(Fags)Ploitation III - Broderick: The Ugly?

You've got to hand it to Harvey Fierstein. Not only did he come out of the closet and toss his sodomite lifestyle on stage for the world to marvel at, but he apparently took the proceeds and splashed the sordid mess onto the big screen thereafter. Not only was this a three-star success, but he got accomplished actress Anne Bancroft to come in behind him, and persuaded Matthew Broderick to make a high-risk career maneuver in aiding and abetting this dinnermashing extravaganza.

Harvey uses the pseudonym of Arnold Beckhoff, a middle-aged drag queen and cabaret entrepreneur looking for love in all the wrong places. The 'trilogy' follows his exploits along with his on-and-off-again affair with Ed (Brian Kerwin), a bisexual Robert Redford knockoff. Meeting Ed at a sissy bar, their open relationship is crushed by Ed's secret affair with a woman. Arnold catches Alan (Matthew Broderick), a successful yuppie, on the rebound, but their own affair is tarnished by a weekend with Ed and his beau. Arnold and Alan pursue plans to have a 'normal' relationship on Christopher Street in the pillow-biters' section of Greenwich Village, only Alan is a victim of righteous gay-bashers who send him to hell with a baseball bat. Arnold proceeds as a single parent to adopt David (Eddie Castrodad), a wayward homo youth, and at the end of the flick we find Ed at Arnold's side trying to make amends and bring all to a happy ending.

Probably what saves this one from being classified as a queer-oriented stink bomb (a la Dahmer) is the performance of Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Beckhoff. She plays the quintessential Jewish Mom whose fabled sufferings are magnified by the fact her son is an itchy-legger. We follow her from the cradle to the grave, astonied in finding baby Arnold in the closet trying on her clothes, to a memorable and revealing sequence at the family dinner table where Mr. Beckhoff and their eldest son indulge a forced blue-collar conversation with their perverted Arnold, to a graveside conflict between Arnold and his Ma over the losses of their lovers. Arnold is fully aware of his family's dilemma, railing over the fact that he is condemned to a life which his parents forever bewail with "Where did we go wrong?". His Ma, alternately, has to live with Arnold's lifelong queerness on parade as he attempts to justify his perverse philosophy. If ever the psychological elements of the homo lifestyle was explored, the Fiersteins (brother Ronald bankrolled this study in sodomy) set the all-time standard.

Special mention goes to Matthew Broderick, who is extremely lucky that he was ever considered for a serious flick forever after. His makeout scene with Kerwin parallels Bruce Willis' notorious kissing scene in The Jackal, but Willis had a helluva better defense to prosecution. However, it can be said that it displays not only his versatility as an actor (and possibly a desperation for notoriety), but provides us with a perverse look at his sexuality that, quite honestly, cannot be overlooked. If he had come on like this in a heterosexual scene, it might've been considered one of the best of the year. Instead he probably had fellow actors fleeing the showers for years afterwards.

All in all, this is a well-done, comical and introspective look at live beneath the sewer covers and behind the gloryholes of America. If you're the type of moviegoer with unusual gastronomics and a strong sense of tolerance, Trilogy might be something you won't see the likes of before or since.