Interview: Author Kyle Turner on Queer Cinema, New York City, and Casting James Bond
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Kyle Turner is a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY, whose work has been featured in Slate, NPR, The Village Voice, GQ.com, and The New York Times. He’s also the author of the new book The Queer Film Guide: 100 Films That Tell LGBTIA+ Stories.
We were thrilled to speak with Kyle for Pride Month about how he picked the final 100, his hot take on casting the next James Bond, underrated John Waters movies, his perfect New York day, and more.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
1. What is the Kyle Turner origin story?
Apocryphal though it may or may not be, my mother showed me Bringing Up Baby when I was 4 or 5, with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and directed by Howard Hawks, and I never looked back after that. The zaniness and the rapidity of the dialogue and the different interpersonal dynamics that exist between the two characters was really really fascinating to me, so I fell in love with movies from there.
Then I started a blog when I was 13 because I had been ranting about the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie at the time, At World’s End, and someone was like “you should start a blog.” I think that was their polite way of getting out of the conversation. But from there I started writing on the Internet when I was a sophomore in high school, and then I started freelancing in a more professional capacity senior of high school and freshman year of college, and I’ve been writing ever since.
2. Congrats on your new book! What was the movie or moment that inspired you to embark on this ambitious project?
Smith Street Books, the Australian publisher, approached me about it last May. It felt like a really wonderful sort of full-circle moment because I’ve been interested in queer cinema and representations of LGBTQIA+ identity since I was in college. I was having these really formative conversations with one of my favorite professors, Margaret Greenlaw, about the nature of identity and the social and political implications of representation and fandom and things like that.
I think the film that most spoke to me as far as a guiding ethos of how I wanted to approach the book was Knife+Heart, which is a film from 2019 directed by Yann Gonzalez. It’s a film that is explicitly unpacking the nature of how desire is formed on screen and how it is telegraphed to us to shape our own notions of what and who we desire. So I wanted to explore all those different facets through 100 great films about queerness.
3. What was your strategy or criteria for landing on the final 100?
When I was originally approached, I wanted to look at all the other lists that existed on the Internet. I looked at The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo. This book obviously owes a tremendous debt to him, and to B. Ruby Rich, the scholar who coined the term “new queer cinema.” And if this was supposed to be a physical object that we were encouraging people to have in their homes, to have a copy of, I was hoping it would have a unique and idiosyncratic enough perspective about queer cinema that wasn’t just something you could Google.
The original draft of the list was something like 186-214 movies. I also sourced from my friends. This book would not be possible without the input of really wonderful friends who I had look at the list and put their suggestions in. From there I whittled down, and I thought it was really important that this was able to explore queerness not only as explicit LGBTQIA+ representation, but also the ways in which it is channeled through form and technique and storytelling and perspective and aesthetic and sensibility. I wanted to try to be inclusive of all those different ways that queerness can manifest in cinema.
4. Which movie was the toughest to cut?
Well, I kinda cheated. There are 200 movies in the book: 100 main entries and then each entry has a sidebar recommendation. A wine pairing if you will—“if you like this, you might like this.”
But it was hard for me to let go of Todd Haynes’ Safe as a main entry, because I really, really wanted that one. Everyone returned to that movie at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown as a film about disease and social anxiety in relation to the ways in which viruses are politicized. And it’s very easy to read as an AIDS narrative. But I am particularly compelled by the film because of the way in which people are interpreted by their environments. The film concerns a housewife played by Julianne Moore who becomes allergic to her environment. What’s interesting is that her body is actually resisting the domestic housewife role that she’s been put into, and I always thought that was a really interesting way to unpack the idea of how identity is shaped by the world around us and by the people around us. So I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to write at length about that one.
5. What was your favorite discovery while researching or writing the book?
One of my favorites that I watched for the project was Southern Comfort, which is a documentary about this older trans man who has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And you get to see him and his community of older trans people that I think many people do not often get access to or a chance to see. This was made in 2001 and it’s no really tender and intimate. You see that this community is fully developed, that they have an intimacy with one another and a shared language at a time when transitions were not necessarily in the primary mainstream discourse. It’s really comforting to see, even in times of extreme strife and political backlash, that queer people are able to find each other and create safety and closeness with one another.
6. Which three films would you recommend to someone with little to no exposure to queer cinema?
I love The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, which is about this narcissistic fashion designer who is being left hot and cold by her muse. That’s a really fun one that has both an explicit queerness to it but also queerness in the way that Fassbinder is deconstructing the Sirkian melodrama. I think it’s really pivotal to understanding queerness as a kind of aesthetic approach.
Pink Flamingos. John Waters. Classic. Iconic. “Filth is my politics.” I think his rebelliousness and his provocations are still worthwhile and still important to consider as modes of being and of challenging normative ideas of how to exist in the world, especially “now more than ever.” And Divine is incredible. And also what’s wonderful about Pink Flamingos is that, in spite of how graphic and weird and bizarre it can be, you can tell that Dreamlanders are having so much fun while doing it. There’s a real whimsy and poetic playfulness to it.
And then I would pick Seed of Chucky, which is a film from 2004 and part of the Child’s Play series. I think it’s fun to challenge people’s ideas of what queer movies can be, and I don’t think they often expect them to be genre-focused or to be both mainstream and also incredibly subversive. Because the thing about Seed of Chucky is that it is about Chucky and Tiffany trying to raise a child who’s non-binary. They were very much influenced by Ed Wood’s exploitation docudrama Glen or Glenda—you see the way in which these two parents are trying to force or graft their respective ideas of what gender is supposed to be onto their doll child, played by Billy Boyd. That one’s really, really sweet and a lot of fun.
7. What event or aspect of the queer experience do you think needs to be made into a movie?
It’s hard to answer that, just because there are so many stories that have yet to be told. I guess what I would like to see is, at least from my personal point of view, not just like the blunt representation of a queer Asian guy dealing with his sense of masculinity and whatnot, but also confronting the different expectations that they have for themselves and that the queer social scenes have for them in relation to sex and sexuality. Not only through the romantic comedy lens of Fire Island, which is a really wonderful movie, but also through a more absurdist point of view—something that’s maybe even scarier or told through a genre lens.
8. Describe your perfect day.
Going to the movies in the afternoon with a friend at a rep theater like IFC Center or Metrograph or Film Forum. Go to get lunch or drink, relax, talk. Maybe go see another movie or a comedy show or a play or musical. Lately I’ve been getting into dancing. I’ve finally become fun in my late twenties. So if we see a long show and it gets out around 11pm, then maybe go dancing and then be home by 1 or 2am, and then decompress by watching Pushing Daisies and eating Bagel Bites in bed.
9. New York City: overrated or underrated?
I think it is appropriately rated. I love New York and I can’t imagine myself anywhere else. There are definitely times in which I exhibit a New York elitism, but I think it is appropriately rated. It makes sense for some people and not others. It is a very expensive place to live, and the work and social culture can be exhausting for a lot of people. But it is something that is very meaningful to me. It’s where I found my people, my community. I think as long as you’re able to find the people who love and support you, and who you love and support, that’s what matters. New York is that place for me, but it’s not necessarily that place for everyone.
“If my book was supposed to be a physical object we were encouraging people to have in their homes, I was hoping it would have a unique and idiosyncratic enough perspective about queer cinema that wasn’t just something you could Google.”
10. As a James Bond fan, who would you cast as the next 007?
There was a time when I thought Henry Cavill would make sense, but he already sort of played a parody of James Bond in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which I wish we would get a sequel to. Such a good movie.
This is a controversial take, and I don’t mind saying this in print because I do think it is important to understand when we’re talking about the history and legacy of James Bond. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be equal opportunity for people of different racial, ethnic, or sexual backgrounds to have opportunities in Hollywood that are big blockbusters. But I think when we talk about who we cast as James Bond—and how we use that casting choice as a corrective for what James Bond means in culture, what it means to British history and its connection to a long legacy of imperialism and colonialism—I think we should be careful about how we have like this wish list of actors of color especially, or women actors, because I don’t think that is necessarily solving the systemic issue of representation in Hollywood, and I think it does a disservice to understanding that lack of opportunities.
Just inserting a Black actor or woman into the role of James Bond doesn’t fix the fact that James Bond is, by his very design, a racist and misogynist foot soldier of the British Empire. And I sometimes get frustrated when people have this wish for Daniel Kaluuya or Idris Elba and whatnot. It seems like a very neoliberal wish fulfillment of putting marginalized bodies into these positions where they’re still acting as oppressors of imperialist governments or nation-states.
So I would ideally go for a white actor, because what James Bond represents is a certain kind of white masculinity. It doesn’t make sense to pretend that is not the case with that character, and that’s what makes the character both problematic and interesting and really fertile ground to think and talk about.
Long-winded answer, but I’m just gonna go with Nicholas Hoult. I don’t know if I believe that, but I’ll say him for now!
11. What’s an underrated John Waters movie?
Cecil B. Demented is very, very whimsical. Even more whimsical than his other movies because it’s so less graphic. It’s all about the state of cinema itself, and what people want out of movies and how the industry was changing. Maggie Gyllenhaal is in it, and I would actually argue that Babylon, the Damien Chazelle movie which I adore, is Damien Chazelle’s version of Cecil B. Demented in that they are both focused on lampooning film culture and cinephiles, but also have this immense love for movies and the mythology around movies. It’s a lot of fun and I don’t think it gets enough attention.
12. What are you hopeful for?
I am hopeful that as the systems around us continue to fall apart, perhaps as scary as it is, it might be necessary. Although I do not identify as an anarchist or accelerationist for the record, I do hope that it does inspire younger people of different backgrounds and marginalized communities to be inspired, to channel their ideas and their passions and their anxieties and their wants and desires into their own artistic endeavors. I hope that, even though a lot of the tools and platforms that we have are privatized and whatnot, people are able to exploit those private platforms to create art, to create community, to be able to find a new way of expressing their sense of self and their queerness.
+1. What’s your question for us?
What film revealed to you something about yourself that was initially scary to confront?
(Chad:) The first one that comes to mind is High Fidelity, which I saw in high school. The way it tackles relationships and vulnerability, as a straight guy who hadn’t had a lot of experience in relationships, it showed me what vulnerability can do, and the power of it. He’s looking back at his old relationships, realizing what he did wrong, and then how he can move forward from that. I think that was a good wake-up call just in terms of how I would approach relationships moving forward. It’s also just a good hang and a great Chicago movie, which is close to our hearts here at Cinema Sugar.