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The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me

2000, Movie, NR, 84 mins

The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me: Review

NIGHT LARRY KRAMER KISSED ME, THE
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To hear David Drake tell it — and tell it he does, in this spirited adaptation of his one-man stage play — his life changed the night he caught a performance of ACT UP founder Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart. It was then that Drake was first confronted with a frank, dramatic treatment of AIDS, a plague that was killing gay men by the thousands but didn't rate coverage in the mainstream media. That eye-opening moment serves the basis for the title segment of Drake's six-part play which, aside from an irritating laugh track and an updated final section, hasn't changed much in its transition from stage to screen. But for all its passion, "The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me" is actually the film's weakest section. Drake is a very funny comic with an unsettling knack for undercutting the laughs with disturbing observations, and the best parts of his show come when he takes aim at things which, for better or worse, have come to define "gay lifestyle." In "That's Why I Go to the Gym," Drake exposes the anxieties underlying muscle obsession. And in the stand-out, "12" Single," Drake sets the language of personal ads, pop lyrics and sexual abuse to a pounding dance beat, chronicling a night of cruising that ends in a scary act of psychic self-mutilation. The moving "Thousand Points of Light" shifts deftly from fond, funny remembrances to a poignant litany of the dead. The play first opened in 1992, and it's very much a product of its time; even though Drake has pushed the time frame for the play's original coda ahead 15 years, it's exudes a slightly stale air that does nothing to dispel gay stereotypes. In the year 2015, will gay men really still be watching THE WAY WE WERE? leave a comment --Ken Fox
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