Sick and Dirty by Michael Koresky with Isaac Butler

Join us for a conversation with the brilliant film historian and curator Michael Koresky to launch his new book, an erudite and surprising account of how queerness persisted (and even flourished) in Code-era Hollywood cinema. He'll be speaking withThe Method author Isaac Butler, followed by a signing.

PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

Can't attend? Order your signed copy (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).

A blazingly original history celebrating the persistence of queerness onscreen, behind the camera, and between the lines during the dark days of the Hollywood Production Code.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Motion Picture Production Code severely restricted what Hollywood cinema could depict. This included “any inference” of the lives of homosexuals. In a landmark 1981 book, gay activist Vito Russo famously condemned Hollywood's censorship regime, lambasting many midcentury films as the bigoted products of a “celluloid closet.”

But there is more to these movies than meets the eye. In this insightful, wildly entertaining book, cinema historian Michael Koresky finds new meaning in "problematic” classics of the Code era like Hitchcock's Rope, Minnelli's Tea and Sympathy, and-bookending the period and anchoring Koresky's narrative-William Wyler's two adaptations of The Children's Hour, Lillian Hellman's provocative hit play about a pair of schoolteachers accused of lesbianism.

Lifting up the underappreciated queer filmmakers, writers, and actors of the era, Koresky finds artists who are long overdue for reevaluation. Through his brilliant inquiry, Sick and Dirty reveals the “bad seeds” of queer cinema to be surprisingly, even gleefully subversive, reminding us, in an age of book bans and gag laws, that nothing makes queerness speak louder than its opponents' bids to silence it.

Michael Koresky is Senior Curator of Film at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image and a member of the National Society of Film Critics. Previously he held editorial roles with Film at Lincoln Center and the Criterion Collection, where he continues to host and curate the Criterion Channel series Queersighted. He has taught at NYU and The New School, and his writing has appeared in Film Comment, Sight & Sound, the Village Voice, Film Quarterly, and other publications. He is the author of Films of Endearment and a monograph on the British director Terence Davies.

Isaac Butler is the author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler’s writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at NYU and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.