Jesse’s Closet
2002, NR.
Directed by Ken Johnson, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring .

Longtime mainstay of the Austin theatre world Ken Johnson has adapted his 1996 play Jesse’s Closet for the screen. The play is set in the San Francisco apartment of Jesse, a gay man who has just died of AIDS. His rural Louisiana parents, who never came to grips with Jesse’s homosexuality, show up to pick up a family album and run into one of Jesse’s old friends. In his 1996 review of the play Chronicle reviewer Robert Faires describes what follows as “emotionally charged conversations and a series of flashbacks, through which we meet Jesse and learn what terrible events propelled him from Louisiana to Castro Street.”

This article appears in July 26 • 2002.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.