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‘Kings & Queens in Their Castles’ is an intimate look at LGBT lives

MisterD — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 06:32:42 +0000

The Washington Post
‘Kings & Queens in Their Castles’ is an intimate look at LGBT lives
By Michele Langevine Leiby April

When Tom Atwood decided to launch himself into fine art photography, it was mostly because he wanted to see a different image of gay men. Until not long ago, most photographic images of gay men fell into one of two categories: a display of the ravages of AIDS or a paean to the idealized, sexualized beauty of the masculine form (usually nude or in advanced stages of undress).

Atwood’s new book, “Kings & Queens in Their Castles,” offers an alternative view. His style, the photographer says, is a studied melange of portraiture and architectural photography.

“I try to challenge my subjects by showing as much of their environment as possible in the frame of the camera,” he says. “I also use a wide-angle lens and a wide depth of field so that both the subject and the background are in focus.”

Atwood, 45, a self-proclaimed autodidact, has no formal background in photography or art history. His approach was honed through trial and error and a passion for his subject matter.

“I started out photographing gay people at home because I am gay and knew a lot of gay people,” he says. “And I think a lot of gay men especially have a flair for design and live in some really playful places.”

Atwood’s subjects in “Kings & Queens” include more than 160 members of the LGBT community. They’re urban and rural, famous and anonymous, beautiful and plain, extraordinary and decidedly ordinary. His work, displaying an intimacy sometimes bordering on voyeurism, captures LGBT men and women in the process of living their private lives.

Some of today’s tumultuous social movements rely on a fair amount of identity politics. This book isn’t about that. Says Atwood: “I thought it would be interesting to photograph this group of people just in everyday moments since, for most people, their sexuality is a part of who they are, but it’s not the predominant part of who they are.”

Here are six of the book’s compelling stories:

Don Lemon

When Atwood arrived at Don Lemon’s Harlem home, the CNN anchor was getting ready to walk his dog. “He’s very friendly, very easygoing, very approachable,” Atwood says. “I realized he’s just a really a social person that’s part of a neighborhood.” He shot Lemon sitting on a skateboard on his balcony, his neighborhood as a backdrop. “I really wanted to shoot people in their everyday environment and show what their private lives are like rather than focus on their public images.”

Holly Taylor and Alison Bechdel

Atwood photographed the women in the garden of their Jericho, Vt., home. Holly Taylor, a self-declared “compost maven,” and Alison Bechdel, a cartoonist and the author of the Broadway musical “Fun Home,” live in the woods. “I love this photo,” says Atwood, himself a Vermonter. “I think it really shows a real Vermont sensibility in a number of ways. They’ve got a garden. They chop their own wood. They heat their house with wood.”

Mother Flawless Sabrina

Considered a pioneer in the transgender and gay communities, Mother Flawless Sabrina ran a national drag pageant enterprise between 1959 and 1969 that put on shows across the country, culminating with an extravaganza in New York. The 77-year-old lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side surrounded by a bevy of quirky possessions: a 1980s-era telephone with giant buttons, wigs strewn about, jewelry draped on an ornate desk. “She’s a female impersonator, which I guess is a little different from a drag queen, but don’t ask me the difference because I’m not sure I know,” Atwood says.

James McGreevey

The former governor of New Jersey will always be famous for the 2004 news conference in which he publicly came out of the closet, his pained wife by his side. “My truth is that I am a gay American,” he declared. Today McGreevey is a Prius-driving resident of Plainfield, N.J., where Atwood photographed him, clad in shorts and a hoodie, pruning ivy in front of his house. “He did go through some difficult times,” Atwood says, “but he seems to be still happy and proud and willing to share his life through this book.”

Bruce Vilanch

Loyal viewers of the television game show “Hollywood Squares” will surely recognize the unruly mop of comedian Bruce Vilanch, whom Atwood photographed ferrying groceries back to his West Hollywood apartment. “I think this is a fun shot because Los Angeles has a lot of outdoor/indoor living spaces,” Atwood says, and Vilanch’s apartment building has hallways that are outside rather than inside.

Randal Kleiser

“I don’t think it’s that common to keep barn animals in Los Angeles,” Atwood says of the menagerie of pets that share the home of film director Randal Kleiser. “It was an otherwise suburban ranch house.” Kleiser, known for such films as “Grease” and “Big Top Pee-wee,” enjoys a spectacular view of the L.A. skyline from his swimming pool. “I like that there’s this strong light from the side in this picture and you can see a lot in both the foreground and background,” the photographer says. (Can you find BOTH horses?)

The post ‘Kings & Queens in Their Castles’ is an intimate look at LGBT lives first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

‘The Outrageous Sophie Tucker’: New York Jewish Film Festival Review

MisterD — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 14:48:01 +0000

‘The Outrageous Sophie Tucker’: New York Jewish Film

Festival Review

William Gazecki‘s documentary recounts the life and career of the famed performer known as the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas“

She was one of the most celebrated and successful performers of the 20th century, but few people are aware of Sophie Tucker today. Despite the loving tributes performed by Bette Midler in her concert appearances over the years, the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas” has lapsed into showbiz obscurity, something that William Gazecki‘s loving documentary clearly hopes to correct. Recently showcased at the New York Jewish Film Festival, The Outrageous Sophie Tucker should have a long life in ancillary markets after its theatrical release later this year.

The film’s true auteurs are producers Susan and Lloyd Ecker, who became fascinated with the singer after seeing Midler delivering Sophie Tuckers jokes in her act in 1973. The film, part of the couple’s burgeoning cottage industry about the performer—they’re written a book and plan to create stage, film and television shows about her—features them prominently as talking heads alongside such figures as Barbara Walters, Tony Bennett, Bruce Vilanch, Carol Channing, Michael Feinstein and many others.

There was no shortage of raw material from which to work, as the detail-obsessed Tucker compiled over 400 scrapbooks from 1906 to 1966 chronicling her life and career.

Tucker began her show business career singing at her Russian immigrant parents’ kosher restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut. She appeared on the vaudeville circuit, often performing in blackface, before eventually moving to New York and getting her big break with the Ziegfeld Follies. Ironically, she was soon let go when the other female performers refused to go on with her for fear of being eclipsed.

By 1929 she was arguably the biggest female star in the world, and she continued to be a major concert draw until not long before her death in 1966. She was never quite able to cross over to Hollywood stardom, although the documentary includes clips of her memorable appearance in MGM’s BroadwayMelody of 1938 opposite Judy Garland, to whom she became a mentor.

Her larger than life personality, bawdiness, uninhibited sexuality and willingness to celebrate her ample girth made her a unique performer, but it was her genius for self-promotion that truly served her well. Barbara Walters, whose father’s Latin Quarter nightclubs in Miami and New York regularly featured Tucker, amusingly describes how the performer would sign copies of her memoir after her shows, refusing to autograph anything else or even to make change (all the money was going to Israel, she would assure her customers). She also had a huge number of product endorsements, including her own line of soap.

Her friends were legion, including everyone from Al Capone, with whom she played cards, and J. Edgar Hoover who, the film purports, once asked to borrow one of her dresses. It wouldn’t fit, she assured him.

The film has its share of missteps, such as the awkward animating of old still photographs and the excessive commentary from the producers, with Lloyd Ecker even tearing up while describing Tucker’s death at age 79 nearly a half century ago. And some of the anecdotes related, including a second-hand account of U.S. soldiers blasting her recording of “My Yiddishe Mama” on the streets of Berlin after Germany surrendered as a tribute to a fallen comrade, seem more than a little apocryphal.

But for a younger generation who think that Madonna and Lady Gaga represent the heights of outrageousness, The Outrageous Sophie Tucker stands as a much needed reminder that they have a very large debt to pay.

Production: Innovative Films
Director/director of photography/editor: Wiliam Gazecki
Producers: Lloyd Ecker, Susan Ecker
Executive producers: Phil Ramone, Gene Schwam

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