The short life and bloody death of British playwright Joe Orton, fitted into a sort of Star Is Born mold, with the Norman Maine role occupied by Orton's one-time lover, longer-time roommate, and eventual murderer, Kenneth Halliwell: himself a would-be actor-novelist-artist (in that chronological order), but relegated instead to maid and message-taker for the "outrageously funny" author of Loot and Entertaining Mr. Sloane. On screen, as never quite in life, Halliwell gets the better of it, however. This is partly the result of his having Alfred Molina to play him, while Orton has Gary Oldman (with a tucked chin and cocked head that suggest the roguish nonchalance of a pop balladeer); and partly, too, the result of his being the more playable role. Halliwell's careerlessness turns out in this sense to be an actual asset: there's less about him hidden from our view. On the other hand we know very well, although with very little actual evidence to go on, that Orton is up to a great deal more than just his perilous adventures with the likes of loiterers in public men's rooms. At those and other times the movie is prone to the diffuseness and pointlessness, the simple gossipiness and gawkingness, rampant in artists' biographies on screen. In other words, the main thing that makes Orton a worthier subject for a movie than countless other sexual outlaws and martyrs is the thing about him that has been left out entirely. But of course the work of a writer is notoriously more difficult to show on film than, say, the work of an actor and/or singer like Mrs. Norman Maine. So, in still other words, the thing that makes Orton a worthier subject for a movie is also the thing that makes him an unworthier subject. That might sound like a contradiction, but it doesn't look like one. With Vanessa Redgrave and Wallace Shawn; directed by Stephen Frears. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.