I Am Michael starring James
Franco as “ex-gay” activist Michael Glatze premiered over the
weekend at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and the
reviews are surprisingly strong.
Glatze is the controversial publisher
and former gay rights advocate who gained notoriety for publicly
renouncing being gay.
Glatze and former boyfriend Benjie
Nycum (played by out actor Zachary Quinto) in 2004 launched Young
Gay America magazine (YGA Mag), a bimonthly magazine for
LGBT youth which folded three years later. The pair, who met while
working at XY
magazine, also co-authored the book XY Survival Guide.
In 2005, Glatze was featured in Time
magazine as a gay rights activist. Two years later, he publicly
announced he no longer identified as gay and denounced homosexuality
in two WND.com articles. In one article, he pledged to fight against
gay rights.
Indiewire.com
called Franco's performance “remarkably convincing.”
“While Quinto provides a devastating
counterpoint to Glatze's changing agenda as the couple's relationship
gradually falls apart, Franco essentially runs the show,” the film
site wrote.
Quinto told The
Salt Lake Tribune: “I like what the character that I play
represents in the film, which is integrity and groundedness and
authenticity and acceptance of who he is. And those are all
qualities that I strive for in my own life, so I thought that those
parallels were apt.”