LGBTQ Critics Celebrate Love Triangles and Thieving Queers

GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics hosted its Annual Dorian Awards Winners Toast last week at the Paley Restaurant in Hollywood's historic Columbia Square, where performers were toasted (and some celebs were not-so-playfully roasted -- ahem, Kevin Hart).

Host Frank DeCaro (from The Daily Show and The Frank DeCaro Show) did live interviews with those accepting awards on behalf of their films, including The Favourite co-screenwriter Deborah Davis. The Favourite was named the Dorian Awards' Film of the Year, its writers -- Davis and Tony McNamara --were awarded the Screenplay of the Year prize, and star Olivia Colman won for Best Film Performance of the Year by an Actress.

There was a cheeky turn from Lucy DeVito (yes, the daughter of Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman) as she accepted the award for Can You Ever Forgive Me? DeVito played a gossipy office worker in the film, which garnered a Best Supporting Actor award for Richard E. Grant and also won for LGBTQ Film of the Year. Grant, who was on set elsewhere, sent a letter of his deep appreciation for the award, as did the film's producer Nicholas Ma (the son of Yo-Yo Ma).

Also at the toast: unexpected hilarity from the world's leading authority on Oscar Wilde, GALECA advisory board member Joseph Bristow, a University of California, Los Angeles, professor who has authored Effeminate England: Homoerotic Writing After 1885 and edited two editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Critic Brantley Bardin brought one of the night's surprise stars: Karen Brailsford, mother of The Hate U Give's nonbinary star Amandla Stenberg, a perennial GALECA fave.

DeCaro, a comedian, pop culture pundit, and radio/TV personality who has spent the last three years touring North America as the opening act for Lisa Lampanelli, is the author of five books including Drag: Combing Through the Big Wigs of Show Business, due from Rizzoli in spring 2019. GALECA boasts over 200 top LGBTQ entertainment journalists and critics in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. Read the full winners list here.

Pictured above: Dorian Awards host Frank DeCaro (The Daily Show); GALECA board president and The Advocate's editorial director, Diane Anderson-Minshall; and GALECA founder and executive director John Griffiths.