It comes as no surprise to Museum of Fine Arts, Houston observers that today the board of trustees unanimously elected Rich Kinder, a life trustee, as its new chairman. Kinder takes up the three-year post as successor to Cornelia Long, who held the position for two full terms or six years.
Co-founder, chairman and CEO of Kinder Morgan, Kinder has long been active with the museum. He has chaired the long range planning committee and has served on the executive and finance committees since becoming a trustee in 1988. He chaired the search committee that recruited director Gary Tinterow in 2011. Kinder and his wife, Nancy, chaired the MFAH Grand Gala Ball in 2001.
While Long is stepping down, she is not stepping out of the museum purview. As a life trustee, she will head the future capital and endowment campaign for the museum’s planned campus redevelopment.
In a prepared statement, Tinterow noted, “All of us recognize the sound guidance that Rich Kinder has provided over a broad range of capacities on the MFAH board, most recently as chair of the long range planning committee.
"We are profoundly grateful to Rich for ensuring a strong transition from the distinguished governance that Cornelia Long has provided in her tenure as chairman.”
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston director Gary Tinterow, left, with new board chairman Rich Kinder and Nancy Kinder.
Describing the new movie Pillionis almost an act of futility. It contains a variety of seemingly disparate parts that coalesce into a whole to make it utterly fascinating. Few other recent films have been able to walk the line between filthy and wholesome in quite the way this one does, and that’s only because few other filmmakers would actually dare to try.
It centers on Colin (Harry Melling), a meek man in his mid-thirties who still lives at home with his parents, Pete (Douglas Hodge) and Peggy (Lesley Sharp), while working a dead-end job giving out parking tickets. While performing in a barbershop quartet at his local pub, Colin catches the eye of biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), who summons him for a clandestine hook-up the following day (which just so happens to be Christmas Day).
With barely a word exchanged between them, Ray establishes a dominance over Colin that quickly leads to them starting a relationship in which Colin does anything Ray asks. And that means more than just sex: Colin, whether desperate for any kind of affection or unlocking a side of himself he hadn’t known, readily agrees to cook, clean, shop, and basically do whatever else Ray wants him to do.
Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Harry Lighton, the film is astonishing in the way it’s able to mine humor from Colin and Ray’s atypical bond. To call Ray “unfeeling” might not be totally accurate, but the way he treats Colin borders on cruel. However, the way Lighton structures the film, it’s easy to understand why someone like Colin would be willing to go along with the situation. It’s both hilarious and heartbreaking to see Colin debase himself in a variety of ways.
On the flip side is Colin’s heartfelt arc with his parents. It’s established right away that Peggy, who is sick with cancer, is a bit too involved with Colin’s love life, with the opening scene featuring her setting him up on a blind date. But their easy acceptance of his queerness and desire to see him find love is as heartwarming as it gets. The juxtaposition between the wholesomeness of their family and Colin’s new life is also the source of a good amount of comedy.
Lighton does not shy away from the sexual side of Colin and Ray’s relationship, and the scenes he depicts are as graphic as you are likely to see in an R-rated film. Some go up to and a little past what might be expected in a mainstream movie (including the use of a certain fake appendage). Other times they play out in a comical way to illustrate just how far Colin has progressed from the person he was when the film started.
Skarsgård, who stole the show in the Charli XCX movie The Moment, is the attraction in more ways than one in this film. The part calls for someone who’s not only impossibly handsome, but also a person who can stop dissent with just a glance, and he lives up to both qualities equally well. Melling, best known for playing Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies, also embodies his role perfectly. He plays Colin as weak enough to be run roughshod over by Ray, but not so hopeless as to not be worth rooting for.
Pillion (which is the name of the secondary seat on a motorcycle on which Colin rides multiple times in the film) operates at a storytelling level that is difficult to achieve. Many people will not fully understand the film’s central relationship, but the way it is showcased by Lighton makes it compelling, gut-wrenching, and sexy.
