Summing Up 2023

1. What did you do in 2023 that you'd never done before? 

I have never, ever purchased a new car before. But I did that this year. It was time. I also gave my old car away to a student.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? 

My resolution for 2023 was to work less for the university. I am not sure I really succeeded at this. I agreed to direct a play this year and that actually meant a lot more time working for the university, but I think that will partially pay off in 2024. This year I'm going to resolve to read more of my friends' books. I did some of that this year, and it was one of my favorite things I did all year. I also want to cook more vegetarian dishes.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? 

Maybe? But I haven't noticed any newborns around, so perhaps not.

4. Did anyone close to you die? 

The day before Thanksgiving, November 22nd, my mother passed away very suddenly. She had been sick very briefly with an e. coli infection, but no one suspected that her life was in danger, and her passing was very unexpected.

Since her death, so many of my friends have been really amazing and have reached out. I have appreciated all of this, and I have been overwhelmed with affection and very moved by everyone's kindness. 

My mother was a very good woman—many people at her memorial service and on social media have pointed out how much she liked to serve others, that she made life easier for other folks and helped them out in myriad ways. And this is all true. My mom went out of her way to be helpful for others, including an extraordinary period in the late 1990s when my mom was a caregiver both for her grandmother (with whom she had lived as a teenager) and my dad's father, who both moved in to live with us because of the medical care they needed. Mom was a very good reader, too, and for many years when I first began life as a writer I would send her my essays to proofread—she often helped me with proofing after graduate school was over. I remember this funny moment when I published an article in American Theatre for which I had been asked to write with a very specific style. She read a proof and texted me "It's very... journalistic?" I said "How dare you!" and agreed. I only say this because she had known my style well enough to know that this article was not it.

My mom and dad both have had a lot of trouble with me being a gay man. I know that such things can often be difficult for people who are serious about Christianity. This was hard on my relationship with my mom, and it was especially difficult for me emotionally when they voted against gay marriage in California (not because I'm into gay marriage or anything—I'm not, really—but because it meant that despite me having been an out gay man for a decade, they were still interested in voting against gay people). This is all much less hard for me now that I'm in my forties and have been on my own for a long time. But recently mom had become, if not less homophobic, at least more willing to push past it when speaking with me. She occasionally asked if I was seeing anyone and would talk to me in terms that acknowledged the life I've chosen. She also dutifully read all of my very gay scholarship; she would usually pronounce it "very interesting".

Mom's memorial service was about two weeks ago in St. Louis, Missouri, and I decided to drive there from Florida. I wanted to give myself time to think and clear my head on the way there. One of the things I reminded myself on the drive was that while I was in St. Louis I was going to hear lots of stories about my mother that I wouldn't really recognize, that there would be a portrait of my mother that was not the portrait I would paint if I were speaking about her. I wanted to prepare myself for that. And then while I was in St. Louis this turned out to be very helpful. So many people knew a different woman than I did. This is a good thing for all of us to remember. Our loved ones are many things to many people, and they are not ours. My mother loved many people and helped many people, and my version of her is not the same as theirs. I say that this is helpful to remember because it reminds me of the stoic approach to great losses like this one. I was not owed more time with my mother. She was someone I was given for a while. Who took time to care for me and raise me. And it is not my job to wish for more time with her. It is my job to be grateful to have known my mother for as long as I did, to be thankful for the time she gave me, and the time I was given with her.

5. What countries did you visit? 

None. But I did go to the Jersey shore for the first time.

6. What would you like to have in 2024 that you lacked in 2023? 

I need a new laptop. I bought myself one, but I am having trouble typing using diacritical marks, and I can't actually have a computer without being able to do that, so I think it might need to get sent back.

7. What dates from 2023 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 

On August 19, I flew up to the Buffalo area and then drove down to Ellicottville, New York for the wedding of Jude Flannelly and Steph Spry. I got to hang out with my dear friends Walter, Jeanne, Katie, Nick, Chris, and Matt. We drank a great deal, and partied with many people, and we let strangers stay in our AirBnB, and we just generally had an amazing time.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
My book Love Is Love Is Love: Broadway Musicals and LGBTQ Politics, 2010-2020 came out this March. The cover is not great, but I think the book itself is very good!

Directing Imogen Says Nothing for Florida State was a very cool experience. I first said no to directing this show, and I had been hoping to hire an FSU alumna to direct it, but it turned out we needed a director quickly to start design meetings and get to work, and so I agreed to do the show. We began design meetings in March, and I was very lucky to be able to work with Krista Franco as my scenic designer. Krista had designed my last two shows at Endstation Theatre Company, and she has been my friend for over a decade. So this was a gift. If you don't know this play, you're missing out. It's about a bear passing as a human in Shakespeare's England, and it's funny and surprising and violent and very, very smart.

Anyway, we cast the show in late August, and I was given a marvelous team. We had a blast working on it, and I got to spend time with my students here at FSU in a very different way than I have in a long time. It was very special, and I was very proud of them.

9. What was your biggest failure?

For basically the entire year, I was supposed to be working on a book manuscript for my editor, Gianna. I didn't work on this book manuscript and did other things instead, like directing a play and writing an article about the American Shakespeare Center. For me this was the right choice, but I felt guilty about it for most of 2023.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I really didn't! My new workout regimen has meant very tight shoulders, but it's nothing a little massage can't fix.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Gods forgive me, but I bought a Tesla. It was surprisingly affordable, and I needed a new car; I had been driving the same Honda Accord I bought used in 2010 for the last thirteen years. I made a calculation that Teslas are as cheap as they're going to be, and the U.S. government is still giving tax rebates on new electric vehicles, so this year was the time to do it. I got the car in August, and it's been honestly amazing. I love it. I charge it at home in my garage, and I never carry keys around anymore. I drove it to Saint Louis, and it's very comfortable to wheel around in.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Those activists and lawyers fighting drag bans and transantagonistic legislation in so many states.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

I have been the most appalled this year by the support by both of the major parties in the U.S. for the genocidal actions of the state of Israel. I was genuinely shocked – but ought not to have been – that President Biden was asking the U.S. Congress for monetary aid for Israel. I had to read that news item twice. Aid for Israel?

14. Which charitable organizations did you give to?

Boys and Girls Club of the West San Gabriel Valley

Wikimedia Foundation

Relief aid following the earthquake in Türkiye

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? 

Summer and the Orlando Fringe

Any time I have cocktails with Jason Regnier.

16. What song will always remind you of 2023? 

The song of 2023 is definitely that mournful Billie Eilish tune "What Was I Made For?"

It's not my favorite song of the year, but it feels very 2023 to me.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: 

a) happier or sadder? Happier. 

b) thinner or fatter? Thinner. 

c) richer or poorer? Richer. 

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

I honestly wish I had worked out more. I'm not really doing very poorly in this department, but I wish I had been better. It always makes me feel good (after it's over). I've been doing P90X3 lately. The workouts are only a half hour long, and they're packed with good stuff, including cardio with weights in your hands.

 

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? 

I spent way more time than I ought to have listening to certain colleagues of mine talk about their accomplishments without ever asking me a single question or considering my feelings. I need to do less of that in the new year.

20. How did you spend the Winter holidays? 

I was in St. Louis for 10 days or so for Mom's memorial, and I was able to spend some great time with family. I was very sorry not to be able to go to California this winter break, but my finances wouldn't really allow it, and I was glad I was able to hug and love on so many of my family members in Missouri while I was there. I baked lots of cookies and coffee cakes. I came back to Tallahassee about a week before Christmas, spent Christmas Eve having a beer with my friend Michael and then the evening at a party at my friends Chari & Tenley's house for jamón Serrano. Christmas Day I made a crazy good Ottolenghi bean mash situation and a spicy mushroom lasagna that was a Christmas project. It was a good day. I'm spending New Year's Eve at my friends Dave and Malia's house home with a movie.

21. Did you fall in love in 2023? 

I did not.

22. How many one-night stands? 

Several. I wish I had been better about this too, though. I should be bolder, braver, and take more risks in this department.

23. What was your favorite TV program? 

I don't like television, and basically I only watched Drag Race, but I actually watched rather a lot of Drag Race. Flagship season 15, of course, and then once the summer started I watched Canada's Drag Race season 2, Drag Race Italia season 1, Drag Race España season 2, which may be the best season I've seen thus far, RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars season 8, Canada's Drag Race season 3, Drag Race Philippines season 1, Drag Race Thailand season 1, RuPaul's Drag Race UK season 4, Canada's Drag Race: Canada vs. the World season 1, Drag Race Belgique season 1, Drag Race Thailand season 1, Drag Race Italia, season 2, and Drag Race Sverige. I've been trying to catch up on all of the international seasons, many of which I had/have missed. I made a spreadsheet of all of the seasons in order – yes, Mary, I made a spreadsheet; I'll share it if you want it – and I just began working my way through it. I'm still very behind, but I'm catching up. And damn there's some great drag. This show is so fun!

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? 

No. I've been pretty chill lately.

25. What was the best book you read? 

I keep track of this on GoodReads. Come join me over there! I had a goal of 125 books this year, and I have so far read 124. I do need to read a play today, so... maybe I'll make it, and maybe not. Anyway, the best book of the year for me was David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity. I also loved Carlo Ginzburg and Bruce Lincoln's Old Thiess, a Livonian Werewolf. I didn't read a lot of fiction I loved this year, but I did read Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar, finally, and it's great.

One of my favorite things I've been doing is reading early modern plays with my friend Michelle Liu Carriger. She and I read about 8 or 10 of these this year, including, what I think was a favorite of both of us: Thomas Middleton's The Second Maiden's Tragedy. It's totally insane, and it includes a weird necrophilia plot. Jacobean drama is bananas.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? 

I don't really listen to a lot of music aside from film scores and Philip Glass. But Carly Rae Jepsen's The Loveliest Time came out in 2023, and I've listened to that on a loop for the last six months. 

27. What was the best piece of theatre you saw? 

I didn't see a lot of theatre this year, either! This seems sort of crazy, I guess. But I did really like Terence Blanchard's Champion. I also really loved Shifted: a New Sci-fi Comedy by Annie Lovelock and Nic Stelter, which I saw at the Orlando Fringe.

28. What did you want and get? 

A painting by Lilian Garcia-Roig. I'm over the moon. It's called Rushing toward the Rapids, and she painted it at the Skykomish River in Washington.

29. What did you want and not get?

A visit with my mom this December. I had been planning to visit her in St. Louis as soon as the fall semester was over.

30. What was your favorite film of this year? 

The Eight Mountains. There are still forty or so films on my list to see for 2023, so this might change, but it has been a great year for movies. My top movies right now are The Eight Mountains, Oppenheimer, Of an Age, Past Lives, American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Afire, Alcarràs, and Under the Fig Trees.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 

I turned 42. I was in Minneapolis for the Mid-America Theatre Conference, and it was also the Sunday of the Oscars. My friends Jessica and Kate and I had breakfast, then Kate and I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, had a beer, picked up Chinese food, and then watched the Oscars in my Minneapolis hotel room.

32. What new recipes did you make this year?

I've been cooking more Indian food because of Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking, and I also made a few things from Ottolenghi's Flavor that have been insanely good. I'm promising myself to cook more from this book in 2024.

33. What were your cocktail obsessions? 

I'm still drinking a lot of Old Barrels. I'm also very into a Paper Plane.

34. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? 

I really wish Tallahassee had a dumpling place. I don't eat enough dim sum.

35. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2023? 

Bright white sneakers. Also, a tightly fitting polo will show off your guns if you have them.

36. What kept you sane?

Spending more time alone. Poems by Chen Chen. Senecan philosophy. Cocktails with Meredith and Jason. Kvetching with Elliott.

37. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Jelani Alladin

and

Barry Keoghan

38. What political issue stirred you the most?

People are really obsessed with trans people and transgender affirmative care. I can't say I give much thought to it; mostly because I believe people should be able to do what they want to with their own bodies whether doctors agree with them or not, but it seems especially insane to be disagreeing with people and their doctors just because what someone else is doing with her body makes you uncomfortable. But I find myself occasionally being asked to agree with flustered straight folks about trans issues, as if they imagine we can identify against trans folks as non-trans folks. No thanks. One thing I plan to start doing when straight people introduce trans issues into conversation is to stop the conversation and say, Before we continue, and before you and I disagree or agree on some particular issue regarding trans issues, I just want to say that I affirm that trans people exist, and that they ought to be able to exist in the world in whatever way they wish. We can talk about specific things, but I want to say that first and that anything else we say needs to be subordinate to this really basic assumption.

39. Whom did you miss?

Justin and Elizabeth and Ashley and Danny.

40. Who was the best new person you met?

Suhaila Meera

41. Tell us a valuable life-lesson you learned in 2023:

You really don't have to do everything. And if you ask for help, people will often help.

42. Share an important quotation from 2023:

One of my favorite things I did this year was to remind the undergraduates at the beginning of the Fall semester to say thank you to their teachers. I realized this year just how much my students take for granted and how hard my colleagues work (for not very much pay!), and I wanted to remind my students that no one has to go out of their way for them. Anyway, I'm going into 2024 feeling grateful, as well.

The Iron Claw (2023)

I had a rough time with most of The Iron Claw. I loathed the father and mother characters so much, and at the same time I was so in love with the brothers and their relationship. This made for very difficult watching. These four special and interesting characters protecting themselves from these two awful characters for so long but also buying into their judgments of them. Rough stuff. I found the film's first two acts miserable and difficult while I watched these assholes fuck up their kids. 

The ending of The Iron Claw – maybe the last 25 minutes or so – were really great. 

Actually, the whole thing was well done. I just didn’t have a very good time watching it. I wanted to punch that mother and father the whole fucking first two hours.

American Fiction (2023)

Cord Jefferson's American Fiction is the best screenplay of the year. This movie is so funny. It also has some fabulous performances. 

American Fiction surprised me constantly, and every time I thought the movie had moved into totally satirical territory, the script brought me back to a sensitive, human, real set of confusing feelings. This is a very good movie and I loved it. 

Extra kudos to Erika Alexander who I loved instantly and to Sterling K. Brown who is kind of miscast but is typically stellar.

Ferrari (2023)

This Ferrari script is a real mess. The acting is fine, but Driver is miscast (he’s waaaay too young) and Shailene Woodley should not be in this movie at all. Mostly the issue is the script. I’m just not sure what they were going for here.

Maestro (2023)

I think Maestro is a hard film to love. Its main character is difficult and inscrutable. And yet… Bradley Cooper's film does love him very much, and it’s very generous with him. I found this carefully and just a bit coldly (or perhaps I mean exactingly) directed. 

Here's one example of what I mean. After the premier of Bernstein's Mass Leonard and Felicia have a terrible fight while their kids are in the other room and the Thanksgiving Day parade is going on behind them outside the windows. It's kind of an amazing sequence because the camera gives us the entire thing in longshot. We never get access to their faces. It's as if the fight, even for the characters, is happening to someone else. We simply watch this fight unfold without being let in. And the sequence is not short, so this choice becomes very apparent very quickly.

Another example is the way the camera lingers with Leonard or Felicia when they make a difficult decision or tell a lie, and we sit there. Unlike, let's just say, the quick fade to black that we got with Coppola's Priscilla, Cooper makes his characters squirm. They have to sit and stew in their choices, deal with them, live with them. This happens several times, but one of my favorites is when Leonard lies to his oldest daughter about the rumors she's heard at school. Felicia tells him he has to lie to her, so he does, but then we watch what that has cost him.

There are many beautiful directorial choices like this involving light and shadow and other wonderful ways Cooper asks the camera to look at these characters, many of which I just wanted to applaud, even while sitting in my seat. My absolute favorite of these, though, is when Leonard returns to his lover David for the first time after spending a long weekend with Felicia and falling in love with her. He tells David that he and Felicia are off to lunch but that he should meet them for a drink later, and then he quickly apologizes I didn't mean to spring that on you... maybe that was insensitive of me. The camera, though, never goes to Leonard. We stay with David the whole time, we watch what this revelation means to him, and we watch him have to manage his own shock and grief so that he can be polite with Leonard in front of Felicia. It's an incredible scene.

I really liked Maestro and I respected it a lot. It’s wonderfully acted. Carey Mulligan is luminous. Bradley Cooper is wonderful. And I thought Matthew Bomer was excellent in his small part. Cooper’s direction is so exacting and careful. I find myself just in love with him and his choices more than the movie itself. This sounds like I didn’t like the movie. But I did. I liked it a lot! I just am finding it hard to love, perhaps because the man himself was so hard to handle once people chose to love him.

P.S. For people complaining that they wanted the movie to be more about Bernstein's music... ok, I guess. But it isn't about that; this movie is about Bernstein's relationship with Felicia Montealegre.

Poor Things (2023)

I thought Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things was rather boring, actually. 

I think … well, I don’t know, the whole thing felt too silly to take seriously in any real way. And some of the acting is horrible (especially Jerrod Carmichael). I liked Christopher Abbott and Ramy Youssef, and I guess I thought this had a few good ideas. But nothing much felt new here, despite the constant weirdness and the Frankenstein anatomies.

And why was it so long? There's an entire sequence where Bella goes back to her father–husband that contained no surprises or character development at all, despite the fact that Christopher Abbott was my favorite actor in the movie.

I'm a Lanthimos fan, but this was not great. That poster, though, is amazing.

Nimona (2023)

Listen, I liked that the main character was gay, but other than that this was not good. This film had almost no surprises, and despite having three very cool characters at its center, Nimona doesn’t make anything of them. They’re all two-dimensional, and every beat in the story is predictable. 

Worse yet, this is a film with a message. It’s an allegorical tale about police and the police state with a little helping of the 2020 George Floyd protests thrown in for good measure. 

Now, here’s the thing, I’m on the same side as this movie’s politics, but that made for very boring storytelling. And the jokes weren’t funny either.

I am glad Nick Bruno and Troy Quane made a gay thing. I'm glad they cast quite a few gay people (Chloë Grace Moretz, Eugene Yang, RuPaul, Julio Torres, Indya Moore), too. And I love Riz Ahmed and Beck Bennett. But I wish the gay thing they all made had, well, just been better.

Rustin (2023)

Rustin is a kind of animated Wikipedia entry on Bayard Rustin, with the entirety of Black Hollywood in small roles playing important historical personages. It ought to have been hard to dislike this movie, because it’s about Rustin, and the man was amazing, but the movie is just so ridiculous. The script is abysmally bad, and the direction is broad and cartoonish. The film’s treatment of homosexuality is especially ridiculous, behaving as if homosexuality should be legally protected and tolerated (but not more than that) while also behaving as if homosexual activity is dangerous and insidious and will ruin your life. Anyway I obviously wanted to love this, but it was very silly.

Napoleon (2023)

Insofar as Napoleon is about a petty and capricious emperor, bent only on military conquest and (apparently) producing a male heir, Ridley Scott’s film about Napoléon Bonaparte has several surprises up its decorated sleeves and boasts quite a few excellent battle sequences. As a film, however, Napoleon is frequently tedious, frustrating, and boring. The trouble is that the film doesn’t like its central character very much at all. In fact, Napoleon’s screenwriter thinks Bonaparte was a classless butcher, intent on destroying most of the citizens of Europe. Frankly I’m inclined to agree, but then the direction and the screenplay are rather at odds. The story of Napoléon Bonaparte has been given lavish, extraordinarily expensive treatment, and all of the character’s petty decisions and erotic peccadilloes have been presented in exquisite detail. All for us to judge him. The film seems especially and pruriently focused on his sexual inadequacies. 

Now, I am not so sure I know how to feel superior to the emperor of France, personally, but the film certainly does: it lets us know that the rulers of Austria, Prussia, and England are much more suited to governance than this grasping, ambitious Corsican, and it reduces Bonaparte, finally, to a series of mocking jokes.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

I really wanted to like Raven Jackson's All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, but boy oh boy is it boring. It looks cool visually, and probably would have been successful as a short film. But mostly this is trying to do a sort of Terrence Malick thing (but with only a whisper of a screenplay) or perhaps a Tsai Ming-Liang thing (but without the commitment to a still camera). Either way I was bored. And I’m afraid the movie really takes us nowhere.

The Seven-Ups (1973)

A solid police–gangster crime thriller made special by a truly stellar car chase sequence. This has one of the great movie cat chases of the 1970s. It’s French Connection level (a movie produced by the director of The Seven-Ups, Philip D'Antoni). Anyway this is worth a watch. It’s nicely plotted, boasts a good central performance by the always excellent Roy Schneider, another by the wonderful Tony Lo Bianca, and that car chase is great.

The Last American Hero (1973)

The Last American Hero is fun for a while, but it has an undertone of disappointment and inevitable darkness that felt very odd to me. I guess it’s the 1970s lonely man thing, but it was weird to see it in a movie about such a young person. Honestly, this doesn’t make The Last American Hero bad in any way, just unexpected given its mostly Smokey and the Bandit yee-haw sensibilities. Jeff Bridges is, of course, quite wonderful, and this movie comes between The Last Picture Show and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (his first two Oscar nominations).

Pastorale 1943 (1978)

Pastorale 1943 is a very intriguing portrait of the Dutch resistance movement into the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. It’s told in careful scenarios and the main characters are a high school teacher, a florist, and couple of other small town denizens. Wim Verstappen's movie is tense and scary and always very interesting but also occasionally stupid, petty, and awkward, rather like a Chekhov short story without any biting satire. There’s a Rutger Hauer cameo at the end that is absolutely glorious.

By Hook or by Crook (2001)

A landmark film in trans masculine representation. This is also funny, sexy, wacky, and very Gen X. Joan Jett sings the song over the credits – “Androgynous” – and also has a cameo as a woman who has a great time being robbed at a Costco.