Tag: Derek Jarman

Categories
Queer

Thrupple

Fire Island Pines

1.

The thrupple, along with the cult of Daddy, was a recurring theme throughout the summer.  Three men glued into a happy relationship, usually two older and a younger man working out the sort of relationship most people (straight and gay) may find not only convenient but very rewarding.

My friend W met and fell for a couple he met on Fire Island.  They have since become a thrupple.   I like the word… don’t you?  It’s easy on the lips… like wimple, one of my favorite words.   Robert arrived from London with his two boyfriends.  My friend Fernando lives with two men in one large bed in LA.  This, of course, is not new.  Derek Jarman introduced me to three beautiful boys who lived on Shaftesbury Avenue in the early 80’s.   I was entranced.

A relationship with one person I find nearly impossible.  The idea of loving two men… well, that’s just greedy isn’t it?  The cult of Daddy suits me just fine.  The older man mentoring and investing in a younger man seems to have a superb historical provenance.

“He’s a semi gay, he needs my help to open a gym on Long Island.  He’s very happy to see me and spend time with his girlfriend.”

The big winners in this recent gay perestroika have been bisexual and more sexually fluid folk.  Curiosities become realities.  The beginning of a seismic social shift across the west.  A shift the ‘other side’ is desperate to quash.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

This sexual revolution, because that’s what it truly is, is not allied to any left-wing or socialist principle like it is in Europe.  American male entitlement and arrogance is built into the process.  ‘I can have what I want when I want it.  If they are getting something good… I want it too.’  The gay white male lifestyle with its glamour, easy money, few rules of conduct, lax morality, social mobility etc. is very alluring to many young heterosexual men.  Especially the poor, the disenfranchised and the beautiful.

Gay men have learned to communicate with them, welcoming straight men into our lives without shame or fear of violence.  They come to us for advice and succour.  We appreciate the time they spend in the gym, the product they buy for their hair.  They luxuriate in the attention, yet baffled by compliments.

Straight women rarely compliment men.  They never tell them how good-looking they are nor praise what they are wearing.  Straight women seldom acknowledge the effort straight men have made… instead, expecting men to praise and compliment them.  A stray compliment from a bold gay man is so unexpected straight men blush like girls.  Only a moment, we hope, before a blush melts into something hot and heavy.  If only for a moment.

2.

The political conversation has shifted for thinking gays in the USA.  Conservative organizations like the HRC lead by the lamentable Chad Griffin are forced to become more radical.  They achieved their wish for some partial, piecemeal marriage equality, although the legislation is hardly a road map to equality for all Americans.  Women and black people are still undervalued and vilified second class citizens in the USA.

At dinner last night, three gay men and three lesbians.  Between us we could not identify one female leader of industry.  We could not identify one black leader of industry.  The CEO of Yahoo was the closest we got but we didn’t know her name.  The other woman mentioned was Martha Stuart but her name unleashed a torrent of misogynistic invective from an older gay man.

I got to thinking about the Third Reich.  We were discussing Yom Kippur, we were discussing the Germans.  We were discussing the gays in the concentration camps and it suddenly dawned on me.  The answer to a question that had bugged me for decades… how were there so many gay men in the SS yet the camps were full of gays and lesbians?  Of course, we are seeing the same thing now.  An elite corp of rich, white gay men with profoundly right-wing values who would gladly imprison people like me with radical, left-wing ideas.  The concentration camps were full of undesirable gays.  The trannies, the butch dykes, the trouble makers who didn’t see things Hitler’s way.

No wonder the trans community are fighting particularly hard to be recognized, respected and their freedom to be acknowledged.  Yet, unsurprisingly there is a push back from elite white gay men… as if the trans are spoiling the party.

Remember as you celebrate your so-called equality… it is still possible to be fired from your job  for being a gay or lesbian if you live in one of 35 states.  In 45 states you can be fired for being a transsexual or by redefining your gender or simply wearing clothes that are generally supposed to be worn by the opposite sex.

The elite white gays are not interested in trans people, black people (unless objectified and used as living sex toys), women, poor people or inclusively.  The moment they achieved some sort of parity they turned their backs on the coalition of outsiders who helped them achieve their equality aims.

My idea of hell:  A White Gay President.

Last night we cooked dinner, we ate pork.  We walked to the tea dance.   Later, I looked on-line to see what was going on.  As I lay in bed I wondered how long it would take for the right-wing gay elite to look upon left-wing noisy gays… the anti-establishment truth tellers as undesirables and start freezing them out.  Throwing them into jail, silencing them?   Like they did to Peter Tatchell in the UK.

My guess is, this is already happening… my guess is… this is happening to me.

Categories
Queer

Not Gay. Queer. Thx.

Int 2

Occasional unfinished notes on becoming Queer.

There’s a difference between gay and queer.  Just like there’s a difference between chocolate and carob.  It looks the same, and used the same but tastes completely different.

Queer: sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary

The older I get… the queerer I become.

I’m not even sure what it means.  But I’m sure that gay no longer describes what I am.

I am not a married drone operator living with my husband and three surrogate children who secretly wishes he could vote republican… and did… once… because nobody was watching.

Nope.  I’m not that and I’m not headed in that direction.

I remain teachable.  My wagon remains unhitched.

Listen, I’ve got a secret I want to share with you.  One I don’t think I’m meant to be sharing.  A secret that might very well discredit my public shift away from gay toward queer as my description of choice.

My description of me.

I feel so let down, betrayed, dishonoured by gay men.  Yes… you.

One day in early December this year I will write the genesis of my change.

This intellectual menopause.  This change.  This perestroika.

Remember:  from the very first play, to the very last film I have sought to make entertainment that re-examined, revealed, remade the gay experience.

I have won endless awards doing so.

My crowning moment was being nominated for a British Academy Award.

Betrayed:

I was used to being told by straight people that if I wanted a career I should stop telling gay stories.

I was not expecting this:  Gay people told me the same thing.  In fact, they (with vehemence)  told anyone talented and gay to live the lifestyle but don’t expect to tell stories about it.

They said,  “You don’t want all your hard work… marginalized.”

They said, “You don’t want to miss out on the big bucks.  You don’t want to end up like Derek Jarman?  Do you?”

My heart sank.  That’s exactly what I wanted.  Back then.  When I relished telling people I was gay.

Derek Jarman.  He was the only film maker I thought worth aspiring too.  That’s how it was back then.  1985.

So, I found him.  Sought him out.

We met on The South Bank in the shadow of the Royal National Theatre.   Denys Lasdun‘s great, neo-brutalist monolith

We sat outside overlooking the Thames.  Gray clouds scudding over the greatest city in the whole world.

Gusts of cold grit blown over us.

He bought two cups of badly stewed tea served in thick Styrofoam cups.

I handed him the Caravaggio catalogue I had bought after seeing the show at the Met in NYC.

“How can I help?”  He asked.

I said, “I want to make a film.”  I was embarrassed.  I was star struck.

He said, “You will. But, you want my advice?  Remember this: Never take no for an answer.”

We talked about Tilda Swinton who nobody really knew back then.

He told me about a young tousled man he met in the street.  A builder.  The builder came up to him on Shaftesbury Avenue and said, “You’re that gay film maker, aren’t you.”

Well, he expected the worst.  It wouldn’t be the first time he had been beaten by a stranger but he looked him in the eye, straight in the eye and said, “Yes I am.”

Ten minutes later the beautiful young man was naked, towering over him.  Blowing a load.

That’s a queer story.  It’s not gay.  For a start, a gay wouldn’t have told the truth.

Secondly, a gay would have been too scared to take a big straight acting blue-collar worker back to his prissy apartment.

The gays.  God.  You were right.  It wasn’t worth it.  Making those plays, those movies.

Yet, I’m still here.  Sitting in my huge bed in California.

Good taste and tenacity will always make you enough money to enjoy a great life.  Where ever it may take you.

The gays betray each other.  They have no respect for themselves or each other.  Perhaps it was me?  Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations.  You know, mutual respect, support, honor?

I remain curious.  Even though I am sure of what I am.

P.S.  Tilda Swinton saw my film AKA at Sundance.

My agent threw a party for her and me in some crazy restaurant.

We talked a great deal about Derek that night.

He was right.  I never took no for an answer.

I begged and I borrowed and I stole to make a moment in my life that no one can ever take away from me.

Not even the gays.

Categories
art Gay Hollywood

Brice Dellsperger

After an uneventful day, excepting a visit from a 28-year-old, sober, HIV positive, gay mafia moll with a remarkable story…I braved the cold and walked from the East Village to an art opening in Soho.

Team Gallery on Grand Street is owned by a grumpy, reptilian gay guy called Jose Freire.  I was introduced to him yonks ago by Max Wigram when I tried unsuccessfully to buy a piece by Ryan McGinley at Frieze.

As miserable as Jose may be…he has great taste and last nights show was no exception.

An extraordinary video installation by French artist Brice Dellsperger.

I met my sweet and excruciatingly handsome friend Leonard the young buff Buffalo boy who seemed a little overwhelmed by both the crowd and the show.  We ate dinner at Prune.  I had the monkfish liver and a very poorly executed lamb steak.  He had prawns and veal.  We did not stick around for desert or coffee.

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The Team gallery show was called:  Refreshing Fassbinder…and others.

The show continues Dellsperger’s longtime fascination with the psychosexual in contemporary cinema.

Body Double 22, after Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was perfectly delicious to watch.  A mesmerizing, non-linear partial restaging of Stanley Kubrick’s thriller Eyes Wide Shut

Body double refers to Dellspergers’s performers (he and long time collaborator Jean-Luc Verna) standing in for and lip-synching to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

The films examine issues of authenticity using digital slippage, irregular lip-synching, and crudely constructed sets and costumes…channelling Kenneth Anger and Derek Jarman.   Gay art cinema.

I loved Jean-Luc Verna’s performance which is tinged with menacing humor..as only a tranny can.

Body Double 27, 2010 is a three-channel video installation which, of course reminded me of my own film AKA.  The same scene repeated, side-by-side, with several different actors playing the same role.

This piece was particularly beautiful and more than adequately fills the main part of the gallery.

In Fassbinder’s film a man lusts after his co-worker Anton, who says, “Too bad you are not a woman”, to which the man responds by becoming a transvestite.

Dellsperger’s film is a repetition of a scene where a transvestite furtively approaches an anonymous man.  The man is always unresponsive.  The transvestite cries on his own.  Dellsperger’s powerful looping fragments form an unrelenting examination of unrequited love.

Dellsperger revisits themes of gender, destabilized identity and homosexuality in the Hollywood mainstream.

If you can, go see this show.

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
Gay Queer Rant

FULL DISCLOSURE

I was with a man last week, a friend of mine.  Married with two kids, good job, comfortable life.  The only fly in the ointment being his insatiable desire for other men.

He had always known that he was gay but fell in love with a beautiful woman.  He still loves her, loves his children and his comfortable life.  When I met him he was in pieces because he was about to tell his wife the truth about his other life.  The life he could no longer contain, compartmentalize.

You know, whether it is another man or another woman the deceit is just the same.  However, his wife, the woman he had been with for twenty years utterly trusted and loved him.  She described him as the center of her world.  Now, after therapy, he had decided to tell her the truth.

You know I am in two minds about FULL DISCLOSURE.  Depending on how it is handled it can be a great thing.  The truth, as we all know, tends to set you free-but at what price for the wife?  For the children?

Is it possible to love and cherish a woman yet have a secret gay life?  I have written on these pages that I believe that it is.  That men think differently about monogamy than women.  Judging by just how broken the man is he really loves his wife and finds his gay life unexplainable.

Of course we do not live in the 1950’s when society was less tolerant of homosexuality but we must not underestimate two things:  firstly, the desire for a regular life of marriage and children with a woman and secondly that the love that develops between a man and a woman regardless of orientation is still real.

The gay lifestyle is not exactly my cup of tea, the bars and clubs, the endless hooking up-found in urban gay life.  Gay men don’t do a very good job of advertising the better part of our lives.  Anyhow that’s another story.

I have loved women during my life and whilst I loved them I was not hankering after men.  The emotional commitment that I had was just as valid as that that I had with men.

Having sex with a man is far easier than telling a man ‘I love you’.

Sexuality and relationships are complicated and whilst some relationships do not fit the norm we should not discount the love that exists there.

My friend desperately loves his wife and children, their lives together have been rich and varied.  Has he been more dishonest than a man who cheated on his wife with other woman?

Can a man still love his wife and have sexual relations with other men?  My friend tells me that he can and does.  Just like Darwin who believed both in God and evolution.  When asked how this was possible to believe in God and his theory of evolution he replied ‘because I do’.

I rather like the Victorian model where gay men married and had children and had affairs with men on the side.  This may not suit the out and prouds or the uber hetero but may suit some people an the middle of the Kinsey spectrum.  We are not all one thing or the other until we say we are.  We are not gay until we say we are.  When we say that we love someone why should this not be believed just because our sexuality is more complicated or in the words of Derek Jarman less ‘common’.

I have loved many women and whilst I have always been honest about my interest in men they seemed to not care as long as they were or felt loved.  Women have a huge capacity for love, for tolerance and forgiveness.