a gay fantasia on national themes

This past weekend I went to NYC to see Angels in America and do some shooting for the documentary. We met up Friday night with some other gay Mormon guys who live in the city so they could show us a proper night on the town.  We met up at Vynl for food, where he had a large corner booth with a table top that was a tile mosaic of Liza Minelli's face.  I wanted to get a picture of it, but it was covered with all our dirty dishes.  I did, however, get a picture of the life size tile mosaic of Justin Timberlake in the bathroom.

After we got some food, we went to a few clubs.  First up were Therapy and Industry, which were right across the street from one another.  Therapy and Industry kind of sounds like a state motto or something and not at all like the clubs mentioned by Stefon during Weekend Update. They were nice, if not a little bit pretentious.  It seemed like those were the clubs where pretty gays with tight shirts congregate for others to look at them.

After that, we went to The Stonewall Inn, mostly for historical purposes.  All I'll say about this one is that it was a very quick visit that I'm trying to forget.  Before calling it a night, we went to a place next door to Stonewall, and I can't remember the name of it.  Upstairs they have a little improv and a lot of singing along to showtunes.  Jack, the guy who was filming everything, was the only straight guy there and the female MC immediately honed in on him.  Let's just say she was more than a little bit thrilled to have a man in the audience who was attracted to women.

Saturday, Kendall and I went and saw Angels in America and this was definitely a highlight of the trip.  I forget how amazing and powerful live theater can be when it's done by real professionals.  I'm including a few clips of my favorite parts, as portrayed by the HBO miniseries. 

Here's the trailer, in case you've never seen or heard of AiA.

Opening scene, with Meryl Streep as the Rabbi.


This is probably the scene that really got to me the most during the play.  The actress who played the pioneer woman did such a beautiful job with it, and there was something about her delivery of it that elicited a fairly powerful and visceral reaction from me that was kind of unexpected.  Almost like she was reaching inside me, as is described in this scene.  I felt like she so beautifully captured what that process of change is like, not just with the words, but her delivery of them.


Harper's monologue on the plane to San Francisco was my very favorite the first time I saw the movie.


And of course the final scene is a really beautiful one.