Review of Gay Sex in the 70s (2005) by Andre B — 25 Jun 2010

One caveat with Lovett's film is that it's almost entirely Manhattan-centric: very much "Gay Sex in the City in the 70s", there's little on what it might have been like to grow up gay in the sticks, where there weren't any gyms or baths or Fire Island to hang around; the idea everyone was out and proud and getting some (if not, indeed, loads) surely throws a rainbow-coloured blanket over some of the trickier stories that might have been told.

.. The formal slack is taken up by Lovett's evocative deployment of archive footage and photography: candid period snapshots showing consenting adults getting up to all manner of naughtiness on rooftops, in windows and steamrooms and - of course - on the dancefloor.

Any voyeuristic tendencies are offset by the personal nature of the testimony collated: explicit at some points, yes, but reflective at others (particularly towards the end, as the first lesions begin to make themselves manifest), it manages to overturn a few of the stereotypes and assumptions we've come to associate with the era.

That said, one of the interviewees turns out to have actually been *in the navy*; if I knew how to scream, my friends, I would have.