In the Beginning

Let's go to the movies!

Welcome to a journey full of intimacy and intrigue, love and loss, pain and passion, lives empowered and lives destroyed. This will be an odyssey exploring the many facets of Gay culture as they exist throughout the human condition and the threads that tie them together. As art reflects life and the reverse, our vessel will be cinema...But first, a little background information seems appropriate.

A year and a half ago, a bout of illness with Crohns Disease forced me to take a leave of absence from graduate study at the University of Georgia. After reading every book in my apartment and then some, the tedium of solitude during much of this period left me with little more than media and Internet entertainment to pacify a once proud gay man, student, and avid socialite. Thanks to my friend Stephen's encouragement, a heaping helping of movies lead me to the realization that I should expose myself to more movies with gay themes. What better way to remain in contact with that part of myself than movies and stories about people like me, about me, about all of us really. And so, with  more free time than anyone should ever have, I began watching. What I discovered, I will now share with you.

It seems that in the macrocosm of human experience we are bound together by common threads. It is my hope that through comedy, drama, tragedy, indie and musical films, all the range this medium has to offer, I will discover these common threads. They define the various personalities and lifestyles to which we can all relate, be it by personal experience, association, or observation. Maybe I will learn more about myself in the process, and develop an appreciation for the great differences that truly make us one

None of the films will be discussed are in any particular order; that is to say that their mention will occur as my fancy leads. It is only appropriate for this sort of blog. Together, we will explore titles like The Boys in the Band, Latter Days, The Bird Cage, Maurice, Priscilla Queen of the Dessert, The Naked Civil Servant, Were the World Mine, Muligans, and many more. You may discover new films to explore, or perhaps suggest a few for me. I hope you will enjoy this adventure as much as I enjoy embarking upon it with you. Through it we may better come to understand who we are in relation to one another and the world in which we live.  I was also hoping for a little nudity, tastefully implied, or otherwise blatant.

Happy Endings,

Matthew