Excuse me for rambling. This may have something to do with the painkillers. I don’t usually take pills but a mashed ankle and a severely strained leg…I gave in to the ibuprofen.
The news looks bad. More unemployment misery, few jobs, double dip, creationism, President takes a vacation, stock market tanks, texting in church…etc. That’s the news.
Some people are telling me that the only way the USA is going to save itself is when the American people accept third world wages. The plan: the people will become so desperate they will work any job at any wage anywhere and the corporations will abandon India and China and return to America.
If this is true…and I suspect that it is, we are in for a long and desperate time.
There were journalists in helicopters filming black people lining up for a ‘Jobs Fair’ in Atlanta. Well presented, educated black people. The usual people who suffer when the economy slows. Apparently some employers don’t want to interview the unemployed. I have no idea why. Can someone tell me?
The images from the helicopter reminded me of the Hurricane Katrina footage. Desperate black people. Waiting in badly organized lines.
“I’m a single mother and I am looking for a job.”
I’m not writing what’s been bugging me..apart from my aching foot.
I want to write about being gay, being a gay film maker/artist. I have not written enough about my recent brush with the ‘gay community’. I have been having the same multiple contractions of apprehension that I had years ago.
The same anxiety. The same question plagues me…even after years of therapy and insight.
What kind of gay am I?
Is this the same question as what kind of man am I? Is this a question I need answering? I just don’t know who my tribe is. The community that has sprung up around me on WordPress is as good as it gets. I like that you write to me. Some of you disapprove but you can’t get everybody to love you all the time.
Those of you who wanted the coyote to rip my throat out…well, it didn’t.
I called my friend Zach and I said, what kind of gay are you? By the time he replied I had lost interest.
I don’t want to know what sort of gay he is. I want to know who I am.
I tried to make gay films for a gay male audience…specifically, unapologetically. We need to see ourselves as we really are. We need to champion the language and locations of our lives as well as be critical of our bad choices, challenge our culture…reveal it, understand our politics..the differences as well as the similarities.
I loved making gay films, I loved travelling the world…meeting you in cinemas on every continent, in every major city. I like meeting you, eating with you, sleeping with you.
You were very accommodating!
Recently, I have been tempted by the mass market.
I had a meeting with a well-known, important producer about my Surrogacy film. Even though he was moved by the story he said that the story would be much improved if I could somehow incorporate a straight man’s perspective. He thought a latino character would complicate the story.
He was part of the problem…not the solution.
His ‘take’ was woefully un-evolved. Shame based.
At first I was irritated then it nagged at me: the suggestion that a regular audience could only identify with us if we sympathised with them.
I have sympathised with straight characters in movies all my life. I have gone out of my way to understand their lives and loves. I have walked in their shoes.
We all do.
I don’t think my producer friend is very interested in me. He wasn’t interested in the film or the rare books he came to see. I think he was interested in the twins. Why shouldn’t he be? It amuses me that he would have made so much effort to accommodate me when all he had to do was take Robby’s number.
Of course he has more to offer Robby than I ever could. Robby would be a fool not to capitalize on that friendship.
I felt the same way when ever Jay Jopling visited me. He would take what ever he felt he wanted..or was valuable from me. He took a beaver lined Edwardian driving coat, he took books by Aubrey Beardsley and Djuna Barnes and Dorothy Parker.
He wasn’t the only one.
Korda Marshall borrowed and broke the rare and valuable Venini vase that The Duchess of Argyll had given me. Now he is rich I wrote to him asking him to replace it. He did not reply to my email.
Robby is very special, he has a quality that may not get him modeling jobs but…and I rarely say this, may make him a star.
I felt that about Tom Hardy. He used to be such a brat. I had a very ‘loud chat’ with Tom in Soho House, London years ago about his excessive drinking. He heeded my advice and gave up. Then, a year or so later, he thanked me for telling him the truth. A truth few dared to tell him.
In actuality I just repeated what Anthony Hopkins told me Lawrence Olivier had said to him about his drinking when he was a young actor at The National Theatre.
It seemed to work.
Pink (Alecia Moore) told me that the hardest thing she ever had to do was ditch her band. The label wanted her and not the band. They were her best friends. She had to tell them as if it were own choice.
We all abandon those who helped us at the beginning. We have to make hard decisions in life if we are going to get on. Leaving our best friends behind so that we might succeed. It is the secret story behind every Hollywood success. Those that got left behind.
Lastly, from one of my personal heroes British gay activist Peter Tatchell:
“The UK establishment is quick to condemn rioters. Yet, the police took bribes & failed to investigate phone hacking. No officers jailed. Cash for knighthoods & peerages. No one jailed. MPs abused expenses system. Only a few jailed. Editors bribed police. None jailed. Priests raped kids. No jail for most. Army killed & tortured civilians in Iraq. Soldiers not jailed. British elite = hypocrites. No right to moralize.”