complex scheme to OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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theFeed siphon funds away from her interests, conceal their grift, and deceive her about the true value of what she had inherited.”

Mary Trump, who is lesbian, gained national prominence earlier this year following the release of her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, which offered insight into the Donald Trump and the Trump family from her perspective.

Trump’s lawsuit echoes claims made in her book, including allegations about the family’s dubious financial dealings, claims of a traumatic upbringing for Donald Trump, as well as accusations that Fred Trump Sr. was a high-functioning sociopath.

In addition to allegedly defrauding her to prevent her from gaining her full inheritance, Trump also accused the President of altering his father’s will in order to “steal vast sums of money

from his siblings.”

Following the release of her book, Trump spoke to The Advocate and claimed that Donald Trump is “uncomfortable” around gay and transgender people.

“I think gay people make him [Trump] uncomfortable with male homosexuality. [He likes] guys with no self-awareness,” she said. “And trans people make him uncomfortable because he’s uncomfortable with anyone that’s different.

And that includes differently-abled, different color of skin, and different beliefs.”

Trump also slammed her uncle’s ban on transgender people in the military, calling it “disgusting,” and said it was “absurd” that her uncle believes that gay people “love” him.

“What’s worse [is] that on some level, he’s actually convinced himself that that is true,” she said. “Anyone who takes that seriously should be discounted out of hand.”

Access Denied

Eric Trump says he’s ‘part of the LGBT community.’

Wait, what? By Rhuaridh Marr

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RIC TRUMP INADVERTENTLY CAUSED mass confusion this week by seeming to declare on Fox News that he is part of the LGBTQ community. The president’s second-oldest son, who is married to Lara Trump and has two children, appeared on Fox & Friends on Monday to discuss an op-ed in the New York Times about a lesbian woman who plans to vote for Trump. Asked whether Donald Trump’s reelection campaign was counting on voters like the anonymous lesbian in the op-ed, Trump offered a baffling response.

“The LGBT community, they are incredible,” he said. “And you should see how they come out in full force for my father every single day. I’m part of that community, and we love the man, and thank you for protecting our neighborhoods and thank you for protecting our cities.”

Trump’s comments quickly went viral after 32

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Bobby Lewis, a researcher and author at Media Matters, shared them on Twitter. “Eric Trump coming out is not the birthday gift this homosexual wanted,” Lewis wrote.

Reactions to Trump’s comments were both plentiful and hilarious. Actor George Takei tweeted: “Eric Trump saying he’s ‘part of the LGBT’ community is like me saying I’m part of the fantasy football community. I might think I know what a ‘tight end’ and a ‘wide receiver’ are, but I would be sorely mistaken.”

Takei added: “Well at least now Eric Trump can claim his father doesn’t hate him because he’s dumb, he hates him because he’s part of the LGBT community. (Yes, he really claimed that this morning on Fox.)” Twitter user Jenny Burns noted that Trump “probably should have told his wife before announcing it on fox.”

FOX NEWS

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Eric Trump

User Mrs. Krassenstein offered two explanations for Trump’s comments: “Eric Trump either: a) just came out as gay on National TV (good for him) or b) Is so stupid that he doesn’t realize that he just accidentally suggested he’s gay on National TV (also good for him).”

Air Force veteran Andrew Goss congratulated Trump for “going on Fox & Friends this morning & coming out on National Television. Man, didn’t see that one coming.”

David Mack, deputy director of breaking news at Buzzfeed, wrote: “[Eric Trump] threw the first brick at stonewall after demolishing it to build condos.”

ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio said: “The LGB community can have Eric Trump. I’ll stick with the Ts.” Former Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill wrote that she was “not expecting to wake up to Eric Trump coming out on FOX & Friends, but good for him I guess. Maybe he can get his dad to stop fucking over the LGBTQ community now.”

Mostly the reaction was just LGBTQ people refusing to allow Trump to sit with us. One person

imagined a conversation between Trump and his father: “Eric Trump: ‘I'm part of the LGBT community, and we love my father.’ Donald Trump: ‘I said WHITE PRIDE not gay pride, you moron.’”

Another summarized the LGBTQ community’s response: “Eric Trump: ‘I'm part of [the LGBT] community.’ The LGBT community: ‘No you're not.’”

User Gallagher Witt drafted a formal denial for Trump’s membership.

“Dear Eric Trump,” they wrote. “After reviewing your application, we have found you to be an unrepentent [sic] dirtbag whose words and actions hurt our community and others. Therefore, your request for inclusion is denied. We had a meeting. There was glitter. Sincerely, The LGBT Community.”

Eventually, journalist and talk show host Michael Signorile weighed in to clear everything up, noting that Trump “isn’t coming out here.

He’s just an idiot who sounds like he is.”

Signorile added: “Anyway, the idea that LGBTQ people — only 14% of whom supported Trump in ’16 — will now vote for Trump after he’s stripped them of rights but b/c their 401k OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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theFeed might be doing better is ludicrous.”

Others noted that Trump likely misspoke and was instead quoting an LGBTQ person he had spoken to who supports his father.

The Fox & Friends segment referenced an oped in the New York Times, “Meet a Secret Trump Voter,” about a lesbian woman who is planning to vote for Donald Trump. “Chris,” as the woman was known, said she was voting for Trump despite being a “well-educated, well-traveled and well-informed” registered Democrat who lives in Manhattan.

She justified voting for an administration that has continually attacked LGBTQ rights by pointing to, among other things, her gains in the stock market and the fact that 200,000 people have died due to Trump’s mishandling and underplaying of the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than the “millions of people” the news media claimed might die.

In response to both Trump’s comments and the Times op-ed, Sarah Kate Ellis, president and

CEO of LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD, slammed the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQ actions and claims that Donald Trump himself is an “ally” to LGBTQ people.

“The LGBTQ community is indeed incredible, but the Trump Administration’s record on LGBTQ issues is shameful and abysmal,” Ellis wrote on Twitter. “The Trump family and their surrogates lie about widespread support in our community. LGBTQ voters will not fall for it.

“We follow the facts: 175 anti-LGBTQ attacks in rhetoric and policy, including fighting all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to discriminate against LGBTQ workers and against qualified LGBTQ couples looking to adopt.”

Ellis also noted that “Washington Post fact checkers say calling President Trump a strong ally to LGBTQ people is ‘bonkers’ and ‘whoppers,'” and linked to a GLAAD ad which ran on Fox & Friends last month that aimed to “shed light on the Trump Administration’s true anti-LGBTQ record.”

Alarming Allegations

New Jersey man accuses Judge Andrew Napolitano of forcing him to engage in “bizarre sex act.” By John Riley

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OR THE SECOND TIME THIS MONTH, a man has sued Fox News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano for sexual misconduct, accusing the judge of forcing him to engage in a “bizarre sex act.”

James Kruzelnick filed a lawsuit on Monday in New Jersey Superior Court claiming that he met Napolitano while working as a waiter at the Mohawk House restaurant in Sparta. He claimed the analyst pursued him and groped him in the men’s bathroom.

Kruzelnick claims he wanted to keep the friendship with the judge strictly platonic. But he was also “flattered by the fact that Napolitano, a famous television personality, was interested in spending time with him,” according to the lawsuit.

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On Sept. 6, 2015, Kruzelnick visited Napolitano’s home, at which point, the judge asked him to engage in daddy-son role-play.

He alleges Napolitano entered the living room with his pants down and asked him to begin spanking him on the buttocks while the judge masturbated. When Kruzelnick said he wasn’t into the “sex game,” Napolitano insisted, telling him, “Just fucking do it!”

Napolitano then demanded that Kruzelnick call him ‘son’ while playing the role of ‘daddy,’ and Kruzelnick complied with his requests, reports the New York Daily News.

After that encounter, Napolitano allegedly promised to use his influence to help Kruzelnick resolve ongoing legal problems related to dis-

OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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GAGE SKIDMORE

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Napolitano

crimination he was experiencing at work, and criminal charges that his brother was facing.

“I have fixed cases, and I have gotten people off. I have sent people away,” Napolitano said, according to Kruzelnick’s complaint.

Kruzelnick claims in the lawsuit that Napolitano continued to “exert severe psychological domination and control” over him.

One night, he and a Fox News intern allegedly went to Napolitano’s house. Kruzelnick was provided with a drink, and began to feel woozy within 10 to 15 minutes of consuming the beverage.

He claims he woke up later in Napolitano’s bed, with blurred memories of engaging in a sexual threesome with Napolitano and the Fox News intern.

He also claims that, during his last encounter with Napolitano, on Aug. 6, 2017, the judge attempted to rape him, according to the lawsuit, which seeks $15 million in damages for sexual abuse, assault and battery and other claims.

Kruzelnick is the second man to accuse Napolitano of sexual misconduct recently. Earlier this month, a South Carolina man, Charles Corbishley, claimed the judge forced him to perform 36

OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

a sexual act on him while he was presiding over the young man’s trial on arson charges in the 1980s. Napolitano served as a New Jersey Superior Court judge from 1987 to 1995.

Both men are represented by the law firm Joseph & Norinsberg. Napolitano’s lawyers claim both sets of allegations are false.

“These allegations are total fiction, and Judge Napolitano unequivocally denies them,” Napolitano’s attorney, Tom Clare, told the Daily News.

“This copycat lawsuit, filed and promoted publicly by the same lawyers representing career criminal Charles Corbishley, is nothing more than a pile-on attempt to smear Judge Napolitano for their own financial gain.

“We will defeat these false allegations in court and look forward to exposing this continuing attempt to abuse our court system to smear a highly respected former public servant.”

Fox News stood by Napolitano after the initial accusations by Corbishley emerged, saying in a statement: “Judge Napolitano has assured us in the strongest possible terms that these allegations are false and he will fight them aggressively in court.”

CSPAN

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Dangerous Decision

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Barrett

Trump SCOTUS pick Amy Coney Barrett would “dismantle” LGBTQ rights. By John Riley

ONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION OF Judge Amy Coney Barrett for a potential Supreme Court seat is sparking fear and concern among members of the LGBTQ community.

Barrett, a former Notre Dame law professor and Catholic who clerked for former conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, is likely to be confirmed as the successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the court’s liberal lions, who died last week at age 87.

At a Saturday announcement, Trump called Barrett a woman of “towering intellect” and “unyielding loyalty to the Constitution” who would rule “based solely on the fair reading of the law” — buzzwords designed to signal to shore up support among Republicans and conservatives in an

election year where the president lags in most public polls.

“I looked and I studied and you are very eminently qualified for this job,” Trump said. “You are going to be fantastic.”

Social conservatives are giddy at the prospect of Barrett on the nation’s highest court, many believing she will be the crucial vote to overturn the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, a decision that Barrett has previously criticized, calling the high court’s finding of a right to privacy “erroneous.”

They also believe she will be a reliable vote against LGBTQ rights — having previously criticized the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing marriage equality and the idea that anti-transOCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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theFeed gender discrimination is a form of sex discrimination — and will overturn laws they disagree with, such as the Affordable Care Act. The court is slated to hear yet another lawsuit challenging the health care law shortly after November’s election.

As soon as the Barrett pick was announced, re-energized conservatives went on offense, attacking Democrats and liberals worried about Barrett’s religious beliefs and the influence they play in her decision-making, accusing them of “anti-Catholic bigotry.”

Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, a socially conservative organization with a history of anti-LGBTQ positions and rhetoric, praised Barrett’s nomination while accusing the Left of seeking to impose a “religious test” on a qualified female jurist in a piece on the group’s website.

“Barrett shot down the accusation that her faith would dictate her decisions as a judge,” Perkins said of answers that Barrett gave during confirmation hearings in 2017 when she was nominated to her current position on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. “Judge Barrett clearly understands her duty will be to decide the cases before her. In her own words, ‘I think one of the great traditions in this country is that judges participate in the law, participate in the decision of cases and rule even when they disagree with the outcome.’

“Anti-Christian bigotry is no new phenomenon on the radical Left, but it has become more and more pervasive in recent years as the Christian faith has been pushed out of public life,” Perkins concluded. “People of all faiths should stand together against the Left when it attacks a woman as accomplished as Amy Coney Barrett for the simple fact of her Catholic religious beliefs.”

Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of the right-wing legal firm Liberty Counsel, praised Trump’s selection of Barrett.

“Amy Coney Barrett is the right choice for the U.S. Supreme Court because she applies the intent and text of the Constitution to the statutes she reviews,” Staver said in a statement. “A judge 38

OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

should be a neutral interpreter of the Constitution who knows what it means to interpret and apply the law rather than an activist legislator who tries to create the law.”

Carter Snead, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who has known Barrett for more than a decade, defended Barrett’s intellect and her “generosity of spirit” in an op-ed in The Washington Post, saying that liberals wary of Barrett’s nomination have nothing to fear.

“She genuinely seeks to understand others’ arguments and does not regard them as mere obstacles to be overcome on the way to reaching a preferred conclusion,” he wrote. “Time and again, I have seen her gently reframe a colleague’s arguments to make them stronger, even when she disagreed with them. And she is not afraid to change her own mind in the search for the truth, as I have seen in several of our faculty seminars. Such open-mindedness is exactly what we want of our judges — and what we can expect Barrett to bring to the Supreme Court, because that is who she has always been.”

But despite Snead’s insistence that Barrett will be a fair-minded jurist, LGBTQ groups have come out strongly against her nomination, arguing she is a results-focused ideologue who wishes to impose her own personal religious and political beliefs on the nation through her position as a judge.

The Human Rights Campaign has launched a “We Dissent” campaign asking supporters to sign a pledge opposing Republican efforts to fill the seat before the next Congress, and to name Barrett as Ginsburg’s successor.

The campaign alleges that Barrett’s “hostility” to certain marginalized groups calls into question her ability to be impartial, thus making her unqualified for a seat on the nation’s highest court.

“The last four years have been an assault on the rights and dignity of LGBTQ people across the country, led by Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell’s prioritization of power over people,” Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “While people are suffering across the

theFeed country, instead of offering aid, Trump and McConnell are rushing through a Supreme Court justice — a justice who could deal a fatal blow to people maintaining their basic health care in the middle of a pandemic.

“The President has dramatically altered the judiciary to try to dismantle hard-fought rights and progress secured over decades — LGBTQ rights, voting rights, reproductive rights and more,” David added. “Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell has sycophantically installed Trump’s extreme judicial nominees and is now seeking to push the balance of the Supreme Court even further to the fringes. If she is nominated and confirmed, Coney Barrett would work to dismantle all that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for during her extraordinary career.

“An appointment of this magnitude must be made by the president inaugurated in January.

The Human Rights Campaign fervently opposes Coney Barrett’s nomination, and this sham process.”

GLAAD recently released a digital ad featuring Barrett and two other prospective Supreme Court nominees being considered by Trump, Barbara Lagoa of the 11th Circuit and Allison Jones Rushing of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the video, GLAAD includes audio clips of people talking about Barrett and the other nominees, casting Barrett as “a superstar of the religious right,” about whom there is “no doubt” in terms of how she would rule on any given issue.

The video also includes a quote from an Axios article alleging that “the idea for a revised list [of Trump nominees] took on increased urgency after the court rules in two major cases in June — one prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity.” It concludes with the words: “You be the judge. Don’t sit this one out.”

“If confirmed, Amy Coney Barrett will be a vote to undermine hard-won rights critical to all LGBTQ people, women and immigrants,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of the LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD, said in a statement. “Health care, reproductive rights, our legal rights to marry who we love or not be fired for who we are, are all at risk.

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“Anti-LGBTQ activists supporting Barrett are wrongly claiming she is being targeted for her religion, when the focus is on her record,” Ellis added. “Barrett has voted against access to abortion, she has spoken out against LGBTQ rights, she would be the deciding vote to take away health care for millions in the middle of a deadly, out-ofcontrol pandemic. Confirming Barrett will drag America backwards. We cannot allow her to represent President Trump’s bigotry and bullying at the Supreme Court for decades to come.”

Lambda Legal, meanwhile, has portrayed Barrett as someone who would dismantle every existing protection for LGBTQ people or people with HIV, calling Senate Republicans’ promise to fill the seat a “power grab.”

“If confirmed, Judge Amy Coney Barrett will unleash a Supreme Court majority that is hostile to all of our basic civil rights, and the impact will be felt for decades,” Kevin Jennings, the CEO of Lambda Legal, said in a statement. “Judge Barrett’s personal belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, coupled with her unwillingness to affirm that the Supreme Court’s decision making marriage equality the law of the land is settled law, should sound the alarm for anyone who cares about LGBTQ people and their families.

“However, her cramped so-called ‘originalist’ view of the Constitution threatens the civil rights of not just LGBTQ people but a host of others, including women and people of color, who have relied on the courts to make progress in the fight for equality and justice.”

Rea Carey, the executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, echoed other LGBTQ and left-leaning organizations by calling for the Senate to delay a vote on a Supreme Court nomination until 2021, when the victor of the 2020 presidential election and a new Senate can confirm a successor to Ginsburg.

“We expected the Supreme Court nominee to be someone that will work to dismantle the rights of LGBTQ and other marginalized communities for decades, block reproductive and voting rights, threaten healthcare access for millions and more,” Carey said in a statement. “We were right.”

GLODI MIESSI, VIA UNSPLASH

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Fighting for Justice

Idaho man sues to stop state from enforcing anti-gay “crimes against nature” law. By John Riley

A

N IDAHO MAN WHO WAS CONVICTed for consensual oral sex in another state over 20 years ago, well before the Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws in 2003, is suing the state for forcing him to register as a “sex offender” for the two-decade-old charge.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, argues that Idaho’s “crimes against nature” statute is unconstitutional, and that the state is violating the man’s rights by requiring him — and others convicted of engaging in oral or anal sex under the now-defunct anti-sodomy laws — to register as a sex offender.

Idaho’s law states that “every person who is guilty of the infamous crime against nature, committed with mankind or any animal, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not less than five years.”

Lawyers for the plaintiff, known only by the pseudonym “John Doe,” stress that they are challenging only the aspects of the “crime against nature” regarding people, and do not object to the prohibition on sex with animals.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court found in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas case that anti-sodomy laws violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, on the grounds that intimate consensual sexual activity is protected from government interference, even if a certain right is not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

The effect of that decision essentially nullified all state-level anti-sodomy laws. But unless the laws were explicitly repealed, law enforcement authorities can potentially abuse the underlying statute in order to punish behavior or classes of OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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theFeed people that they dislike.

With its requirement to register as a “sex offender,” Idaho is one of four states currently abusing the now-defunct laws in such a manner, reports the Idaho Statesman.

In their complaint filed on behalf of John Doe, the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho argues that having to register as a “sex offender” has created a barrier to employment and has effectively ostracized him from the community.

Doe’s legal team has asked for a preliminary injunction to stop the state from enforcing the registration requirement while the case is heard on its merits, and has called for the removal of the “crimes against nature” law — and any other similar law in other states — from the list of criteria that require a person to register as a sex offender.

The lawsuit names Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, Col. Kedrick Wills, the director of the Idaho State Police, and Leila McNeill, the bureau chief of the state police’s Bureau of Criminal Identification as defendants.

“Registration as a sex offender burdens almost every aspect of daily life. Doe suffers significant restrictions on his public and personal life through Idaho’s unconstitutional conduct,” the complaint reads. “First, he will succeed on the merits because the Supreme Court has long held that sodomy prohibitions violate the Due Process clause. Second, the constitutional injuries that Doe suffers every day through the violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights constitute

irreparable harm. Third, a balance of the equities favors granting a preliminary injunction because it will not cause any harm to Defendants to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, and the public interest is served by enforcing the Supreme Court’s clear holding.”

Critics of the law, which has its roots in laws adopted during the time Idaho was still a territory, note that anti-sodomy laws have been used to target groups, specifically gay men, for criminal prosecution, most notably in the “Boys of Boise” scandal of 1955, an investigation in which law enforcement sought to out and arrest gay men who were ostensibly engaging in homosexual sex.

Fifteen men were eventually convicted on various charges, while thousands of more men were “outed” as suspected homosexuals — even if they weren’t actually gay — when they were questioned by police.

Matthew Strugar, a Los Angeles-based attorney involved in the case, issued a statement condemning the state’s continued use of the law to persecute LGBTQ individuals and others.

“More than 17 years ago, the Supreme Court declared homophobic laws like Idaho’s Crime Against Nature statute unconstitutional Idaho ignores that ruling and continues to demand people who were convicted of nothing more than having oral or anal sex to register as sex offenders,” Strugar said. “Just as the state cannot criminalize those sex acts, it cannot force people with decades-old oral sex convictions to register as sex offenders.”

Camp Classic

T

Village People lead singer demands people stop saying ‘YMCA’ is about ‘illicit gay sex.’ By Riley Gillis

HE LEAD SINGER BEHIND THE VILlage People’s beloved ’70s smash hit “YMCA” has taken to Facebook to shoot down rumors that the song’s lyrics hint at clandestine sexual encounters between men, even going so far as to threaten to sue any media out42

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lets that say otherwise.

Although the song has long been a pop culture staple of the LGBTQ community, Village People lead singer Victor Willis insisted fans need to “get [their] minds out of the gutter” and stop perpetuating the false narrative that his song cele-

WIKICOMMONS

theFeed

Willis, fourth from left

brates anonymous gay hookups.

“I wrote 100% of the lyrics to Y.M.C.A., so I ought to know what my song is about,” Willis wrote. “Y.M.C.A. is one of the most iconic songs in the world. I will not stand idle and allow it to be defamed. Therefore, I will sue the next media organization, or anyone else, that falsely suggests Y.M.C.A. is somehow about illicit gay sex.

Get your minds out of the gutter please! It is not about that!”

Still, with lyrics like “they have everything for you men to enjoy/you can hang out with all the boys,” it doesn’t require much mind-wandering to come up with a decidedly NSFW interpretation of the disco classic.

The Village People’s propensity towards campy, provocative outfits also helped fuel a gay interpretation of the song, with the six original members most easily recognized by their costumed getups as a Native American, cowboy, biker, construction worker, athlete, and a policeman.

Furthermore, the band’s hit song “In The Navy” has similarly been plagued by rumors of gay undertones and double entendre-laden lyrics, albeit with the “illicit gay sex” taking place in the Navy, rather than a YMCA. Ironically, the one group of people seemingly unaware of the suggestive undertones of ‘YMCA’ are the most likely to be enraged by them: Trump Supporters.

The President has taken to playing the Village People’s hit at his rallies, much to the displeasure of Willis, and much to the amusement of anyone who has ever heard the song, which would seem to go against his particular brand of male chauvinism.

Earlier this year, Willis asked Trump to stop playing Village People on the campaign trail if the president was going to follow through on his threat to use the U.S. military to shut down ongoing BLM-inspired protests against racism and police brutality.

Willis isn’t the first musician to come out against a perceived widespread misinterpretation of his song, particularly where the Republican Party is concerned.

Bruce Springsteen has continuously condemned the Republican Party’s usage of his 80’s classic “Born In The U.S.A.” to signal conservative values and staunch patriotism, both of which are at direct odds with his song’s decidedly antiwar narrative, which calls out the American government’s disposable treatment of military members.

While Willis may not agree with “Y.M.C.A.” being a gay anthem, the song has been deemed an “American cultural phenomenon” by the Library of Congress.

Earlier this year, the 1978 hit was one of 25 historically or culturally “significant” recordings added to the National Recording Registry.

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&Boy

the

Since directing The Boys in the Band, Joe Mantello sees Mart Crowley’s landmark gay play in a whole new light.

ART CROWLEY’S THE BOYS in the Band bears a unique distinction as a gay classic that many gays love to hate — whether or not they actually have seen the play onstage, or watched William Friedkin’s 1970 film adaptation. Since its original, revolutionary 1968 Off-Broadway production, the play’s reputation as a comical but caustic representation of gay male lives and relationships has preceded it into any conversation about queer stigma, invisibility, and self-loathing.

The group of gay men who gather in an Upper East Side Manhattan apartment to celebrate a birthday spend more time cutting each other down than cutting cake. The party’s host Michael, birthday boy Harold, and their friends and frenemies are no jolly poster boys for queer affirmation. But fifty years of queer progress hasn’t yet made the characters’ shared condition obsolete. The messiness of their lives and their biting humor can still connect sharply.

The play found an eager new audience with director Joe Mantello’s Tony-winning 2018 production, boasting an all-gay cast filled with outand-proud A-list actors, including Jim Parsons, 44

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Zachary Quinto, and Matt Bomer. Mantello, an award-winning actor himself — and two-time Tony-winning director of Broadway hits like Take Me Out, Assassins, and Wicked — sought to capture what worked fabulously onstage and transfer it to the screen, with a new film adaptation featuring the entire Broadway cast, which premiered earlier this week on Netflix.

The film, like the play, was produced by media titan Ryan Murphy, and benefited from the hand of the playwright, Crowley, who, sadly, died earlier this year. “Mart was a very generous collaborator,” says Mantello. “He was around a lot, but he really gave us the time and space to explore our own version. In fact, he not only encouraged it, he insisted that we do that. And that's just the kind of person he was. He was very open-hearted, very generous. And I think he found it absolutely delightful that we were able to bring something new to this.”

Directing only his second feature film since his 1997 adaptation of Terrence McNally’s Love!

Valour! Compassion!, a show he also directed on Broadway, Mantello was able to bring his own experience transferring a play from stage to screen.

And, having acted in the Murphy-produced Net-

DAVE KRYSL

M

Interview by André Hereford

ys

flix drama Hollywood (as closeted production chief Dick Samuels), he considered himself in safe hands collaborating again with Murphy and Hollywood producer Ned Martel, who worked with Crowley on the new Boys in the Band script.

Mantello has nothing but praise for Murphy. “He’s fantastic because he makes sure that you're surrounded by really top-notch, first-rate people,” he says. “And so someone like me, who has very limited experience on a film set, feels the support of experts, and that allows me to do my job and to express the things that I do know, and to rely on the expertise of a team that's surrounding me. And that's just great.”

METRO WEEKLY: First of all, I have to say I came

SCOTT EVERETT WHITE / NETFLIX

to this movie a virgin of The Boys in the Band. I hadn't seen the Friedkin version and hadn't seen any prior stage production of it.

JOE MANTELLO: Oh, wow. Well, can I ask you a question first?

MW: Sure.

MANTELLO: I'm not asking you whether you thought it was good or not, but what did you

make of it? You sound like we’re of different generations. Did you feel like it had any resonance to your life?

MW: Absolutely, it did. Underneath the camp and the bitchiness and the way they talk to each other, it hasn't changed. We don't call each other pansies and fairies, now it’s gurl and bitch. These things have evolved. And the reputation that the play has of “this moment of self-loathing gay men,” whatever that is, that feels current, as well.

MANTELLO: I’m just now beginning to talk to younger queer journalists and they don't have the same issues with it, they don't have the same inability to see themselves in it. In fact, it feels very relevant to them. Yes, the details are different, but they're able to make correlations between moments, language, rituals and that's fascinating to me.

MW: How did you first encounter The Boys in the Band?

MANTELLO: I was caught somewhere in between, because I was the generation that came between.

I encountered it in the early ’80s, when I was in college. So we were somewhat past that time —

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“I think it's always good to be reminded of our history.

It's always good to honor our history and those who came before us, to have empathy for them, to understand that by applying modern standards to their actions will only leave you feeling frustrated.” obviously there were elements that still lingered, but certainly hadn't come as far as we have now.

And so when I saw it, I saw it right around the time or right after I came out and I thought it was terrifying. It felt like a cautionary tale and it felt like something that was hard to watch, but the artist in me loved it as a piece of work and loved the performances. And so it was like I had this strange, schizophrenic reaction to it.

MW: There was at least one moment for me that was hard to watch. Alan basically assaults and gay-bashes Emory, and is not immediately shown the door. That, viscerally, is like, “Ugh, how can he still be in that room?” What's your take on how that moment flares up and plays out between those characters?

MANTELLO: My feeling is that if they could have shown him the door, they would have to be comfortable being their authentic selves around him.

Do you know what I mean? They were already in retreat. The only one who pushes back, and it's why he gets his ass kicked, is Emory. And Emory is like, "I'll take you down." But the rest were — I don't want to say cowardly, because that's editorializing — but they were in retreat and they didn't want to cause waves. I think that extended to the moment after Emory is brutalized. But you also have to understand, the context of it is, of course fags got beaten up. That wasn't a new moment. They lived in a world where that happened all the time. Their lives were constantly devalued, so they would never think to ask for more. That's the source of the shame. That's the source of the self-loathing. That's the cost of it.

MW: It's sad and difficult to watch. But, also, I think Emory represents himself and his era well.

I've been privileged to know gay men and women who were out in that era, in the 1950s and ’60s.

But it strikes me that there are young, queer people who might see this movie, who will never know men who lived then. What do you think Boys in the Band has to teach the children, as they say?

MANTELLO: I think it's always good to be reminded of our history. I think it's always good to honor our history and those who came before us, to have empathy for them, to understand that by applying modern standards to their actions will only leave you feeling frustrated, and that what's important to understand is the context, the history, the culture that they were living in. When we were doing the play, I found an article on the front page of the New York Times. It was a story about “homosexuals,” as they referred to them, and cracking down on crime. And in the piece — quite blatantly and more than once — the words “degenerate” and “perverts” were used to describe gay men. This is the New York Times in the mid-60s. No one said anything, there wasn't any pushback, there wasn't any backlash, no one got canceled. It was just an acceptable term.

If you were someone living in that time and you read the New York Times as the paper of authority and you saw that — and in addition, someone is telling you, “You're sick and you need to see a psychiatrist” to change who you are, because that's how sick you are — and these are the images and the messages you're being bombarded with every single day, how is there not a cost to that? How is there not an erosion of your humanity? What bothers me about people's response to the play sometimes is that it feels reductive. And what it does is it places responsibility on that failure of the spirit on these men, rather than the society that they existed within. It's like these men are just dismissed as somehow they didn't get it together. I have great compassion for these OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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characters. I think Emory is heroic. I genuinely do. I believe a year and a half from this party, Emory will be at Stonewall.

MW: I can see that. Talking about the society around them, these are queer people who grew up mostly without LGBTQ heroes. They didn't get to see something like a star-studded, all-gay cast on Broadway performing a show, or in a movie. Or, to get to see artists like you accept major awards on national TV and kissing your partner, which is huge. So you're getting to play a role in shaping a different narrative for the generations that are alive now. How do you feel about that?

MANTELLO: Well, all I can tell you is a story from my past. When I was in high school, I would watch

MANTELLO: That was always the plan and there

was no issue, because first of all, I think they were all pretty extraordinary in the play, and I think even better in the film.

MW: How did you approach the absence of audience interaction, which, certainly as a cast, they had grown used to?

MANTELLO: I think what happens is that the rhythm of the dialogue dictates a pace and energy that becomes ingrained in them. I think it was probably more useful to me when we were editing the film to understand the rhythm of a joke, having seen it played in front of an audience. It's like, if you deconstruct that joke, this is what needs to happen. It needs to happen in

“If four years ago you'd asked me my opinion about Boys in the Band, it would be very different from the opinion that I would give you today. My position on it has evolved, because I investigated it and I had to challenge my own prejudices against the material.” the Tony Awards every year. And there was a year Torch Song Trilogy won best play. And the man who was the producer, John Glines, went up to the microphone and as he was giving his thanks, he thanked his lover. It was the first time, I think — certainly the first time I remember, but I also think just the first time ever — that something like that had happened. And as a young man in Rockford, Illinois, who saw that, that had a profound effect on me, because it told me that was possible.

That this thing that I was so desperately trying to change and submerge in myself and walk away from, there was somebody who was standing up, proudly thanking his lover. You can't underestimate the trickle down effect of that. So I think the wonderful by-product of all of these other gay actors being in this, is that somebody is saying, it's possible. Sometimes that's all you need.

MW: You were able to keep the entire Broadway cast intact for the movie, which is certainly not always the case. Was that always the plan?

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these three parts, and then that's how you land it.

So I can create that rhythm in editing, but I think it was just ingrained in them at that point.

MW: You had the prior experience of going from stage to screen with Love! Valour! Compassion!

by Terrence McNally. On the surface, they share many similarities. What were some major differences between them in going from play to screen?

MANTELLO: That cast was the entire original cast with one exception. Nathan Lane had played the role on stage and was unavailable, and so Jason Alexander joined us and they were both wonderful in very different ways. And so right off the bat, the dynamic was just slightly different. The other major difference is that it was at a time when you could make a small, independent film for not very much money. And in fact, that's what Love! Valour! was. And so it was a real struggle.

We had an extremely limited shooting schedule.

We had to shoot outside Montreal. It was a film where probably over 50 or 60 percent of it took

Mantello on the set

place outside over one beautiful summer. And in that particular summer that we were shooting, it rained two-thirds of the time. So it was just a different thing. There wasn't Ryan Murphy muscle to make things go smoothly, we just filmed.

MW: Ryan Murphy muscle apparently gets things moving on stages, soundstages, studio lots, everywhere. Can you talk more about that collaboration?

MANTELLO: The thing about Ryan, what I admire most about him, is, when he got into the room — because that's what you've got to do in this business, you've got to get into the room and the room is where the power is — he didn't get in the room and close the door behind him. He held the door open for a lot of other people to come in and said, "Come on, come into the room with me, join me, let's tell our stories. We will be the ones who tell our stories." He's a remarkable collaborator and friend.

MW: You can definitely see how he has opened the door for people, with Pose especially. And to talk about Hollywood for a second, that series imagines a world where being out and proud would have been very different for the men in The Boys in the Band, if the events in Hollywood had actually taken place. I know some people feel the revisionist

history maybe went too far. What do you say?

MANTELLO: You want to know my honest answer?

I haven't seen it, so I don't know how it plays out.

I never watched it.

MW: Wow, that is crazy.

MANTELLO: No, I never watched it.

MW: But you do know what happened.

MANTELLO: I do know what happened, but the tone of something can be affected really drastically in post-production. So what I will say to you is that, on paper and when we were shooting it, it did not seem extreme, that there was something very interesting about the revisionist history. So I guess from the little bit that I know, people felt that “Ryan solves racism by making a movie,” right? Is that the general consensus of people who objected to it?

MW: I assume.

MANTELLO: [Laughs.] I think he always imagined it as a fable. I feel like I can't speak to it with any authority, because I haven't seen it. So I don't know what the end result looks like or what it feels like.

MW: Okay. Well, I won't hold you to defending it.

Now I'm going to ask you about something I do expect your full disclosure on, because I'm really OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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SCOTT EVERETT WHITE / NETFLIX

intrigued by your Broadway revival of Virginia Woolf, which unfortunately was interrupted by the lockdown while still in previews. First, on a practical level, when there's a possibility of trying again, do you think that the company would attempt to remount that show?

MANTELLO: I don't think anyone has anything against it. I think it's highly unlikely, because what would magically have to happen is that the four actors' schedules would line up perfectly with theater availability and all sorts of other things along the line. So I wouldn't say that it's never going to happen, but I would place it under the category of highly unlikely. But I've been surprised before, so I don't know.

MW: It seems like any Broadway show going up is a miracle. So anything can happen. I would love to have seen Laurie Metcalf do that part. Also, the casting of Rupert Everett and Russell Tovey, who both are out, would suggest a queer angle. Was that the case?

MANTELLO: It really wasn't. I want to be able to tell you that it was, but it really wasn't. And we've been, obviously, having lots of conversations these days about queer actors playing queer roles. And my feeling about that, and I think in 50

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this particular case [with The Boys in the Band], it really affects the storytelling and it affects the work and there are lots of benefits that we gained because of this. But I hesitate to be dogmatic about it, because I think you leave yourself open to the argument that the opposite is true.

And I don't think that. I cast Russell and Rupert because they were the best actors for those roles in my interpretation of this play, but it had nothing to do with their sexuality. Certainly, it wasn't as if George and Nick were really wanting to go off and fuck each other. If that's the question, that was not part of it, no.

MW: If you were remounting Love! Valour! Compassion!, and somebody wanted to do it with an all-gay cast, do you think that would make a difference?

MANTELLO: I think there would be definite benefits from that. But when we did the original production, they were not all gay. They all didn't identify as gay men and I thought it worked really well. So I've seen it happen. I think the thing that I object to the most is straight actors being celebrated and endowed with this sense of "You're so brave for taking on this role." I think that's horseshit. That's got to stop.

MW: I would one hundred percent agree with that.

I've actually seen that leveled just today, online, as people responded to the trailer for the movie Supernova with Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth. But the casting of that movie excites me and I really don't care that the actors don't identify as gay.

MANTELLO: Yeah, let's see whether they can pull it off. But I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about the casting. They're both wonderful actors who have more than proven their talent. It's like, I'm a person who exists in the gray zone. I just am. I'm comfortable in the gray zone and I am not a dogmatic person. Maybe I should be, maybe I should be more black and white, but I'm just not. I tend to evaluate things as they come. I believe life is complicated. Also, I'm not a person who engages in any kind of social media and so I sit with things for a long time, and real-

MANTELLO: Oh wow. That's amazing.

MW: Being a director who does comedy, drama, mu-

sicals, could you imagine Hollywood the musical?

MANTELLO: I actually could. Based on the script that I read. Yeah, I actually could. Actually, it would be a really interesting idea for a musical and maybe it would work. There's something about a musical that's so presentational that maybe, you don't have that same kind of filter that expects a kind of realism, that the music would make it more of a fable. You could lean into that a little bit more.

MW: I think you've got to work on that then — when you have time.

MANTELLO: I'm honestly happy just sitting here on my ass right now, just enjoying life.

MW: What will be next after promoting this film?

“The thing that I object to the most is straight actors being celebrated and endowed with this sense of, ‘You're so brave for taking on this role.’ I think that's horse shit. That's got to stop.” ly that's neither good nor bad or better or worse than anyone else. That's not how I live my life. I don't make pronouncements.

MW: Actually, I have a personal thing about not making pronouncements. And yes, it doesn't seem that the world always respects nuance, especially not currently.

MANTELLO: No, because I think people evolve, and if four years ago, you'd asked me my opinion about Boys in the Band, it would be very different from the opinion that I would give you today.

Because my position on it has evolved, because I did the work and I investigated it and I had to challenge my own prejudices against the material. But they were mine. They're not in the work.

MW: An important distinction.

MANTELLO: Yeah.

MW: So this is actually just a nice, easy question to end on, because I was touched by my mother's description of Hollywood. She said it feels like a musical, but without the songs.

MANTELLO: You know, I really don't know. I'm

not avoiding the question, I actually don't know.

I had come to the end of projects that I had lined up. For a few years, there's been some talk of Nathan Lane and I doing Death of a Salesman.

I don't know where that exists, but if that happens, it probably wouldn't happen for a couple of years.

MW: With you directing him as Willy Loman?

MANTELLO: Yeah. We talked about it. That project goes back to when I directed him for the first time in Love! Valour! Compassion! and at the end of that experience, I said to him — and I think I was probably 32 at the time — "One day, I'm going to direct you in Death of a Salesman." So we've been talking about it for over 20 years.

MW: Well, there's still time.

MANTELLO: There's still time.

The Boys in the Band is now available for streaming exclusively on Netflix. Visit www.netflix.com.

OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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DAN MCFADDEN COURTESY OF LD ENTERTAINMET AND ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS

Movies

Ms. America

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Moore and Monáe

A postcard-pretty portrait of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Julie Taymor’s The Glorias fails to deliver. By André Hereford

ULIE TAYMOR IS A DIRECTOR ALWAYS up for adventure, be it onstage with Simba or Spider-Man, or in films from Frida to Across the Universe. And for Taymor’s latest, The Glorias (HHHHH), the film’s real-life subject Gloria Steinem provided a vivid roadmap to her exploits, with her 2015 memoir My Life on the Road. Yet, however Steinem might have portrayed her extraordinary life in print, The Glorias doesn’t add up to that adventurous of a biopic.

Taymor and screenwriter Sarah Ruhl — known for theater work like her Passion Play cycle, which premiered at Arena Stage — dash the movie with fantasy and dream sequences that interject verve and theatricality. But those poetic interludes rarely add to the film’s storytelling, which rolls through Steinem’s trailblazing

chronology, from nomadic childhood as a bright, well-read little girl, to brilliant and brazen observer of Sixties culture, to avatar of an earthshaking social movement.

The Glorias of different ages interact in the film, but outside the realm of time, on a bus bound to who knows where (until we learn where). The girl she was at eight-years old, and the woman she was at 25 and at 40 confer with each other, confessing Gloria’s true feelings at pivotal moments in her life. The device helps keep the film moving, although whenever the Glorias are explaining the story, we’re not seeing it dramatized. And, after Gloria’s tough childhood, the movie doesn’t dramatize much at all.

Events in her adult life feel recreated, posed simply to mark an interview she gave, or a rally she OCTOBER 1, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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attended. And her grownup faults or foibles appear to be off the table completely.

Scenes of young Gloria (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) are dominated by the moving performances of Enid Graham, as her long-suffering mother Ruth, and Timothy Hutton as dad Leo, a traveling salesman and small-time scam artist. Ruth, in the eyes of teenage Gloria (Lulu Wilson), is a woman whose spirit was broken and probably had been before Gloria was even born. But when twentysomething Gloria, played stiffly by Alicia Vikander, thinks of dad Leo fondly, he’s the peripatetic bon vivant who taught her to feast at the banquet of life. Remembered less fondly later, he’s the fear of abandonment or commitment that might have dogged her own relationships — not that this film seems the slightest bit interested in Steinem’s re-

lationships, beyond familial.

Although, once older sister Susanne (Olivia Olson) is out of the house, she’s gone from the movie, too, save for a bomb-dropping phone call in the late-going.

Famous feminist figures like Bella Abzug (Bette Midler) and Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Monáe) also pop in and out, not really to relate to Gloria, but rather to relay their part in her biography. Limning exposition almost all of the time, the movie doesn’t give Julianne Moore, as the seasoned Steinem who led the National Women’s Political Caucus and still stands strong among us, much to do but look picture-perfect playing the black-clad, rule-breaking boss of Ms. Magazine. An inspiration to career girls, suburban moms, and biker chicks alike, Ms. Steinem deserves a more inspiring film adventure.

The Glorias is available for purchase on digital and streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. Visit www.primevideo.com.

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RetroScene

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Duplex Diner Mardi Gras Party - February 2007 Photography by Ward Morrison

For more #RetroScene follow us on Instagram at @MetroWeekly

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RetroScene

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Green Lantern - January 2004 Photography by Ward Morrison

For more #RetroScene follow us on Instagram at @MetroWeekly

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LastWord.

People say the queerest things

“ I don’t want to ever hear again for as long as I live that women are too emotional to lead.”

—CHARLOTTE CLYMER, writer and trans activist, on Twitter after watching the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Has anyone checked in on Hillary Clinton?

Girl I’m so sorry.”

—CHASTEN BUTTIGIEG, author and husband of former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, in a tweet while watching the debate. Clinton responded: “Thanks, I’m fine. But everyone better vote.”

“There is security to being identified.

”

‘I’m a straight white male’ or ‘I’m a gay Asian dancer’ — you can find community easily and safely.

—DONALD GLOVER, speaking to GQ about questioning his sexuality in college. He continued: “Most of my college years were me being like, ‘I don’t know what I like.’ I had friends who asked, ‘Are you gay?’ And I’d be like, ‘I sort of feel like I am because I love this community.’ You know? But maybe I’m not? And I always was trying to figure out ‘Am I weird for not wanting to label it?’ Yet, also, I never felt completely safe in just one place.”

“ It takes a man and a woman to create a child, and it’s my view that if children are being born with my sperm they must have a mother and a father.”

—NEIL GASKELL, a 49-year-old man in the United Kingdom, speaking to the Daily Mail about his decision to sue a sperm bank for allowing his donated to sperm to be used to help same-sex couples have children. “I accept that some people will find this uncomfortable and that people might think I’m homophobic, or against the idea of single mothers,” Gaskell said.

“But that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“ I see these magazines and they’re so mean-spirited.

I hope people realize it’s all made up.”

—Actress and producer DEBORRA-LEE FURNESS, wife of Hugh Jackman, addressing the gay rumors that have followed the Greatest Showman star throughout his career. “It’s just wrong,” Furness told Australian TV show Anh’s Brush with Fame.

“It’s like someone saying to Elton John, ‘Oh, he’s straight.’ I’m sure he’d be pissed!”

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