Editor

Miami Gay & Lesbian Festival will open with Craig Lucas' feature film debut, entitled THE DYING GAUL.
the festival runs April 18th to 21st


The Dying Gaul is a 3rd century B.C. sculpture (pictured above) that sits in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. It reveals the Greeks' ancient admiration for the Gauls, who fought naked and without armor.

"The Dying Gaul" is also the title of a screenplay that Hollywood writer Robert Sandrich (played by Peter Sarsgaard) has written about 2 gay men, one of whom is dying from AIDS, travelling in Europe who visit The Dying Gaul statue in Rome. It becomes the central metaphor for Sandrich's script, as he draws parallels between the ancient Gauls and the courage of modern gay men. It's a thinly autobiographical script about Robert's own lover who (as the film opens) has just died from the disease.

Sandrich's script is the catalyst for momentous changes not only in his own life but in the lives of Jeffrey (Campbell Scott), a Hollywood studio executive who wants to buy the script for $1 million (if Robert will change the sex of his late lover to that of a woman), and Jeffrey's wife Elaine (Patricia Clarkson). Elaine, a failed screenwriter no longer writing and now living a life of luxury in the Hollywood Hills, reads "The Dying Gaul" before Jeffrey has the homosexuality eradicated out of it....and so loves "the film it could have been", she insists upon getting to know Robert herself.


Elaine's fascination with the intertwining of Robert's life and his screenplay stirs Elaine's own writer's curiosity. How does Robert deal with the pain, grief and loneliness? Answer: by hooking up for anonymous sex with strangers through AOL chatrooms. Which chatrooms? Elaine wants to know. Later, Elaine signs on to AOL herself under the pretense of being another gay male on the make and doesn't have much trouble deciphering what screen name Robert is using. Elaine's curiosity leads to a psychologically complex and unnerving turn of events that explodes into an epic Hitchcockian tale of lust, power, lies and revenge.