In \u201cAny Day Now,\u201d a new film by Travis Fine, Rudy Donatello (Alan Cumming) is, like his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle name suggests: a superhero. Sure, he dons heels and skirt not a mask and a shell, but he is a dyed in the Carmen-Miranda-puff-sleeved-sparkle-midriff hero.<\/p>\n
The film is an edgier version of Harvey Fierstein\u2019s \u201cTorch Song Trilogy,\u201d also set in the late 70s, where (in part) a gay male couple adopted a teenage boy. In \u201cAny Day Now,\u201d the teen\u2019s not just any child, he\u2019s a special needs kid with Down’s syndrome. Like in \u201cTorch Song,\u201d Rudy is a professional female impersonator. But unlike Arnold, Rudy is brassy, ballsy, and brilliant in an Italian streetwise manner. And he\u2019s compassionate and firmly set in his beliefs of right and wrong. Which is how he ends up with Marco (Isaac Leyva), the neighbor\u2019s boy left by his junkie mother.<\/p>\n
The 1970s were cruel\u2014glasses were gigantic, hair went forever, plaids and stripes worked together\u2014and gays and handicapped people were equivalent. Wait, no, handicapped were just discarded; gays were reviled. The delicate interplay of injustice in this film will both make you cheer for the effervescent Rudy and his determination to have a relationship with his lawyer beau Paul (Garret Dillahunt) while saving a boy\u2019s life<\/span> — and make your skin crawl. And I don\u2019t mean \u2018skin crawl\u2019 like in \u201cMad Men\u201d where it is naughty cocktail drenched evil (toward women) that you know is (sort of) resolved in modern society, I mean the kind of icky film feeling that makes you realize we haven\u2019t made much progress. The film is set in 1979, the year after Harvey Milk was murdered and is at the precipice of the 80s AIDs crisis, making it the perfect place to spin this truth.<\/p>\n Yeah, yeah, \u201cGlee\u201d and \u201cModern Family\u201d are your favorite TV shows, you sobbed through \u201cBrokeback Mountain,\u201d and were endeared to \u201cKids Are Alright\u201d\u2014you\u2019re totally down with the gays. Let\u2019s say that\u2019s a start. But if you say, \u201cWell, none of this would happen today,\u201d to Thee I say, \u201cYu-huh.\u201d Go see \u201cAny Day Now\u201d and get a taste of where gays came from, where they are going, and what still needs doing for full rights. And on the Down’s front: there\u2019s Becky on \u201cGlee\u201d who is together and likeable, and of course Chris Griffin\u2019s star crossed girlfriend in \u201cFamily Guy,\u201d so we aren\u2019t complete cultural ogres these days, but we can\u2019t hide behind Mitchel and Cameron and Becky and Ellen and say we\u2019ve arrived.<\/p>\n It is a rare film where I don\u2019t want to tell you what it\u2019s about because I want you to go see it that badly. So go see it and find out. But I will say this:<\/p>\n If you are expecting \u201cPricilla\u201d or even \u201cMilk\u201d\u2014 you will be disappointed. But if you are expecting a well done film that speaks directly to the issues of today through the lens of only three decades ago (okay, that\u2019s longer ago than I thought it sounded at first, but you see what I mean. It\u2019s recent compared to stone tool use, for instance). Because like Marco, even though we know we are in a gay tale and things have got to go badly at some point, we long for a happy ending.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one should be punished for stuff that ain\u2019t their fault,\u201d demands Rudy of Marco\u2019s handicap, but we know he\u2019s describing his life-way as well. Even though \u201cAny Day Now\u201d is a look back at where we were with these issues, we feel confident that with heroes like Rudy out there we will all sleep better at night. Just let him get his face on first.<\/p>\n – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n “Any Day Now” will be showing on Sunday, December 9 at\u00a0\u00a07:00\u00a0pm at the Screen.<\/p>\n More information and complete program and schedule, at http:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index<\/a>. To purchase tickets, visit TicketsSantaFe.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In \u201cAny Day Now,\u201d a new film by Travis Fine, Rudy Donatello (Alan Cumming) is, like his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle name suggests: a superhero. Sure, he dons heels and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"festival_year":[],"class_list":["post-6262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19403,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6262\/revisions\/19403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6262"},{"taxonomy":"festival_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/festival_year?post=6262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}