Movie Reviews: Leslie Jordan's Trip Down "The Pink Carpet" is Worth Taking, and "The Adonis Factor" Provokes

Is there anyone who doesn't like Leslie Jordan?

No, seriously. Is there? It's a cliche to call him America's answer to Quentin Crisp, but there are definitely similarities. It's not his demeanor I'm taking about — it's the fact that he knows, and is completely comfortable with, exactly who he is. And he's so authentic to that person that it's actually really difficult for me to imagine anyone, gay or straight, not loving him.

Jordan is the star of a new film, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, now out on DVD, and the bad news is that this is just a taping of his a one-man show — a stage show that was pretty bare-bones to begin with. I'll say upfront that while actors may love their one-man shows (for obvious reasons), I generally don't. Satisfying theater is all about dramatic tension, and it's almost impossible to generate much tension with only one person on stage. One-person shows are basically a person talking for ninety minutes.

But Pink Carpet works anyway, mostly because the person doing the talking here is someone as interesting and funny as Jordan.

He isn't what I expected. In the show, he is, by turns, impish, bitter, foul-mouthed, bitchy, air head-y, raunchy, angry, and — guess what? — ultimately, very thoughtful. Jordan's harmless gay-buffoon act is just that: an act. It's easy to get distracted by the quips and the over-the-top guest spots he did on Will & Grace (where he won an Emmy for playing Karen's rival, Beverley Leslie), but he's clearly very, very smart.

He also has a heart as big as all of America.

Jordan's own story is pretty by-the-numbers as celebrity stories go (rejection, humilation, drugs, triumph). But what makes it work is (a) the sometimes funny, sometimes surprising celebrity anecdotes (about George Clooney, Cloris Leachman, Faye Dunaway, Beverly D'Angelo, and others); (b) Jordan's own intelligence and genuine wit; and (c) his willingness to completely bare his soul.

Jordan's story is partly universal — it's about finding yourself and sticking to your dream — but it's also very specifically gay, especially for men of a certain generation. Who could hate himself more than an effeminate gay man born in the 1950s? Jordan's answer may surprise you, and it goes a long way in explaining how he turned his own self-hatred into love.

I said I didn't like one-person shows because there's only one person on the stage. Well, there's only one person on stage in My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, but boy is he there. I defy you not to be enamored.

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Are gay men obsessed with the way we look? If so, why — and what are the costs? And how much are we driving the culture at large when it comes to the relatively new (or rediscovered) interest in male looks?

Director Christopher Hines explores these questions in a new documentary, The Adonis Factor, a follow-up to his previous film, The Butch Factor.

Hines gets a lot of different perspectives from a lot of different gay men, exploring their attitudes and opinions about the way they look, and the gay community's attitudes about looks in general. It's a diverse bunch of men, some of whom are almost jaw-droppingly superficial. Others, including at least one porn star, have a much broader perspective.

It's an interesting discussion, even if a lot of it reinforces the most extreme stereotypes of gay men as catty and superficial. Still, whether it's intentional by the filmmaker or not, the movie leaves the distinct impression that those who are least obsessed with their looks are the ones who are happiest with themselves and their lives.

My quibbles? I think the movie overstates its case, and the degree to which gay men in the urban club and gym scenes represent "the gay community." It mostly focuses on Los Angeles, which is truly a world apart — for gay people and straight people. Plenty of gay men happily exist outside the Los Angeles bubble — and not just the bears, who are presented as sort of a reaction to the rest of the gay community's obsession with looks.

Then again, the fact that many gay men do tend to act this way when they gather together in groups must mean something.

Because the movie lets the men mostly do the talking for themselves, it also sometimes has something of a "college paper" feel to it: present an opening thesis followed by a bunch of different arguments, and then just kinda wrap things up at the end. I appreciate the movie's point-of-view is that it doesn't really take a point-of-view — that's a perfectly valid perspective for a documentary to take. But I suspect its lack of coherence, and a strong central "point" or driving metaphor, will keep it confined mostly to gay and bisexual male viewers, with little cross-over to the community at large.

Still, there is much food-for-thought here of a topic that is often referred to by gay folks, but is rarely frankly discussed.