Boy Next Door

dir. Mark Kidel, UK, 1994, 51 min

Made as Boy George re-emerged as a solo artist after a period of severe heroin addiction, the film explores the background to his emergence as the gender-bending star of Culture Club and his descent into self-destructive behaviour.

Friends and family provide insightful contributions to George’s own very candid and humourous account of his rise, fall and rise again, while writer Jon Savage explains George’s journey with a sharp sense of the singer’s sense that he had betrayed his sexuality in presenting himself in Culture Club as a sexless doll-like figure, at time when being gay as a rock star got in the way of mass success.