Who says old gay guys can’t do it any more?
Critics have already hailed Call Me By Your Name as a masterpiece, and the film continues to rack up nominations and prizes even before a nationwide release.
But a closer look at the screenwriter behind the film makes that feat all the more remarkable. James Ivory, the California-born and out-queer writer/director has done some of his best work of his storied career at the tender age of 89 (just 72years older that Call Me‘s 17-year-old lead character, Elio Perlman, played by Timothee Chalamet, for those keeping track). In fact, the writer-director-producer has an additional four projects in various stages of development, signaling that he has no intention of slowing down any time soon.
Call Me By Your Name marks something of a departure for Ivory, who usually directs his own scripts. With Call Me By Your Name, he collaborates with out-gay Italian director Luca Guadagnino. Together, working from a novel by sexually fluid author Andre Aciman, Guadagnino and Ivory have crafted a coming-of-age masterpiece, and one about a gay man at that.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Ivory became known for his collaborations with his Indian producing partner and sometime boyfriend, Ismail Merchant. Together the pair produced a number of high-profile and Oscar winning films throughout the 1980s and 90s, which became known as a subgenre: Merchant-Ivory films. The Merchant-Ivory collaboration earned praise for lavish historical dramas critiquing English culture (neither Merchant nor Ivory is English, though their movies feel unabashedly European), and a reputation for costume drama tone. The incredibly naturalistic, erotic and sensual tone of Call Me is definitely a departure that audiences will welcome.
At the same time, Call Me fits as a natural evolution of Ivory’s filmography. Especially those produced by Merchant, his films focus on characters enslaved by societal expectations, suppressed emotions and strict class and gender conduct. The drama in Call Me throbs with all of these themes–feelings that queer people have long struggled with–but in a more liberated time and place.
In that sense, all of Ivory’s seminal movies have a sneaking queer current, sometimes literal, and others, metaphorical. That Ivory doesn’t get mentioned alongside other queer filmmakers like Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), Vincentte Minnelli (Meet Me in St. Louis), John Waters (Hairspray) or Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) is a gross injustice. Moreover, Ivory has spent his entire career as an out-gay man, even during the era of AIDS, the Moral Majority and Reagan, when coming out could mean career suicide for a filmmaker. (Ivory was one of the earliest critics of serial sexual assailant Harvey Weinstein as a bully and “asshole.”)
Since three time Oscar nominee octogenarian Ivory seems poised to score a fourth with his screenplay for Call Me By Your Name, we thought we’d take a retrospective look at the career of this revolutionary but often overlooked queer cinematic luminary.
Pour a glass of fine wine to go with slab of well aged cheese and grab the Kleenex (trust us) to have a look-see at the essential work of the great James Ivory.
1. Call Me By Your Name
This tender coming-of-age tale of desire, coming out and heartache has already sparked a good deal of discussion over its attractive leads, and career-making performances (including a reduced supporting turn by Armie Hammer’s scrotum). Yet the film’s honesty and bittersweetness in telling a queer love story sets Call Me By Your Name apart from other films in the genre. Critics are citing it as Ivory’s sensual masterpiece as a writer.
2. Maurice
Speaking of the gays, Ivory directed this tear-jerking period piece about a gay man trying to live an out life in heavily-repressed post-World War I Britain. Based on an incendiary novel by gay writer E.M. Forester, Maurice features hunky James Wilby in the title role and a gorgeous Hugh Grant as his boyfriend. Furthermore, Maurice features a happy ending—something unheard of in films about gay characters at the time, and revolutionary in its source novel. Ivory observed that the illegality of homosexuality kept the novel unpublished during Forester’s lifetime, because “if he’d published the novel with homosexual acts in which these criminals had a happy ending, he thought he’d be arrested for obscenity.”
3. A Room With a View
Ivory issued a scathing indictment of the British class system with this adaptation of another E.M. Forester novel that explored the director’s standard themes: unsaid love, hypocrisy, desire and liberation. With a cast that includes Maggie Smith, Daniel Day-Lewis and Judi Dench, A Room With A View made Helena Bonham Carter into a full-fledged star, and nabbed Ivory a Best Director Oscar nomination.
Related: Is this gay sex scene in ‘Call Me By Your Name’ the hottest ever to hit the big screen?
4. Howard’s End
Emma Thompson took home a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as a heiress robbed of her inheritance in yet another adaptation of an E.M Forester novel. Ivory directed from a script by longtime screenwriting collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, attacking hypocrisies among the English social classes, and giving Thompson and Anthony Hopkins each one of their best roles. And that, folks, says something.
5. The Remains of the Day
Thompson and Hopkins struck again, as did Ivory with this heartbreaking drama about unrequited love between a butler and a housekeeper—two people who bury their feelings as a means of survival in war torn Britain. Though Hopkins, Thompson and Ivory all scored deserved Oscar nominations, today the film has another treasure: a fantastic performance by the late Christopher Reeve, which sparked a comeback as an indie film darling before his tragic accident derailed his career.
6. The Wild Party
This forgotten musical, itself an adaptation of the epic poem that spawned two more musicals—one on Broadway, one off—plays as an ode to and condemnation of Old Hollywood decadence. Featuring one of Raquel Welch’s best roles, The Wild Party, though flawed, deserves a look.
Oh, and it has an epic orgy scene. So, there’s that.
mrjeremito
The short answer is “no”. His masterpiece is “Maurice.” But “Call Me By Your Name” is a solid adaption.
DCguy
This post says that the author of “Call Me By Your Name” is “Sexually Fluid.
Where did they get this information? The author says in the interview about the book…….
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“You have no idea what’s going to come out, but you want to follow it.
And sometimes it gives you a thrill to follow it: “Oh my God, my God, I’m writing a gay sex story and what do I know about gay sex?” I didn’t know anything! So I’m writing about it, and then I have the scene with the peach [a scene in Call Me by Your Name that’s both very tender and very raunchy]. Now, are you serious? Have I ever done anything like that? Never! Would I? Never! Okay?”
—————–
Just wondering since one of his interviews was even titled something along the lines of “How can a straight man write such a good gay love story?”
As for the list, I think you were right on the money. Maurice was number 1 but this one may have bumped it.
JaredMacBride
Ivory was not the screenwriter on any of the listed movies except Maurice and Call Me By Your Name, two good bot very overwrought melodramas.
Ryan Field
I have no problem with any book or film that tackles a sensitive subject. I despise censorship of any kind. But my problem with Call Me By Your Name is that it’s a story about predatory behavior and it’s being called a love story instead. And it’s being called a gay romance. This is not gay romance. This is not gay love. There’s nothing gay about this movie. It’s a heteronormative POV with gay content about a 24 year old and a barely legal 17 year old. If they were honest and up front about that I wouldn’t even be commenting right now. But don’t tell me this movie is one thing when I know it’s something else. This really is a good example of the old saying, “Don’t pee in my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
Bob LaBlah
Down here we say “don’t piss down my neck and try to tell me its raining.” You must be from Los Angeles.
jcoberkrom
Have you seen the movie. The father’s monologue sums it all up quite well.
OzJosh
You’re obviously a deranged right-wing, christian nutter who has not seen the movie. Not a single thing you say is justified. First, you can call 17 “barely legal” if that gets you hard, but it’s still legal – and legal in just about every country in the world. And where the story takes place – Italy – the age of consent is actually 14. So legal, legal, legal. Also, anyone who thinks sex between a 17-year-old and a 24-year-old is somehow transgressive and shocking must be extremely screwed up about sex and have absolutely zero idea of a 17-year-old’s sexuality, and ability to consent. Finally, if you had seen the movie, you would know that they only behaviour that could possibly be called predatory comes from Elio, the 17-year-old. He pursues and propositions Oliver, who is reticent and cautious, and there is very clear consent before there is any sex. Now, please, get a life.
OzJosh
I would also love to see how you justify the notion that it’s a “heteronormative POV”. The movie was written by a gay man, directed by a gay man, and told largely from the POV of a teen whose emerging sexuality takes him from flirting with girls to being completely and utterly besotted, then lovesick over his first gay love. And the subtext is that this is also the emergence of his identity as a gay man. It is very much a gay love story.
cancorv
Thank you to all the people who’ve replied to Ryan Field. His response is curious to say the least. And I can’t help thinking, a little sad.
crowebobby
Homosexuality is a mental illness in any configuration, Ryan, be it man and man, boy and boy or man and boy. So don’t try to convince yourself that sodomy between yourself and another adult is a less vile abomination or less heinous insult to God than the same filthy perversion between a man and a youth is. The unassailable, unequivocal, and irrefutable Word of our only Lord and Savior has made that emphatically clear and woe betide he who would seek to dilute or pervert His admonitions.
(Of course I’m talking a load of shit. But so are you.)
Bob LaBlah
I saw the preview for this when I went to see Darkest Hour last week and wasn’t impressed at all.
Giandorko86
Who in the pluck cares…..seriously
Bob LaBlah
Obviously you must care. You responded to it. Didn’t think that far out, huh? Its to be expected. Regardless of the name change your comment proves the nut didn’t fall to far from the tree.
He BGB
Well has anyone here actually SEEN it yet? I haven’t yet. It finally arrived in my city though. I get the feeling I got overly excited about it, it has been hyped like crazy, and will be disappointed. The book seemed to be more about 2 horny straight guys so I didn’t finish it. Since it is referred to as “bittersweet” I think that is a spoiler.
cancorv
Hi He BGB, I’m sorry you didn’t finish the book. I found it astounding and could barely put the it down and at the same didn’t want to finish it. And when I did I didn’t want to speak to anyone for about 2 days. Long before I heard about the film and Ivory’s involvement in it, it read like the glorious 1980s Merchant Ivory films that my partner and drooled over in our 20s. I’d encourage you to give it a second chance. The imagery, the story, the setting and above all the language are superb. But of course, it depends where you’re coming from – we all respond to things in our own ways, with our own baggage.
jcoberkrom
I am a James Ivory fan to say the least, but alas, I don’t know whether it was the screenplay, direction or editing, but it could have been better – if shorter.
Having said that the acting is the best. You soon quit looking at the half naked bodies and see the personas that embodies them.
Also, the monologue by the father towards the end of play not only spoke volumes, it went to the heart.
The arts don’t make you think they make you feel! This movie will make you feel.
OzJosh
Ivory’s screenplay is certainly a masterpiece of restraint. But thank god he didn’t direct the film. For one thing, he wanted to cast Shia LaBouf – an actor with zero sex appeal – as Oliver. He also wanted to make the sex much more explicit, which would almost certainly have resulted in it being a niche gay film.
Umoja
This is a lovely-to-watch movie, but it is only because it is elevated by the actors. It is not a masterpiece in storytelling. However it does convey the secrecy of desire very well – the romance itself is very abrupt and an anti-climax that isn’t really warranted by how wonderful and inclusive, intelligent, open and communicative Elio’s parents are.
Unsatisfying resolution. Also, it commits the crime of having hetero sex scenes that are more explicit than the gay sex scenes and I always find this to be a horrid mark of shame and internalised/externalised homophobia.
mz.sam
Well said, Ryan Field. This is an over-hyped gay-themed movie was made palatable for bi and open-minded straight audiences. There are many superior but overlooked gay independent films that went straight to DVD due to the lack of industry financial backing. Call/Name doesn’t come close to the much critical acclaimed Oscar winner Moonlight, a true masterpiece in filmmaking.
cancorv
Yes mz.sam – I too am a little concerned about the hype this film is receiving. Personally, I don’t mind if films are made palatable for a wide audience (as you say) – sometimes I even feel that it’s telling my side of the story to people who might otherwise not understand, or be on side. I was astounded Moonlight won the Oscar because it seemed too non-commercial, by which I mean it didn’t speak a film language that the majority of cinema-goers speak (not that I’ve done any research – just a hunch). And I heard that the Guardian voted Call me by your Name its numero uno this year, which makes wonder if it’s not on the march to the Oscars. Imagine two gay films being consecutive Oscar winners. (this is not a coherent message. I apologise in advance)