Synopsis
A chronicle of gay culture in New York during the post-Stonewall, pre-AIDs era. Thirteen men and one woman look back at gay life and sex in Manhattan and Fire Island - from Stonewall (June, 1969) to the first reporting on AIDS (June, 1981). They describe the rapid move from repression to celebration, from the removal of shame to joy, the on-going search for "someone," the freedom before AIDS, the friendships, and brotherhood.
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Cast
- Larry KramerHimself
- Tom BianchiSelf
Recommendations
- 83
Entertainment Weekly
The director, Joseph Lovett, wants us to ask if there's such a thing as too much freedom, and he has the sobriety to say yes -- and no. - 80
Salon
Lovett's film is a finely balanced and loving work of history, which never tries to sugarcoat elements of the explosion of gay sexuality three decades ago that may seem excessive or disturbing to some contemporary viewers. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Some four decades after the birth of the gay-rights movement, the excess and sexual abandon of gay life in the '70s seems more an aberration than an accurate picture of out-and-about gay life at the end of the 20th century. - 70
The A.V. Club
Lively, impassioned, well-structured documentary. - 70
Variety
Magnificent photographs, archival news footage, and location-shot porn add texture and immediacy to Joseph Lovett's fascinating memoir of the sexually explosive 12-year period (1969-1981). - 70
The New York Times
Within that narrow framework, the film is quite successful, using archival photographs, clips from pornographic films and television commercials, and interviews to evoke the period between June 1969, when the Stonewall riots brought homosexuality out of the shadows, to June 1981, when the AIDS epidemic began. - 70
L.A. Weekly
It's fair to assume that most viewers likely to see the film, whose title is the very definition of truth in advertising, already own the knowledge being sold. - 63
New York Daily News
Lovett's history is heavy on hedonism, but he does deliver a succinct perspective on this celebratory era - between the sad bookends of repression and loss.
