Melville House Books

The reviews have been awful, but novelist Gore Vidal is sticking up for the movie Alexander anyway. As a Reuters wire story reports, Vidal says Oliver Stone‘s $160 million opus is “barrier breaking” because it presents Alexander as a bisexual. The film, says Vidal, is “a breakthrough in what you can make films about. Movies are always the last to register changes in society and this movie does it.” Critics still seem unimpressed, however. One quoted by the report calls the film “an act of hubris so huge, that, in Alexander’s time, it would draw lightning bolts from contemptuous gods.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.