Tell me about Parting Glances

I haven't seen it since it came out in the 80s, but I remember liking it. It was sad, though, and it seemed that every gay themed movie in the 80s and 90s was about AIDS. I wonder if it would hold up on viewing today.

I remember Mimi from The Drew Carey Show being it. She looked different without all her clown makeup on.

John Bolger was at his yummiest in this film and is still goodlooking.

It’s great. The first gay movie that I saw in the theater. I saw it again a couple years ago. It made me think about how so much has changed and been forgotten since AIDS was central to everything for most gay men in the early eighties.

It is sad, yes, but also joyful. Steve Buscemi is adorable.

Highly recommended.

R3- I think Steve Buscemi is really cute in this movie. Like his character says- Bolger is just a Ken Doll type.

The masculine blond twink was appealing too. I did not look the boyfriend of the Bolger character.

The film was one of the earlier motion pictures to deal frankly and realistically with the subject of AIDS and the impact of the relatively new disease on the gay community in the Ronald Reagan era and at the height of the pandemic. It is considered by film critics an important film in the history of gay cinema. The story revolves around a gay couple facing the challenges of a long-distance relationship. The film was well-received for its detailed evocation of gay and gay-friendly urbanites in 1980s Manhattan.

Janet Maslin was not too keen.

Most of 'Parting Glances' functions as a parade of homosexual stereotypes, some of them very engagingly represented, from the eager social neophyte (Adam Nathan) to the wealthy but unattractive businessman (Richard Wall) who uses his success as a powerful sexual lure. The film is best in the long party sequence that simply throws these figures together and doesn't require them to do more than light mingling. It fares less well when Robert (John Bolger) and Michael (Richard Ganoung) discuss the depths of their relationship and their imminent separation, since there seems to be so little of substance between them.

Parting Glances has remained one of my favorite gay films since it came out.

One of the things I loved about it was that AIDS wasn't treated as the film's focal point but was just a matter of fact about gay life at the time.

And fuck Janet Maslin's opinion about the movie.

What I liked about Robert & Michael's relationship was that it was obvious Michael was still in love with the Steve Buscemi character, and I thought the reason Robert decided to go abroad was to give Michael space so he could be with him when he was dying.

On a personal note: Richard Ganoung reminded me of a friend of mine from around that time (and on whom I had a mad crush).

To this day whenever I think about Parting Glances, I think about that guy.

I think I saw it when I was 16 and I seem to remember a scene where two guys are sitting in a stairwell and one says to the other that he had his first boyfriend at 16. It was the first gay movie I ever saw. I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning to watch it on HBO quietly in the living room. And being 16, hearing someone say they had a boyfriend at 16, just made me wanna cry. I don't know that I wanted a boyfriend at 16, but having one would've changed my life.

^ but I only had to wait two years until I was 18

I mentioned it on the other thread, because for me it was the best movie that depicted real 80s Gay life with all the fear of AIDS looming over what was suppose to be the best time of our lives. I went to no less than 12 funerals for friends who died of AIDS during the mid-80s.

The movie was bitter-sweet for all of us who lived through that time never knowing if we might be next. "Philadelphia" was Hollywood's idea of what the Gay/AIDS scene was like. It sucked 😠

^I hated Philadelphia too. So maudlin and wasn't even a great story. It was a movie about a civil lawsuit, not a story about a person with AIDS. Maybe I was bitter that it was focused on a character that wasn't like the friends that I lost. It seemed like an awful stereotype.

^ One of the few times Tom Hanks was totally miscast. He would have been more believable cast as Martin Luther King 🙄

R2 Still handsome. Better looking than his uncle Ray, that's for sure.

After a lot of online searching I found Adam Nathan who played Peter.

R2

And all these years later, he still can't act. He was the only wrong in a movie full of rights.

R13

Ray Bolger was his great uncle.

It was an independent film when they were real and raw. Nothing processed or mass-marketed about the characters, situations, etc.

Tubi has got everything up there. Everything.

Its on YouTube.