Behind The Candelabra Trailer {Matt Damon and Mike Douglas}

Back then, the carefully constructed images of closeted celebrities like Liberace and Rock Hudson were due to an unofficial agreement between their PR handlers and the press. The personal lives of these actors were open secrets among the people in the industry, but the fans saw the images of the playboy or the confirmed bachelor. To live openly was to cause immediate infamy and the death of a career (and risk the careers of those that supported him), so a double identity was formed and the true self confined to a fishbowl. Even Liberace admits in the film, "No matter how many people are around, I feel like I’m all by myself."

Directed by the slyly unpredictable Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Side Effects), Behind the Candelabra was scripted by Richard LaGravenese from the book by Scott Thorson and Alex Thorleifson. Since it is Scott’s account of his relationship with Liberace, he is featured as much in the film as the star himself, beginning when Scott was in his late teens. Fortysomething Matt Damon does not look like an eighteen-year-old, but he nails the awestruck innocence and star worship of the impressionable Thorson, immersing himself in the opulence of Liberace’s world. As Liberace, Michael Douglas is amazingly cast and truly surprised me with his portrayal of the performer. Whether he was charming his female audience members on stage in a bevy of Austrian crystal, furs and gold pianos, or entertaining at his home of Austrian crystal, furs and gold pianos, Liberace thrived in his world of "palatial kitsch." Douglas wisely plays the character as fun without becoming farcical (emerging from a Rolls Royce driven onto the stage was a hoot), and his stage portrayal echoes the detail and control that the entertainer brought to his performances. 

 Liberace died of AIDS in 1986, his final secret revealed despite his wishes. "I can’t stand bad publicity," he says in the film. Soderbergh has crafted a film as much about control, disguise and frustration as it is about spectacle, honesty, and love. Liberace loved his female fan base to the point where he created a false image of himself as the romantic lead, but through this his natural flamboyance and dramatic flair was allowed to shine. He didn’t stop doing what he loved on stage, but that superseded the recognition of who and what he loved in his personal life. If his private fishbowl was constricting, Liberace countered it by the magnificence of his stage persona, the showmanship outweighing the secrecy. If his legacy is at all apparent in the shows of Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Madonna and even Lady Gaga, it’s that "too much of a good thing is wonderful."