By Lee Pfeiffer
When I screened this DVD presentation of the much-hyped HBO movie Behind the Candelabra, about the love affair between Liberace and his young boy toy Scott Thorson, the three people I viewed the movie with unanimously voiced an almost vitriolic response to the film. It had nothing to do with the gay love affair content (they are all dyed-in-the-wool liberals who support gay rights.) Their complaints centered on the fact that the film was boring and pointless and a colossal waste of talent. I was taken aback by the degree of their hatred for this movie but I will concede it was distinctly disappointing. First the background. In 1977 Scott Thorson was a hunky young guy who was introduced to Liberace. They entered an intense relationship that Thorson, in his memoirs, maintained was a legitimate May/December love affair. Before long Thorson had displaced Liberace's previous live-in lover and had moved into the master pianist's opulent but garish mansion. Thorson had been warned that Liberace went through lovers like Kleenex but nevertheless for a four year period he seemed to be an invaluable aspect of Liberace's life. Thorson was not only a companion but a trusted confidant. He was put on Liberace's payroll and became his major domo, even appearing in his act by driving the flamboyant entertainer on stage in a Rolls Royce. Somewhere along the way, however, the wheels fell off the relationship and Thorson found himself out of favor. In an All About Eve-like scenario, he was being upstaged by other young men who had caught Liberace's eye. By this point, Thorson-who had a troubled past and little hope for a professional career- had become financially dependent upon Liberace, who he claimed had promised him financial security for the rest of his life. The result was a messy and highly publicized palimony-type legal battle that saw Thorson getting a modest payment in return for removing himself from Liberace's home and his life.
Behind the Candelabra must have seemed like a sure-fire project from the very beginning. Steven Soderbergh would be directing and two of Hollywood's most legendary heterosexual screen gods, Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, would play Liberace and Scott Thorson in a big screen adaptation of Thorson's book that would be adapted by acclaimed screenwriter Richard LaGravanese. Yet the film was unable to secure a theatrical release. The official theory was that the prospect of two straight screen legends making out together would turn off audiences. This is a valid concern. Way back in 1969, two of England's leading "swordsmen", Richard Burton and Rex Harrison, co-starred as an aging gay couple in Stanley Donen's Staircase. This very fine, little-seen film was avoided like the plague by audiences. Given the fact that films cost a fortune to market and publicize, the decision was made to premiere Behind the Candelabra on HBO. It was received with praise in many quarters and was nominated for any number of international awards, with Douglas winning a Golden Globe. However, one suspects that if the high profile talent had not been involved, the movie might have been treated more harshly. Douglas and Damon give excellent performances and boldly go where no straight actors have gone before, enacting sequences depicting gay sex in a way that probably would have destroyed their careers in less enlightened times. However, the film never grasps the viewer emotionally. The whole thing plays out like a gimmick as though two straight guys thought it might be a hoot to see if they could pull off the challenge of portraying two flamboyantly gay men, one of whom was the most over the top entertainer of his era. When you get over the initial novelty of seeing Douglas prancing around on screen and ogling Damon, who is in almost superhuman physical condition, entering a hot tub naked, you are left with a patchy story line that plods through a two hour running time that seems to take longer to unwind than Ben-Hur. The script is also restricted by the fact that it has to adhere to Thorson's version of history, which naturally portrays him sympathetically and doesn't address criticisms that he may have been an opportunist who entered a relationship of convenience in order to obtain financial security. (Thorson was serving time in jail when this film premiered last year.)
We see details of Liberace's remarkable lifestyle but learn little about his background or ascension through show business. An unrecognizable Debbie Reynolds is cast as his adored mother but she is criminally underutilized in the role. Liberace occasionally discusses some aspects of his past but the emphasis is on his showmanship and the shallowness of his existence. His home is a monument to himself and his relationships are portrayed as based primarily on short-term sexual satisfaction. Thorson's background is also glossed over. When we first see him he is living with an older couple who were his de facto parents and working as an animal handler in the film industry. Suddenly, he's in a hot tub with Liberace and moving into his mansion, with scant attention paid to his emotional or financial state at the time. Because this is Thorson's vision of his relationship with Liberace, it is presented as a genuine love affair that had run out of steam, with him paying the price as Liberace's victim. The film does have a final sequence in which Liberace, laying his bed dying of AIDS, calls Thorson to stop by for one last goodbye. In the film version, the two men manage to put aside their differences and have an emotional last meeting. However, this scene illustrates the basic problem with the entire film: despite valiant performances by Douglas and Damon, there is no truly emotional core to this scene or the entire project. Sequences that are meant to enrage or touch the viewer do neither. The movie lumbers along from one fairly monotonous sequence to the other. As director,Soderbergh is efficient, but somewhat cold and distanced from his own project. There are some moments of genuine humor, such as when Thorson first sees Liberace sans toupee. However, there are other aspects of the film that don't work at all. For example, Thorson maintained that Liberace coerced him to undergo radical plastic surgery in order to obtain his mentor's physical characteristics. In a dramatic sequence, Thorson reluctantly goes under the scalpel which is wielded by a crackpot plastic surgeon (well-played by Rob Lowe). The only problem is that the "new" Thorson doesn't look much different than the "old" Thorson and in no way resembles Liberace. We all know that no one wants to risk messing up Damon's billion dollar face but this key aspect of the films falls short because the payoff shot of the radically transformed Thorson just isn't there.
The film captures the mood and look of the 1970s well enough as evidenced by the fact that not all of the garish fashions are confined to Liberace. (Yes, guys we really did dress this way in the '70s.) However, the sheer opulence of Liberace's stage appearances have a less-than-grand look to them that would seem to fall short of his actual shows. The one exception is a cliched ending sequence in which Thorson envisions the late entertainer ascending to Heaven. The scene seems directly inspired by the finale of Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, but done less effectively. The movie boasts an interesting supporting cast including Dan Aykroyd as Liberace's manager and Scott Bakula as one of Thorson's cronies, but- like Reynolds- these talents are not used to their full potential.
There was much I admired in Behind the Candelabra but in the aggregate, the film falls short of its potential and our expectations. The HBO DVD release of the film includes a short "making of" featurette that emphasizes how much care and effort went into recreating Liberace's home and the fact that many of his actual costumes were used in the production. It also addresses the Liberace's ludicrous insistence on maintaining that he was straight because of fears that admitting his obvious homosexuality would have ruined his career. The featurette is, in many ways, more interesting than the feature film it supports and one is left with the impression that, because Liberace did lead a remarkable and dramatic life, the best way to learn about it is probably through books or documentaries.