Roy Cohn/Jack Smith

Roy Cohn/Jack Smith

1995 · 90 min · ★ 10.0 · Drama

When Jill Godmilow’s movie Roy Cohn/Jack Smith premiered at the 1994 Toronto International Film Festival, the number of AIDS-related deaths was reaching an all-time high in the United States (over 270,000). In New York City, the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, many artists and filmmakers were grappling with the disease. While Broadway was hosting the second part of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play Angels in America, downtown New Yorkers were fondly recalling another recent production, Ron Vawter’s one-man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, in which the actor, who died of AIDS in April 1994, performed two monologues, first as Cohn, the conservative lawyer, and secondly, as Smith, the flamboyant experimental filmmaker—both of whom died of AIDS-related causes in the late 1980s.

Directed by Jill Godmilow · Written by Gary Indiana

Your Rating

Cast

Make it a double feature

2h 28m together

Both from Jill Godmilow.

More from Jill GodmilowSee all →

The Popovich Brothers of South ChicagoThe Popovich Brothers of South Chicago · 1977
The Popovich Brothers of South Chicago
★ 8.01977
MovieDocumentary
In a small community of steel workers, truck drivers, and teachers on the South Side of Chicago, a musical group called the Popovich Brothers maintained the traditional music and rich culture of their Serbian homeland by performing in local venues. By the 1970s, when this documentary was made, the Popovich Brothers had been performing for almost 50 years, bringing this music to new generations.
TalesTales · 1971
Tales
★ 7.01971
MovieDocumentary
Made entirely by women - a group of young men and women have a cinema verite confessional about their most bizarre sexual experiences in a strange modern day Decameron.
American PlayhouseAmerican Playhouse · 1982
American Playhouse
★ 6.61982
SeriesDramaComedy
American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.
Antonia: A Portrait of the WomanAntonia: A Portrait of the Woman · 1974
Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman
★ 6.51974
MovieDocumentaryMusic
1974 documentary about symphony conductor Antonia Brico, including her struggle against gender bias in her profession.
Waiting for the MoonWaiting for the Moon · 1987
Waiting for the Moon
★ 4.91987
MovieComedyDrama
Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, Guillaume Apollinaire, others; and Hemingway pops in.
SCUM ManifestoSCUM Manifesto · 2017
SCUM Manifesto
2017
Movie
Jill Godmilow (Far From Poland, Waiting for the Moon) in collaboration with Joanna Krakowska and Magda Mosiewicz pay homage to the original SCUM Manifesto, a French film made in 1976 by Carole Roussopoulos and Delphine Seyrig that was inspired by Valerie Solanas’s infamous text of the same name. Much like Solanas’s radical feminist text, SCUM Manifesto is a form of resistance and a call to action.
The Odyssey TapesThe Odyssey Tapes · 1988
The Odyssey Tapes
1988
MovieDocumentary
A study of concert-artist Richard Dyer-Bennet at work on Homer's Odyssey - that is, developing a strategy for performing, in English, and in 1978, with harp in hand, this monumental 24 hour poem, which, in Homer's time and Homer's life, only existed in oral form - a long song, performed in public as entertainment and as tribal history.
Mabou Mines' Lear '87 Archive (Condensed)Mabou Mines' Lear '87 Archive (Condensed) · 2001
Mabou Mines' Lear '87 Archive (Condensed)
2001
Movie
Jill Godmilow's six-hour archive of The Mabou Mines ensemble's controversial 1990, gender-reversed production of William Shakespeare's King Lear documents the first two-week workshop on the play at the Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta. Director Lee Breuer and the cast are seen working on transposing the play to 1950's America in this intimate record of a master class in avant-garde performance work. Taken from over 100 hours of material, this condensed archive comes with a 32-page handbook with guides for tracking the production.

More Like This

My Life Without MeMy Life Without Me · 2003
My Life Without Me
★ 6.12003
MovieDramaRomance
A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.
American SweatshopAmerican Sweatshop · 2025
American Sweatshop
★ 5.62025
MovieThrillerMystery
A content moderator is tasked with purging offensive media from the internet. When she witnesses a crime in a video, she is lured away from the safety of her keyboard as she obsessively seeks to hold someone accountable.
Italian for BeginnersItalian for Beginners · 2000
Italian for Beginners
★ 6.52000
MovieComedyDrama
Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.
Desert HeartsDesert Hearts · 1985
Desert Hearts
★ 7.11985
MovieDramaRomance
While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed literature professor finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay.
Beyond SilenceBeyond Silence · 1996
Beyond Silence
★ 6.91996
MovieDramaMusic
Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.
Grbavica: The Land of My DreamsGrbavica: The Land of My Dreams · 2006
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
★ 6.92006
MovieDramaHistory
A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.
Open HeartsOpen Hearts · 2002
Open Hearts
★ 7.12002
MovieDramaRomance
Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.
The Secret Life of WordsThe Secret Life of Words · 2005
The Secret Life of Words
★ 7.02005
MovieRomanceDrama
A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.
Lost in TranslationLost in Translation · 2003
Lost in Translation
★ 7.42003
MovieDramaComedy
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
Wilbur Wants to Kill HimselfWilbur Wants to Kill Himself · 2002
Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
★ 6.52002
MovieComedyDrama
The strange comedy film of two close brothers; one, Wilbur, who wants to kill himself, and the other, Harbour, who tries to prevent this. When their father dies leaving them his bookstore they meet a woman who makes their lives a bit better yet with a bit more trouble as well.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter