An Englishman in New York (2009)

The later years of Quentin Crisp's life in New York City.

Director:

Richard Laxton

Writer:

Brian Fillis

Stars:

John Hurt, Denis O'Hare, Jonathan Tucker

4 wins & 7 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
John Hurt	...	Quentin Crisp
Denis O'Hare	...	Phillip Steele
Jonathan Tucker	...	Patrick Angus
Cynthia Nixon	...	Penny Arcade
Swoosie Kurtz	...	Connie Clausen
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Nick Adams	...	Dim Man
Jeff Applegate	...	Journalist
Silver Bramham	...	Orlando
Twinkle Burke	...	Audience Member # 3
David Douglas	...	Audience Member # 5
Benjamin Eakeley	...	Young Man (as Benjamin Eakley)
Alex C. Ferrill	...	Audience Member # 1
Amy Gaipa	...	Audience Member # 2
Robert Gomes	...	Angry Gay Man
Craig muMs Grant	...	DJ (as Craig 'muMs' Grant)

Storyline

Following the success of his television biography 'The Naked Civil Servant' Quentin Crisp is invited to America to lecture on How To Be Happy, and falls in love with New York's more permissive ambiance. Agent Connie Clausen enables him to be a 'resident alien', writing film reviews and dispensing words of wisdom. Curious about but impervious to trends, he describes AIDS as a "fad, nothing more", actually to divert heterosexual anger but he is misinterpreted and reviled by many gays. A return to popularity occurs when he helps Patrick Angus, a young, AIDS-afflicted artist attain fame for his paintings and his healthy cynicism is marketed by performance artist Penny Arcade, putting him back in the limelight. Poor health causes him to refuse a lecture tour of England but he gives a triumphant final audience at a gay club in Tampa. A postscript informs that he died at the age of 91.

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Plot Keywords:

new york | gay | resident alien | aids | gay club | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

27 April 2009 (USA)

Also Known As:

Anglik w Nowym Jorku

Filming Locations:

Ham House, Richmond, Surrey, England, UK

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$1,923 (United Kingdom), 29 March 2009, Limited Release

Company Credits

Production Co:

Leopard Drama

Technical Specs

Runtime:

75 min 74 min 74 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Sir John Hurt also played this character in the television movie The Naked Civil Servant (1975). Quentin Crisp said of Sir John Hurt, that he was his representative here on Earth.

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Quotes

Quentin Crisp: Persistence is your greatest weapon. It is in the nature of barriers that they fall. Do not seek to become like your opponents. You have the burden and the great joy of being outsiders. Every day you live as a kind of triumph. This you should cling onto. You should make no effort to try and join society. Stay right where you are. Give your name and serial number and wait for society to form itself around you. Because it will most certainly will. Neither look forward where there is doubt nor ...

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Connections

Spoofed in An Englishman in Brisbane (2013)

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Soundtracks

So Many Men So Little Time
Performed by Miquel Brown

User Reviews

Not another "Civil Servant"

This film was definitely superior to the BBC's new "Day of the Triffids" adaptation (which was scheduled directly against it), but is not the dramatic equal of the original "Naked Civil Servant", with which it will inevitably be compared. I suspect the main cause of this is that the source material simply doesn't provide a lot of scope: when a story starts with its protagonist in his seventies and having finally gained acceptance and even celebrity, the time-span is inevitably somewhat short and there isn't a great deal more that can happen to him. Even in situations which could, and would, have been threatening to the younger Quentin Crisp, his elder statesman status effectively restricts the repercussions.

As a result, more or less the only 'plot event' of the film is the arrival of AIDS in New York, with even that seen largely through the effects on Crisp's career of a single dismissive quip (his reasoned attitude is that making too much of AIDS will only bolster public perception of homosexuals as disease-ridden outcasts, but this doesn't go down well among his target audience). Otherwise, "An Englishman in New York" consists largely of bons mots; little snippets of Crisp performing and delivering his famous lines, whether to an audience of one or to a small studio gathering.

That said, given the limitations of its material the film manages to pull off the difficult trick of its predecessor, presenting its deliberately flamboyant, over-the-top protagonist as a sympathetic human being whose pose we not only condone but find ourselves applauding. I generally shy away from 'gay issues', but find myself feeling here for the people he meets and the prejudice he encounters, both from them and on their behalf. In some ways, it is as hard to be a determinedly effeminate homosexual among the butch 'clones' of an out-of-the-closet New York as among the disapproving middle classes of pre-war England.

John Hurt does an excellent task in portraying the physical aging of the character, and of course it is a great bonus to have the same actor appearing in both films with a genuine generational time-lapse between them. It is just a truism that -- despite Quentin Crisp's much-repeated prediction that every year "things are going to get worse" -- happiness, as the proverb has it, simply doesn't make for such an enthralling story as do troubled times; and this is essentially a depiction of a man who has finally come to terms with the world, and it with him. As such it is well-meaning and pretty well executed, but not a particularly unmissable experience.

And inevitably it is less touching and less striking than its predecessor.