Prick Up Your Ears is a celebration of outrageous playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman) and his love affair with Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina) which concluded with their violent and premature deaths.

Orton was one of the 1960s golden boys, from working class Leicester lad to national celebrity, from sexual innocent to grinning satyr, from penniless student to icon of Swinging London. He became a star by breaking the rules - sexual and theatrical. But while his plays including Loot, What the Butler Saw and Entertaining Mr. Sloane were hugely successful, his private life was sometimes sordid, often farcical and ended in tragedy.

With a star-making central performance by Gary Oldman, a superb cast including Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Walters and Richard Wilson and a brilliant script by Alan Bennett, Prick Up Your Ears is a cult British film.