"Behind The Candelabra" opens at Cannes

[Guest fountainhall]

The new movie about Liberace and his one-time lover, Scott Thorson, seemingly played with superb conviction by two of the least gay actors you could imagine, Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, had its premiere at Cannes last night to rave acclaim from attendees (according to the Huffington Post). As Damon told The Guardian, neither actor hesitated to play a gay character.
 

“These two roles are really phenomenal. It was not the kind of thing I would hesitate about at all.” He added, “In terms of being in bed with Miochael Douglas, I now have things in common with Sharon Stone, Glen Close, Demi Moore; we can all go out and trade stores.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/may/21/behind-the-candelabra-cannes-oscar

Ironically at a time when gay marriage laws are being changed in many parts of the world, this movie was turned down by every Hollywood studio because they believed the film would find only minimal audiences as a result of its gay content. Shame on them! And bravo to HBO which took up the project and will likely show it in cinemas around the world – apart from in the US, that is! So the film will never be nominated for an Oscar. HBO has scheduled it for this coming Sunday evening in North America.

TIME magazine has written about Liberace - 
 

He parlayed a two-season syndicated TV program (1952-54) into a career that, for the next few decades, flourished ever more gaudily in Vegas showrooms, concert venues and Radio City Music Hall. Let the infidels in the tabloids mock Liberace for his mincing ways, his ostrich-feather frocks, his retinue of winsome piano prodigies or “protégés.” Virtually any publicity was good for business. As he telegrammed London’s Daily Mirror after a derisory column in 1956: “What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank.”

Like Little Richard in his prime, Liberace was gay. His effeminacy was part of his act; as author Michael Herr wrote of the ’50s Lee, “Never before, at least knowingly, had a man ever had the big steel balls to show himself like that, and on television.” But he also didn’t officially acknowledge his sexual status. Indeed, he strenuously if unconvincingly denied it during the Thorson suit. Nor did any other major gay performer come out in that period, when homosexual acts not only were considered a perversion, but in many states were illegal. Officially outing himself, Lee must have thought, would alienate one of his core constituencies: middle-age and elderly women.

 
In that sense, Liberace echoed the thoughts of another gay entertainer, Noel Coward. In the business, everyone knew that Coward was gay. Like Liberace, he ‘acted’ gay. But he always said he would not come out, not only because of the mores of the times, but because he sincerely felt the coach parties of middle-aged ladies from outside London who would troop to his mid-week matinees would be genuinely upset.
 
TIME and other reviews have given great advance notices to the movie. It ends –
 

Looking Music Hall-size glamorous on the big screen, Behind the Candelabra is a TV movie only in its sage, nuanced and closeup concentration on the emotional tensions that bind two people, then break them apart. It happens that, this time, one of the two is a spectacular showman who could never stop performing. As Liberace exclaims from the stage, and from beyond the grave, “Too much of a good thing is — wonderful!”

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/21/soderberghs-behind-the-candelabra-michael-douglas-is-liberace/

The first trailer is below, followed by a “Making Of” vdo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp3wAyRf15c

[kokopelli]

Will the real Scott please stand up, please stand up?

[TotallyOz]

I have been excited to see this. I have friends who saw it last month and loved it and said it was a must see.

[kokopelli]

Well, ok, what are the reviews now that is was aired?  I did see it and was not impressed.  Yes, it was a good show but that is about all, for me.  No real indepth presentation or interpretation by either of the two characters which can be expected from a TV production.  The part of the semi-blind plastic surgeon played by Rob Lowe was truly bizarre.  And Liberace without his wig, what a sight to forget.

[Guest fountainhall]

I just found this rather touching, sad, and ultimately humiliating, BBC clip about Liberace's death and autopsy.