WHO THE HELL IS JOE ORTON?
Joe Orton - a Lost Gay Icon?
I recently saw a small British film called Over the Edge. Its weird off-kilter sense of black comedy and unconventional gay characters reminded me of the plays and films of Joe Orton. Orton was an unbelievable trailblazer in 1960s British theatre. His irreverent, sexually-tinged, almost mean-spirited comedies should have been a flop in the socially conservative England, but instead his plays, “What the Butler Saw,” “Entertaining Mr. Sloane,” “The Ruffian on the Stair,” “Loot” were indeed absolutely shocking and controversial but huge hits with an audience ready to enter the modern era. At the height of his ascending fame, he was infamously murdered by his lover Kenneth Halliwell reportedly right before he was to meet the Beatles and present his script for their new film, Up Against It (which ends with all 4 Beatles naked in bed together.) His fame received a boost in the 1980s with the bio-film, Prick Up Your Ears with Gary Oldman playing the impish, sexually adventurous and prodigiously talented Orton. But ask a young homo today who is Joe Orton and 9 out of 10 times you’ll get a blank stare. What has happened to our gay history? This is really sad, because his work is still very current, just as outrageous and very funny today. Frustratingly, the only film adaptations of his plays are the classics, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, and Loot and BOTH are out of print in the USA. Even the film business has forgotten this amazing gay maverick.
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Posted on June 29, 2011, in Gay Comedies, Gay Film Classics and tagged Gay theatre, Joe Orton, Plays-to-film. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
I agree… Orton is a lost gay icon. I became aware of him in the 80′s when I was involved in stage productions of Loot, and Funeral Games. The excellent biopic Prick Up Your Ears (the title was a play on words/anagram for Prick Up Your Arse, from the biogrpahy of the same name by John Lahr) is available on DVD. The Orton Diaries is also another book I’d recommend, and it includes some of his letters and other activities only briefly mentioned in the film.
It is heartning to have a blogger raise the issue of gay history…and Orton was truly a ground breaker. His history came into light another generation ago in the New Wave music era of GB, Orton’s plays and films brought to life hip swinging London and the emerging gay identity, homosexuality having just been legalized. The hottest scene with Gary Oldman in Prick Up Your Ears is when a group of horny lads hoist the Orton character up on their shoulders to unscrew the light bulb in the ceiling of a London underground loo as a prelude to…Screwing!