Bud cort gay
* (restored)
‘Many a first appointment has been given an adrenaline boost as soon as each member of the dubious couple discovers that Harold and Maude is the other’s favorite film. More meaningful than merely cult popular, Harold and Maude was a spiritual experience to many an earnest college kid who thrilled to its anti-establishment, devil-may-care spirit and its macabre sensibility, establish to the tune of Cat Stevens’ glorious soundtrack.
‘Gloomy, ashen and nearly necrophiliac, the 20-year-old Harold Chasen, played with comic catatonia by Bud Cort, is addicted to committing suicide. Then he meets a feisty, vital septuagenarian named Maude. Under Maude’s sexualized tutelage, Harold learns to embrace life. Following her groove, Harold learns to heed Stevens’ do-your-own-thing musical creed: “If you wish to sing out carol out/And if you desire to be free be free/’Cause there’s a million ways to be/You comprehend that there are.”
‘When the film was released in 1971, critics panned it and it promptly flopped. Eventually it found a home at college art houses and achieved a certain cult status among motley, artsy misanthropes. Ruth Gordon, who played Maude, died in 1
I bought myself a present this week. One that I’ve been waiting for most of my life. That’s not hyperbole. After seeing Harold and Maude in the initial 1970s, I was eager to get the original soundtrack album, only to find one had not been released. Now, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hal Ashby’s black comedy, it has just been issued for the first time.
Listening to Cat Stevens’ iconic songs I am transported back in time. “I’d left my happy abode, to see what I could uncover out, I left my folk and friends to plain my mind out…” I had recently moved to San Francisco, trying to find myself. I’ve loved this movie since I first saw it (at the Clay Theatre?). I was ecstatic to be away from family and friends, living in a real capital, embracing my unused identity (and behavior) as a homosexual man.
It now seems significant that this film was developed in the overdue 1960s at the height of the counter-culture, San Francisco being one of the epicenters of that movement. I told myself I’d moved to San Francisco because of the strong coffee and foreign/independent films, but it was — I later realized — really to com
Bud Cort [Interview]
October 15, 2012by rontrembathiii
Bud Cort is a classically trained artist who has proven himself as a ridiculously talented star for more than 40 years. He’s proven himself a genius of the stage and screen. He’s had roles that own left audiences spell bound. He’s undoubtedly one of the finest actors of this time, and of a time before many Trainwreck’d readers can even remember.
A quick IMDB search will indicate you into the direction of so many great pieces of work that Bud Cort has been a part of. When I was a younger lad, the name Bud Cort was only synonymous with Kevin Smith’s Dogma. But, as I grew older, and more in tune to the world of motion picture beyond my own personal stigmas and accelerations towards commonalities (I am STILL a huge Kevin Smith fan, mind you), I can now state that I best know Bud Cort for the same reason most of you will know him for as well. He is Harold. As in, Harold and Maude. A film that so utterly pre-dates itself that it is almost impossible to deny. And while he has done several wonderful films, television shows, and stage performances since, the hipster love child in many of us will al
Harold and Maude (released December 1971)
| Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon Here's the original theatrical trailer... |
H
What the Queer Cinephile Says: According to my research, Harold and Maudereceived very minute praise when it hit theaters in delayed 1971. Critics, including Roger Ebert (yes, the man was reviewing films way back then), were not particularly amused by this this very, very black comedy about a death-obsessed young male and his affair with a free-spirited 79-year-old woman. Hollywood loves to build movies that examine relationships between older men and younger women. No one ever seems to mind the proof that The Sound of Music