Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch.The stories of Charles Dickens have become the stuff of pop-culture mythos.
Like Shakespeare, people often quote or allude to the characters and plot twists of Dickens’ writing without even realizing they’ve done so.
Maybe that’s why we find it so satisfying when a filmmaker has the chutzpah to take Dickens’ work and reimagine it in a bold new way.Case in point: Twisted, the 1996 indie drama that reimagined Oliver Twist set in a world of hustlers and drugs.
Keivyn McNeill Graves plays Lee, a ten-year-old boy forced taken in by Andre (William Hickey), a low-life gay pimp. Lee’s only protectors are Eddie (Anthony Crivello), one of Andre’s boys turned drug dealer, and Eddie’s boyfriend Angel (David Norona).