“He loves the world but he does find it hilariously funny”: this is actor Ian McKellen’s description of his friend Armistead Maupin. Starting in the 1970s, Maupin was the Charles Dickens of San Francisco; his serialized Tales of the City used outrageous fictions to open the eyes of San Francisco Chronicle readers to the real city around them. It was a city of seekers, like Maupin, who had “ventur[ed] beyond our biological family to find our logical one.” Tales became six novels and a TV series. In his new memoir, The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin, and this film we meet the funny, thoughtful author whose goal is to create characters, “gay, straight, who function lovingly with one another.”