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I'm Stephen Metcalfe, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest Bronze Ball of Regret Edition.

It's Wednesday, October 12th, 2011.

On today's program, the new indie darling, very darling film weekend.

The not so new, possibly darling, dancing with the stars, and the death of Steve Jobs. Joining me today is Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. How you doing? I'm good. Good. And our film critic, Dana Stevens. Hey. Hey, Stephen. Before we plunge in, exciting news, we're going to do a live show in Hudson, New York, my own backyard.

Yimby, right? I'm going to yimby the show. Yes, in my backyard. Yes, in my backyard. Hudson, New York is just a two-hour Amtrak ride from Penn Station in New York City.

It's going to be at the Spotty Dog Bookstore on Warren Street, and we know that it's going to be on – this is what we know so far.

It's going to be October 30th sometime in the afternoon slash late afternoon, but we haven't pinned down at time yet.

What we need people to do, Julia, what do we need people to do?

We need people to email us at cultureFest at Slate.com and tell us if you are thinking of coming, if you think you might take the opportunity to journey upstate or perhaps you are already upstate and would like to journey from hither and thither. And then once we have a sense of the interest, we'll figure out some kind of ticketing process and let you know whether there'll be room. Yeah, because we have limited capacity in the bookstore. Yeah, it's pretty small bookstore. But we're very excited. We're going to, Steve's going to tour us around his haunts. We might go eat some pie. And then we're going to go to this great bookstore and Gab. Oh, absolutely. By the way, I didn't mean to suggest that there weren't fimbies, that there weren't fans in my backyard.

I'm sure that there are plenty of upstate fimbies who will come to the show. You don't have to, if you live upstate, don't go to Penn Station and then reboard another train. But are there foes in your backyard? The other kind of fimbie, foes in your backyard? Uh-oh. Uh-oh. I don't think foes come out on a beautiful October afternoon. No, one hopes not. But anyway, so we're very psyched. It's going to be a lot of fun. All right, should we plunge in? Okay. Weekend is the second feature from the director, Andrew Hay. I guess. Hey, H-A-I-G-H.

Is there some Gaelic? Am I going to get Gaelic hate mail? Is it Gaelic? I have no idea, but I mean... Now you're going to get Gaelic. I've inspired it. Let's call him Hay. Well, he'll forgive me because he made a beautiful film in my estimation. It's a weekend is a low-budget movie about two gay men, a shy, somewhat soft, good soft, awake and baker name Russell and Glenn a hardened

and by Russell's standards, at least ambitious artist, and the sort of kind of romance

that plays out over the course of it, between them, that plays out over the course of a single

weekend. Dana, I can't hide my love for this movie.

I think it's absolutely terrific. I hope people go out in droves. They discover it as well. What did you make of it? I loved it, too. Are we going to be just a complete love fest for this movie, Julia? Were you also on board with Weekend? Yeah. It was dreamy. It was definitely dreamy. But I think there's something to debate because I feel like a lot of the oaths to it, including yours, Dana, made the point that it was really just a beautiful love story that didn't make a particular fuss of being a gay love story.

And that was part of its charm.

And I actually think it's a quite political movie that it's not at all sort of a, you know, post-sexual identity revolution. Hey, isn't it nice to watch two people fall in love, whatever gender they are, sort of movie? Because the dynamic of their relationship has a lot to do with the fact that one of them is a bit further out of the closet than the other and the debates they have about that. So to me, it felt, it felt extremely political, but that's not a way of saying that it was bad because it was one of the most subtle and deft bits of, I think, quite political filmmaking I've ever seen. But then why does it feel, I mean, I guess just because of the subtlety and the deafness, but I kind of agree with what you're saying. There is a lot of thematization of, you know, the fact that their relationship is a gay relationship and what it means to be in the closet, part way out of the closet. And gay marriage, they debate gay marriage at one point. But so then why, I mean, if anybody's listened to this, they may think, well, this sounds like some very tendentious issue movie that, you know, would never play outside of a gay film festival. And to me, it really feels like a crossover movie that they could have appeal for somebody who's never gone to see a gay love story. And I don't quite know how those two things can coexist. I think I agree, but with both of you on this. Let me frame it a little bit, at least for me, which is a number of years ago, John Updike, wrote a review of a novel by Alan, the novelist Alan Hollinghurst, in which he said, this was in the

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