But Laundrette was both able to “hide” behind “art house cred,” and it was a rich stew of many elements that weren’t specifically gay, e.g., Thatcher’s Britain and racism. Laundrette was certainly the first film that managed to pull off a gay make-out scene that didn’t empty theaters. Yes, it can be argued that Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) got there first. While I have great admiration for earlier works that dared to be about gay life - yes, even William Friedkin’s The Boys in the Band (1970) - Torch Song Trilogy is the first film to tackle the subject from the standpoint of both a normalized lifestyle and one that was still fighting at every turn for actual acceptance and respect. It’s perhaps difficult from today’s standpoint to realize that Torch Song Trilogy was something of a landmark in 1988.
Bogart may add little to the film, but neither does he take anything away from it.
However, that may not be such a bad approach to the material - it's slickly efficient without ever getting in the way. The direction by Paul Bogart clearly shows the director's TV show sensibility (it remains easily the best theatrical feature Bogart ever made). It is a movie that rises to something like greatness on the writing and acting - and the charisma of its star. It's by turns raucously funny, tender, defiant, sad and hopeful. But the film consists of relationships - two specifically - he has after this point, not to mention his strained relationship with his extremely Jewish mother (Anne Bancroft). Fierstein plays Arnold Beckoff, an unattached professional drag queen with a history of failed romances that he relates to us in the film's opening while he prepares to go onstage. It's often rather simply described as being about "a gay man's search for love." Well, yes, it is that, but it's a lot more. In Brief: Harvery Fierstein adapts and stars in this film of his hit play.
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