Imagine a darker version of Walk the Line, perhaps as directed by David Lynch, and you begin to get an idea of what to expect from this imaginary biopic.

Its subject, Jesco White is from a similar kind of southern white rural background to Johnny Cash, but less well known and far more troubled in terms of drugs, drink, depression, and the devil alike.

White’s youth was spent looking for whatever kicks he could find, beginning with self-asphyxiation around the age of six before quickly moving onto “huffing” lighter fluid and petrol, drinking whatever he could lay his hands on, injecting crystal meth, and developing a penchant for tattooing and wounding himself.

As far as his father and mother were concerned, Jesco had the devil in him. Unfortunately, Jesco himself believed this – in his environment, full of fire-and-brimstone preachers it would be hard not to – and lived up / down to it.

His sole release was another D, dance, specifically the distinctive form of Appalachian mountain dancing or clogging of which his father, D Ray, was a leading exponent.

Unfortunately, Jesco could never quite keep his devils at bay and wound up in a juvenile detention centre, which he went in and out of for the rest of his adolescence, before being sent to the state mental hospital. The constant on each occasion was a lack of effective therapeutic interventions, the sense that he and the other inmates/patients – the label really made no difference – were individuals who did not matter.

Eventually Jesco was released, albeit into a world of trouble. Most significantly his father had been murdered whilst he was institutionalised.

This fuelled both the positive aspects of Jesco’s being, in his desire to keep his father’s dancing legacy alive, and the negative, in his “eye for an eye” understanding of the Bible.

The conflict between the good and the bad Jesco, or the straight and the intoxicated, is at the core of the remainder of the story, clouding his relationship with his older girlfriend Priscilla and leading inexorably to tragedy.

White Lightnin’ is well directed. Though there are some moments where it feels like technique for the sake of it, most of the tricks within helmer Dominic Murphy’s bag contribute to the overall effect in a more poetic form-is-content way: the black screens between scenes and their suggestion that an indeterminate amount of time has passed, either subjectively or objectively, for Jesco; the bleached out, processed visuals the sickness and poverty of his (un)natural environment.

It is also nicely acted. As Jesco, Edward Hogg delivering a bold, primal performance. As Priscilla, Carrie Fisher bravely takes on the kind of older woman role that many performers more concerned with their image would likely have declined.

The main problem I had with the film was thus its writing, its treatment of the facts.

On the positive side, White Lightnin’ did encourage me to find out more about Jesco White. It is also true that it is a highly subjective portrait, with many scenes which deliberately confuse real and the imagined situations and experiences.

But – and it is a big but – screenwriters Eddy Moretti and Shane Smith play rather too fast and loose with things on occasion. Most notably, the most significant moment in Jesco’s life, the murder of his father, happened when he was in his late 20s, rather than his teens as presented here.

Indeed in general the film-makers seem more comfortable creating a sense of place than they do time. Perhaps the intention is to suggest that nothing really changes in this part of the USA – we may, after all, wonder why D Ray’s success as a dancer didn’t lift his family out of poverty – but a more 1950s or 1960s rather than 1990s feel to the details of trucks, motorcycles and tattoo designs might have helped cement this idea.

If the film’s dark subject matter means it needs to be approached with some caution, it’s also important to emphasise it’s not as bad as it could be. For that, interested parties are recommended to check out Todd Phillips documentary about outlaw rocker G G Allin, a self-destructive damage case whose train-wreck of a life makes even White look lucky and well-adjusted.

1. What was the first RPG you ever played?
Basic D&D - Red Box Edition

2. How long ago?
1984

3. Tell us something about it?
Three people in school, including Q, played it and our teacher allowed them to run a couple of games for the whole class. I remember some people rolling character stats using a D20 rather than 3D6 and rerolling anything outwith the 3-18 range.

4. How soon after did you start playing a regular session?
Within a couple of months – I got the Basic set for myself during the summer holidays and by the start of the next school year we (myself, the three GMs, one of their older brothers and his friend) were playing almost every week.

5. Which genres have you played?
A bit of everything except post-appocalypse.

6. Which games have you played?
D&D, AD&D, Runequest, Traveller, CoC, Dragonquest (SPI), Paranoia, Vampire, Rolemaster, Star Wars, and probably others I can’t remember just now.

7. Give a list of some or all of the PC's you've played.
Oblib Sniggab – Halfling
Ruth B – Malkavian vampire who accidentally killed another PC while in a frenzy
Esmerelda – half elf magic user / thief
A nameless outlaw – Star Wars
Franz the Short – half elf fighter/ranger
Sebastian Melmoth III – Cthulhu who’s as or more sane than when he started

8. What's your favourite genre?
Fantasy

9. What's your favourite game/system?
Probably Runequest and Dragonquest

10. What's your favourite supplement?
Any of the RQII ones – Trollpak, Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror etc.; AD&D Lankhmar; original Greyhawk boxed set

11. Who are your favourite PC's?
Ruth, Franz, Sebastian

12. Have you GM'ed?
Yes, probably more than playing

13. Which game did you GM first?
Basic D&D

14. How did it go?!
Well enough

15. Which is your favourite campaign that you've GM'ed?
Don’t have a favourite – all have had their good and bad points. Maybe my Dragonquest game would just shade it, as that was the one where I was really doing things in my own style rather than using pre-generated scenarios and material.

16. Do you prefer to GM or PC?
Don’t mind.

17. Which genre that you haven't tried would you most like to try?
Something dynastic or tribal, where the characters are more embedded into a longer-term context, such as Glorantha / Heroquest or Pendragon.

18. Which game/system that you haven't tried would you most like to try?
Glorantha / Heroquest or Pendragon.

19. Do you play a typical character of any kind?
If other people’s responses are a fair indication, usually some sort of borderline psychopath.

20. What do you like best about role-playing?
Storytelling and acting, problem solving, creating imaginary worlds and situations that have real world analogues.

This new documentary from Kirby Dick seeks to do for closeted Republican politicians what his earlier This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated did for the MPAA, namely expose hypocrisy and a self-serving agenda.

Until the mid-1970s the Republican and Democrat parties did not appreciably differ on their stance on gay issues. True, a reason for this was perhaps that before the Stonewall Riot and the birth of the gay liberation movement there probably weren’t any votes to actually be won around gay issues anyway.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 this changed. For Reagan saw the Republicans enter into an unholy alliance with Christian conservatives, leading to the emergence of the so-called “culture wars” between progressive/Democrat and reactionary/Republican elements.

As a consequence, it became all but impossible for Republican politicians to admit their sexual preferences to the wider world. The resultant divergence between their homosexual practices – as interviewees make clear the appellation gay can hardly be ascribed to many of these individuals – and their anti-gay preaching to the crowd is unsurprising, the usual hypocrisy to be expected from politicans.

What was far worse, however, was the way family values ideals often impacted on their voting within congress, not just on things like gay marriage and adoption but also funding to fight the AIDS crisis.

Equally disturbing is the silence of the mainstream – read straight – media on these issues, leaving the job of naming and shaming closeted Republicans to gay activists, press and bloggers.

Much like This Film..., Out Rage is successful in doing what it sets out to, in getting its serious point across adroitly and with considerable wit.

It proves more limited in its relevance and accessibility however. Whereas we in Europe are familiar with Hollywood product and, through it, are indirectly affected by MPAA decisions, what the US as a nation or at a state level decides to legislate for and against rights remains a domestic issue. Thus, for example, whilst under Reagan Republicans were voting against gay equality legislation and AIDS funding alike, under Thatcher Conservatives were voting against the former (i.e. Clause 28) but were devoting money towards the latter, even if this was perhaps motivated more by the fear of AIDS spreading beyond gays and drug addicts than any actual sense of compassion for those with 'deviant' lifestyles.

More serious criticisms are what is missing even in the US context. That the film is really about homosexual Republican men, rather than lesbians, bisexuals or transgendered individuals can at least be explained away by reference to the party’s male establishment bias, the likes of Sarah Palin notwithstanding. But, on the other side of the coin, one would thereby like to know more about the wives and girlfriends of homosexual Republican: What do they know? What is their understanding of the situation?

I also felt Dick might have done more to draw out possible parallels between past and present. One noticeable thing, again from a UK perspective, is the tell-tale nature of the names of many of those featured: that a James McGreevey is Irish-American, a Barney Frank or Larry Kramer Jewish-American. What’s evident is thus how in other respects Americans have overcome old prejudices and no longer feel the need to misrepresent themselves in terms of one – i.e. the WASP – ideal, and the possibility that the self-hating Republican gay is something of a contemporary analogue to the old cliché of the self-hating Jew.

Comment on Edinburgh crime figures by area: "If they just waited until Edinburgh had a football derby, then sealed the grounds and gassed the place, I'm pretty certain crime would drop to zero."

LOL