Call Me by Your Name Screenwriter James Ivory on Queer Film

James Ivory

At the GLAAD Awards, Ivory notes the variety of people who love CMBYN and discusses how it carries the torch of 1987's Maurice.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

May 08 2018 12:06 PM EST

May 08 2018 12:20 PM EST

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When people who encounter Call Me by Your Name screenwriter James Ivory on the streets of New York and tell him his work changed their life, they're usually referring not to that film but to his 1987 gay love story Maurice, he noted at the GLAAD Media Awards Saturday night. But Call Me by Your Name gets positive reaction from a broad range of people, from college students to 70-something straight couples, who tell him they were moved by its love story and brought to tears by the ending (we hear it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg's favorite film of 2017).

Ivory was accepting Call Me by Your Name's award for Outstanding Film-Wide Release along with producer Peter Spears, who shared an emotionally wrenching post from the AIDS Memorial Instagram account, from a man describing coming out as gay to his mother in the early days of the epidemic. She was so upset that she vomited, and she told him AIDS proved being gay "had backfired."

That post, Spears said, reminds him of the importance of GLAAD's work and of some advice a friend gave him: "Every day, going forward, tell your stories, of who you are and how you love , what you believe and what you have learned along the way. Don't be silenced. Refuse to be erased It matters. We matter. Now more than ever."