Frameline
Since I completely skipped blogging about SFIFF, I'm going to write something about the two films we've seen so far at Frameline, the San Francisco LGBT film festival. Today we saw The Butch Factor and Dare.
First of all, neither one is a film per se. They're both on digital video (unless I'm really missing something), but there's a lot of great work being done on video these days, so that's no strike against them. I did notice that the audio on Dare was sometimes hard to understand in the Castro Theatre because it was compressed way beyond normal theatrical sound.
I'm surprised no documentary before (that I knew of) had specifically tackled the topic that director Christopher Hines covers so thoroughly in The Butch Factor. The 87-minute feature explores gay men's complicated relationship with masculinity. The core segments of the film, and the freshest material here, are profiles of several gay men who play traditionally masculine roles: rugby player, construction worker, rodeo bull rider, and so on. Candid interviews about real people's lives often make for the best documentary material, and that's certainly true in The Butch Factor. We learn about the confusion these men felt while growing up and their sometimes painful experiences with living in the closet, as well as the camaraderie they feel just from hanging out with the guys.
Hines is a pro, and to paint a complete picture, he includes a few gay men with different approaches to masculinity. Along the way, the movie makes the point that sometimes the effeminate gay men are the toughest because they had to become that way.
The movie was exhaustively researched, with interviews of a wide variety of men all over the U.S. That's both its strength and its weakness. For me as a journalist, watching The Butch Factor sometimes felt like sifting through a cornucopia of great interviews and angles for a feature story. I felt the urge to edit and to hone the focus of the film. There are topics that are covered more than once when they don't really need to be.
Hines does give us breadcrumbs, though: Those are the little details that keep us interested through the film. The subjects are likable and there's enough humor in the movie to at least lighten up the expansive subject matter. Nevertheless, the movie felt longer than 87 minutes. In fairness, I should add that the seats in the Victoria Theatre (otherwise wonderfully restored) get uncomfortable pretty quick.
The Butch Factor is a comprehensive look at an important subject, to be enjoyed in the comfort of your living room -- or, as one person in the audience suggested, in every high school in America.
Dare is a wonderful expansion of a short that showed at Frameline four years ago. It's about a high school actress and her unpopular friend, the A/V guy, who follow their attraction to the Big Man On Campus, Johnny Drake, to an uncomfortable destination. The writing is nuanced, the direction is assured, and the performances by a stunning cast (Emmy Rossum, Zach Gilford of "Friday Night Lights," Alan Cumming, and Sandra Bernhard, among others) are superb. We got to see Gilford stretch a bit from his FNL role as sensitive underdog Matt Saracen, though he gets back on more familiar ground as Dare digs deeper into Johnny's character. Gilford was at the screening along with Rossum, director Adam Salky and writer David Brind for a lively Q&A afterward. Brind was the only gay person among them; it's nice to see another successful gay-straight film team.
First of all, neither one is a film per se. They're both on digital video (unless I'm really missing something), but there's a lot of great work being done on video these days, so that's no strike against them. I did notice that the audio on Dare was sometimes hard to understand in the Castro Theatre because it was compressed way beyond normal theatrical sound.
I'm surprised no documentary before (that I knew of) had specifically tackled the topic that director Christopher Hines covers so thoroughly in The Butch Factor. The 87-minute feature explores gay men's complicated relationship with masculinity. The core segments of the film, and the freshest material here, are profiles of several gay men who play traditionally masculine roles: rugby player, construction worker, rodeo bull rider, and so on. Candid interviews about real people's lives often make for the best documentary material, and that's certainly true in The Butch Factor. We learn about the confusion these men felt while growing up and their sometimes painful experiences with living in the closet, as well as the camaraderie they feel just from hanging out with the guys.
Hines is a pro, and to paint a complete picture, he includes a few gay men with different approaches to masculinity. Along the way, the movie makes the point that sometimes the effeminate gay men are the toughest because they had to become that way.
The movie was exhaustively researched, with interviews of a wide variety of men all over the U.S. That's both its strength and its weakness. For me as a journalist, watching The Butch Factor sometimes felt like sifting through a cornucopia of great interviews and angles for a feature story. I felt the urge to edit and to hone the focus of the film. There are topics that are covered more than once when they don't really need to be.
Hines does give us breadcrumbs, though: Those are the little details that keep us interested through the film. The subjects are likable and there's enough humor in the movie to at least lighten up the expansive subject matter. Nevertheless, the movie felt longer than 87 minutes. In fairness, I should add that the seats in the Victoria Theatre (otherwise wonderfully restored) get uncomfortable pretty quick.
The Butch Factor is a comprehensive look at an important subject, to be enjoyed in the comfort of your living room -- or, as one person in the audience suggested, in every high school in America.
Dare is a wonderful expansion of a short that showed at Frameline four years ago. It's about a high school actress and her unpopular friend, the A/V guy, who follow their attraction to the Big Man On Campus, Johnny Drake, to an uncomfortable destination. The writing is nuanced, the direction is assured, and the performances by a stunning cast (Emmy Rossum, Zach Gilford of "Friday Night Lights," Alan Cumming, and Sandra Bernhard, among others) are superb. We got to see Gilford stretch a bit from his FNL role as sensitive underdog Matt Saracen, though he gets back on more familiar ground as Dare digs deeper into Johnny's character. Gilford was at the screening along with Rossum, director Adam Salky and writer David Brind for a lively Q&A afterward. Brind was the only gay person among them; it's nice to see another successful gay-straight film team.
Labels: dare, frameline, Friday Night Lights, the butch factor, zach gilford
posted by Steve at
10:12 PM
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