Sure, you're all glued to HBO right now thanks to the season 3 premiere of Game of Thrones… but seriously, the best stuff has yet to come. Michael Douglas! Matt Damon! Feathers! Lipstick! Sequins! Champagne in the tub! It's almost time for Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, and this brief teaser is actually the first time we've been able to see any of it in action.
Granted, from the first photo of the two of them on set, and especially that bedazzled Entertainment Weekly cover, we've known we were in for something over-the-top here, but I love the way the teaser reflects it, with the feathers in close-up and the fancy script for the names of all the major players. The story told by the film is likely to be dramatic, with Damon as Liberace's much-younger lover Scott Thorson, who sued the performer for $113 million in 1982, after their relationship ended. Thorson actually filed a palimony suit, based on Liberace's promise to adopt Thorson-- one of the few ways in which two men could have their relationship legally recognized at the time.
It's a wild story, involving plastic surgery and drug use and a Rolls-Royce that Thorson drove onstage during Liberace's shows. Soderbergh, who says this will be the final film he directs, says that every Hollywood studio turned the film down for being "too gay." Are we in for something even more scandalous and over-the-top than True Blood and Game of Thrones? We sure hope so. Behind the Candelabra airs on HBO May 26.
