About the movie
Outrage (2009-II)
Rating: 
Cast:
Barney Frank; Tanner Barklow
Directed by:
Kirby Dick
On the web:
READER FEEDBACK
‘Outrage’: Gay skeletons in D.C. pols’ closets
In "Outrage," it's asserted that you can't swing a dead cat in Washington, D.C., without hitting a gay Republican.
Left unstated, but implied, is that gay Republicans should be hit with dead cats, or subject to special punishment for assisting a political organization that actively works against the interests of homosexuals (same-sex marriage, AIDS funding).
Short of hitting them with dead cats, "Outrage" simply identifies them, piggybacking on the work done in the gay media. The movie, for instance, interviews men who say they know guys who've slept with a prominent big-state governor, and identifies his boyfriends, among them some local Republican staffers.
This is a queasy business: It's one thing to re-out an elected official and public figure, another to out low-level party apparatchiks who ducked "Outrage" and clearly want their private lives to remain private.
"Outrage" argues that that kind of queasiness is outdated, part of a mainstream media "conspiracy" to allow such men to remain in the closet, even as it uses such code words as "dapper bachelor" to describe them. The movie is funny on this point, and others, and affirms that director Kirby Dick ("This Film is Not Yet Rated") has a knack for the gags and gotchas of the modern commercial documentary.
Like other newfangled docs, "Outrage" relies on reviews to activate the hype mechanism. It also implicates the reviewer in the outing process, which is why I'm being an obstinate media dinosaur about naming names (easily obtained online).
The governor is the movie's biggest fish. He's positioning himself for a run at the presidential nomination in three years, and, the movie implies, has acquired a wife to make such a thing possible.
He's on camera denying he's gay, but "Outrage" undercuts the denial by showing the closeted Jim McGreevey, in old footage, making the same claim.
That's a little sneaky, considering that the guy might conceivably be bisexual, and in any case is comparatively moderate. "Outrage" is on firmer ground attacking gay conservative strategists who devise and enact cynical anti-gay strategies.
These polemics have a kind of natural charge to them, but there are glimpses in the movie of something more complex and in a way more interesting - the way closet psychology mixes with political ambition to create a fascinating hybrid of warring (or maybe complementary) desires.
One Log Cabin Republican tells of a powerful closeted official who views out-of-the-closet pols as wimps, lacking the mental toughness to stay in the closet - to do what is necessary to hold power, to get things done.
Here "Outrage" is on to something interesting. Big-time politics as blood sport, played by men and women who will tell any sort of lie, make any compromise (right, Sen. Specter?), to have access to corridors of power. Larry Craig has his issues; so does John Edwards.
It's why, in D.C., everybody knows, and nobody cares.
In our nation's capital, a guy with principles is a problem, but a guy with secrets is a guy you can work with. *
Produced by Amy Z*er*ng, wr*tten and d*rected by K*rby D*ck, mus*c by Peter Golub, d*str*buted by Magnol*a P*ctures.
