Man of the Year (1995 film)

Man of the Year is a 1995 mockumentary film written, directed by and starring Dirk Shafer. It is a fictionalized account of Shafer's reign as Playgirl magazine's 1992 "Man of the Year" and his struggle with reconciling his public persona as a sex symbol to women with his identity as a gay man. Shafer combines mock interviews (both with some of the actual people involved and with actors standing in for the actual people) with archive footage from Shafer's appearances on talk shows like Donahue, The Maury Povich Show and The Jerry Springer Show (along with an early appearance on Dance Fever) and recreations of events like his Playgirl photoshoots, his "fantasy date" with a Playgirl reader and the death of his friend Pledge Cartwright (played by actor Bill Brochtrup) of an AIDS-related illness to relate the story.

Man of the Year
original poster
Directed byDirk Shafer
Produced byMatt Keener
Written byDirk Shafer
Starring
  • Dirk Shafer
  • Vivian Paxton
  • Claudette Sutherland
  • Michael Ornstein
Music byPeitor Angell
Barry Stich
Eric Vetro
CinematographyStephen Timberlake
Edited byBarry S. Silver
Ken Solomon
Distributed bySeventh Art Releasing
Release date
Running time
86 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$209,935[1]

Critical response

Variety gave Man of the Year a generally favorable review, calling the film "pleasant to watch and intermittently clever."[2] However, it notes that Shafer's writing is "uneven" and that the film's "structure is a bit repetitive."[2] The New Yorker largely concurred, noting that Shafer "keep[s] condescension at bay with some nice comic spins"[3] but finding the use of the death of Shafer's friend as Shafer's catalyst for coming out to be self-serving. The San Francisco Chronicle was far harsher, deriding the film as a "vanity" production and complaining "There's no shape to Man of the Year, no forward movement. Man of the Year doesn't even have the benefit of being hip."[4] The New York Times, however, found the film "gently satirical"[5] with the use of real clips from Shafer's various talk show appearances creating a "tone of vertiginous loopiness."[5] The Times also saw the metaphor in Shafer's experience to the pressure that society put on gay people to pretend to be straight.

DVD release

Man of the Year was released on Region 1 DVD on February 23, 1999.

gollark: Fascinating.
gollark: It was probably handled via some automated tool TJ09 has which just puts in that stuff around the issue.
gollark: More like micromanagement by someone who believes that they have the right to control fansites too.
gollark: (this is now up on the forums).
gollark: ```Unfortunately, it is unavailable, possibly forever, because (according to an email):Thank you for your request to access the Dragon Cave API from host dc.osmarks.tk. At this time, your request could not be granted, for the following reason: You have, through your own admission on the forums, done the exact thing that got EATW banned from the API.This may be a non-permanent issue; feel free to re-submit your request after correcting any issue(s) listed above.Thanks, T.J. Land presumably due to this my server and computer (yes, I should use a VPS, whatever) can no longer access DC. Whether this is sickness checking, scraping, or using EATW's approximation for optimal view count I know not, but oh well. Due to going against the unwritten rules of DC (yes, this is why I was complaining about ridiculous T&C issues) this hatchery is now nonfunctional. Service may be restored if I actually get some notification about what exactly the problem is and undoing it will not make the whole thing pointless. The text at the bottom is quite funny, though.```

References
  1. https://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=manoftheyear96.htm
  2. Levy, Emmanuel (1995-07-17). "Man of the Year". Variety. Retrieved 2008-03-23.
  3. Diones, Bruce (1996-04-01). "Man of the Year". New Yorker. Retrieved 2008-03-23.
  4. LaSalle, Mick (1996-03-01). "'Year' of Living Vainly". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2008-03-23.
  5. Holden, Stephen (1996-03-15). "Literally and Figuratively, Unclothing a Dreamboat". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-23.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.