"My personal theory is that the Hays Code didn’t just forbid certain behaviors and images, it also subtly suggested the way that they might one day be allowable. Eventually filmmakers and studios figured out it wasn’t so much that you absolutely couldn’t show homosexuality, drug use, prostitution, child abuse, and mass murder. They just couldn’t seem fun. Or even funny. John Waters joyfully violates this deeper unspoken code. That’s why his films, especially Female Trouble, burn with the raw power of a Public Enemy or Baby Face."

"Tennessee Williams’s short stories are eclipsed by his plays, but they are by no means outclassed. His ear for dialogue, his eye for character and his dramatic gifts are as powerful in his stories as they are in his plays. Like the plays, the stories are flavored with a connoisseur’s taste for the strange and bizarre, including cannibalism, incest, rape, castration, nymphomania, alcoholism and murder. My favorite among the stories is the fiendish “Desire and the Black Masseur,” but there are many, many runners-up."

"A murder mystery set in the gay leather bars of NYC in the '80s. Truly a mysterious film wherein the audience gets lost in the fabric of the story as the character does. Pacino doesn’t like to talk about this film, but it’s maybe his greatest performance. The gay community in NYC didn’t know whether to support or repel this film, which saw spells of people showing up near location banging pots and pans, bouncing light off mirrors and renting apartments next door to blast music."