Performance Anxiety

A decade after the death of an American TV star, a young actor reminisces about the written correspondence he once shared with the former, as well as the impact those letters had on both their lives.

It's 1957, and James Whale's heyday as the director of "Frankenstein," "Bride of Frankenstein" and "The Invisible Man" is long behind him. Retired and a semi-recluse, he lives his days accompanied only by images from his past. When his dour housekeeper, Hannah, hires a handsome young gardener, the flamboyant director and simple yard man develop an unlikely friendship, which will change them forever.

At a birthday party in 1968 New York, a surprise guest and a drunken game leave seven gay friends reckoning with unspoken feelings and buried truths.

In 1955, young photographer Dennis Stock develops a close bond with actor James Dean while shooting pictures of the rising Hollywood star.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

The untimely death of silent screen star Rudolph Valentino prompts the many women in his past to reminisce about his troubled rise to superstardom.