The Movie LoverBy Richard Friedel
Published by Alyson Publications 1981
ISBN: 0 932870 43 0
The Strange Case of Burton Raider
Recently I began to re-read Richard Friedel’s The Movie Lover, something I do every couple of years and have done for the last twenty. No matter how many times I do, it still makes me laugh. The humour lies not just in the story but also in the way it is told. Mr. Friedel has a wonderfully detached, ironic manner that heightens the comedy of already funny situations.
The story is written in the first person by one Burton Raider, a gay young man, and concerns his rediscovery of a long-forgotten film star, Marietta. Marietta is a sort of Dietrich/Garbo/Bergner composite. He sees her one day shoplifting (she has fallen on hard times) and, having rescued her from the store detective, manages by various means to re-launch her career and win fame for himself, finding love on the way.
Those are the bare bones of the story. However, we get far more than that on our voyage to the end of the book. We start with Burton’s childhood. >From the word “off” he is a precocious child. Not only that, he is extremely self-aware and knows that he is not as other boys. He is very sophisticated, living largely in a world of his own imagining, that imagining being fuelled by his incessant viewing of old Hollywood films and reading of magazines, especially Vogue. He is more familiar with Joan Crawford and Vivien Leigh than he is with the neighbourhood children. He thinks the great outdoors is fit only for farm animals and his preferred occupations are advising his mother on decor and helping her shop for clothes. His long-suffering family eventually accept his peculiarities and cease trying to get him to behave like other schoolboys.
His first days at Kindergarten are a hoot. He regards his teacher as pitifully untutored and naive and his schoolmates as little more than mindless peasants. His reflections on their shortcomings and his futile attempts to ingratiate himself make hilarious reading. Throughout the book we are treated to a running commentary on everyone he encounters. This commentary gives us a fully-rounded picture of Burton’s personality and in no time at all we see the world as he sees it – full of unappreciative fools. Any gay person will have felt as he does, if not for the same reasons or as articulately.
One day new neighbours move in next door. The son of the house is the breathtakingly handsome Roman and for Burton it is love at first sight. Roman is apparently as straight as they come and Burton’s love goes unspoken. They become firm friends after Raider is brutally set upon by some schoolmates who can bear his singularity no more. They are found guilty in court and the compensation they have to pay Burton forms the foundation of the modest fortune he uses to make his film for Marietta. Marietta makes her own special contribution, raising funds from a variety of investors.
By the end of the book not only are their efforts crowned with success, Roman is back in the fold after a brief and unsuccessful heterosexual excursion to California (a place also grist to Burton’s humorous mill) and they drive off into the sunset to spend their lives together – a suitably filmic ending.
Since reading The Movie Lover I have looked for a sequel or another book by Mr. Friedel. None, so far as I know, has ever been published and I have been unable to find anything out about him. Not only that, but this extremely comical book seems not to have been reprinted. We have three mysteries here: why was the book a one off, what became of Richard Friedel and why has the book never been reprinted? In terms of both style and substance The Movie Lover is streets ahead of much far more meretricious stuff that gets published these days.