While the evocation of the 1980s, obvious passion for the artist's work and magnificent acting from the ensemble cast should have made this movie a '10', it has one fatal flaw: this film, Basquiat, dealing with a young man's struggle for identity, fails to mention or even hint at the fact that he had both female and male sexual partners. While I highly respect the acting ability of Jeffrey Wright (just check out his performance in Westworld), he was not only misdirected but simply miscast. To understand the real Basquiat, see the 2010 documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat - The Radiant Child. There, you see a cute, good-looking, charismatic, ambitious although introverted young man whom you could easily imagine receiving offers from men and women alike - and equally imagine the offers being taken up. The portrayal in the film, Basquiat, is of a slightly autistic, inarticulate, heterosexual boor with a 'junkie walk' before he was even a junkie. It is well documented that the artist David Bowes was a male lover of Basquiat's, and other characters from the era, some still alive today, attest that while living on the street he would often exchange sexual favors with both males and females for a place to sleep for the night; not uncommon practice for the homeless. I mention all this not to disrespect the memory of Jean-Michel as I'm actually a great fan of his. Let's instead respect him by honoring him truthfully and mentioning the unmentionable: male-to-male sexuality.
Directors and scriptwriters be damned; you spoil otherwise good movies. Just when will film-makers get over their homophobic paranoia? Why make a movie about Howard Hughs and not mention he had bedded most Hollywood leading men of his day? Why make a movie about Alexander the Great misrepresenting his life-long male lover and companion, and not mentioning his Persian male lover? Why make a film about Archilles and pretend that his male lover, whose death caused his downfall, was his platonic cousin? Why make a movie about Cole Porter and not mention anything? The list goes on.
