If you need just one excuse to go to this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, then this is it. It’s filmmaker Stephen Kijak highly anticipated (and long overdue) new documentary ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED. It promises to be a timely exploration of Hollywood and LGBTQ+ identity and examines the life of legendary actor Rock Hudson, from his public “ladies’ man” persona to his private life as a gay man.
Hudson was one of the most popular movie stars of his time, he had a screen career spanning more than three decades. Although he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Giant (alongside James Dean), it was as a major heartthrob for both women and gay men, that he won several Most Popular Male Star Awards.
After his film career started to wane Hudson successfully moved into television and his last role was as a guest star on the fifth season (1984–1985) of the primetime ABC soap opera Dynasty, until an AIDS-related illness made it impossible for him to continue.
The disclosure of Hudson’s AIDS diagnosis provoked widespread public discussion of his homosexuality., People magazine published a story that discussed his disease in the context of his sexuality. The largely sympathetic article featured comments from show business colleagues, such as Angie Dickinson, Robert Stack, and Mamie Van Doren, who claimed they knew about Hudson’s homosexuality and expressed their support for him. At that time, People had a circulation of more than 2.8 million, and, as a result of this and other stories, Hudson’s homosexuality became public.
The film is an intimate portrait of the Hollywood icon, whose death from AIDS in 1985 shocked the world and forced a shift in public perception of the pandemic. The film examines not only his cinematic & cultural legacy but takes a rare and sometimes heartbreaking look at his private life through interviews with close friends and former lover
Hudson’s life was the subject of Andrew Davies and Andre Schaefer‘s documentary Rock Hudson — Dark and Handsome Stranger in 2010 which Variety summed up succinctly as a ‘maddeningly reductive documentary.”
This new biography of Rock Hudson is examined in this relevant investigation of Hollywood and LGBTQ+ identity, from his public “ladies’ man” character to his private life as a gay man. Unmissable.
Screening at TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 11th, 12th & 18th June 2022
Labels: 2023, documentary, preview, Rock Hudson, Stephen Kijack, Tribeca
