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Elaine was once a screenwriter herself, who long ago betrayed her art and sold out to Hollywood. The introduction of the artistically virtuous Robert into her life triggers the release of her, long buried inner self-guilt. She also finds herself strangely drawn towards Robert – even though he is gay. Her attraction to him is some kind of highly destructive combination of sexual lust, love/hate, and a rich, bored housewife's trouble-making urge to snoop and meddle in other peoples' affairs. Elaine's transformation, and especially her emotional state after learning of her husband's homosexuality, are also fully explored with great nuance and heart by the talented Clarkson.

The casting in The Dying Gaul is superb. For all three leading parts, the filmmakers managed to find actors who could successfully create and put across not just believable, but truly archetypical--even iconic-- characterizations of their roles. In watching this movie, I was struck numerous times by how much the characters reminded me of similar people I've known in my life. The Dying Gaul caused me to dredge up all kinds of deeply unsettling, powerful memories from my past, especially from my own moral and psychological development as a gay man learning to deal with the straight world around me.

I believe many gay viewers will also experience a disquieting emotional resonance from this film. Many of us have had, at some time in our lives, an affair of some kind with a closeted, or even married man. Watching The Dying Gaul leaves a person thinking about one's own secret, often-buried psychosexual remembrances. After the film, I noticed many people leaving the theater in a kind of thoughtful silence. I left that way, too.

The Dying Gaul plunges down and dredges up a whole netherworld of libidinous, subconscious, Jungian-type matters lying at the core of both heterosexuals' and homosexuals' worlds. Most significant are the film's explorations of the psychosexual sub-strata lurking beneath the social interactions between hetero and homo worlds.

The movie delves into the motives of the self-proclaimed bisexual Jeffrey, who keeps his homosexual love affair secret from his wife. The film also addresses, for lack of a better word, “fag-hag” issues, as Jeffrey's wife Elaine exhibits an exceptionally strong attraction to the out gay Robert. It touches on the psychology of mercy killing; on the power of sex to tear away masks; on the culture of internet sex chat sites

As the entire setting of The Dying Gaul is the Hollywood film industry itself, the movie sends a powerful “Don't Tread On Us” message for real filmmakers on issues of gay artistic empowerment. There are harsh lessons to learn on all sides when the thoughts, feelings, creativity and/or personal memories of gays are not taken seriously, when gay sensibilities are dismissed as something lesser than hetero sensibilities, when gay artists are exploited and/or allow themselves to be exploited, and when any artist gives into self-deception and/or not being true to oneself.

When all its characters' inner secrets finally become exposed, The Dying Gaul finishes with a sudden, emotional train-wreck of an ending. In classic Oedipus Rex fashion, such a finale leaves audiences feeling as though they've just fallen off a cliff.

It is interesting to note that it is the self-deceiving Jeffrey who, in the beginning of the film doesn't understand the meaning of The Dying Gaul as a name for Robert's screenplay. Yet it is Jeffrey who assumes the physical position of the famous tragic statue at the very end, in effect becoming The Dying Gaul himself.

My criticisms of this film are few and slight. I did feel the first half of the film plays better than its second half. I was more engrossed by being drawn into all of the movie's intrigues than I was once everyone's cards were out on the table. Several dream-sequence type soliloquies delivered by actors looking right into the camera are a bit over-baked and not entirely professional looking.

While lead character Robert is understandably not quite in his right mind throughout the film, I found it a bit of a stretch that he could not deduce the identity of his mysterious internet chat buddy in some very pivotal scenes (he had enough clues).

The Dying Gaul director/screenwriter Paul Lucas was nominated for Broadway's 1990 Tony Award as author of Best Play nominee Prelude to a Kiss and again in 2005 for writing the book for Light in the Piazza. Though primarily known as a writer, Lucas began his career as an actor, in the chorus of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

He received the 2004 OBIE for Best American Play for Small Tragedy and the 2003 New York Film Critics Circle Award for his screenplay The Secret Lives of Dentists. His other plays include Stranger, God's Heart, Blue Window, Reckless and Missing Persons. He wrote the opera libretto to Orpheus in Love (composer Gerald Busby) and the book for the musical Three Postcards (composer/lyricist Craig Carnelia) with Norman René. Lucas created the musical Marry Me a Little, which featured songs by Stephen Sondheim. His additional screenwriting credits include Longtime Companion, for which he received the Sundance Audience Award.

Lucas has received the Distinguished Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 2003 PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for mid-career achievement among other honors. He has been awarded Guggenheim, Rockefeller and NEA/TCG Fellowships. He is partnered with set designer John McDermott.

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