I saw Howl before you!

Paul works for the box office at Outfest and got a bunch of us comp tickets for the steerage class of the Orpheum theatre's special screening of Howl. The only downside to having a seat in the "rear balcony" was not the seat itself, but having to hear the lispy usher near us make "rear" jokes for forty minutes to everyone who entered. "Are you a rear boy?" "Do you like the rear?" We get it, you're cheeky, now shut up.

Before the film, the festival's organizer asked everyone to get out their phones and text "outfest" to a number to donate $10. I was thankful that my phone was dead so that I had an excuse not to be charitable, but a lot of people obliged, including Jessica to my right, who told me her text bounced back as invalid. Indeed, at the end of night, they handed out slips of paper explaining that the number that was on all of the signs was incorrect and gave us a corrected number to try texting again. That's a pretty big fuck up, but as Stacy pointed out, at least the donations failed rather than ending up at the Christian Coalition. I'd be curious to know how many people originally tried to donate when in a peer pressure situation and then chose not to without a whole audience of people watching.

Also before the film, Jane Motherfucking Lynch received some award for being an awesome gay or what Amy Poehler referred to as Jane's "Gay Bat Mitzvah." She was great, her speech was even better than Howl itself.

Speaking of which, I should probably get to reviewing Howl since that might actually be of interest to everyone who has to wait two more months for it to "come out" (hey-o!) I actually liked Howl, but I didn't love it. The film attempted to interweave three things: poet Allen Ginsberg's life story, the trial that determined whether his work "Howl" was obscenity, and Ginsberg's poems. For this reason, there was no consistent narrative and you had to deal with its form or it was going to be a problem.

The court scenes were the most compelling, perhaps because they had an actual narrative arc. Mary Louise Parker and Jeff Bridges had funny yet brief scenes as critics who testified that "Howl" had no literary merit, while Jon Hamm played Don Draper, if Don were willing to defend Sal in court rather than toss him aside.

James Franco (who you might know from General Hospital) did a pretty good job as Ginsberg in the biographical portions. As for the poetry, I'm glad that they found a way to feature it, and I enjoyed the animation that they paired with the poems, but Franco's voice has a strange cadence, so I found it annoying listening to him read lengthy poetry excerpts. We didn't need quite so much of the poetry anyway, since we've all either read the poem or will read the poem now that we know that some labelled it "obscene," but the directors stretched the material past the point of necessity and entertainment in order to make it feature length when it would have worked best as no longer than an hour piece. I did learn a bunch about Ginsberg, though, which is nice. Embarrassing disclosure: Up until more recently than I'd care to admit, I thought that Allen Ginsberg and Alan Greenspan were the same person. I would think, a lauded poet and our nation's foremost economist - what can't this man do?

My review of liking it all right is far kinder than a lot of the audience. At the after party, most of the people I encountered were griping about the film. Some people had shown up drunk and couldn't handle such a somber film, others found it terribly boring, and still others were just plain disappointed that Franco didn't take off his clothes.

The after party started out fairly lame, but at least the drinks were free as long as you ordered it with Absolute vodka. The music was awful, which is not to say that the music was gay, but rather not gay enough. If you're not going to play good music, play campy, fun pop songs that everyone knows the lyrics to, especially with this crowd, not wordless techno. Halfway through the DJ either switched or got a clue, because then the Whitney, Journey, Gaga, and La Roux began, but not before half the crowd had already cleared from the place out of boredom. I started chanting "Homos go home," not as hate speech, but because I wanted to clear room for some personal space since I was now ready to "Absolute"ly boogie. My friends and I danced for a good hour, during which I kept hoping to "accidentally" back my ass up into Jane Lynch, but alas, no dice. Still, it was a fun time, and I'd recommend you see Howl if you A) like poetry B) are boring like me or C) are stoned.