Widescreen Dreams: Growing Up Gay at the Movies (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies, Joan Larkin and David Bergman, Series Editors)
In five idiosyncratic and overtly personal essays and "outtakes," Horrigan, an assistant professor of English at Long Island University, discusses how The Sound of Music, Hello, Dolly, The Poseidon Adventure, The Wiz and Dog Day Afternoon provoked an active fantasy life in his childhood and teen years that in turn grounded his sense of self as a gay man. Mixing autobiography, film criticism, cultural commentary and his own fantasies, he examines his responses to these films in the context of his family life, sexual desires and relationships. His insistence on recounting such minute details as how the Alps in The Sound of Music reminded his mother of the hills of her Reading, Pa., birthplace can detract from his more sustained reflections. But when Horrigan is on target, as when he reveals how his sexual fantasies about Al Pacino enabled him to understand and act upon his own sexual desires, his personal anecdotes illuminate the complex relationship between film and the imagination. Horrigan can write directly and elegantly; occasionally, his over-the-top projections, such as a five-page transcription of a fantasy interview with Dick Cavett after "Patrick Horrigan" makes a gay film with Al Pacino, are both daring and exhilarating. Like Wayne Koestenbaum's The Queen's Throat or D.A. Miller's Place for Us, Horrigan's take on the interaction between gay men and mainstream culture is challenging, although at times so personal that a more universal appeal cannot be taken for granted.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.