Some of My Best Friends Are...

It's Christmas Eve at a gay bar in Greenwich Village.

It's a portrait of a bunch of isolated people who, in one of the ending statements, have nowhere else to go. The range of characters run from flashy queens all the way to uptight New Englanders who don't do anything about their sexuality but talk about it. The bar is owned by a woman who presides like a mother at a party; her staff is mostly middle-aged men who go home to their wives. There's an undercurrent of sadness under the almost hysterical holiday partying. Like many of the cheap movies of the era -- of any era, really -- the cast includes actors years after their cinematic prime, like Carleton Carpenter, the current stars of queer cinema, like Candy Darling, and performers before they became well known, like Fannie Flagg, Gil Gerard, and Rue McClanahan.

In the end, Christmas Eve is no time to be alone, and these people are more alone than most.