Elegance Bratton doesn’t make timid movies, and he doesn’t give timid interviews. In this week’s cover story, he talks about directing By Any Means, the unnerving sight of 20 actors in Klan robes on his Georgia set, the battle to preserve the Black and queer history of house music, and the dating-app sandwich that led to a 12-year marriage.
In The Feed, the “go woke, go broke” mantra for corporations runs into hard data, Florida’s LGBTQ congressional hopefuls lose even as equality candidates win down-ballot, and Virginia Rep. Eugene Vindman faces the fallout from his vote for a “forced outing” bill.
We also cover a federal ruling on Florida’s drag restrictions, a California pharmacy’s defiant response to anti-gay vandalism, Rehoboth Beach’s first openly gay mayor, and a fund helping transgender people cover transition expenses.
Elsewhere in the issue, bisexual rapper Isaiah Rashad hits the road with a new album and a renewed sense of freedom, while André Hereford reviews Keegan Theatre’s Gruesome Playground Injuries.
"This is not your grandma's civil rights movie." Elegance Bratton is telling me about his latest film, By Any Means, and he's a passionate hype man for his work. "This is a propulsive, muscular thriller that is bringing us inside this dynamic relationship and that is ultimately a commentary on all of us watching it."
Directed by Bratton, from a script by Sascha Penn, the film stirs up ghosts of Mississippi in the '60s-set tale of a Black FBI agent who hits a wall trying to investigate a deadly attack on a civil rights leader and his family. So he's teamed with a mob enforcer from New York who comes down to Klan country to crack a few skulls if he has to, to shake loose the truth.
