If you're looking for a film about Langston Hughes, look elsewhere. I saw the film at the Nuart in West Los Angeles, one of the premiere specialty theaters in town. It was playing on a double bill with the virtually unwatchable, ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE GETS HIS NIPPLE PIERCED. After suffering through that hideous film, I was then subjected to a film supposedly about Langston Hughes, but really nothing more than a production designer demo. The film looked nice, but outside of a few short clips of Hughes, you wouldn't even know that the film was about him. Rather than explore the life of one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, the film seems more interested in parading images of gay men on the screen. The film doesn't even seem to explore the alleged homosexuality of Langston Hughes, at least not in a way that a heterosexual can understand. After the film was over, the audience was so disappointed, that the line for patrons to get their money back was longer than the line to purchase tickets.
Review of Looking for Langston
Looking for Langston
(1989)
Pretentious Film That Reveals Little About Langston Hughes
4 November 1999