It's not just the occasional wide stance or salacious IM to an underage staffer or "I am a gay American" confession. Nor is it all Capitol Hill gossip and he said-he said rumors and secret hookups. By Kirby Dick's measure, closeted gay Republicans are as real and prevalent in politics as harried pages or tasteful suits, and this seemingly far-fetched premise comes to fierce and loathsome life in Dick's film Outrage, the documentary you are guaranteed to be hearing about long after Tribeca is over.
I'm going to do my best to get through this review with a minimum of gay puns, but to be fair, that would actually be true to the spirit of the film. Despite its ponderous title, Outrage actually takes an equally sarcastic and infuriated tone toward the hypocritical pols it targets. It gets a serious moral concern out of the way early, answering whether these men deserve the right to privacy with their sexual orientation with striking displays of their anti-gay voting record. Not only are these men's alleged homosexuality a fascinating explanation for their rigid anti-gay stance-- beat up the fag so you don't look like one-- but also a damning finger of hypocrisy pointed, in some cases, at the very heart of the conservative Republican movement.
The biggest fish Dick has to fry is Florida governor Charlie Crist, who was reportedly a strong contender for the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nomination, and conveniently got engaged in the middle of the vetting process, presumably to beef up his hetero credentials. As with most of the movie's targets-- former RNC chairman Ken Mehlmann, Rep, David Dreier, Larry Craig of course, and even former New York City mayor Ed Koch-- Dick doesn't out Crist with shocking photos or any words from the governor himself. Instead he uses both firsthand (often anonymous) sources, local reporters both in the mainstream and gay media, and perhaps most fascinating, interviews with a handful of openly gay politicians-- Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, former Arizona Representative Jim Kolbe, and of course, the gay American himself, former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey.
It's not that Frank or Kolbe or McGreevey or anyone else actually knows what goes on behind closed doors, of course. But the way they talk about the facts of living life as a closeted politician, all the benefits and challenges of keeping one's sexuality a secret, makes the closet the most likely explanation for these men with sketchy past marriages or lifelong bachelor status. Looking at footage of Crist as he goes on national talk shows or parades for the camera with his latest girlfriend, it seems coldly logical that a man would deny such a fundamental part of himself in pursuit of power.
Outrage isn't a perfect movie-- shots of anti-gay hate crimes are a little excessive-- but it's fascinating far beyond being a prurient look into some prominent bedrooms (which it really isn't). It's hard to know if the movie will have the cultural impact it's aiming for-- the film acknowledges that previous outings of politicians have been ignored or covered up by mainstream media. It'll probably be easy to ignore by the people who want to ignore it, but even if it's stuck preaching to the choir, Outrage is entertaining, effective, and well worth seeing, even if it's just to be up on all the gossip.
