It's the other Lincoln movie of the year — the one in which he isn't a vampire hunter — and damn if Daniel Day-Lewis isn't the spitting image, but will there ever be a movie that touches on Lincoln's rumored homosexuality? We'll see.
If Tony Kushner won't touch it, who will?
Screenplay by Kushner based partly on the book A Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the film also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Jackie Earle Haley, Jared Harris, Lee Pace, James Spader, David Strathairn, Sally Field, and John Hawkes.
Watch the full trailer, AFTER THE JUMP…
In 2004, C.A. Tripp published a controversial book suggesting Lincoln was gay, which I covered at the time of its publication:
According to the NYT review, among Tripp's assertions are that Lincoln had a "youthful affair" of four years with Joshua Speed, had a homosexual relationship with bodyguard David V. Derickson, shared a bed with a man named Billy Greene who told Lincoln's law partner that the president's thighs "were as perfect as a human being Could be," and "wooed" fellow lawyer Henry C. Whitney "to close intimacy and familiarity."
The book argues that it was Lincoln's homosexuality that led to his volatile relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln and describes an account by bodyguard Derickson's commanding officer: "Captain Derickson, in particular, advanced so far in the president's confidence and esteem that, in Mrs. Lincoln's absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him and — it is said — making use of his Excellency's night-shirts!"
But that will likely be fodder for another movie…
