Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

An old friend from San Francisco, the tough-guy actor and outspoken gay activist J.E. Freeman, just sent this poem to me and asked if I could repost it for National Coming Out Day , which I am very glad to do, as the suicides of those young  people are also weighing heavily on my mind: Unfortunately to be free requires sometimes that one fight back The most expensive quality in life is freedom. Freedom is never free. Never without cost. The price is not caring what the price is The price is to dare to be unafraid. Or if afraid to stand any way in fear and to take what comes. For what else makes courage? How else are heroes made? It is by facing that which we fear and surviving. It lies in requiring in demnding the haters to stand exposed in the light of their hatred which is only their own fear lashing out. To kill one's self is to become one's own executioner. It is to buy into the verdict of the hater. If one must die for one's freedom make the h...

Because I hung around with the wrong crowd high school, and because I used to date the editor-in-chief of the late lamented H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror , I know a little something about the Cthulhuian Mythos. So trust me when I say that Lovecraft’s cosmic overlord is not so much your usual slimy tentacled monster, but rather a permeating apprehension of erosion, mutation, alienation, annihilation, violation, madness and existential dread . This is best to keep in mind when you add Dan Gildark and Grant Cogwell ’s 2007 award-winning film Cthulhu —loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s novella, The Shadow Over Innsmouth )—to your Netflix queue. Forget about popping some popcorn and settling back for a cheap fright. This is a personal vision film, one that requires some close watching. Fortunately it’s also visually striking, and directed with the seductive pace of Korean horror films. The story is simple: Urban man returns to his beautiful-yet-creepy island childhood home (he’s...

Friend Robert Chesley , who died eighteen years ago this month, left a cabinet of letters, notes, plays in manuscript form and ephemera—all of which are now in the care of the foundation that bears his name. When it became clear they needed a better home, literary executor Victor Bumbalo asked Michael and me to check out the GLBT History Society in San Francisco. And so it looks like the Chesley papers will soon be returning to the city he loved. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE _____

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk After we were refused seats with an unobstructed view at the so-called “People’s Premiere” at the Castro Theater, a couple we know who are Academy members were kind enough to let Michael and me watch a screener of Milk in their very comfortable home screening room. What is there more to say about a film that has as much relevance as ever? In 1978 there was the fight against Proposition 6—the infamous Briggs Initiative —Harvey Milk’s shining moment in his too-short political career. Now there’s Proposition 8, only no Harvey to show us how to fight. Four bullets took Harvey from us and three decades of AIDS took away the leaders we might have had. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

About a week ago I had to opportunity to view again, after twenty years, an arty but satisfying film by director-documentarian Jill Godmilow, called Waiting for the Moon . Plotless and rather devil-may-care when it came to realistic chronology, it depicted the lives of Gertrude Stein and her companion, Alice B. Toklas, as they spent them in the artistically rich atmosphere of pre-war Paris and their peaceful country house in the French province of Ain, near the Swiss border. Their days spent in Ain hold a particular glamour for writers. For who among us has not longed for that quiet place, where nothing is heard but the rustling of the leaves, the whistling of the teakettle and the steady scratch of pen on paper? And who among us has not longed for that ever-present companion who understands and fulfills not only our bodily needs—in kitchen and bedroom—but our fundamental need to get the words down right, and in order, the way we see them in our head? And, of course, how many of us...

San Francisco native Margaret Cho is among my favorite performers/artists and one of the funniest people in the world. I’ve been waiting nearly two years to get the opportunity to see the movie she wrote—now it looks like her worst fears have been confirmed. But hey Margaret! There is an audience out there in DVD World grateful to be able to enjoy your work (and the works of a few others I can name) even on the home screen. Here’s her 14 October 2005 blog posting : Tickets for our Los Angeles AFI screening are available, and if you can come support our film, I would really appreciate it. We are showing the film to potential distributors, and if we can prove that Bam Bam & Celeste has an audience out there, it might actually get to a theater near you. The film world is a notoriously racist and sexist place. “Admit one only” goes not just for the ticket, but for the different levels of “minority” you might qualify for. You can be a woman, just don’t be a woman of color. You...