This issue started out as a tribute to homosexuality in the movies — queer monsters, 1930s sissies, Pink Flamingos, gay painter Francis Bacon as rendered by John Maybury, a San Francisco transvestite/transsexual film festival, and, yes, the obligatory gay dwarf (Lorenz Hart in Alan Vanneman's piece on Words and Music). Of course, like the world, Bright Lights is never entirely homosexual (a tragedy for both the world and us), and we've balanced the scales with articles on Frank Capra, the wonderful early silent studio Thanhouser, Truffaut's Jules and Jim, the Soviet-Cuban "poetic documentary" I Am Cuba, the gorgeously embalmed Russian classic Mother and Son, a pair of worthy but little-noticed art films (Bad Manners and Unmade Beds), and a slew of book reviews. We want you to have your cake and eat it too, which is possible, as the great English novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett wisely pointed out, if you have two cakes. Consider this issue of Bright Lights your two cakes.

And, oh yes, your inspired, otherwise unmarketable manuscripts are always welcome, no matter where you fall on the bumpy map of gender.