If you want to see a movie that really nails the pathology of bigotry, try writer-director Tom Kalin's revisionist look at the 1924 Chicago trial of Leopold and Loeb — two gay, Jewish, eighteen-year-old intellectuals convicted of the "thrill killing" of thirteen-year-old Bobby Franks.

Kalin is not arguing the innocence of Nathan Leopold (Craig Chester) or Richard Loeb (Daniel Schlachet). His point is that contrary to the popular belief at the time, their homosexuality did not make them do it. Attorney Clarence Darrow (Robert Read) used their relationship as evidence of insanity and got them life sentences instead of the gallows.

Kalin's experiment (shot on a shoestring over fourteen days) meets the test of a great film — it lets us view the familiar in astonishing new ways. Ellen Kuras's stylized black-and-white cinematography offers one stunning image after another. The lovers' bed sweeps into the courtroom, incarnating the public's wildest imaginings. Previous Hollywood forays into the case — Compulsion and Hitchcock's Rope — seem timid by comparison. Kalin brings a searching mind and a poet's eye to Swoon. His haunting and visionary film is a stunning debut.

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.