The gay rights community applauded Tim Gunn when the Bravo reality TV star and former teacher at Parsons' fashion design school released a video on YouTube expressing support for struggling gay teens in the wake of a string of recent suicides. In a particularly revealing moment for the otherwise stoic academic, Gunn told the tale of his own suicide attempt as a 17-year-old.
"I'm very happy today that that attempt was unsuccessful, but at the time, it was all that I could contemplate," he says. "I thought, I need to end things right now."
Gunn survived the 100-plus-pill attempt, and on the video, celebrates his current success.
He relates to his viewers, "I understand the desperation. I understand the despair. I understand how isolated you can feel." He even advocates himself as among the personal supporters of troubled gay youth.
At the end of the clip, he directs viewers to the Trevor Project, a national 24-hour, confidential hotline for gay and questioning youth, with which Houston's hometown artist Trey Speegle is heavily involved.
Despite having a name befitting a gay porn star, Gunn has shied away from public disclosure of an active homosexual life. In fact, he admits to not having had sex since a brutal breakup in 1982 and describes himself as "very single." In an interview with Metro Weekly, he explains that he was unaware of his sexuality until the age of 22, and his high school troubles stemmed from a crippling stutter and severe loneliness at boarding school.
Yet through it all, Gunn has followed his own mantra: "Make it work."
As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.
Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.
Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.
Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.
Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.
Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.
Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.
