ChgoTheatreGuy said: "I remember seeing the film for the first time on television in Cincinnati on a Saturday afternoon as a teen. I was immediately drawn in by "something" that I hadn't yet figured out about myself. The language and intensity really made me wonder that if when I got older if I would be as bitter and nasty as the people in the film. I remembered watching the film almost every time that it came on TV, and then going to see the unedited version at my downtown rep theatre and bringing a friend to share my new found obsession. This film is truly a classic, and it is a terrible shame that he has passed."
I first saw it on television, too, and I was around 14, I think not even quite that old, very much unaware yet of my sexuality. I tuned in after it had started (I was flipping through the channels late at night--all five or six of them) when the cowboy was just or had just arrived, and from the way everyone talked about waiting for Harold to show up and there only being men there, at first I thought they were plainclothes police on some kind of stakeout. To be fair, I was just a kid at the time, and I figured out within a couple of minutes what the set up was.
But I had no warm feelings towards the movie then, and even into my twenties I had no fondness for it, let alone appreciation for the craft involved. I needed hope and happy endings then. Heck, even something like Querelle was better (at least there was a lot of fairly explicit moments and Brad Davis was hot). It took me being older to give Crowley the credit not just for his daring but his amazing skill, and the cast for their note-perfect performances.
Now I'm very appreciative of it. I can't quite say I "like" it, but I think it is truer (at least to its era) than I once gave it credit for, and extremely well realized as a piece of writing (and in terms of the movie, performance, direction, cinematography and editing).
