Feb. 7, 1952 – July 23, 2005

Spending his 21st birthday reviewing Strangers on a Train didn’t seem much of a sacrifice to former Gay & Lesbian Times film critic Kyle Counts: He had fallen in love with movies years before, at the age of 5, when he saw Old Yeller.

Counts was born Feb. 7, 1952 in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich. Growing up in the Detroit area, he was lucky to live across the street from a movie theater, where he could be found every Saturday (back in the good old days when the ticket price was 25 cents).

As a student at the University of Michigan, Counts was one of 50 to audition for a film critic post with the campus paper.

“I remember [author and media critic] Neal Gabler gave us the assignment,” he said.

A review of an Alfred Hitchcock film landed him one of the two spots. He went on to write film reviews throughout his college career, where he received his degree in architecture and design but also took many film, TV and media classes.

After college Counts moved to Berkeley and turned to writing to relieve the monotony of “copycat stuff.” Hitchcock stood him in good stead again when he queried and landed an assignment from Cine Fantastique magazine for an article on The Birds.

Counts later moved to Los Angeles, where he spent 16 years writing and editing for New Fitness Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter and Movieline (now Hollywood Life), among other publications.

His first love was animation, and many of the articles he wrote were about animated films. He also spent a few years in Seattle, where he worked as head researcher for a DVD game set about the life of Clint Eastwood, entitled Eastwood.

San Diego claimed Counts in 1997, where Gay & Lesbian Times readers quickly grew accustomed to his wide-ranging knowledge of the cinematic art form and the acerbic wit of his reviews. He was an active member of the San Diego Film Critics Society and served a term as its president. He was the Gay & Lesbian Times’ film critic for four years.

Counts passed away on July 23 after a long illness.