The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema

A collection of reviews and articles by film critic Thomas Waugh, written over a period of 20 years and originally published in gay community tabloids, academic journals, and anthologies. Waugh touches on some of the great films of the gay film canon, from Taxi zum Klo to Kiss of the Spider Woman . He also discusses obscure guilty pleasures like Born A Man…Let Me Die A Woman , filmmakers such as Fassbinder and Eisenstein, and film personalities from Montgomery Clift to Patty Duke. Emerging from the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, Waugh traverses crises from censorship to AIDS, tackling mainstream pot-boilers along with art movies, documentaries, and avant-garde erotic videos. His words oscillate from anger and passion to wry wit and irony.