Categories
art

Drawing

Did you know that I used to be a fashion illustrator?  I found these images..I will post them as and when I post new blog entries…

Really enjoying my free head.  Really loving being free from the shackles of obsessive love.  Really talented.

Willy, the new dog, has found the hat we wore in France and is eating it.

Today I am working more on the treatment.  JA got back to me late last night..loving the idea.   This is a keeper.

It’s 8am and Ashley and I are sitting together working on our respective projects.  It’s like being at Film School all over again.  Except, of course, we are in the thick of it.  Hollywood I mean.

Anyway, must get on.  Have a lovely day my darling blog readers.

I keep adding more as I find them.  Some of these are really beautiful.

Ok, these will be the last for today.

Categories
art

Treatment

Today I wrote the first outline of the treatment.

The film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between the GREAT IDEA and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture.  The first step to making what will be my 6th low-budget feature.

It flowed, as I thought it might, with considerable ease.  I called Charlie and discussed it with him, he gave great notes.  He just has that sort of brain.

Why did I call Charlie?  Because I want him to pay for it.  I then sent the outline to JA.  Why did I send it to JA?  Because between us there isn’t anyone anywhere who makes or is in some small way involved with or finances or post produces film who we can’t get to.

He will get back to me when he has time.

Now, that is the first great lesson when you start the process of making a film..patience.  You must have PATIENCE.  There are rarely, at this stage, immediate responses.  In fact, as you will see, the long wait is what the film maker is forced to accept again and again…things happen in God’s time rather than yours.

If you are in any way impatient…well..forget being a film maker.

The other great fact about low-budget film making:  NOBODY WANTS TO MAKE YOUR FILM.  So, you may as well get used to people saying NO from day one.  If you are in any way sensitive to the word ‘no’ then film making is not going to be a game you will ever enjoy.  Yet, saying that, I always advise any film maker to never accept no for an answer.  Somebody, somewhere will eventually say yes.

Be tenacious!

Derek Jarman taught me that.  He said, “Never take no for an answer Duncan.”

Within a few hours of deciding to make my movie I made a classic error:  I told a far more established writer at my therapy group my great idea.  BAD MOVE.  Keep good ideas to your chest!  This particular writer knows what a vindictive freak I can be so he better keep his mouth shut.

Still, I fretted all day about it.

Making a gay film for a gay audience.  A niche film?  In many ways this will be the most commercial of any of the films I have ever written.

It deals with: Big Ideas! and Universal Truths!

I am comfortable making niche films.  I know my audience, I know the business model and I enjoy trolling around the gay film festival circuit when the film is made.

You will be pleased to hear that this film will not be about Jake!  Although, that particular story would indeed make a great film…closeted lieing homo meets TV Reality Star and regrets it..deeply.  I just can’t be bothered.

YOU make that film.

Needless to say I am excited about starting this process and knowing me it will one day be a movie.  Now, that’s a word  I rarely use…excited.

Everyday, in some way, do something that will make your film a reality.

Yesterday went to Sharon’s birthday party.  Took a fine piece of art out of my collection and gave it to her.  Hope she appreciates it.  She can always give it back.

Days and nights filling up with fascination and intrigue.  I may indeed give sperm this week to my friend who wants a baby.

Categories
art Malibu Rant

Sweet Thing

The rain has finally stopped pouring over the house and into the view.  The skies have cleared. The sun is shining.  The sea is glistening…etc.

Confined to my room with painfully torn ligaments.

Ashley has been running around fetching and carrying.

Sweet thing.

Paying gardeners, buying logs, feeding me pain pills.

This evening she and her friend Aaron Rose sat by the roaring fire whilst my blue eyed friend Bowdy entertained us with unusually funny impressions. When he started his ‘performance’ I was dreading that he was going to be terrible.  He was GREAT!

It’s incredibly unusual in LA to meet a young actor who can actually act.

Aaron is curating a street art show at MOCA.  Next week he is in Paris working with young artists.  A commercials director..apparently they make a ton of money.  Do I wish that I had the ability to make commercials?  Just talking about it, the prospect of it…made the inside of my mouth dry up.

With Ashley making busy around the house life is filling up again with unusual and interesting people.  She is such a doll.

We discussed these three words:  Nigger.  Cunt.  Faggot.  The impact each word has and the power we invest in them.  It was a fascinating conversation.  We felt really naughty talking about each of them…as if overheard we might be arrested or torn from our lives.  It felt subversive.

We were talking about the concentration camps and Aaron revealed that he didn’t know that the pink triangle, symbol of gay pride, originated there.  The pink triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify homosexual men, as well as those imprisoned for sexual offenses such as rape, bestiality, and pedophilia. Originally intended as a badge of shame, the pink triangle (often inverted from its Nazi usage)  is second in popularity within the gay community only to the rainbow flag.

Alan Davies the British comedian and I had a fight in the Neptune Pub, Whitstable twenty-five years ago when he started wearing the Pink Triangle to prove his solidarity with gays and lesbians.  The problem was,  he was homophobic towards me.  After a huge shouting match and a bitchy struggle he removed the pink triangle.

I have been reading my old blogs.  The ones written when I first arrived here in the USA.   Not only are they a very good read but life sure was full up with people places and things.  Of late (and more contemplative) the written journey has been internal rather than external.

Every day I get closer to my goal of exorcising the ghosts of past love.  Things are getting so much better.  Not so very long ago I didn’t think I could go anywhere that we had been together..not Paris nor New York or Whitstable.   I feared that just walking down the same street we had strolled would ruin it for me.  But, you know, that was the voice of shame whispering seductively in my ear.  The shame I felt about failing to keep him.  The shame of making bad choices in love.

I am better than that.  Paris is a big city.  I am a bigger man.

I sometimes wonder in whose arms he rests now?  Placating him.  Telling him the lies he needs to hear.  Is he happy?  I know in my heart, I know that he will never truly be happy.  He has made terrible mistakes and those mistakes may never be forgiven.  He will try to put it right but not for her.  He wants her to forgive him so he can feel better about himself.

He will be in perpetual torment until he truly understands a selfless apology. Equally, she needs to fully embrace the act of forgiveness.  Can she forgive him?  Eventually she will.  She has no option.

Living with hate or resentment in one’s heart can ruin your life.

Forgive him for being frail and flawed and weak and cowardly and for telling inexcusable lies?  Yes, we can do that.  Eventually.

We are connected forever.  A dance with death.  A marriage with the Devil.  There is something oddly Gothic about it.

I called the small claims court to have the date moved so I can go to London and deal with this bollocks stuff.  Directly to London.

Sooner or later Jake and I will face each other.  Whether it is in the court room or on the street he will pay what he owes me.  He would be such a fool not to.

We will bump into each other.  I know that scenario.  If he has worked properly on himself he will have undergone the change he so badly wanted.  He will be gay.  Not like when I first met him:  A gay man sheltering in the husk of a straight man’s life.  He will be true to his own nature, to the mannerisms and voice that he was so scared to reveal.  I began to see the occasional gay moment when we were in France, the twist of the mouth, the limp wrist, the effeminate draw on the cigarette.  All quite normal for a delicate, passive homosexual.  Endearing.

Like so many ‘straight acting’ gay men he is petrified of being seen to be gay.

He will be revealed.  He will find happiness.  I pray for it.

Categories
art Gay Health Malibu

Dreaming of Being Healed

As is things couldn’t get any worse I fell in the garden yesterday and ripped the tendons in the back of my right leg.

Thankfully Ashley was at home and wrapped me in ice.  I dare not go to the hospital because it will bankrupt me.  Now at home totally incapacitated.

Began to panic about getting back to the UK with one functioning leg and a dog.

Have to go via Paris again.  Not even directly to Paris but via NYC to go to court to get the money that Jake owes me.  This really stinks.   Everything conspiring to make life more difficult than it needs be.  It was such a silly thing to do.  How did I do it?  I tripped up the path and instantaneously I could feel the tendons detach.  Pop.  Oh God.

Ashley cooked dinner for us.  Her friend Emma arrived. They made steak and greek salad.  After all that meat we ate chocolate and drank hot tea.

It rained heavily all night.

The night.  Plagued with nightmares.  A kitten hidden in a chair.  Me as a child wandering into the road outside my Grandmother’s house in Herne Bay overlooked by my step-father.  Torrential leaks from the ceiling coursing unchecked through the house.

This year has been ghastly.  Made more so by Jake’s despicable antics.

Unthinking, callous, selfish.

I sometimes wonder how his parents put up with his lying shit?   Of course!  They love him unconditionally.

This leg situation is going to take at least a month to fix…more without treatment.

I wrote to Jake’s father asking him to persuade his son to just pay me the money.   We have a court date fixed now.  This is fucking bore.  He is holding onto me.  Refusing to let go of the final tendril.  The last vestige.  Let me go Jake.  Pay me the money so I can go to the UK and get on with my life.

I am sure that he feels the same way…we were perfectly synchronised.

The drawings are by Jennie.  She sent them yesterday.  Drew them when we were in rehab. They have a real Picasso feel about them.

Categories
art Love

Stevie Wonder

Frank and Willie

I spent the night in Hollywood.  Had breakfast with John but didn’t go to therapy.  I had the dogs with me and wasn’t going to leave them in the car whilst I was inside getting my head fixed.

Finally, just three months late,  summer is here and despite all the drama of the past months I find myself feeling positive, upbeat, fearless.

I described it yesterday to Frank as no longer being possessed.

Frank and I had dinner with friends in Beverly Hills.  We sat next to Stevie Wonder..which was kinda wonderful.  As they were eating their desert he and his friends sang to each other so we were treated to an impromptu performance.  This is LA.

My friends are film finance wizards from the UK so, after we deconstructed the British Film Industry, we talk love lives.  They were fascinated by the Sex Rehab show.

Two women with very differing pathologies.  One said that when ever she falls in love she becomes unrecognisable.   The effective, fully functioning business woman becomes needy, obsessed and emotional.  Huh..I nodded a lot as she described the symptoms of obsessive love.  The other woman couldn’t be more different, trusting her man to the point where she becomes suspicious of any man who asks her randomly what she is up to.  She, of course, is very happily married.  The other woman..is not.

Dinner was BETTER than therapy.

I ate a small cobb salad.  They very kindly paid for dinner.  So sweet.

I spent the day in Malibu being that handyman I had wished daily would just come with a screwdriver and do all the things I had been putting off ever since I first got here four years ago.

I put up a mirror in the bathroom, a shelve in the hall and a hat rack too. I hung curtains over the double doors and whilst I did all this Ashley cooked the most delicious breakfast which we ate on the back terrace.  I had scrubbed the huge, wooden table with vim and a scrubbing brush like a mad man until it was a delightful silvery grey color.

This morning I filled the truck with books and draws and cushions and the remainder of my shoe collection and here we all are at the house.  It’s 80 degrees.  The dogs are slumped on the marble floor…panting.

This morning we ate breakfast in the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and Third.  Ordering scrambled egg and sausage…the deal is you sit down and they call your name when it’s ready.  They called my name very loudly.  I was aware that some people thought they knew who I was but having my name operatically yelled over the terrace confirmed their suspicions.

I chatted with a young fan.  He was adorable.

Anyway, very excitedly expecting my box of meat and veg from Jennifer’s organic delivery service.

P.S.  Forgot to mention that I went to the Prism opening (vernisage).  The gallery belongs to my friend Jared.  I had a lovely long chat with Stavros Niarchos about Spetses and the Russels and Engenio Lopez.  Bumped into Degan Pener who wants me to write something about art for The Angelino.   Saw Kevin from W but he was frosty.  You can’t win them all.

The problem with Prism is that there is no frisson.  It needs to take itself seriously rather than be the gallery ‘toy’ of two rick kids.   Remember going to Tracy Emin‘s White Cube show?  There were a thousand people in Hoxton Square..even class war demonstrators?

Where’s the audacity?  The verve?  Those boys need to cut a dash.

Categories
art

Too Much Stuff

I have complained before about owning too much stuff.  Unable to throw things away.  Yesterday was no exception.  I moved more stuff into the Malibu house from Hollywood and find it impossible to let things go.  Throw things out.  Dump the junk that in some cases I have dragged twice around the world.

It amazes me that I have now sold over thirty works of art and you really would not notice the difference.  Every spare space on every spare wall is covered with art.

I have just one small box of knickknacks that I have left on the drive waiting to be sold when in fact they need to be thrown away.  I need that TV intervention show where kindly looking therapists gently pull ‘precious’ things away from me and throw them into a dumpster/skip.  I am not, obviously, a 3rd degree hoarder but my inability to let things go one might use, at this crucial time with Jake,  as a metaphor.

What’s the difference between shame and embarrassment?  I am embarrassed by the things crammed into my cupboards, closets and wardrobes.   Under the stairs I keep an archive of every film and theatre project I ever worked including two 35mm prints of AKA.  I attempted to donate this thorough personal collection to the Outfest Film and Television Archive but at the last moment did not get around to.

I have a shelve, a rather deep shelve, in the kitchen where I have put things that I know need to be thrown away.  Every time I open the cupboard door these things look at me pathetically, ‘please don’t throw us out’ they plead.

All this stuff from Hollywood fucks up the aesthetic.  Cluttered, overwhelming and all the wrong colors.  I am trying for less and all the time have to deal with more.

Yesterday Ashley and I cooked dinner for Frank and Stephen.  Delicious. Both Frank and Stephen didn’t know what St Tropez was.  I was mildly shocked. The Architect text messaged me asking, in lieu of dating, if he could be my slave.  I am considering my options.

I am so happy that Ashley lives here.  She brings such verve and life to the house.  This Sunday she is inviting friends over for lunch, it’s going to be a great deal of fun.

Yesterday I realized that in the post Malibu Hill Billy from last December was the first time I heard from Jake.  Compare the lightness and optimism of those early posts.  I wish I could reclaim that mood.  I will eventually.

I have a date for my operation.

Categories
art Malibu

Room Mate

Marine Layer at Night

My friend Ashley moved in last night.  She arrived with Thai food and a pillow.

Almost immediately felt a trillion times better about everything.  Being on my own is not good for me.  Just me and my head.  We lit a huge fire, watched interesting film clips on my computer and life felt a great deal better.

The marine layer shrouded the house all night so everything this morning is wet and sparkling.  The gray light, as I have said a million times, suits all the colours here in the house.

I get my watch back today, the big gold one I broke last year but forgot to pick up.  I should fetch my grandfather’s ring that is still in repair.

I bought a family box of food from my friend Jennifer’s company Out of the Box Collective which arrives Saturday week.  She has sourced the best of what is available from local farms including organic meats, vegetables and raw milk/yogurt etc.  I am really excited about this!

Three of us living up here cooking great food, making art and doing what humans do..supporting one another..and I don’t mean through bad times but supporting one another to do the best of what we can possibly do.

The great thing about Ashley is her connection to everything happening in the new arts here in LA.  Performance, film etc.  We watched clips of things on YouTube that inspire us.  She showed me a really interesting animation/performance that I loved.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPWjA8nAmuo]

I understood that I had not just isolated myself from people but from my life blood..art.  I simply stopped going to anything.  I stopped turning up.  To have a life in the arts you have to be present.  For nine long months I have been a dead man.  Jake became my life and the poor lamb head just couldn’t be my life.

Manhunt date number 4 was a funny latino boy. 27 years old and HIV positive.  Hmmm.  We didn’t have much to say so he left. He was a bit pissed that he had driven all this way and didn’t get any.

I feel so much better about everything.

Suddenly all of my anxiety, obsession and resentment has slipped away…at least for the time being.

This morning I thought about writing which I have not thought about for a long, long time.  Just having someone around keeps me focused.

Let him have his life and I will have mine.  I wish we could have had a kind goodbye.

You see, I went from having a dear, dear friend to having nothing…whilst he was surrounded by his family.  Never on his own.  A family to fall back on.  I had nothing.  When I lived in Whitstable the people there, they were my family for good and for bad.  I just had to step outside of my front door and I would engage with people who had known me all my life.

Lily

I saw a property for sale today in England that I can’t stop thinking about.  Hastings is a small British seaside town.  I have always really loved it.  There’s a house there that looks amazing.  Huge.  Lots of space.

You see!  Already my head is in a different, more positive place.  Just wait until Anna arrives and we will be cooking, as they say, with gas.

At 8 this morning Jason popped by with Lily (my god-daughter) and her brother Max for breakfast.  Hot chocolate.  I think this maybe a regular event as they have an hour to kill most mornings between dropping the kids off at their various schools.

Somebody asked me what I seek in a man.  I think he wanted to know about sex but I replied:  intelligence, wit, kindness, fortitude, patience.

Have a great day everybody!

Categories
art Rant

Suddenly Inspired…

…to write a film. But, guess what’s getting in the way? YOU GUESSED IT! The lieing twat of Westchester. That was something else he sneered at. My film making. “Oooh,” he chided, “It’s shot on tape.” Yeah, fuck face..shot on tape..went to Sundance nominated for a British Academy award. He really tried to undermine my confidence. Sneery cock whore that he is…

Ok, relapse! That’s what happens. I remember just how ‘ironic’ he is about anyone who tried to achieve anything..like kids or films. I wonder if he can communicate at all with the artists he is meant to represent when he is so desperate to be one himself.

He did make a sort of film. A high school parody. He thought it was HILARIOUS.

How will he ever encourage the best out of his clients? Unless he is getting fucked by them of course.

Wanna know something funny? He loved reading my blog when I was writing shit about other people. It’s a bit uncomfortable now tho isn’t it JB?

Hahhaha.

RENTER ALERT!!!

OK, yesterday, when I got back to the apartment in Hollywood (almost finished packing) there was a vicious note from Viken Douzdjian’s two-bit lawyer demanding his money back for the rental. Viken is a surgeon from Portland Oregon who rented the house for 7 people for $250 a night. He arrived and left immediately because the ‘TV was too small.’ and ‘There was a stain on the carpet.’ Let me remind you again Viken..that’s why it’s $250 a night rather $2, 500 a night like the guy next door or $25, 000 a night like the houses on the PCH. This surgeon from Portland told me to alter a cheque that he had misprinted then recalls the cheque! What a fucking twat. Then..get this..he tells me that he can’t stay in the house of a homosexual.

This surgeon better not be cutting you open if you are gay..cause he hates us gays!

Thank God I keep every email..including the one where he tells me to alter the cheque. Read the fucking contract dick-wad surgeon, homophobic, LIAR.

Viken Douzdjian is a homo hating, rental con-man who can’t seem to read the contract he signed. He joins the Renter’s From Hell Hall of SHAME.

Viken..let me introduce you to Irene Brown from Maud Place Hawaii and Dave Stewart from who gives a shit ville. Dave did the ‘we are Christians and can’t stay in your house’ bullshit.

“There’s PORNOGRAPHY in your house.”  they squealed like pigs after finding some funny postcards in a draw..without nudity I might add . Actually, I thought Dave was gay when I met him. My gaydar went off like an Amazonian dawn chorus. Mrs Dave probably put him through Christian gay-boy rehabilitation…so they could have those ugly kids.

Fuck Christians.

All of you.

Oh yeah, and when I spoke to Viken’s moronic lawyer I tried to make a point about Jews and Gays in the concentration camps and why homophobia should not be colluded with in the same way we have no truck with anti-Semitism.

He thought I was being an anti-semite..not realizing of course that JB is a Jew, my sponsor is a Jew..and so was my GRANDFATHER.

Fucking idiot.

I am in NYC. Alive..although maybe dying…here for fashion week. Hope I don’t bump into the lying fuck face.

Categories
art Rant

PUKE

Guess who I received a long letter from yesterday when I got back from the Emmy do at SHLA?  Yes, you guessed it…Jake. What a smarmy bastard..of course he couldn’t just let it all go.  He couldn’t leave me alone.  He had to reach out.  Just as I was NOT thinking about him, getting right with our situation.  DAMN.  I was in such a positive mood.

I went to bed feeling all confused and mushy again.  Thinking all manner of absurd things.

He timidly suggested that we don’t meet for the time being.  How about we never EVER meet?   Why don’t you just fuck off and lean on some of your other friends like you lent on me for support?  They’ll get sick of you too, bleating and moaning and missing her.

So, why was he writing?   He asked for his full name to be removed from the blog which I did ..then I re-read his letter.  It was all about him.  Blah fucking blah about his coming out and how much I meant to him.  Bullshit.  If I had meant anything to him he wouldn’t have contacted me.  Not once did he enquire about my continuing health problem..not once.  The more I thought about it the more annoyed I became.

He asked after the ‘darling’ little dog which nearly made me PUKE.

So, I called him and left a long message on his phone.  I told him never ever to contact me again.  That his mate had emailed me from Mt. Kisco to tell me that he was laughing at me with Jake and other friends behind my back.  That I hated him.  I wanted him to hear my voice.  That I meant what I was saying.  That I am serious.  Like when you call your dealer and tell them to lose your number.  Like when you tell your friends that you are not coming out for a drink.

The funny thing was he didn’t want to demonize me..well Jake, that’s very reassuring.   I am having NO TROUBLE demonizing YOU.

So annoying!  I had been really getting my head together.

Saw George Clooney, said Hi.  He seemed to remember me from the evening Sharon introduced us at Chateau Marmont.

Had dinner with Toby at Pace..his steak cost $50.  My soup $8.  I drew these:

Categories
art Auto Biography

Picture Perfect

I wanted to post a few pictures. I want to remind myself that it has all been an incredible journey.

I wanted to include this one because I have a man’s legs wrapped around my shoulders. He is called Chris Boot. He was in South Africa with Tilda Swinton. Tilda came to the dinner thrown for me at Sundance when AKA played there. She came with Jamie Johnson.

Boom Boom Boom (The Sublime) 1982 Peter Doig

 You can see half of the Peter Doig painting I bought at his St Martin’s degree show.  It hung in my Furlong Road, Islington sittingroom until I was arrested.  At which point Doig decided to snatch it back and I never saw it again. It is probably worth in excess of $1, 000, 000 now.

Matt Rowe and Marie Palmer, we met at the Mercer Hotel in NYC with Mel C from the Spice Girls.  Matt had been one half of the duo who wrote all of their best tunes. New Years Eve 1999, Mercer Hotel with Calvin Klein, Tom Cruise, Nicole KidmanAlan Cummings and Fran Leibowitz. A cool very night.  Matt is still a great friend.

I’ve written loads about Jay Jopling in this blog. This is the night he met my sister Jessica.

Justin Lee-Aliston was my best gay friend in Whitstable. He was the sweetest boy. He killed himself a few months after he was gay bashed in Camberwell South London.  Here he is in happier times with my friend Tracy at the Island Wall, Whitstable house.

Celia Lyttleton, I can’t remember where we met but she is a doll and this picture was taken at a fancy dress party at the artist Glynn Boyd Hart’s house during the 1980’s.

Celia introduced me to the artist Ana Corbero at her Albermarle St gallery. She in turn introduced me to Colin Cawdor , the Thane of Cawdor-Macbeth. Duncan and Macbeth in NYC, in a sprawling apartment in Williamsburg. Long before anybody else was living there.

Our view.

Colin and Anna. Now, Colin lives in the North of Scotland in his castle, a castle he had to wrestle from his step-mother. Ana lives in Spain with her husband. I remember that he dressed Ana in Azzadine Alaia-and the moths ate clean through her fur coat.

I’ll post some more soon.