Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961)

Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961) first gained notoriety with a short film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, employing Barbie dolls to portray the ill-fated pop singer and other characters. He followed that with Poison, based on the writings of Jean GENET, which won the Berlin Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Poison marked the producing debut of Christine Vachon, who went on to produce several more films for Haynes and dozens of other successful—often queer-themed—films, including Happiness, Boys Don ’t Cry, and One Hour Photo. He is best known for his feature films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Poison, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, and the Academy Award-nominated Far from Heaven and I'm Not There.

Haynes’ Far From Heaven, set in 1950s Connecticut, deals with issues of race and sexuality. Dennis Quaid portrays a married executive struggling with his homosexuality. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, and won over seventy other awards. (Picture: James Lyons in a scene from "Postcards from America" (1994). Photo provided by Killer Films)

I'm Not There is based on the life of Bob Dylan, with Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Whishaw, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, and Cate Blanchett taking turns portraying the singer/songwriter.

Haynes was a founding member of Gran Fury, an artists’ collective associated with the AIDS activist group Act Up. His ex-lover and editor, Jim Lyons, died of AIDS-related illness shortly before the release of I’m Not There.

Stern, Keith. Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals. Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

( Further Readings )

More LGBT History at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Persistent Voices

It happened today: January 2

André Aciman (born January 2, 1951): http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3415171.html

André Aciman (born on 2 January 1951) is a writer, currently distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York teaching the history of literary theory and the works of Marcel Proust. Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Aciman's critically acclaimed debut novel is a frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion.

Clyde Martin (born January 2, 1918): http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3991691.html

Clyde Martin (born January 2, 1918) was assistant to Dr Alfred Kinsey and co-author of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. The 2003 musical Dr. Sex focuses on the relationship between Martin, Kinsey and his wife, with the character of Wally Matthews being based on Martin, Martin and Kinsey sharing Kinsey's wife as sex partner. In December 1938 Martin sought out Kinsey and gave Kinsey his sexual history. The pair formed a bond, and Kinsey offered a cash-strapped Martin work in Kinsey’s own garden.

John Wojtowicz & Elizabeth Eden: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3992471.html

Elizabeth Eden was an American transsexual woman whose boyfriend John Wojtowicz attempted to rob a bank to pay for her sex reassignment surgery. The incident was made into the '75 film Dog Day Afternoon. Wojtowicz was sentenced to 20 ys, although he was released in April 1978; while imprisoned, he sold the movie rights to the story for $7,500 and subsequently was able to help finance Eden's sex reassignment surgery. Eden died of AIDS-related pneumonia, aged 41. Wojtowicz died of cancer in 2006.

M. Carey Thomas, Mamie Gwinn & Mary Elizabeth Garrett: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3991826.html

Martha Carey Thomas was an American educator, suffragist, linguist, and second President of Bryn Mawr College. In 1885 Thomas, together with Garrett, Gwinn, King, and Rogers, founded The Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore Maryland. Thomas lived for many years in a relationship with Gwinn. After Gwinn left Thomas in 1904 to marry Alfred Hodder (1866-1907) (a love triangle fictionalized in Gertrude Stein's Fernhurst), Thomas started another relationship with Garrett.

Peter Harvey & Paul Thek: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3992268.html

Paul Thek met set designer Peter Harvey (born January 2, 1933) in Miami Beach in 1954. He had been supporting himself as a hustler while developing his art. Wilbur Pippin, a friend, introduced Thek and Harvey to the renowned mid-century photographer George Platt Lynes. Harvey graduated from the University of Miami in Coral Gables in 1955 and immediately secured work doing theatrical set design, earning enough money to support Thek and free him from having to hustle to support himself.

Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961): http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3447027.html

Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961) first gained notoriety with a short film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, employing Barbie dolls to portray the ill-fated pop singer and other characters. Haynes’ Far From Heaven, set in 1950s Connecticut, deals with issues of race and sexuality. Dennis Quaid portrays a married executive struggling with his homosexuality. His ex-lover and editor, Jim Lyons, died of AIDS-related illness shortly before the release of I’m Not There.

William Haines & Jimmie Shields: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/1395339.html

William Haines was a film actor and interior designer. In New York in 1926, Haines met Jimmie Shields, probably a pick-up on the street. Haines convinced Shields to move to Los Angeles. In 1933 Haines was asked to choose between a sham marriage and Shields. Haines chose Shields and they remained together for the rest of their lives. Soon after Haines died, Shields, who suffered from Alzheimer's Disease, put on Haines' pajamas, took an overdose of pills, and crawled into their bed to die.

Drifting by Jayson James

The main story is about Derrick and Justin, but this is more a choral book about college students. These are not adults, and indeed you can say that from the wrong decisions they take, mostly out of misunderstandings and too much emotional approach to life. They are cute in their mistakes, and an adult reader arrives to the point to want to cuddle them to make it better.

You can say at first there is past history between Derrick and Justin, and indeed I discovered at the end of the book it was a third chapter in a series, but truth be told, I didn’t miss the previous books, I suppose it can be good to go back and read about these two as best friends and high school students finding love, but it was also good to read about them as young adults facing the first odds of their relationship. And yes, there is a break-up and there are even other boyfriends, but that was right, it’s for sure nice and sweet to believe two boys met in high school and are forever together, but sometime I also wonder if it’s not better for them to have the chance to see that what they have together is good, better than what they can find out.

There is a lot talking about sex, and also doing it, after all these are barely legal boys just out from the shelter of their parents’ homes, but this is not an erotic romance; sex is there, but it’s not what moves the story; sometime sex is even comfort, and most of these boys take it lightly, like it was just another way to spend the time, and I found this to be truthful, they don’t have malice, like they don’t have prejudices. Strangely enough, the more “adult” about this matter is the younger of them, who decides he is not adult enough to have sex and decides to wait some more years.

Paperback: 278 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; First edition (July 5, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1481291610
ISBN-13: 978-1481291613
Amazon: Drifting
Amazon Kindle: Drifting

Series: Finding Our Way
1) Finding Our Way
2) Tormented Discovery
3) Drifting

More Reviews by Author at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Reviews

In response to the Rainbow Awards fraud allegations

Last week, an author who entered a book in the Rainbow Awards accused a member of the jury of fraud. I [Elisa] and several others, including the Rainbow Romance Writers board, took a close look at the accusations and investigated the judge in question. We found that the judge did not do what they are accused of and see no evidence of fraud. Members of the jury can be authors/editors/publishers who will not read in the category they are submitting for (for authors) or books they have relation with (for editors/publishers). The Judge in question is a reviewer who posted a review on Amazon before the book was assigned to them by the Rainbow Awards. Many times before the reviewers in the Rainbow Awards jury have already read their assignment, we are proud of the expertize skills of those judges/reviewers.

In response to the Rainbow Awards fraud allegations, we would like to release the following statement:

After close scrutiny of the evidence presented to us, we see no reason to conclude fraud was committed in the judging of the specific category or by any judge.
* Members of the jury have the right to nominate one book, and only one, when the Awards cycle begins in a category they are not judging for. The Judge who was called upon did not nominate the specific book, they read it in first round but they didn't read it in the finals, when the winners were selected.
* The winners in the finals were chosen by 5 judges and to combat bias in judging the highest and lowest score for every book is removed in calculating the final result for every single book and this was also the case in the contended category
* The more than 150 volunteering judges are established readers, writers and reviewers in the LGBTQ Romance genre and therefor not completely unbiased, but every effort is made to select the books every judge is given so that affiliations with publishers, genres and categories (for writers) limits the chance of bias.