Why did John Schlesinger and James Lee Herlihy respectively say that Midnight Cowboy was not a “gay movie” nor a “gay novel”?[1] This is a blog on the myth of the MIDIGHT COWBOY as discussed by Glen Frankel (2021) Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, liberation and the Making of a Dark Classic, New York, … More Why did John Schlesinger and James Lee Herlihy respectively say that Midnight Cowboy was not a “gay movie” nor from a “gay novel”? This is a blog on the myth of the MIDIGHT COWBOY as discussed by Glen Frankel.

In the Introduction to the catalogue of the recent exhibition devised by the Crocker Art Museum Breaking The Rules: Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown, curator Scott A. Shields says these queer artists who lived together in California and elsewhere were ‘nearly always described as followers rather than leaders’. And yet the evidence suggests otherwise. Whilst … More A blog on the Crocker Art Museum’s ‘Breaking The Rules: Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown’. Scott Shields says Brown knew that, in being ‘a homosexual couple’, they would ‘remain, at least to some degree, outsiders’. But is it art!!!! Yes.

On seeing Robert Icke’s Player Kings: my thoughts and feelings on the delight in being wrong and having the wrong expectations and being surprised by true artistic teamwork. There I am in the collage above waiting in my stalls seat (A10 it was) for the play to begin. The theatre had much grandeur to offer … More On seeing Robert Icke’s ‘Player Kings’: my thoughts and feelings on the delight in being wrong and having the wrong expectations and being surprised by true artistic teamwork.

In Martyr, an amazing funny fable, mythic in its proportions, about a queer American-Iranian former addict, by Kaveh Akbar, the main character, Cyrus, remembers an ‘old-school Muslim fairy tale, maybe it was a discarded hadith I guess, but it was all about the first time Satan sees Adam’. After surveying the first man thoroughly externally ‘like … More In ‘Martyr’, the main character, Cyrus, learns to love as a queer man. This is a blog about Kaveh Akbar (2024) ‘Martyr’.

This blog is a preparation to see Player Kings at Manchester Opera House on Tuesday 19th March 18.30 with Ian McKellen, surprisingly, playing Falstaff. Will this production release Shakespeare from the heteronormativity that still tries to strangle in its cradle the appeal to an exceedingly male communal radicalism (with nasty bits like misogyny mixed in) … More This blog is a preparation to see ‘Player Kings’ at Manchester with Ian McKellen playing Falstaff. What should I expect?