Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh directs them with unrelenting authenticity. Sex hangs over the entire film, and scenes depicting it don’t shirk away from the mechanics of male-on-male physical intimacy. But unlike those two, Liberace has been gifted with a biopic that unflinchingly depicts the intercourse he had as hot, even in his 60s. Like both Freddie Mercury and Elton John, Liberace was known for his lavish stage persona. Based on the memoir of the same name written by his lover at the time, Scott Thorson, HBO’s Candelabra is a fearless peek inside the decadent but sometimes volatile lives of filthy rich musicians.
While watching the “controversial” sex scene in Rocketman, I found myself reflecting not on Bohemian Rhapsody, but rather, of another biopic about a queer musician whose preternatural talent allowed him to transcend heteronormative expectations: 2013’s made-for-TV Behind the Candelabra, which follows piano virtuoso Liberace in the last decade of his life. So ultimately, why was I so disappointed? I mean, have you seen Taron Egerton and Richard Madden lately? Please. Several weeks before the film’s official release, immediately following its Cannes debut in early May, The Hollywood Reporter published an article with the headline “ Rocketman Blazes Trail as First Major Studio Film to Depict Gay Male Sex.” In it, they claimed that the film “tackles its subject’s sexual awakening without flinching.” Shortly after, sources confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the sex scene would remain intact. “ has and always will be the no holds barred, musical fantasy that Paramount producers proudly support and believe in,” he said in a tweet. But Fletcher was just as quick to squash the claims. So when word first dropped in March that the studio was seeking to have a gay sex scene cut - because its inclusion might push the film to an R-rating, making it much more difficult to match the financial success of the tamer PG-13 Bohemian Rhapsody - the backlash was appropriately swift.