The Screengrab : George Takei

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 2-8, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Mr. Sulu! Set a course for the nearest multiplex, warp factor five! I’ve read Nick’s Take and Scott’s Take, and I…must…see Star Trek right away! What, you thought I’d be bitter? You thought the Shat Man would be upset that he wasn’t asked to even contribute a cameo, much less assume the captain’s chair that is his birthright? Oh, please. You sound like that paranoid George Takei!

I’m perfectly thrilled that everybody loves this new Trek adventure, even as we all know in our hearts it can’t hold a candle to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I’m even happy that Chris Pine Gets His Kirk On. Let the kid have his fun! We all know who put the T in Tiberius.

One place I was thrilled not to see my name mentioned was in The Screengrab’s Top Ten Worst…Movies…Ever!!! (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten) Believe it or not, some people have had unkind things to say about The Devil’s Rain, and I feared the good people of the Screengrab would fall into the same trap. Since they didn’t, I was happy to read the rest of these fine posts:

Reviews: Outrage, Rudo y Cursi, Adoration

53 Years Ago in the Screengrab: Finding "The Searchers"

The Less Than Triumphant Return of Mad Max

Scarlett Johansson: The Unkindest Cut

Not on DVD: "The Grey Fox" (1982)

Precursors: Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Star Trek Showdown IV: Shatner’s Last Nerve

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT

We got so caught up in Christian Bale’s ranting and raving, we forgot it’s been a while since we checked in with crazy ol’ Cap’n Bill Shatner and his enabling daughter. Does their cracked crusade against George Takei continue? Of course it does! Apparently Takei recently claimed that he had not been invited to appear as a guest on Shatner’s A&E talk show, Raw Nerve. You may recall from the previous installment of Star Trek Showdown that Shatner planned to do so, but as he explains here, “There’s a process. George has to be vetted.”

Star Trek Showdown III: The Search for Shatner’s Sanity

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:30:00 GMT

At some point, it became my job to keep updating you on the continuing mental deterioration of William Shatner. Once you start down a road like this, it’s hard to stop. I’m afraid I’ll miss something important, like Shatner appearing pantsless and professing his undying love for Nichelle Nichols. Alas, this installment isn’t quite that intriguing, but it does provide further evidence that Shatner really, really needs to stop thinking about George Takei already.

Entitled “William Shatner responds to George Takei’s claim that he invited Bill to his wedding,” the new episode finds the good captain in a conciliatory mode…except when he’s not. He wishes Takei would stop being mean to him. He's thrilled that George has found love in his life. He’s never said anything bad about Takei…well, except for that last video, in which he said Takei had a “psychosis.” But that just means he’s out of touch with reality, right? So no big deal there. He also tackles the issue of Sulu’s promotion to captain in the Star Trek movies, rightly pointing out that if Takei were given his own starship to command, he wouldn’t be on the Enterprise set anymore setting phasers to stun on Shatner’s orders. Finally, he issues an invitation of his own to Takei. Check it out:

Related:
Star Trek Showdown: Shatner Fires Back
Star Trek Showdown II: William Shatner Responds to Sulu Snub

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Oct. 18-24, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Greetings, Screenbag fans. William Shatner here to take you where no man has gone before. That is, no man besides that Steve Don Vodiak who usually does the Highlight Reel on Fridays. I thought it was important to step in today because I’m deeply troubled by the 21 Stars We Hate (Parts One, Two, Three and Four). Not because I wasn’t included – it would take a sick mind, a truly disturbed psychosis to even think of such a thing – but because I don’t see such names as George Takei, Adrian Zmed and James Spader on the list. God love them all, but they are truly unspeakable screen presences, whose lines and close-ups I was forced to cut – for their own good!

And speaking of Takei, this Star Trek Showdown post is greatly offensive to me, excepting, of course, the parts of it that confirm the dreadful mental illness that Sulu fellow has labored under lo these many years. I prefer to focus on the positive, such as these reviews of Six Man, Texas, Fear(s) of the Dark and Synecdoche, New York, rather than dwell in the sick cesspool of negativity where posts about The Big Fix, Turkey Shoot, Pride and Glory and Meet the Browns drown in their own repulsive bile.

While the Screenbaggers trash Bill Maher and Roger Ebert, while they wallow in the past glories of Duel in the Sun and the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, while they pretend to mourn Levi Stubbs, Rudy Ray Moore and Mr. Blackwell, I alone will testify to their deteriorating mental states. For I am Shatner.

Star Trek Showdown II: William Shatner Responds to Sulu Snub

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

When last we checked in with the YouTube sensation William Shatner is Off His Meds, the Shat Man had a bone to pick with new Star Trek auteur J.J. Abrams. Shatner (enabled by his daughter Liz) claimed that he had never been approached to make a cameo appearance in the new movie, and went on to offer some advice as to how Captain Kirk could be resurrected for the film. (It’s as simple as putting his DNA in the hovering machine and throwing the switch on the right, after all.) Now Shatner is compelled to comment on the news that, unlike many of his former Star Trek cohorts, he was not invited to George “Sulu” Takei’s big gay wedding.

Way back when he wrote the first volume of his Star Trek Memories in 1994, Shatner was startled to learn that most of his co-stars from the original series considered him to be something of a dick. Takei elaborated in his own memoir, To the Stars, in which he complained of Shatner stealing lines and close-ups from him, and even went so far as to claim on the Howard Stern show that the Shat had denied Sulu a promotion to captain. So it’s not like there’s no crazy at all to be found on the Takei side of this story…but Shatner really outdoes himself in this latest clip. Who knows what he thinks he’s up to here? It would be nice to think he’s playing the character of “William Shatner, Unhinged Asshole,” sort of like Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm or Bruce Willis in What Just Happened, but…well, judge for yourself:

The Gay Pride Top Twenty (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

It’s Gay Pride Month, the 10th Annual Provincetown Film Festival kicks off this weekend and George “Mr. Sulu” Takei and Ellen DeGeneres are getting married (though not to each other, of course) in California (hooray California! And what’s taking you so long, New York and Vermont and Washington and Hawaii and Illinois and...y’know, all the rest of the country?)...

...so, anyway, to help celebrate, we here at the Screengrab thought it would be a good time to salute some of the highpoints in gay (and lesbian and bisexual and transgender) cinema with our very own rainbow collection of Queer Nation classics (not that there’s anything wrong with that)!

ANGELS IN AMERICA (2003)

"Hey, wait just a cotton-pickin' minute!" the purists among you may cry. “I thought this was a list of Gay Pride films, not TV shows!” Well, for starters, Mike Nichols’ all-star, six-hour, multiple Emmy and Golden Globe winning adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning rumination on homosexuality, homophobia and the better angels of human nature wasn’t TV...it was HBO. But more importantly, in a media landscape of generally low ambitions, lowered expectations and lowest common denominator multiplex landfill, it’s hard to ignore a six-hour celluloid phantasmagoria of staggering audacity, master class filmmaking, sharp dialogue, potent visuals, timely thematic resonance and knockout performances (including a multi-tasking Meryl Streep, future Weeds costars Justin Kirk and Mary-Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright, Patrick Wilson, Emma Thompson, James Cromwell, Ben Shenkman and Al Pacino, using his late-career bluster to good effect as prototypical self-hating conservative closet case Roy Cohn). Sure, it gets a little silly sometimes, but who would've thought a movie about the AIDS pandemic (as depicted through intertwining tales of two infected men haunted by ghosts and other celestial messengers) would find time for so much humor, imagination and hope...and, as opposed to, say, a certain lengthy, operatic, sometimes silly (but Oscar-winning) big-screen multi-part epic about heroic bravery in the face of faceless evil, lethal apathy and looming death, the cultural and political battles depicted in Angels in America are no fantasy, and continue to rage on and on and on...

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001)

The most original film musical of the decade began as a drag act at Squeezebox!, a weekly gay performance event in mid-90s New York City. Performer and creator John Cameron Mitchell based his iconic character Hedwig on details from his own life: his childhood in East Berlin, his idenitification with queer rock stars, his struggles with being the gay son of a military general. The crux of Hedwig's character is both a fiction and a metaphorical truth: she is the victim of a botched sex change operation, leaving her a little bit male and a little bit female. Fueled by the anti-showtunes of Stephen Trask and Mitchell's gender-bending charisma, the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a glam-rock spirit quest: Hedwig begins as a self-loathing wannabe rock star looking to complete herself through sex, and by the end of the story, she is walking naked into the world, stripped of makeup and bitterness, finally learning to love herself. If that's not pride, then what is?

FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002)

Though he’d established himself since Poison, his first major feature, as the most talented director to come out of the so-called ‘New Queer Cinema’ movement of the 1990s, it wasn’t until Far From Heaven that Todd Haynes' talents were recognized by the mainstream media. His previous films had been too controversial, too oblique, too postmodern; but with this 1950s period piece, Haynes finally gained widespread acceptance and, with it, four Oscar nominations. Ironically for one of the most original filmmakers in Hollywood, the movie that gained him this recognition was a pure throwback. With its high melodrama, ginger treatment of interracial relations, and gorgeous color palette, it was unmistakably reminiscent of the films of the melodrama king of the fifties, Douglas Sirk; and with its highly stylized acting, uncomfortable emotional weight and unapologetic addressing of gay sexual desire, it likewise conjured the films of Sirk’s most famous devotee, Ranier Werner Fassbinder. In a way that blends the fantastic, romantic sensibilities of Sirk and the gritty, rich realism of Fassbinder – and with a freedom to frankly address issues of racism and homosexuality that were denied to them both – Haynes manages to make a film that’s both moving and incredibly frustrating. Always able to coax winning performances out of his actors, he also gets Dennis Quaid to deliver an exceptionally sensitive performance in a role where both understatement and overreaching could have been a disaster.

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985)

For obvious reasons, European cinema was several decades ahead of the curve when it came to addressing homosexuality (or, for that matter, any sexuality) on screen. It’s impossible to even conceive of an American film in 1985 – let alone one with the relative high profile of Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette – being as frank, and as frankly erotic, about a gay couple. Like Far From Heaven, it succeeded largely by not making its focus too narrow; the story of young Pakistani Omar and his white lover, a former skinhead played with verve by a young Daniel Day Lewis, is made especially lively and vital by placing it within the context of a broader story of the British immigrant experience at the peak of Thatcherism. Deftly blending issues of race, class, culture and economics with a star-crossed romance, My Beautiful Laundrette owes much to a top-shelf script by Hanif Kureishi; but what shouldn’t be overlooked is its intensely erotic scenes, which were among the first in mainstream film to illustrate that gay sex on the big screen could pack as much power as its heterosexual counterpart. Gordon Warnecke as Omar is a real find in his big screen debut, and Daniel Day Lewis, in only his third film, already shows signs of being the titanic actor he would eventually become.

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991)

Gus van Sant has always specialized, at least in his personal films (that he finances with tripe like the Psycho remake and Good Will Hunting), in convincingly portraying the sad, proud lives of lowlifes, drifters and people with no real home to go to, whether by choice or by circumstance. He also has a particular talent for showing us characters who desperately need the love of someone, but who are none too wise in selecting who that someone should be. Those two themes come together with audacity and depth in My Own Private Idaho, the story of two hustlers – the poverty-stricken, vulnerable, narcoleptic Mike Waters (played by the late River Phoenix) and the slumming, proud, arrogant Scott Favor (played by Keanu Reeves who, God bless him, at least seems to be trying). For a movie so charged with homosexual love, it’s strangely lacking in sex, and not in the self-denying, passionless way that’s required from most gay characters on the big screen: rather, sex for the two of them is a largely joyless professional operation reserved for the making of money or the killing of time. This doesn’t mean they don’t need love, though, and therein lies the movie’s great tragedy: Mike wants the love of only Steve, and Steve wants the love of only his estranged, wealthy father. All of this plays out with an aesthetic derived not from Warhol’s cool surface gayness, or Fassbinder’s melodramatic near-camp: it’s given a thick sheen of the classics, drawing directly from Shakespeare. This can be both its damnation (several of the openly Shakespearian scenes come across as contrived and hokey) and its salvation (framing the entire struggle in the trappings of real tragedy gives it dramatic depth and resonance it might otherwise lack), but it’s a movie that certainly can’t be faulted for its ambition, and whatever its flaws, it’s a worthy step forward in the mainstreaming of gay characters in American cinema.

Click here for Part Two, Part Three and Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Gwynne Watkins, Leonard Pierce