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Trapped in the closet full movie 1 222/15/2023 ![]() Still, for many in the public, his sexuality was no secret. With fear of the disease setting back gay acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic – “If you knew someone was gay in the 1990s you stayed away from them,” he recalls, “not just straight people but other gays as well” – Michael remained in the closet. “I recall standing in the balcony of Heaven, THE huge gay club in London at the time, with Paul Gambaccini, and he pointed down at the enormous crowd of dancing people pressed together and said to me, ‘Do you realize that nearly half of these guys are going to be dead in five years?’ It was such an outrageous thing to say, you wanted to think maybe four or five of them might get it – but he was absolutely right.” “Young people today really don’t understand,” he says. But then, as the director remembers, AIDS happened. Instead, says Napier-Bell, he planned to build his career and then come out when he was already a star. Though his documentary doesn’t get granular about the timeline of Michael’s coming out process, the filmmaker claims the singer toyed with the idea in his earliest days of success yet held back when it became clear his record label would not allow it. ![]() George had a dislike of having to compromise, and a lot of guilt for not coming out, which he knew he ought to do.” “People say stars are uncompromising, but it’s the very opposite – the music industry DEMANDS compromise. “Every artist has the problem of balancing their desire for artistic perfection with the needs of the industry and the struggle with their own demons,” says the director. ![]() As Napier-Bell – an out and proud gay man himself – told the Blade, they couldn’t view him any more harshly for it than he did himself – but in the 1980s, if he wanted the level of stardom he was capable of achieving, he had no choice but to keep his sexuality hidden. For a younger generation, Michael’s “notorious” bathroom incident often overshadows his musical legacy, and some judge him harshly for remaining closeted through so much of his career. In the film, which documents the musician’s public and private lives side-by-side and sheds insight on the difficult balancing act he tried to maintain between his star image and his authentic self, the incident is just part of Michael’s larger story.
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