Gary M. Kramer loves movies. The prolific freelancer is a contributing writer to alternative queer weeklies including, Gay City News in New York City, The San Francisco Bay Times and our very own PGN. His work also appears on the websites Salon, Slant, Bomb and Cinedelphia. He has authored, edited and contributed to several books, including most recently “The Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.” As one reviewer noted: “Gary Kramer notices things I never caught, making me want to go back and watch the films again.”
PGN: What was the first LGBT film you ever saw?
GMK: “The Times of Harvey Milk” at the Orson Welles Cinema in Boston. I was 16 and I was so nervous that I pretended that I was going to see a Woody Allen movie and when that was sold out I said, “OK, I guess I’ll just have to see that other film about Harvey Milk … ” It was incredible and inspiring, the best choice I could have picked for my first LGBT film.
PGN: What drove you to see it?
GMK: Back then it definitely wasn’t OK to be gay and I wanted to see something that would show me queer life in a positive light. I wanted to see something that would inspire me and it did. I didn’t come out, but it certainly made me want to learn more about the community. That same summer Andy Warhol movies were playing and Pedro Almodóvar movies were the rage and I saw them too, but they never had that same inspirational quality that Harvey Milk did.
PGN: When did you become aware that you might be gay?
GMK: I think it was in the fourth grade. I realized that my friendships were probably a little more intense for me than was appropriate for polite society.
PGN: How did you go from realizing that something was up to going by yourself to see a documentary about Harvey Milk?
GMK: At about 12, I was already into films and I would go see anything and everything. I gravitated to the smaller, independent films. I preferred the quiet slice-of-life movies versus “Star Wars” and the big blockbusters that everyone else was into. The more I read and got into those types of films, the more I started seeing myself represented on screen. I think in many ways you are what you watch, and yes, I liked to go to films about things that I knew nothing about to educate myself, but there was always a quality of humanism to them that made me want to seek out LGBT films. I remember seeing “My Beautiful Launderette,” I remember seeing “Desert Hearts” and several of Almodóvar’s early movies and a lot of independent foreign films. I identified with the stories and they helped me learn about life. I mean “Longtime Companion” and “Parting Glances” were key films when I was in college. [Laughs] I remember seeing “Edge of Seventeen” and hating it and then years later seeing it again and recognizing that I disliked it so much because it was my life at the time! Not my life exactly but I resonated with the character so much, I denied it.
PGN: Speak a little about the power of film to open up hearts and minds to other ideas and cultures.
GMK: As I said, I believe the silver screen is a mirror. Some people watch movies to escape but I really want to think when I go to the movies, I want to be provoked and stimulated. Even if I hate a movie, I appreciate it if it makes me think. I don’t like being bored or feeling like I’ve seen it before. I want something that will resonate with me. That’s why I gravitate to independent films, queer independent films in particular, and spend so much time thinking about and analyzing them, to understand the universal experience of what being gay is.
PGN: What were you doing in Boston at 16? Are you from Btown?
GMK: No, I grew up here. I was doing a summer internship at Harvard. It was great, I was on my own and able to do what I wanted, so I must have seen about 150 movies that summer. I went to seven in one day!
PGN: Wow! And tell me about the fam.
GMK: My father was a teacher, an archeologist, and my mom was an interior designer and then switched to travel so that she could coordinate the trips my father was taking. We traveled a lot when I was a kid; we lived in Mexico for months at a time. I developed a passion for Latin culture from living in the Yucatan and climbing pyramids when I was 5. It was extraordinary and I loved it. My father was not Indiana Jones, but Pennsylvania Kramer.
PGN: Any siblings?
GMK: Yes, a twin and a younger brother. My twin still lives near where we grew up with his wife and kids.
PGN: Any fun twin things? Ever switch up?
GMK: We’re very close and similar in a lot of ways. We feel each other’s emotions because we know each other very well. I’m a little more creative whereas he works more in the financial arena. And yes, once in third grade we switched for half a day. I think we fooled a couple of people.
PGN: Where did you go to college?
GMK: University of Rochester. But I did a year abroad at the University of Kent in Canterbury, which was truly incredible. I still have friends from that time, including one I email every day.
PGN: What made it so magical?
GMK: Films are my passion but books are too and that year really renewed my interest in books. I learned a real appreciation for 19th-century European realist literature. I worked in publishing for a while after that. I am a publicist for Temple University Press, and have worked in various facets of publishing, for trade houses or university presses over the years. I worked in advertising for a time and at a business magazine for a short time.
PGN: When did you start writing about films?
GMK: At 16. I wrote about “The Color Purple,” “Witness” and “Kiss of the Spiderwoman” for an arts journal for high-school students. I took those pieces to the Chestnut Hill Local, they liked them and I started doing regular film reviews. I graduated and continued to work for them for many years. In 2000, I struck out and became a freelance writer because there was a whole big world out there and a thing called the interweb that allowed me to publish in Hawaii and Las Vegas and all over the country. And it brought me to the work I do now.
PGN: Describe what you do.
GMK: It’s funny, somebody once said I was a showbiz correspondent, which I thought was a really great term. I do a lot of celebrity interviews for Salon.com, I’ll also do listicles on crazy topics and the occasional review.
PGN: You also became known for your compilation, “Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews.”
GMK: Yeah, I did a collection of essays, reviews and interviews that was well-received. I got a commission for a sequel along with an advance but about a week after I submitted the manuscript, the publishing house folded. I got to keep the advance but the book never got published! I have enough material for an updated version but right now it’s on the back burner.
PGN: Because you have a new book just out!
GMK: Yes. It’s “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina 2.” I have a friend, Beatriz Urraca, who is very involved in the Argentine film world and she co-authored with me. We’ve done another book together and taught classes at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute and we have another course coming out in the spring. I love Argentine cinema. There’s a lot of it and it’s really good.
PGN: And how did a nice Jewish boy from Philadelphia get so involved with Latin cinema?
GMK: When I was young, my mother gave me a book by Tina Rosenberg called “Children of Cain” and it had six chapters on Latin-American life, politics and crime. I’m not sure why she gave it to me but the Argentine story in the book was about a guy who infiltrated the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, who were the women whose children disappeared in the late’70s. The story struck me so deeply that I got interested in Argentine life and culture. Even though it was far removed from my experience, something about it resonated with me. I started going to a lot of Latin-American films. “The Official Story” had come out …
PGN: I remember that film. Powerful. What are some of the highlights of the book?
GMK: I’m especially proud of the queer chapter. I co-wrote the introduction and I have an interview in the book with filmmaker Marco Berger; I really love his work and through that I was able to book other interviews. There are a lot of really exciting gay movies and filmmakers coming out of Argentina.
PGN: With your love of cinema, especially foreign films, how much do you cringe when someone says, “Oh, I don’t like reading subtitles … ”?
GMK: I know people like that! There are ways around it. I was just telling a friend about the film “C.R.A.Z.Y.” Have you seen it? It’s extraordinary beyond measure. The first time I saw it I was fine the first two hours and cried the last 10 minutes; the last time I saw it, I was fine the first 10 minutes and cried the next two hours. My friend started to balk because it was subtitled but I told him he just had to get over it for this film.
PGN: You cover so many different topics other than film, including how to have a great gay wedding. What prompts the topics?
GMK: Both of my brothers got married and my mom got remarried in a 12-month period. I was best man for all three so I became an expert on all things wedding-related and wrote about it for the Jewish Exponent. I learned to dance for one column, I did a whole thing on tuxedos, I wrote about skin care for brides. Pretty much give me a topic and I’ll dive in.
PGN: How do you strike a balance between informing the reader and not giving too much away?
GMK: For me, writing a review is about managing the audience’s expectations. I don’t like to tell too much and I really try to avoid spoilers, to the point that I joke that I won’t even tell you what happens to JFK or Lincoln at the end. I want the person reading to be enticed to go see the film. I’ll let them know if it’s a talky film, or if it’s lyrical or poetic (which is code for boring). If you’re expecting the “Fast and the Furious” and it’s Terrence Malick, you’re not going to enjoy it. Especially writing for PGN, people want to know why a certain film will resonate with them.
PGN: That sounds like real estate, like where “cozy” means the place is small. What are others?
GMK: Deliberate means it’s slow, but I love slow films; you can get caught up in someone’s world, you just have to have patience. Non-narrative or non-linear means experimental or whacky. But people shouldn’t be afraid to do some work. I like very high-brow or very low-brow culture in films. My secret shame? I loved “Dirty Grandpa,” I really did. It’s that boring middle I can’t stand, the movies where they spoon feed everything to you so you don’t have to think. I love a character who makes increasingly bad decisions better than the hero. When they try to jerk your tears out of you, it can be effective but it doesn’t do anything for me. Ambiguity to me is the sign of a thoughtful director; they make you think and interpret what’s going on. It’s why I like doing interviews, because with a good film, three different people will have three different takes on the story.
PGN: The most overrated and underrated stars?
GMK: Most overrated? Meryl Streep, hands down. I just wrote an essay about how much I dislike Meryl Streep and her over-the-top, scene-chewing antics. She’s just become a mimic and she doesn’t give honest performances anymore. She impersonates rather than inhabits characters and it’s boring. The most underrated? Tilda Swinton, though she’s got more of a cache now. Javier Bardem, he’s gotten more recognition since he won an Oscar but I’ve been a fan for many years. “The Dancer Upstairs” was an extraordinary film, one of the three best from the past decade. Gael García Bernal is also phenomenal. I stalked him for about nine years. I tried numerous times to interview him and something always kept it from happening. Two years ago I was at Telluride and he was there with a film and still somehow I never saw him. This year I finally got to talk to him and that interview will be out this weekend. It was worth the wait.
PGN: What was the worst celebrity encounter?
GMK: Ashley Judd. It was for her first movie, “Ruby in Paradise,” and they gave us a list of things we couldn’t ask. I thought as an up-and-coming actress she’s be interested in talking about her film and her work, but no. She was difficult. It’s another reason I gravitate to more independent films and filmmakers. They’re much more interesting and the answers don’t sound like a canned Hollywood press release. Not that I haven’t gotten great interviews from some big names. I once interviewed Sarah Jessica Parker about some silly rom-com she was in and she turned me onto a great book she was reading, which enhanced my appreciation of her. I like getting to hear about the secrets they bring to the work, the depth they show.
PGN: What’s your favorite holiday film?
GMK: “C.R.A.Z.Y.,” the film I mentioned earlier. It’s not a Christmas movie per se but the main character was born on Christmas Day.
PGN: Have you been on a movie set?
GMK: I have. I was in Tiona McClodden’s film “Bumming Cigarettes.” I was supposed to just sit in an HIV clinic reading a magazine but the day of she said, “Wait, I have a better part for you” and had me stand outside the restaurant Knock and refuse to give the main character a cigarette. I later found out at the screening of the film that I was playing a male prostitute! If I’d known I would have done some research for the character, but she told me I threw great shade. So my character was Trade Throwing Shade.
PGN: What’s the best thing about being a film guy?
GMK: I love the opportunities I have to meet people and talk to them about their work. When I became a freelancer, it allowed me to pick and choose the projects I wanted to work on. I can follow my curiosity that developed back when I saw Harvey Milk. It’s a pretty wonderful life.
For more information about “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina 2,” visit www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/D/bo25031790.html.
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