There’s an eerie sense of déjà vu with HBO’s “Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York.”
The four-part true crime series, now streaming, focuses on four victims, gay men in the 1990s, who were murdered, dismembered, their remains found in garbage bags along a New Jersey highway.
However the emphasis here is not, as is usual in true crime, on the demented killer but the men who we are vividly brought to see as people with families, loved ones and full lives.
Adapted from an Edgar-winning 2021 book also called “Last Call” by director Anthony Caronna and producer Howard Gertler, what ultimately emerges is an unstinting portrait of the violence done not just to a gay quartet but to gays, lesbians, trans people in general.
The documentary chronicles police and institutional indifference, if not neglect. That makes the climatic court trial a tense test case of basic gay civil rights.
“What we wanted to do was set the table so people understood that in 2005,” Caronna said, “gay marriage wasn’t a thing. For gays, 2005 was still a time where somebody could get off for something heinous. There was still a lot of homemade homophobia within the justice system.”
“Last Call” begins in 1970s Florida where former beauty queen Anita Bryant wins national attention and enthusiastic support by attacking homosexuals as unfit parents. “Last Call” ends with current Florida governor Ron DeSantis echoing Bryant with attacks on trans children, gays and lesbians.
“We knew when we started developing the show we were going to tie it into what the present day climate is,” Gertler begin in a joint phone interview. “We were, ‘Let’s tell the story from the book’ — and as we’re making the show it will become apparent the best and the most direct way to do this.
“One thing we discovered was the homophobia we talk about in the ‘90s, Anita Bryant really was the spark for that. We wanted to be historically specific about the atmosphere that the Anti-Violence Project found itself doing its work in — and the way that her mission and messaging was politicized nationally. And the way that could lead to violent behavior, as in the murder of Robert Hillsborough.”
In 1977 San Francisco, Hillsborough, a city gardener, was stabbed 15 times by his 19-year-old killer screaming “Faggot! Faggot! Faggot!”
“In the last episode,” Gertler continued, “we tie it together with Ron DeSantis who says exactly the same thing as Anita Bryant was saying. We put a clip of Anita Bryant right next to DeSantis so people could see how he is playing out of the same handbook.”