Duncan Roy's Blog[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yghncsxRs]
Matt Rowe arrived from London. Lunch with Casey at Westville. Steven and I ate an early supper and held hands in the street. I felt my whole body tingle with excitement. Late dinner at lil’ Frankies with my pride boys. I love them.
Gave up after that. Exhausted.
I found out that somebody for whom I had long-held a candle is in fact gay…
Much more to tell but have no time.
Austin is as beautiful as El Paso is not.
The people in downtown Austin look like they just walked out of the East Village.
The last time I was here Joe and I stayed at The Driskill Hotel. This time around I am spending the day writing before I move on.
I would like to have stayed a little longer but fate well and truly intervened.
I am exhausted.
Yesterday, after I was released by the ICE guys with my passport re stamped I spent an hour by myself. It was blissful.
The Dane and his ex picked me up from the small Sierra Blanca cafe at the edge of Interstate 10 where I had eaten unexpectedly delicious Huevos Rancheros with the cops.
Reunited with my fellow travelers, back in our luxurious transportation. The Dane, Lucie and I headed back to El Paso where we parked ourselves in a coffee shop…like I am doing now…and The Dane anxiously attempted to help Thomas by calling his friends, family and officials.
As we drove into El Paso I noticed something strange and scary.
All the palm trees were dead.
Trees that formerly decorated the forecourts of the huge car dealers on Montana are now just sad, brown stumps.
The same is true of commercial and domestic palms. Palms of all varieties…dead. Their bark ruptured, waiting for the woodsman to take them down.
What killed the palm trees?
Global warming? Climate change? El Paso just had the worst winter…ever. It killed palms, mesquite and cactus. If I had doubted climate change before…this was indeed the smoking gun.
I am persuaded. Climate change exists.
We would spend all day and most of the evening in El Paso at either the coffee shop or at the alien detention center where, at 7pm, we were allowed to see Thomas.
He looked miserable and cried a bit but anyone who has been to boarding school can attest this is just first day nerves.
Unlike boarding school they wouldn’t let us sit in the same room as the ‘detainee’ so we spoke on telephones peering at Thomas through bullet proof glass.
He held his hand up to the window like Billy Hayes in Midnight Express but unlike the film Lucie didn’t rub her tits over the glass and Thomas did not jerk off looking at them.
Nor did we hand him a book stuffed with dollars.
For me it was a total waste of time.
This idiotic boy had deliberately over stayed his visa, not renewed his passport and had the attitude of any entitled prick who thinks he should be allowed to stay anywhere he pleases.
I was even more pissed at The Dane for getting me involved with his half-baked friend. His ex Lucie was really sweet and had a great attitude. I have no complaints about her.
I just knew the moment I met Thomas that he was going to cause trouble.
An immature, exhibitionist thirty-one year old man who cater/waiters for a career is not someone I necessarily want to know. No, I am not being a snob. I am just angry. You will be pleased to hear that I did not lose my temper and remained remarkably calm.
Whilst they were fruitlessly contacting embassies I wandered around El Paso in the searing 110 degree heat checking out Kinsineta couture…see above.
I bumped into Nicholas, the manager of the El Paso hipster coffee shop who offered to not only help us out by visiting Thomas in detention but also offered to show me around. I leapt at the chance. If only to hang out with a relatively normal human being.
As they were moping over poor incarcerated Thomas, Nicholas took me to the very authentic Chico’s Tacos which was amazingly tasty and cheap.
We were both well fed for less that $5. Check the wiki link above. He then drove me to a mountain that over looks not only the city of El Paso but into the violent border town of Juarez, Mexico where there are (apparently) several drug related cartel murders every day.
“It is a miracle when there are no murders in Juarez.” Nicholas said sadly. “I love my country but we are not very good to each other.”
He told me about gunmen bursting into schools and shooting students. Weddings and funerals where the same happens. Endless, brutal Cartel related murders. He told me that the children of the Cartel roam El Paso boasting who their parents are and scaring the locals.
From the mountain we could very clearly see the controversial border fence that separates the USA from Mexico.
“Everybody in this town is involved with smuggling.” He said, looking over the vast, hot landscape. “People and drugs.”
I dropped Nicholas at his car then returned to The Dane and Lucie who had now finished with Thomas.
Inspired, I took them to Chico’s which they loved. I fed the dog and for the next four hours I drove through the night toward Austin from El Paso.
Lucie took the helm at 1am and I slept fitfully in the back of the SUV.
When I woke at 7am we were in Fredericksburg. A charming Teutonic historical town, tastefully planned and well manicured. We sat in the German Bakery and ate buns and drank hot, dark coffee. It was such a fucking relief to be out of El Paso and experiencing a different, altogether more understandable world.
Frankly I couldn’t wait to leave The Dane. It was not his fault per se but he and his friend took a risk with our vacation/trip to NYC that is not easily forgiven.
Thomas will go home to Sweden where he will hopefully grow the fuck up. Even in the detention center he was imagining that he could marry his girl friend at the facility and they would let him go back to his studio life in Brooklyn.
Yeah right!
I am in Sierra Blanca, a two-horse strip of nothing near El Paso Texas. I should be in Marfa looking at art but life has a remarkable way of getting in the way of ones intentions.
Yesterday started off badly and ended up even worse.
We woke up in the New Inn Willcox. The four of us. Grumpy and tired.
We set off for Marfa, ended up in Las Cruces by the Rio Grande.
This tiny, charming place made famous by the forests of pecans and pistachios planted around the town. There was a small street market where we baked in the midday sun.
I found a dedicated AA meeting-house.
Bagel was worried by our travelling through these southern border towns because his Swedish passport was well out of date. We scoffed. We weren’t going anywhere near the border. Yet, the proximity still scared him.
After lunch everyone was in great spirits, the road was clear, we were making good time. Lively, intelligent conversation. That was until we were funneled into a homeland security border control and everything went to shit.
Big time.
We were routinely stopped and asked if we were US citizens.
None of us are.
Of course within minutes they discovered that Thomas’s (Bagel) passport was out of date and he had over stayed his welcome in the USA.
Then, to my horror they told me that my passport had problems and I too was detained.
Detained. For the next twenty hours I underwent a harrowing scrutiny.
I must say however that all of the border control agents, the ICE patrol guys and every single official I came into contact with was courteous, kind and helpful.
Quite unlike any British police officer..except the detective I met last summer with the sociopath.
These men and women have a tough, demanding job but, from what I saw, within that tiny little office at the edge of Interstate 10 there is a good family atmosphere. They seem to mainly deal with cannabis infractions. The sniffer dogs leaping on anyone with weed in their car.
Each dog is an official agent and has it’s own badge.
Just as I was leaving they brought in ten young goth men and women. Their tattoos and piercings at odds with the uniformed officers.
Again, I only saw the agents be utterly polite, once going out of their way to fetch an elder lady a wheel chair.
My situation was more complicated than Thomas’s as he had simply over stayed. So, after many, many phone calls I was released with my passport re-stamped correctly.
Thomas was not so lucky and is now languishing in an alien holding camp with a thousand other illegal aliens.
Of course all I worried about was the Little Dog who had to sit in a huge cage whilst they were processing me. He looks a little traumatized this morning. If I had been traveling on my own they would have called the pound.
It does not bear thinking about.
So, here we are. In El Paso at a cool coffee-house near the convention center hooked up to the internet waiting for 6 o’clock to roll around so we can visit Thomas. The Dane is obviously worried about his friend so we are obliged to curtail our trip.
This means that I will be in New York for the premiere of Transformers 3 and other choice events.
I have a great deal to achieve this coming week. I have hospital appointments, friends arriving from London and LA for my birthday party.
I am just thankful that the border immigration folk expedited my passport problem.
“Don’t pester old film makers about your film making. I don’t care about your process, your poverty or your inertia. All I care about is that you make a film. Just do it and make it good.” Duncan Roy June 2011
So, here I am again. Good morning hipsters! I spent an hour in the garden at 7am weeding and watering. It looks just dandy. Then I came in and within two minutes I had broken a sugar bowl, a cafetière and jammed my fingers into a draw.
I AM ONE CLUMSY QUEEN.
Yesterday Gabe and I went to Paradise Cove Beach Cafe on the PCH for lunch. We were charged $5 each for walking from the PCH where we parked into the restaurant rather than paying $3 to use their car park. I thought they were kidding. A $5 ‘walking fee’? Rip Off USA. It made me so mad. Gabe just looked bemused as I let the manager have two barrels of shit. In turn the manager just looked at the crazy man and rolled over like a puppy.
He offered us a beach side table, a waitress with psychiatric training and a refund.
A $5 walking fee? How can they get away with that shit?
We ate their mediocre ribs, drank their weak tea, sat on their grubby beach. Thankfully we sat next to an attractive married couple from Hollywood who really were worth meeting. He sells sex toys on-line. They were like a gay couple. Hot tub parties and three ways. I really liked them. She said that when they have a baby they might calm down a bit.
Gabe sat on my lap and held my hand, massaged my fingers. It was so sweet. We were the only gays on the beach. The out of towners looked at us suspiciously. Yet again I felt uncomfortable. Fuck! When I was with the Penguin/Matt/Jamie I didn’t care. Because, I suppose, when I was with them I didn’t care what other people thought. It was just us…and as I have said before: I would have defended my love with my life.
After lunch we investigated the pier, the peace paddle (some hippy event) we talked for ages to a lady who had worked in India on an ashram who now sells South Indian food from a food truck. She told us dolefully how the city of LA is targeting the food truck community (there are 500 of them) with all sorts of horrible rules. What ever happened to American innovation being encouraged and celebrated?
(Even the sex toy guy is despondent about how small businesses are treated. He is moving his cash to Brazil.)
Food trucks are a recessionary necessity. A perfect response.
The previous day Anna and I had been on Abbot Kinney. The first Friday of every month the streets has a kind of street party. The galleries open late and every thirty feet there is a food truck. It was so much fun. We bumped into Meg Ryan and her friend Laura Dern.
Anyway, we ate all sorts. We struggled through the crowds. Some man who thought he knew me. Said, “Hey! How are you?” I let him think he knew me. At the end of the conversation he realised who I was and the meeting came to an abrupt ending. This happened in Ojai too. It seems to happen more and more.
Last night I was talking to a young film maker and gave him the advice quoted at the top of the page. Very Ayn Rand of me.
Today I am hiking with Tom. Gabe is coming over to relax. Miles has recovered from his binge. Cooking dinner for us all tonight.
I feel rather wonderful. Having fun. At peace.
I look at my blog site stats. A bunch of fluctuating numbers posted throughout the day behind the scenes of this blog. I used to be mesmerised by these stats. Especially when thousands of people read the blog every day. Now, those numbers have dwindled.
I could do more to boost my numbers but choose not to.
Each morning I get up and write everything that is on my mind. It isn’t particularly interesting to most people what happens to a man living on both coasts of the USA. Living on a small stipend delivered monthly from various investments made many years ago. Living with a small dog and a pair of beautiful twins. Living with bi-polarity. Living in his dreams.
Yet, every morning I feel compelled to write my life for you to read. I try not to boast, I try not to be too self piteous. I try to tell it as it is. Sometimes I am just talking to myself, sometimes I am talking to my Mother. Mostly I am just talking. Last year I seemed to be engaged in a one way conversation with him.
As the days pass between who I was and who I am, the years pass between what I thought I wanted and what I actually achieved, the decades between an impetuous youth and a contemplative old age. I become less frightened, more at peace.
I know that my writing about him has chased many of my regular readers away. I worked out that terrible obsession here on this blog. Do I regret writing it? What sort of diary would this be if I hadn’t written it? What sort of man would I have been if I sat here suffering and just candy coated what was the most bitter of all pills?
Of course I am capable of telling you lies but for the most part I get up and tell you whatever truth is presently haunting me. I have not written things and regretted it. When I was with him I often excluded him from the narrative and as a consequence the most beautiful moments we shared have been lost. Making love in the wood. I didn’t write about that when it happened and now it is as if it never happened. Writing retrospectively about those moments somehow devalues them.
I know that you hate me writing about him but he has been on my mind. When I stop feeling angry, foolish, sad…I still find myself wanting the best for him. Wishing him well. Hoping that he resolved his stuff with her. Praying that he now has the gay life he wanted so badly.
After all is said and done…I loved him. For good or for bad.
I wish that I did not now have to see him in September.
At this moment I have climbed fully out of the straight jacket I designed for myself. Life has become simple and manageable once again. My head no longer in two time zones. No more longing, fantasy, false hope.
I listened to the singer Adele talking about how her first album was crafted after a nasty break up. How she punched her ex bf in the face then wrote her album. This is what artists do. Copper’s Bottom, the play I showed at Sadler’s Wells in my mid twenties was all about a love affair I had with a policeman. The deep scars it left in me. This is what artists do. We craft something from our own experiences, we do not disguise our vulnerabilities, our history. I cannot deliberately disfigure the past.
When I was nominated for the BAFTA I finally had proof of sorts that being true to oneself and the stories we tell can reach much further than those of us who hide away. I have hidden away for most of this year. Licking my wounds behind my site stats, my failed love affair.
If I am to remain credible I must do what I do best: create. Wasting the rest of my life hankering after what could have been is just plain stupid. Whilst many of the folk I grew up with are considering retirement I must do what thousands of artists before me have done and just get on with it. Do the work.
Regardless of how many people are watching.
This morning I have watered the garden. Listened to the birds. Made strong coffee.
Miles is vomiting in the bathroom. He drank too much last night at the Whale Wars premiere. He is missing his girlfriend who has moved to the mid-west. Watching him struggle somehow helps me. I have no idea why.
“I’ve never been this hung over.” He moans.
I don’t have ANY sympathy for people who drink too much.
Now, what next? Apparently the niche publisher is not so niche and the nice woman there has already read my book and wants to talk further. I wonder what that means?
I put my film on ice but am ready to warm it up. I am meeting producers this Sunday. Whilst I was in New York I met another producer.
I seem to be getting back into that grove.
PS I got a 4k reduction on my property tax..which is now only 13k a year. Hurrah!
The first time Joe ever took me to Fire Island Pines I was immediately convinced that something I had always hankered existed: a place where gay men and women of all ages could live together, experience life together and express themselves without shame.
I have heard from black friends who traveled to Africa for the first time that they experienced a sense of truly understanding how it might be to live an unfettered life.
There are exceptions.
I have just finished reading A Black Man Confronts Africa.
From 1991 to 1994, Keith Richburg was based in Nairobi as the Africa bureau chief for the Washington Post. He traveled throughout Africa, from Rwanda to Zaire, witnessing and reporting on wars, famines, mass murders, and the complexity and corruption of African politics.
Unlike many black Americans who romanticize Africa, Richburg looks back on his time there and concludes that he is simply an American, not an African-American. This is a powerful, hard-hitting book, filled with anguished soul-searching as Richburg makes his way toward that uncomfortable conclusion.
I am a gay (adopted) American. I do not belong. The laws of the land preclude me from being truly equal. The streets are periodically mine but not consistently. Really? I thought things had changed for the gays? Strangely, post Will and Grace things have not changed. I urge any one of you (gay or straight) who think things may have changed for gay people in contemporary USA (and I have said this many times over): Try holding your same sex friends hand in a street anywhere other than NYC or LA.
See what happens.
Returning to Fire Island this summer for the first time in a decade I am excited to see how things have evolved since I lived there and if the idyl I first experienced still exists.
The beautiful beach, the beautiful boys, the sunset and sunrise…no cars. Dinner prepared by groups of men who sit down together and share. Share being the operative word. What ever share you may have in the house you are renting…doing things collectively is the modus operandi.
Have I idealized my memory of this slim sand bank set at the edge of the Atlantic? Have, within a decade, my memories been burnished?
I wonder.
Firstly, finding a house to rent has been quite hard. I guess my demands are not normal by gay Fire Island Pines standards. When searching for a house I made it quite clear to the realtor that I am sober. I do not drink and I do not take drugs. I told him that I was not interested in the big gay beach parties (drug festivals). That I am going there to write.
Almost every house that I looked at was a ‘party’ house. Almost every person I spoke to told me that they wanted to have fun…read that as excessive drinking, drug taking and sexual unmanageability.
Having a sober person around might mean curtailing the ‘fun’.
I have heard that The Pines has become quite trashy. I have heard that they have ruined the ambiance.
The über gays have long since deserted The Pines for The Hamptons. Aping upper-class American straight people rather than investing in the peculiarities of The Pines.
What is it that draws me back there? What is it that I loved so much?
Well, Joe and I had a wonderful time together in our pretty little house. It was the nexus of gay culture and me. For the first time in my life I saw both old and young gay people going about their business (during the day) just like common people. Fetching their shopping on small, red carts. Dressing up, holding hands, not dressing up…alone.
For the first time in my life I felt as if I owned the space around me, that I could not be judged in this place.
Until I got there I believed those things to be true but I had been kidding myself.
Just getting there from Manhattan was an adventure. The car to Sayville. The ferry ride from Sayville to the island, the palpable excitement of the passengers. The great piles of supplies and dogs and suitcases.
Thank you Joe for taking me there.
The first man I saw when I scrambled down the gang-plank was an elderly man with a stick walking slowly along the board walk. It delighted me. “Is everyone gay here Joe?” I thought to myself that there was indeed a place where I could be free when I was his age. I knew even then in my late 20’s that being old and gay was going to be difficult. My premonition has come to pass. Being old and gay is going to be horrible from what we found out when researching The Scarlett Empress.
Unless, of course you have a spare $160, 000 to buy a surrogate child who might look after you.
I had thought about going back to Whitstable in my dotage but not even Whitstable holds much allure to me. Being the old gay man in town…I have seen the way we are treated.
When I arrived at The Pines I understood how life might play out. The options. I looked around and even though the bars were full of very drunk gays (I was one of them) the look on their faces was different. They looked relaxed, they looked happy.
We went to gay bingo, we involved ourselves with the gay fire department. We had opinions about dune reclamation. We walked barefoot to the beach and watched the beautiful naked men play ball and walk their dogs. We paid for limousines from JFK for our friends and delighted them with our house, our gay lives.
Our routine rarely altered. Watching the sunset, hanging out on the dock to see who would get off the ferry. Buying expensive food at The Pines Pantry…the store was just like any store but crammed with fancy queens buying $100 steaks.
When I got sober the AA meetings were quite small on Fire Island…now they are huge.
I really have no idea what it will be like to live out there once again for the summer.
I am excited at the prospect.
Of course there are other places where one might feel free, where YOU might feel free. Perhaps you have already found your very own utopia elsewhere.
The Fire Island Pines experience is short-lived. In September this utopia is disassembled. The grand houses are shuttered, the store closes, the ferry comes but once a day.
There are other places for us to go. Unless we vanish. Those of us who look kindly upon our strange ‘culture’ can find our tribe elsewhere.
Not until I got to San Francisco did I have that sense of belonging once again. Where the streets were mine. The neighborhoods belonged to us. Where fear and shame were banished.
Like Keith Richburg I am aware of the anthropological problems but still happy to have experienced the adventure. Let me for a moment love it all without criticism, let me love what we have carved out for ourselves both good and bad and celebrate our difference. Celebrate.
No, I don’t want to kill myself.
There have been times recently when I have seriously thought about suicide but life always delivers so much more than death ever could. Why would I want an endless night when I have the glorious day?
This too will pass. A tiny rule that reminds me daily that life is worth living. That love, lust, hate and anger all have a certain shelf life and it’s only a matter of time before relief is found or misery returns.
1.3% of all deaths are from suicide.
On average, one suicide occurs every 16 minutes.
Suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death for all Americans.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people aged 15-24 year olds.
(1st = accidents, 2nd = homicide)
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for 25-34 year olds.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students.
More males die from suicide than females.
(4 male deaths by suicide for each female death by suicide.)
More people die from suicide than from homicide.
(Suicide ranks as the 11th leading cause of death; Homicide ranks 13th.)
There were over 800,000 suicide attempts in 2010
Sobering statistics.
When I was a kid things were so confusing, so traumatic I made two attempts at taking my own life. Once with a knife and secondly with pills. I failed to complete my mission on both occasions. Thankfully.
When I had my breakdown during my mid twenties I met young people, at the Henderson Hospital, who seemed determined that life was not worth living and had made far more serious attempts at ending things than I had.
Sarah’s story, particularly, sticks in my mind. I may have written about her before but let me refresh your memory.
Sarah was a young, pretty blond girl who had been serially abused (sexually and physically) by both her parents, foster parents and finally by her adopted father.
By the time I met her she was a husk of what she should have been.
She trusted no one. Why would she?
Every day at the hospital we would congregate for an obligatory house meeting. Sarah was missing. I was sent (by the nursing staff) to her room to find her. When I opened the door I was met with a blood bath.
There was blood everywhere, on the sheets, the floor, sprayed on the ceiling and the walls.
Sarah saw me and said sweetly, “I’ll be down in a minute.” She was pathetically dabbing with a blood sodden rag at the mess on the walls. “I just want to clear this up.” She smiled at me. Softly. She had severed an artery in her wrist and as fast as she mopped up the blood more spurted out.
I grabbed her wrist and called out for help. Screamed for help. Eventually someone arrived. We were hustled (still holding her as a human tourniquet) into a car and to the local ER.
By the time we got to the hospital I was welded onto her and had to be surgically removed from the congealed, bloody wound.
I have no idea what happened to Sarah. Perhaps she succeeded and did indeed kill herself. I have no idea. She didn’t come back from the emergency room.
I don’t remember ever asking about her. Out of sight, out of mind.
Those who threaten suicide are frightening people. A disregard for their own life could very easily become a disregard for yours. A suicide is a murder. A murderer may kill you too.
During the past decade of sobriety I have met many men and women (mostly men) who managed to kill themselves. It always amazed me that even sobriety could not save them.
Death seems so alluring to some people. There is nothing alluring about death: a premature death is just absurd to me. We are dead all too soon and for those of us who do not believe in heaven we may as well find heaven on earth.
Anyway, I am too much of a coward to kill myself. Too much of a coward to drink or take drugs. Too much of a coward to be successful. Too much of a coward to say no…to open letters…to say goodbye.
I have learned to live with depression (without drugs) mental illness (without therapy) inertia (without fear) and love (without conclusion). Some people cannot face the power of life itself. The beauty, the grandeur, the mystery seem so threatening to them and end up dead by their own hand.
Perhaps they cannot/will not respect this extraordinary world, this abundant place.
Recently, as documented here, I have felt vulnerable and sad. I felt (falsely) as if life could only be lived in a certain way…with a lover at my side. On those occasions I am blinded to what I have and drawn to those things I do not have.
These past weeks since the great ‘closure’ my eyes are open, I am bathed in light. The night is no longer a terrible and foreign place. The day begins without yearning nor ends with tears.
God damn it…
This too will pass.
http://youtu.be/53lmJi9GWdQ
One of my favorite directors Leonard Kastle, originally an opera composer who unexpectedly found a niche in film history as the writer and director of the low-budget 1969 crime-thriller film “The Honeymoon Killers,” died on Wednesday. He was 82.
When I made my worst ever film, The Method with Elizabeth Hurley I stole, almost shot by shot, one of Kastel’s brilliant murder scenes. See attached video.
Sadly, not even appropriating Kastel’s genius would save that terrible film.
One of the most shocking lines from any film ever written? When angry with her jewish boss Martha Beck says, “I’m not so sure Hitler wasn’t right about you people.”
In the 1950s and ’60s Mr. Kastle enjoyed a modest reputation as a composer of melodic, romantic operas and as a musical director of works for the stage.
Fame arrived by an unexpected route. Warren Steibel, the producer of “Firing Line” with William F. Buckley Jr. and of Mr. Kastle’s television operas, was given $150,000 by a rich friend to make a film. He hit on the idea of making a grim, documentary-style work based on the story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who were known as the Lonely Hearts Killers.
Fernandez was a balding lothario, Beck his obese lover. Together they sought out victims by reading newspaper personal ads, and when Fernandez had won the trust of those they contacted, they robbed them. The couple murdered two of their victims and the 2-year-old daughter of one as well. Fernandez and Beck were electrocuted at Sing Sing in 1951.
At the request of Mr. Steibel, who died in 2002, Mr. Kastle sifted through the trial records at the Bronx County Courthouse. Then, after studying scripts by Fellini, Pasolini and Truffaut, he wrote a screenplay.
Both men envisioned the film as a cinematic rebuttal to “Bonnie and Clyde.” “I was revolted by that movie,” Mr. Kastle said in an interview for the 2003 Criterion Collection reissue of his film on DVD. “I didn’t want to show beautiful shots of beautiful people.”
For his director, Mr. Steibel hired Martin Scorsese, whose first film, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door?,” he had seen recently. But as filming began near the summer home that Mr. Steibel and Mr. Kastle shared in New Lebanon, N.Y., trouble loomed.
It quickly became apparent that Mr. Scorsese’s deliberate, painstaking approach would break the budget and play havoc with the shooting. Mr. Kastle said that after Mr. Scorsese and Oliver Wood, the cinematographer, spent an entire afternoon filming a beer can in a bush, it was clear they would need another director.
When Mr. Scorsese’s replacement, an industrial filmmaker named Donald Volkman, also proved unsatisfactory, Mr. Kastle stepped into the breach. Against the odds, he turned out a quirky masterpiece.
“The Honeymoon Killers,” with Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoler in the lead roles, stunned moviegoers and critics. Brutal, unblinking and ruthlessly honest, with a powerful undercurrent of black comedy, it quickly earned an exalted place in American cinema.
Variety, in an early review, hailed the film as “well-scripted, harrowing, brilliantly acted” and “deserving of a class build-up.” Roger Greenspun, in The New York Times, called Mr. Kastle “the real star of the movie” and placed him “among the important deliberate artists of his medium.” François Truffaut, on more than one occasion, included it among his favorite contemporary American films.
The film performed tepidly at the box office in the United States, despite strong reviews, but found a receptive audience in Europe. It reaped a new harvest of acclaim as it made the festival and art-house circuits when it was re-released in 1992.
“Even 20-plus years after its original release, this picture’s implacability and refusal to compromise are as startlingly pure as ever,” Kenneth Turan wrote in The Los Angeles Times.
In 2006 Jared Leto and Salma Hayek starred in a remake of the film, “Lonely Hearts,” with John Travolta as the detective who pursues the murderers.
It was Mr. Kastle’s first and last movie.
Mr. Kastle was often asked why he never made another film. It was not for lack of trying, he said.
“I have six or seven screenplays, and maybe something will happen,” he told the interviewer for the Criterion DVD. “But one thing I can always say — and not every director can say this — I never made a bad film after ‘Honeymoon Killers.’ ”
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Another beautiful day spent walking the city streets, meeting friends old and new.
There is so much happening that I am finding it almost impossible to remember where the day begins and how it ends.
Let’s see…hmmm.
Woke late. Walked to Mud for my daily cup of their aromatic coffee. The cute Brooklyn guy was serving in his pixie hat. “Milk, one sugar?” I nod.
Walked the dog drinking my coffee . We stare at squirrels in the trees. This daily Mexican Standoff between The Little Dog and the squirrels.
At 12.30 I go to NYU AA meeting. A very drunk man sat next to me. I was a bit worried that he was going to vomit on my leg. He left early. People cried who had known him sober. We can get very complacent. He’s a good reminder of what can happen. Men like him keep me sober.
The Big Book of AA was written for people who can’t stay sober…not for people who can.
After the AA meeting a young gay new comer wanted my number. I congratulated myself for NOT giving it to him. I know what these boys want. Don’t think I went through all I went through this year without learning something. He can offer his sad ass to some other sucker. Listen, I am not that guy. I may sound like a sage when I speak in AA, I may look like a caring person on TV…but let me make this perfectly clear for anyone who may be listening…those are mere aspects of my personality.
I AM NOT THAT GUY.
I am not boasting when I say this…well..I might be…but, I am looking pretty damned good. I am strong, svelte, confident, happy. I am pleased to tell you that I have welcomed myself back into my own body. It’s great to be back on good form. Caustic humor, acerbic wit..all evidenced yesterday both at lunch with Peter Evans, then with my new cub friend (friend of Brendon’s). All afternoon sitting by the pool..receiveing people like the stately homo I have become.
Hung with actor friends Matthew Rhys (Brothers and Sisters) and Anatol Yusef who plays Meyer Lansky in Boardwalk Empire. Anatol and I are talking about doing the Wayne Sleep bio pic together. Anatol….playing Wayne of course. Meg Ryan as Princess Di.
Anatol and Wayne could be twins. Those two boys were separated at birth.
Joke. That was a fucking joke wasn’t it? It was…wasn’t it?
Dashed home for a quick shower, took dog to park for a poo and a wee…met charming green-eyed boy who made small talk about wanting a dog, then met Zack et al at The Bowery Bar for the final Beige party night ever. I wore the jacket that Hedi Slimane designed for me when he was at Dior. I wore slim pants and patent leather boots and a black tee shirt. I looked fucking GREAT.
We arrived at 8.30 bribed the hostess, tranny person to get us a table but I didn’t sit at the table once. I felt like the Belle of the Ball. I was chatting with dozens of super cool gay men. Flirtatious yet dignified. It just felt great, validated. Comfortable. Some of the men we met at Ken Mehlman‘s apartment were there. Amanda Lepore was sitting in a booth getting her fake tits out. I have met her so many times in so many different locations. Miami, LA, Paris…with David LaChappelle mostly.
There were so many people. It was jammed. So many, many people I remember from years and years of going to Beige.
I must admit that I have never felt at ease at Beige. In the words of my friend, “This has always been a bit of a cunty crowd.”
Last night it was my crowd.
I left just as the party was getting messy. I walked home. Happy as the day was long.
I have been off kilter for so long. Last night, it was different. I felt great, I felt like I deserved the compliments.
That’s a change isn’t it?
