I haven't tried to write a movie review for local "alternative" paper The Chicago Reader since the first month I moved here in 1989. The review was for Roger and Me and I paid for both showings I attended myself, at the now closed Cinearts (if I'm remembering correctly) on Michigan. At that time working a cashier job for minimum wage, at the long-gone Kenessey Gourmet Restaurant and Bakery on Belmont & Sheridan, that was a big outlay. I could have watched it once but I simply don't trust my first reactions to any movie; or, rather, two viewings only begin to satisfy my curiosity about what great movies have to tell me.

[A woman babbles, speaking in tongues, perhaps, more and more loudly, two seats in front of me in filter as I'm writing this. It's starting to drive me crazy.]

My review was fairly negative. Although I agreed with Moore's politics I thought he was far too glib and tended to make fun of everyone in the movie except himself, including people who had no real power to respond. Of course, from another perspective that just made the evasions and stone-walling of those who did have power even more damning. In the end though I thought that the left's supporting a political David Letterman so unequivocally was a compromised position at best. Moore's grown up quite a bit since then, and I have too I hope, although he's still too ready to go for the easy kill.

The Reader's resident film critic, the estimable and inspiring Jonathan Rosenbaum, had already written a review. However, then-editor Joe Lenahan sent my manuscript back to me with handwritten notes: "I don't have the heart to just throw this out; for what it's worth I found your comments…interesting." Part compliment, part condescension. Oh well.

I wrote a letter to the editor instead, critiquing Rosenbaum's overly positive review and the editor printed it. Rosenbaum responded. A couple more people wrote in to agree with me. Rosenbaum responded to all of us. I thought it was a lively and rewarding exchange and although I didn't get paid for it, it was still satisfying to see my ideas in print.

I never tried to write another movie review for reasons that had to do with money, being involved in a 6-year relationship and with ACT UP, laziness, struggles with depression and disillusionment with my own writing and anyone's willingness to want to read me, etc. etc. In film school in Carbondale I was somewhat the teacher's pet, at least in heavy writing-oriented theory and criticism classes; the mechanics — the physics, if you will — of filmmaking always intimidated me. In my home town of Indianapolis editor Steve Sylvester of Stepping Out and later The Indianapolis New Times (now defunct like everything else I was involved with in this story) published 99.9% of what I wrote, partly because he had no one else writing decent reviews for him but mostly because, as he said several times, he was a real fan and he admired my sometimes fearless if out-there interpretations. That was generous considering the places queer/feminist theory took me when I looked at film in those days. I've apparently lost forever a New Times review of James Cameron's Aliens that proclaimed its having a pro-choice subtext. One letter to the editor from "Reading in Indy" took me to task but thanked me for my "spirit." Not that queer theory or feminism aren't still valuable tools. But I'm veering…