The Screengrab : ed koch

Outrage Over "Outrage": NPR Redacts Review of Kirby Dick Doc

Phil Nugent — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Kirby Dick's new documentary Outrage is about "the politics of the closet"--specifically, the plight, and the damage done to gay rights legislation, by closeted politicians who align themselves with the religious right and the "family values" set to deflect suspicions about their own sexual orientation. In its hard line against hypocrisy, the movie is on the side of those, such as blogger Michael Rogers, who are working to "out" closeted politicians. It's a position that's designed to antagonize those who regard outing itself strictly as an unjustifiable intrusion into others' personal lives--including those in the media, which Dick specifically takes to task for what he sees as its eagerness to avoid dealing with gay issues. (In our own interview with the director, Dick describes a run-in with a reporter who told him that he couldn't write about the movie because it would violate his paper's policy against outing. ""Do you mean to say," Dick replied, "that your company's policy on outing trumps your company's policy on reporting!?" That kind of compartmentalized thinking has begun to affect the kind of coverage the movie is getting. Last Friday, the NPR website ran a review of the movie by Nathan Lee that, because of NPR's policy on outing, was subsequently "edited" to remove the names of former Senator Larry Craig, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, and Florida governor Charlie Crist. The movie itself makes an elaborate case that Crist is living a strategically dishonest life that includes a recent marriage and support for his an anti-gay marriage amendment that voters have added to the state constitution. Lee subsequently asked that his name be removed from the review and added a comment to the site, lest anyone think that it was his idea to reject using Crist's name in favor of the pithy phrase "one major swing-state governor ... with aspirations to be the 2012 Republican presidential candidate."

In his comment, which has been deleted from NPR's site but can still be read at indieWire's story on the debacle, Lee wrote that "I personally disagree with NPR's policy--there is no other area of 'privacy' that elicits such extreme tact. And also feel that it is a professional affront to my responsibility as a critic to discuss the content of a work of art, and an impingement of my first amendment right to free speech and the press." Whatever you think about outing, it seems hard to argue that NPR seemed to be at cross-purposes with itself by attempting to cover a movie whose subject matter it didn't feel it could allow its reviewer to freely describe. At the same time, NPR wound up providing Dick with an example he can point to in the future to bolster his claim that the mainstream media is so queasy about gay sexuality that they jump at any excuse to avoid talking about it. After all, if a high-profile documentary film implied that Charlie Crist was a graft-happy crook or had been on the grassy knoll in Dallas, it's hard to imagine a major media outlet trying to address these charges while gingerly dancing around using the guy's name, on the grounds that he hasn't called a press conference to concede their accuracy. The New York Times articles by Jeff Gerth that suggested that the Clintons were involved in some vast pile-up of illegal acts gathered under the label "Whitewater"--the articles that led to the appointment of a special prosecutor and a four-year, multimillion-dollar federal investigation--were less firmly grounded than some of the things people talk about in Dick's movie as if they were common knowledge, which in some quarters, they are. For what it may feel are the best of reasons, NPR is signaling that it believes it's one thing to report that some people are saying that the President and First Lady conspired to have a White House counsel killed and made it look like suicide, but that reporting that some people are whispering that someone with an anti-gay voting record is himself gay is just too monstrous to contemplate.

In most respects, though, NPR's handling of the matter has just made it look silly. It's kind of insane that they felt that consistency in their policy meant that they had to delete not just Crist's and Koch's names but that of Larry Craig, whose restroom-stall arrest not only ended his political career but turned him into a punch line overnight. Worse, the site's right and left brain seemed to be warring with themselves over that very issue: even though Craig's name was removed from the review, as of this writing, the review is still illustrated with a copy of Craig's glowering mug shot. In the meantime, Movieline has pointed out that there seems to be a double standard at NPR regarding speculation about the sexual orientation of celebrities: what's a gross violation of privacy for Charlie Crist is just good fun when the subject is an American Idol contestant and Queen Latifah. This doesn't necessarily mean that fear of the truly powerful has more to do with NPR's policy than concern for people's privacy rights, but the only other plausible explanation is that NPR's attitude towards gays is actually condescending as hell.

Related Stories: Nathan Lee Loses His Voice

Screengrab Review: "Outrage"

Screengrab Review: "Outrage"

Nick Schager — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

There’s a second-hand quality to Outrage that stems, in large part, from director Kirby Dick’s decision to not place himself front and center as he did in his prior non-fiction exposé, This Film Is Not Yet Rated. In examining – and outing – closeted gay politicians who support anti-same-sex legislation, Dick relies primarily on the investigative work of others, whether it be Blogactive’s Michael Rogers, who was reportedly instrumental in bringing to light the story of Senator Larry Craig’s failed public bathroom stall pick-up, or satellite radio talk-show host Michelangelo Signorelli, who years prior publicized deceased Malcolm Forbes’ carefully concealed homosexuality. By letting others do the heavy lifting, the filmmaker comes off as more than a little reticent, a quality in tune with the overall tone of his latest – which repeatedly justifies its modus operandi of outing closeted pols by cogently arguing that hypocrisy can’t be tolerated in public officials – and one that prevents it from generating the type of horrified, righteous indignation implied by its title.

Outrage focuses on a handful of high-profile cases to reinforce its central argument that there’s a vast conspiracy afoot to legally persecute the country’s millions of gay men and women. Any such grand scheme is never dragged into the light of day by Dick, however, as his documentary makes a strong case not for a collusive plot orchestrated by shadowy forces, but for a more predictable pattern of behavior followed by individuals interested in attaining positions of power at any cost. Whether it be Jim McGreevey, who speaks openly about his outing, or Florida governor/2012 presidential hopeful/long-time bachelor Charlie Crist, who for years has been dogged by rumors about his sexuality, the explanation remains largely similar: desperate to not alienate any portion of the voting population, aspiring Capital Hill bigwigs hide their sexual identity behind hetero facades, and then, once elected, embrace an anti-gay platform as a means of reinforcing their own ruse (and, also, censuring the very thing they dislike about themselves). The hypocrisy is, unsurprisingly, quite galling, and though Dick’s statistics could use a bit more clarification (his anti-gay voting record percentages remain vaguely defined), the thrust of his argument is forceful.

Which is why, alas, Outrage is so frustrating. Rather than pursuing someone like Crist himself, Dick mainly relies on talking heads and third-party news footage and interviews to make his case, which drains the film of immediacy and leaves one craving more concrete confirmation of the accusations being leveled. Just as problematic are the doc’s diversions, most notably one in which Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is outed by a speaker who claims that the newsman once hit on him, an aside that’s meant to reinforce the idea that many in and around politics are concealing their sexual preferences in order to climb the professional ladder, but mostly seems like tabloid gossiping only speciously related to the primary point about political two-facedness. Even more than such inconsequential diversions, however, Outrage suffers from a lack of surprise or complexity, its revelations already well-known – unless some have yet to hear that former New York City mayor Ed Koch liked men – and its contentions so straightforward and clearly expressed that, after twenty minutes, the film has conclusively made its case, and thus proceeds to merely spin its wheels.

New York Magazine Picks the New Yorkiest Movies Since 1968

Phil Nugent — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

To celebrate its fortieth anniversary, New York magazine has set its writers to assemble a "canon" of cultural works (books, music, TV, movies) from the last forty years that "capture something emblematic about New York." This, as David Edelstein's list of movies makes clear, isn't necessarily about selecting the best, nor is it limited to movies made by New Yorkers in New York: El Topo is here, for its role in creating that urban institution, the midnight movie. (By a felicitous quirk of timing, the first title on the list is Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston, for its indelible closing image of the Statue of the Liberty after a wild weekend.) Also cited: Mean Streets, The Godfather, Part II, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Death Wish, The French Connection, Shaft, Deep Throat, Annie Hall, Saturday Night Fever, Tootsie, Wild Style, My Dinner with Andre, Stranger Than Paradise, and Wall Street.

Edelstein sort of half-apologizes for having picked so many movies from the 1970s, but how could it be otherwise? It was in the seventies that Hollywood declared studio lots passe and invaded the city with film crews, which were often manned by smart-ass native New Yorkers like Sidney Lumet, Paul Mazursky, and Brian De Palma, whose sensibilities came through so strongly that thet sometimes seemed to be making a "New York movie" even when they weren't. The American movie renaissance of the seventies is inextricably tied up with the breakdown of "the ungovernable city" in the same period; at the same time that the country at large was so attuned to the virtues associated with New York that Woody Allen could emerge as a sex symbol, the city went bankrupt and all but imploded, and the movies were here to record that. Movies as great as Scorsese's early features and as klutzy as Shaft all double as time capsules that tap into the urban chaos and make it look exciting, which is why there are people now who are nostalgic for the "good, old" (pre-Disneyfied) Times Square of hookers, three-card monte, and garbage-strewn streets. Movies don't feel as if they have that kind of combined impact anymore, though one movie that tried hard was Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which both Edelstein and Lee credit with helping to drive Ed Koch from office. In an accompanying Q & A, Lee appears to also take credit for hooking up Barack and Michelle Obama, since "Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I said, 'Thank God I made it.'" Timing is everything. If they'd met a year earlier or a year later, and he'd taken her to School Daze or Mo' Better Blues, she might have gone right home and changed her phone number.

God Damn Us All to Hell, Every One!

Phil Nugent — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:30:00 GMT

In I Am Legend, Will Smith zips around a depopulated Manhattan in a sports car, with his trusty German shepherd in the seat next to him; if he takes a curve too fast and the pooch soils the upholstery, he can always pick up another one. Smith also high in the tall grass that, intended, has sprouted up in Times Square and hunts deer with the Virgin Megastore in the background. He doesn't have any scenes with the Statue of Liberty, but as Sewell Chan points out in The New York Times, apocalyptic fantasies centered in New York City often go straight for the lady in the harbor. Charlton Heston had a hissy-fit when he encountered her remains at the end of Planet of the Apes; her torch sticking out of the waterline was the last visible trace of a submerged New York in Steven Spielberg's A.I.; and the promotional artwork for the forthcoming Cloverfield uses a smoking, ravaged statue to indicate what horrors may await audiences when that viral-marketed behemoth finally lumbers into theaters.

New York is hardly the only place on the American landscape that has been obliterated onscreen to audience-pleasing effect. The whole point of the 1974 disaster hit Earthquake was, in the words of Pauline Kael, about "seeing L.A. get it." And though Chan includes the 1996 Independence Day in his roll call, noting that it's a film in which "Giant alien spaceships hover over, and then destroy, New York and other major world cities", the fact is that the one thing everybody probably remembers from that picture is the image of the White House exploding. (Even people who didn't see that movie may well still remember it from its once ever-present trailer.) But you know New Yorkers. Chan quotes the architectural historian Max Page as writing, “The best thing for New York might be the sight of King Kong tramping through the streets of Manhattan on his way to a fateful appointment at the top of the Empire State Building. For if there is one thing that symbolizes New York’s pre-eminence, it is that so many still want to imagine the city’s end.” But Chan isn't just convinced that this is all about the city; he also thinks it's "tasteless" to indulge in this sort of thing after 9-11. An alternate hypothesis might be that it's actually a sign of health that moviemakers and audiences may be ready to indulge in this kind of scary fantasy again; that they've moved on. Luckily, he was able to reel Ed Koch in for a sound bite. “'They want to see our skyscrapers destroyed because they are envious of them,' Mr. Koch said in a phone interview. Asked whom he was referring to, he said, '"They" is the rest of the country.'” Maybe the monsters and aliens keep attacking New York because they're trying to make friends with us by taking out Ed Koch.