Review: Prick Up Your Ears
Tragic, bawdy, funny film
by Ross West
Twenty years ago last week Ken
neth Halliwell hammered British
playwright Joe Orton to death,
then killed himself. They had been
lovers for 16 years.
The witty, sexy, and charming
Orton seems always ahead of the
game, and yet, like Guy Burgess
(In Another Country), he is an
eternal outsider because of his
homosexuality. In one sense Prick
Up Your Ears is about insiders and
outsiders. By film’s end the au
dience feels like insiders, privy to
Orton’s most intimate moments
and the conflicts that rage both
within and about him. The film is
startling and well-told, tragic,
bawdy and funny.
Based on John Lahr’s biography
of Orton, Prick Up Your Ears
moves smartly through the rocky
territory of the young writer’s
troubled life. One night he’s
presented with the London Even
ing Standard’s Best Play of 1966
Award for his play Loot. Later that
same evening, after eyeing some
like-minded gents in a subter
ranean public restroom, he sets the
award beside a urinal, douses the
lights, and melts into the dark sea
of anonymous, forbidden sex.
Director Stephen Frears brings
to this film the same sensitivity he
demonstrated in last year’s low
budget gem, My Beautiful Laun
drette. In Laundrette Frears cap
tured two subcultures: gays and
prosperous Indians living in an
economically withered London,
the central characters in Prick Up
Your Ears are not only gay, hut ar
tists. In both films Frears’ direc
tion subtly denies the walls that
could keep audiences from
sympathy.
He draws lines separating his in
siders and. outsiders, however, then
deftly places the audience in one
camp or the other. The balding
and dour Halliwell (Alfred
Molina) is left standing in the rain
while his lover rides off in a shim
mery white Rolls with Paul
McCartney. As the camera hangs
on the sad-sack outsider, the au
dience becomes an embarrassed
participant in his rejection and
shame.
Beyond Frears’ sure-handed
direction, the film benefits greatly
from fine performances by Molina
and Gary Oldham as the radiant
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STARRING RAUL SCOFIELD AND MARIA SCHELL
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Prick Up Your Ears, the story of playwright Joe Orton, is directed
by Steven Frears who directed My Beautiful Laundrette.
Orton. Oldham’s last—and
first—starring role was Sid Vicious
in last year’s remarkable Sid and
Nancy. Oldham’s extensive thea
trical background and natural
talents have prepared him to take on
almost any role although twice in
a row he’s been cast as a popular
artist snuffed out early on.
(Should the success of La Bam
ba and The Buddy Holly Story
give the Big Money in Hollywood
the idea of making it three-for
three with something like The Big
Bopper: Boppin' Till He Dropped,
I’d advise Oldham to turn down
the role.)
Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With
Andre, Radio Days) plays Lahr,
the biographer whose investigation
into Orton's life shapes the film.
This device allows for direct inter
views of Joe’s friends and
associates, interviews that con
veniently melt into flashbacks. Not
only is this easy, but it opens the
door for the film’s only uninter
esting sub-plot, that of Shawn and
his under-appreciated co-writ
er/wife. Their relationship is sup
posed to be an artsy reflection of
Joe and Halliwell; I'd call it a
missed bet.
Prick Up Your Ears is a fine and
moving film, a backstage pass, an
invitation to become an insider, a
guided tour through ecstasy and
torment.
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492 E. 13th
686-2458
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"Working dass British playwright Joe Orton had
a career with the trajectory of a Fourth-of-July
rocket, fast, brilliant, astonishing, with a plunging
drop-off when Orton was murdered by his male live
in lover. "Prick Up Your Ears" was directed by
Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Lauindrette) with
Gary Oldman (Sid of "Sid 4 Nancy”) as Orton and
3
3
a
3
J
1
Alfred Molna as his roommate...there is no denying :
(the film's) bitchy appeal, nor ths brilliance of it’s
principal actors, along with Vanessa Redgrave as
Orton's celebrated literary agent."
- Shela Benson, Whole Earth Review
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