#loeb and leopold

[laurelwen]

Interview with Gregory Read (director of Like Minds)

So, I had to transcribe this so I can use it for some new Like Minds content I'm working on (analysis), so I figured I might as well share the work with all of you. Ngl, I laughed and laughed at him saying he didn't want the characters to be gay. Honey, did you even watch these scenes as you were filming?

He had to die.  It was a necessary means to an end.

Read:  What I was interested in was looking into juvenile psychology and looking at why do we have sociopaths in our society.

Narrator:  17 year old Alex, played by Eddie Redmayne, is charged with the murder of his friend Nigel (Tom Sturridge).  Lacking any substantial evidence, the police call in forensic psychologist, Sally Rowe (Toni Collette) to help prove his guilt.  But what she discovers is a tangled friendship full of enigma. 

"Why do you want to know what I believe in?"

"It'd be a good place to start."

"Gestalt."

"Gestalt..."

"An organized whole in which each individual part affects every other, but the whole being more important than the sum of its parts."

"Yeah, I'm familiar with first year psychology theory.  Should I be impressed?"

"It's not what it is.  It's how you use it."

Read:  I found this great paper on gestalt psychology and it was really fascinating.  It was such a...almost like a door opening to me, because it started talking about how you can have two sociopaths that can come together into a close environment and then create something bigger between themselves.

Have you ever had that feeling that there was someone inside your head, listening to your thoughts?  I read this article on twinning, about how two people can communicate across countries, through their minds.  There was something about this guy.

Read:  I was aware that in gestalt relationships, they tend to be a, not always, but a lot of times it was partnering, where it was a husband and wife team, or two gay men.  So I was interested in that concept, but I didn't want Alex to be gay.  And I didn't want Nigel to be overtly gay--I think he's asexual.

"What'd you do with the knife?"

"I sense some hostility."

"Oh, do you reckon."

"Let's just call it fingerprint insurance."

Read:  I constructed those two different types of characters.  One which is controlling and very driven by his success and career.  The other who is totally insular and is obsessive.  And then draw them together into a close proximity and then basically let them loose and see what happens to them, and how they fire off each other, and how you end up with this kind of cat and mouse type game. 

"I don't want any part of this."

"Well, I'm sorry, Jack, but you were the one who got inside MY head."

"Well get out of mine."

"It's too late for that."

Read:  I wanted to use colors that weren't overt.  And I wanted to kind of let the school kind of be more womb-like amongst the urban sprawl of...urban decay.  So I wanted the outside world to be kind of these steely kind of colors, and greens, and darker tones.  And I wanted the school to be more mahogany and kind of warm tones.  And the reason for that is really to give a sense of the psychology of it.  And when you go into the interrogation room, I want it to be stark and bright and short focus.

"Tell me about Nigel."

"Nigel got what he wanted."

"And what was that?"

"Eternity."

Read:  Well the train is definitely, it's like Dante's descent to Hell.  It gave me this feeling, like it was almost like an umbilical cord to the outside world.  This train that rattles on its unsteady path between the womb-like school and the outside world, which is cold and bleak and hard and true and rough around the edges, where the school is pristine and perfect and starched collars and, you know.  So to me it was just showing those two worlds and then bringing them together in a gestalt amongst themselves, so the two world create the environment that creates these characters. 

(watch the video here)

[Like Minds Masterpost]

[sharpth1ng]

ITS SIMPLE, MAN

This is a little old so I just see flaws now (would re-draw Maureens face if I had the energy) but here, you can have it

[gene-forrester]

Made purely because this Letterboxd review for Compulsion made me giggle:

[normalbrothershow]

this show is so good (characters pictured are aware they're brothers)

[paulmccartneyprostateorgasm]

it Can be another beatle they kill but it doesn't Have to be

[barnbridges]

the secret history + allusions to leopold and loeb

[the-breath-in-air]

9 Queer Movies from the 1990s You May Not Have Heard Of

It's New Years, which means it's time for lists. And while everyone else is doing 'top X of 2023,' I've decided to list 9 queer movies from the 1990s. Why? Because I wanna. Plus, in discussions of representation, I often see folks talk about it with a heavy focus on mainstream 'Hollywood' produced movies, which leads folks to talk as though progress has been linear. As if, in the past there was no/'bad' queer representation and now there is 'good' representation. But of course it's not that simple. Plenty of amazing queer movies were produced in the past decades...they were just indie movies and thus difficult to find in a world prior to Netflix and Mubi and whatnot. But now we have streaming services, so allow me to share some of my favorites from the before times (specifically the 1990s).

Without further ado....here is an alphabetical list of queer movies from the 90s you may not have heard of (especially if you're under 30).

--

Beautiful Thing (1996) (dir. Hettie Macdonald)

Before there was Heartstopper, there was Beautiful Thing. It's a story about two gay teens, one sporty and one very much not sporty...and about how they deal with pressure to come out and pressure to hide who they are. It's a very sweet coming of age story, really. However, unlike Heartstopper, in Beautiful Thing the economic class of the protagonists plays an important role in the story (the characters all live on a counsel estate in London). The characters stories are nearly as much about them being working class as it is about the two main character being gay. It's one of the first movies I ever saw about gay teens, and I loved it. I still get a wistful smile every time I hear Mama Cass Elliot's "Make Your Own Kind of Music." (cw for parental abuse)

--

Edward II (1991) (dir. Derek Jarman)

The real Edward II was King of England for 20 years in the 14th century. At the end of the 16th century, Christopher Marlowe wrote a play about Edward's reign and eventual downfall. In 1991, Derek Jarman streamlined Marlowe's play and brought all the homosexual subtext between Edward and Gaveston way out front. In the film, Edward II is in prison and reflects on the events which have led him to that point. The trouble begins when Edward takes the throne and brings his exiled lover, Gaveston, back to England. All around them the rest of the aristocracy (including Edward's wife) conspire to bring Gaveston down. The movie itself is anachronistic (set in 1991), with minimal sets and costume, and staged a lot like a play. A lot of the dialogue is right out of Marlowe's play, though there are some changes to the story (notably at the end). It's honestly my favorite Derek Jarman movie, and frankly one of my favorite movies, full stop. (cw for blood, animal corpses, violent death)

--

Fire (1996) (dir. Deepa Mehta)

Fire is the first film in the Elements Trilogy written and directed by Deepa Mehta. Each film in the trilogy is about different characters in India, with the connection between the three being thematic rather than plot or character. Fire is about two Indian women, Radha and Sita, who form a bond through their struggles living within a traditional "joint-family" (i.e. a family where all extended family live together and all money and resources are shared). The women in this family have very little agency and this film explores how the two main characters navigate through it. The men in this film are also repressed by the social structure in which they live, and this film spends some time looking at that as well. It's a film about queer desire between women living under patriarchy. (All the movies on this list are available on streaming services in the US, except Fire. However, I was able to find it uploaded to a random YouTube channel) (cw for someone catching on fire, brief domestic violence (a slap), and non-consensual kissing)

--

Happy Together (1997) (dir. Wong Kar-wai)

In Happy Together, two men from Hong Kong travel to Argentina and eventually get stuck there when they run out of money and are unable to return home. The relationship between these two men is very tumultuous, with a lot of arguing and breaking up and getting back together. It's one of the first movies I saw in which queer folks have, just, regular ol' relationship drama - exasperated by the regular ol' struggles of life. (i cant remember if there are any content warnings i should put here; it's been a few years since i've seen it)

--

Lilies (1996) (dir. John Greyson)

Lilies is a Canadian film in which a prisoner requests a bishop come to the prison to hear the prisoner's last confession. It quickly becomes clear, however, that the prisoners have something else in mind when they begin staging a play. It turns out the bishop and prisoner knew each other as teens, and the play is about the events in their lives that led up to the prisoner being put on trial. So you end up with a play-within-a-play (or rather a play-within-a-movie). The film weaves between the production staged in the prison and the memory of the events in a really fluid way. All the prisoners portray their characters in the 'memory' sections, which lends itself to some really great moments in the prison sections. And at the heart of this memory/story is a queer love story. (cw for parental abuse, murder, fire, and suicide)

--

The Living End (1992) (dir. Gregg Araki)

This is a film about two young gay men who are diagnosed HIV positive. Unlike more mainstream films about HIV that came before (and after), The Living End wears its anger and pain on its sleeve. The entire world is entirely fucked up, and so these two men turn to a nihilistic outlook. The acting is just okay and some of the dialog is a bit ridiculous...but what draws me to rewatch this movie is the way that it conveys the emotion of the time. It's a ball of rage manifest on film. (cw for attempted suicide, rape, murder)

--

Love is the Devil (1998) (dir. John Maybury)

One of the problems with the average biopic is that it attempts to portray a person's entire life in a single movie. Thankfully, Love is the Devil doesn't have that problem; it focuses on only 8 years of Francis Bacon's life - the time he spent with a man named George Dyer. By this point, Bacon was already an extremely famous artist (and, at least in the film, a bit of an asshole). Bacon meets Dyer as Dyer attempts to burgle Bacon's studio - and thus begins an extremely dysfunctional love affair. If you want to see Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig portray this dysfunctional relationship, then this is the movie for you. Also, if you want to see a biopic that lets the subject of the film be portrayed as a shitty person, this is a film for you. (cw for bdsm, drug use, untreated mental illness, and suicide)

--

Orlando (1992) (dir. Sally Potter)

From right out the gate, Orlando announces its queer themes by having Quentin Crisp portray Queen Elizabeth I, and Tilda Swinton portray Orlando (a man). From the first scenes it becomes clear that gender is going to be a main theme in the movie. Orlando is a young man who will never grow old and never die. He begins life in the 1500s, during Queen Elizabeth's reign, and we see him (and later, her) throughout the centuries between then and 'present' day (1992). The film is broken into thematic chunks (poetry, politics, society, etc). In each of these chunks we see Orlando's life as it reflects the social norms of the time (especially gender norms).

--

Swoon (1992) (dir. Tom Kalin)

Like Rope (1948) and Compulsion (1959), Swoon is a film about the Leopold and Loeb murder. Unlike the earlier films, Swoon makes the gay relationship between Leopold and Loeb explicit. Their relationship in the film is fairly uneven, with Loeb being characterized as more of an explicit manipulator. Leopold, on the other hand, is driven more by wanting to please Leob. Complicating this dynamic is the way that Leopold is the one more interested in their sexual relationship. Is Loeb exchanging sex for help with his criminal activities? Or is Leopold committing crimes in order to elicit sex from Loeb? Or both...something a bit more complicated than either/or? The film, especially the latter half, eschews and lampoons the sensationalism of the reporting of the crime from the time. (cw for murder, blood (in black and white), and animal corpses)

--

Honorable mention goes to more well-known movies I didn't put on this list, such as: But I'm a Cheerleader, Velvet Goldmine, Bound, Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Birdcage, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, My Own Private Idaho, Bent...there are actually a whole lot of queer movies from the 1990s, now that I think about it.

[citizenscreen]

100 years ago today Leopold and Loeb murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks for the thrill of it. The horrific ‘crime of the century’ inspired Hitchcock’s ROPE (1948) based on the 1929 play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton.

[vimbry]

"mink car" (the song), in spite of its misery, has the sweetest production trivia:

its title stems from a silly conversation flansburgh and robin goldwasser were having about what hypothetical luxuries people buy when they get rich, like a mink coat, with robin increasing it to a mink car.

flansburgh and linnell wrote it sitting at a piano together

[dick-chugger]

If I had a nickel everytime I was enjoying a work of fiction and then found out it's insipired by Leopold and Loeb, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice.

[doyouknowthismusical]

[roryfrommybabysittersavampire]

i've been getting rlly into the Leopold an Loeb case and I know there's like a very small community that talks about it on here but did you guys know you can just read their psych evals??? all like 300 pages ????

some highlights <3 crazy that theyre more comfortable taking about murder than gay people

[dickloeb]

petty beyond pettiness

Chicago Tribune. June 2, 1924.

[chaoticdesertdweller]

On this day, May 21, 1924:

Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold murdered Bobby Franks to see if they could get away with committing the perfect crime.

[volnodymets]

a moment of appreciation for Nathan's crooked smile

[sewerfight]

They would've been best friends