Odd Man Out (1947)
On the face of it, this seems a religious film. Yulch. It’s usually called a thriller, and Carol Reed is famous for The Third Man, but there is much here that is not thrilling. There are ideas though, and those interest me. James Mason is remarkably beautiful as a young man. He plays a revolutionary in the IRA recently returned from jail who — though weak and bleary—insists on leading a bank heist to raise IRA funds. (All this raises the spectre of Bobby Sands, the IRA hero who went on a hunger strike in 1981; of course this film was made long before.) The film is a picaresque account of Mason’s attempted escape from the police — for he kills a man and must run. But we are perhaps less on the edge of our seats re: Mason’s subsequent fate, than we are fascinated by those who he meets along the way, mainly the tattered, poor and drunken Irish working class. At the climax of the film, Mason wrenches himself to a standing position and quotes (1 Corinthians 13): “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things…” The ultimate biblical message here is that we are nothing without love. I can support this, especially since Kathleen Ryan — as a young woman who would do anything for Mason (he is indifferent to her until the end) dies with him. This is noble, but it interests me less than some of the people Mason meets on his journey — for instance, a pair of older women who nurse him, ignoring his violent acts and political views. These characters seem to embody love, and the wacky F. J. McCormack — an unhinged beggar who tries to make money off revealing Mason’s whereabouts (and who collects birds), suggests perhaps a less appealing aspect of humanity, without judgement. But it is Robert Newton’s Lokey, a painter who discovers Mason near the end — and is struck not only by Mason’s beauty but the exigency of making him the subject of a painting — who really interests me — especially Newton’s dialogue with his doctor friend Tober (Elwyn Brook Jones) as Jones props up what appears to be a dying James Mason for Newton’s work, and Newton says: “He’s near death. He sees it. There are wonderful thoughts in his eyes.” Jones wants to repair Mason’s body, but Newton is interested in his soul: “There’s more to be considered than his body that may be dying. His soul that might be still alive.” And: “ I understand what I see in him.” What is it?” “It’s the truth bout us all.” “Is that all?” “He’s doomed.” “So are we all.” Newton, the mad painter, is is a prototype for a compelling myth about artists in general. He is more interested in somehow replicating the soul of the man he is painting than he is in saving the man’s life. Artists have long been suspect for being more interested in aesthetics than human beings. Stories about Michelangelo suggest that he captured a young man, tied him up, and tortured him to death, in order to observe the agonized convulsions of a dying body for a painting of Christ. I’m not suggesting the rumour is true; what interests me is the truth behind the fantasy. Michelangelo’s bound slaves are blindingly beautiful depictions of suffering, ergo, we feel guilty for taking pleasure in them. It may have been this that started the rumour. But artists are eternally suspect. During these ‘extraordinary times,’ young artists are distancing themselves from the notion of 'artist as criminal '— an idea promoted by Oscar Wilde and Jean Genet. I have had little contact with young artists during this pandemic. But I get from my fleeting moments in zoom rooms is that they have accepted that their chosen profession simply pales when set beside the urgencies of a pandemic. And they are regretful— nay, racked with guilt — about even imagining that being an artist might possibly be part of the ‘new normal.’ Now, it seems, is the time for artists to throw in the towel: ‘I see the folly of my ways. Human suffering is all around us — particularly now — and I am not so superficial as to imagine any paltry art object is more significant than the tragic reality we live in. I would gladly throw away my paint brush, my dancing shoes, or my pen, if I could in any way help those suffering from COVID-19.’ The artist as criminal — which I have always hoped to be — or at least imagined I am — is now the ‘odd man out.’ Now I would never think of kidnapping a young man and torturing him in order to write about it (do you believe me?); but from the time I was 5 years old I appreciated the special appeal of each and every depiction of Saint Sebastian. It seems that if we value art at all, then in our newly moralistic, scientific, medicalised future, we are in grave danger of being assumed murderous Michelangelos. I, on the contrary, believe that though starving people need sustenance, as soon as they are fed, they definitely need something more substantial. And if they are dying, well they might prefer a poem; and that, after all, is what The Bible is. I say this partially because it appears that — very slowly (after all we live in Ontario, Canada, where all things happen with great care, and we try not to get visibly excited about anything) this COVID-19 lock down may be lifting — although we have been warned in no uncertain terms not to congratulate ourselves on a job well done, be happy about it, or imagine it might last — or that the suffering from COVID-19 might ever end. And we have also been told explicitly not to have joy, and certainly not to celebrate — and not to call what we will soon (hopefully!) be experiencing ‘freedom.’ That means that at some point I may stop writing this. And though it will matter to no one really, well —it matters very much to me. Robert Newton in Odd Man Out is frustrated because the dying James Mason who is his subject is removed from his gaze before he can finish his painting, and when Mason is gone he he looks at what he has created and realises it’s second rate. Then he sighs, picks up his bottle and takes a swig. That will be me tonite. What I can’t imagine is that I would have to give up this blog ever, as it is more important to me than life itself — because for a few hours a day it succeeds — however briefly — in saving me from what some might consider the inconsequential suffering that appears when I suddenly realize that life is simply ordinary. And in this it appears I am increasingly alone.
Friday, 15 May 2020
Thursday, 14 May 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 57: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
The Return of Dr. X (1939)
The appeal of this movie may be the opportunity to see Humphrey Bogart play a fearsome monster — the horrible Dr. X. Dr. X (known in this film by two names: both “Marshal Quesne” and “Maurice J. Xavier”) — a murderer and medical genius brought back to life by John Litel, who plays an eloquent scientist passionately interested in saving life. Litel invents a “usable, renewable synthetic blood” that will waken the dead. The problem is that it fails to “recreate itself” unlike human blood. Bogart thus must steal the blood of others to stay alive, which makes him a very pale, nervous, unlikely vampire. There is an appearance by Lya Lys as a half dead European movie star (she is also the female lead in Salvatore Dali and Luis Bunuel’s surrealist classic — L’Age d'Or). But what really makes The Return of Dr. X a cult film is the revelation that through all this lunacy and under pounds of white clown makeup, eye shadow, and (weirdly) lipstick, Bogart somehow remains Bogart. Though he certainly played sensitive men as well as thugs, Bogart always remained himself. So does his performance in The Return of Dr. X challenge our belief in the ultimate power of cinema to deceive? It does not. The fact that Bogart is Bogart, and not a monstrous zombie (named either Marshal Quesne or Maurice J. Xavier) makes his presence more — not less, compelling. For Bogart was never actually playing himself. That too, was an illusion. He was playing the 'Bogart’ he decided to present to the American public. Who was Bogart like when he was at home with Bacall? Did she yank on a dildo and screw his ass? Even if we are really more interested in movie stars than the characters they play, none of it is real. That’s about as far as I can go with this movie; except to suggest that Dr. X is really Dr. Fauci (who, in case you have been living under a rock, is the long reigning head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and presently America’s top doctor). It’s time to decimate the horrible Dr. Fauci. He is definitely up to something — and even if he is a character wearing a mask, it is the mask that tells the truth. All this is doubly confusing because Fauci masquerades not as a truth teller, but just a humble human in search of the ultimate answer. For just as Einstein did not invent the atomic bomb: merely E=mc squared, Dr. Fauci did not invent social distancing; he merely theorised that some people may die of COVID-19. None of Fauci’s statements are certainties. This is the hallmark of a scientist, and something the rhetorician Gorgias warned us of; those who tell us they know nothing are manipulating us, because they know we wouldn’t trust anyone who claims to know the truth. Fauci, because of the nature of science, can never be sure… of well….anything. And it is that uncertainty that has plunged our lives into the terrifying maelstrom of the undecided, where all we can confirm is doubt. The hallmark of scientists is that when another experiment comes along they may discover their initial findings were wrong. So they bring us the latest theory, humbly. They make no grand claims, other than to say that it has been tested more than other theories at this present time, and may -- or may not -- prevail. They are, they assure us, ‘doing the best they can.’ So Fauci says social distancing is not the final answer, only the temporary solution until we find a better one. And when asked point blank: 'Does being infected with COVID-19 gift us with immunity from the illness?’ — he says carefully: ‘as far as we know.’ And then the inevitable: ‘after all, we know so very little about this disease.' And: 'we are really in the dark.' This is not just the climax of his beguiling self-effacement, but a cul-de-sac; something akin to a devil’s whirlpool or a black hole, with the potential to suck us into its deadly vortex, and strangle us -- with its infinite, soul-destroying inconclusivity. If nothing is certain, then we must — after all — to be safe — fear the worst. I am not suggesting a conspiracy here; just that the sine qua non of science — and it’s enormous power — lies in its humility. Am I being unfair to poor Dr. Fauci? Well, he personally is responsible for AZT, which he prescribed in high doses during the 90s as a possible final solution for AIDS. It killed countless gay men. But much worse is this vaccine business. Fauci assures us the pandemic may only be over once there is a vaccine. But don’t forget he also promoted himself as the prime force behind the development of an AIDS vaccine that — after nearly 40 years — has never surfaced. That’s reason enough not to trust him. I don’t blame Fauci personally for not finding a cure for AIDS, I blame him for dangling a cure for AIDS in front of us when there was no chance of finding one. But perhaps the problem for me is just doctors in general. I hate them. Why should we think they have more integrity than other people? Is it because of the lab coats? Might there not be just as many asshole doctors and nurses as there are asshole car salesman? When my father died he owned an apartment in a lovely seniors' residence. The hallways had names like Willow Avenue and Tulip Lane. But I always knew that there was a hospital at the centre which was its humming heart, hiding benignly behind the well-appointed rooms and lush landscaping, waiting to envelop him. When he was diagnosed with cancer, three nurses appeared from nowhere. I will never forget my father lying inert on the couch, as these ever-cheerful Chatty Cathies discarded the pills he would no longer be needing, because, well — after all, he was dying. My father could hear them, and he was as bewildered by death as by anything that wasn’t television, tennis, or a plate of mashed potatoes. At one point he asked them — ‘So what am I supposed to do, just lie here and wait for the phone to ring?’ He was talking about the woman he loved, because she too was a nurse, and had long ago promised to come to him when he was dying. But — unfortunately, when he died — she was otherwise engaged. These three heartless purveyors of the truth, these humble couriers of honesty, couldn’t answer his question. Instead, they chirped: “I’m afraid you won’t be needing these,” as he watched them pop the pills that he had so depended on for the last 20 years into a garbage can. I don’t hate them or even blame them. I do blame science, for pretending to be something that it is not. And by that I mean for pretending, in its own deceptive, circuitous way -- to be the answer to everything.
The appeal of this movie may be the opportunity to see Humphrey Bogart play a fearsome monster — the horrible Dr. X. Dr. X (known in this film by two names: both “Marshal Quesne” and “Maurice J. Xavier”) — a murderer and medical genius brought back to life by John Litel, who plays an eloquent scientist passionately interested in saving life. Litel invents a “usable, renewable synthetic blood” that will waken the dead. The problem is that it fails to “recreate itself” unlike human blood. Bogart thus must steal the blood of others to stay alive, which makes him a very pale, nervous, unlikely vampire. There is an appearance by Lya Lys as a half dead European movie star (she is also the female lead in Salvatore Dali and Luis Bunuel’s surrealist classic — L’Age d'Or). But what really makes The Return of Dr. X a cult film is the revelation that through all this lunacy and under pounds of white clown makeup, eye shadow, and (weirdly) lipstick, Bogart somehow remains Bogart. Though he certainly played sensitive men as well as thugs, Bogart always remained himself. So does his performance in The Return of Dr. X challenge our belief in the ultimate power of cinema to deceive? It does not. The fact that Bogart is Bogart, and not a monstrous zombie (named either Marshal Quesne or Maurice J. Xavier) makes his presence more — not less, compelling. For Bogart was never actually playing himself. That too, was an illusion. He was playing the 'Bogart’ he decided to present to the American public. Who was Bogart like when he was at home with Bacall? Did she yank on a dildo and screw his ass? Even if we are really more interested in movie stars than the characters they play, none of it is real. That’s about as far as I can go with this movie; except to suggest that Dr. X is really Dr. Fauci (who, in case you have been living under a rock, is the long reigning head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and presently America’s top doctor). It’s time to decimate the horrible Dr. Fauci. He is definitely up to something — and even if he is a character wearing a mask, it is the mask that tells the truth. All this is doubly confusing because Fauci masquerades not as a truth teller, but just a humble human in search of the ultimate answer. For just as Einstein did not invent the atomic bomb: merely E=mc squared, Dr. Fauci did not invent social distancing; he merely theorised that some people may die of COVID-19. None of Fauci’s statements are certainties. This is the hallmark of a scientist, and something the rhetorician Gorgias warned us of; those who tell us they know nothing are manipulating us, because they know we wouldn’t trust anyone who claims to know the truth. Fauci, because of the nature of science, can never be sure… of well….anything. And it is that uncertainty that has plunged our lives into the terrifying maelstrom of the undecided, where all we can confirm is doubt. The hallmark of scientists is that when another experiment comes along they may discover their initial findings were wrong. So they bring us the latest theory, humbly. They make no grand claims, other than to say that it has been tested more than other theories at this present time, and may -- or may not -- prevail. They are, they assure us, ‘doing the best they can.’ So Fauci says social distancing is not the final answer, only the temporary solution until we find a better one. And when asked point blank: 'Does being infected with COVID-19 gift us with immunity from the illness?’ — he says carefully: ‘as far as we know.’ And then the inevitable: ‘after all, we know so very little about this disease.' And: 'we are really in the dark.' This is not just the climax of his beguiling self-effacement, but a cul-de-sac; something akin to a devil’s whirlpool or a black hole, with the potential to suck us into its deadly vortex, and strangle us -- with its infinite, soul-destroying inconclusivity. If nothing is certain, then we must — after all — to be safe — fear the worst. I am not suggesting a conspiracy here; just that the sine qua non of science — and it’s enormous power — lies in its humility. Am I being unfair to poor Dr. Fauci? Well, he personally is responsible for AZT, which he prescribed in high doses during the 90s as a possible final solution for AIDS. It killed countless gay men. But much worse is this vaccine business. Fauci assures us the pandemic may only be over once there is a vaccine. But don’t forget he also promoted himself as the prime force behind the development of an AIDS vaccine that — after nearly 40 years — has never surfaced. That’s reason enough not to trust him. I don’t blame Fauci personally for not finding a cure for AIDS, I blame him for dangling a cure for AIDS in front of us when there was no chance of finding one. But perhaps the problem for me is just doctors in general. I hate them. Why should we think they have more integrity than other people? Is it because of the lab coats? Might there not be just as many asshole doctors and nurses as there are asshole car salesman? When my father died he owned an apartment in a lovely seniors' residence. The hallways had names like Willow Avenue and Tulip Lane. But I always knew that there was a hospital at the centre which was its humming heart, hiding benignly behind the well-appointed rooms and lush landscaping, waiting to envelop him. When he was diagnosed with cancer, three nurses appeared from nowhere. I will never forget my father lying inert on the couch, as these ever-cheerful Chatty Cathies discarded the pills he would no longer be needing, because, well — after all, he was dying. My father could hear them, and he was as bewildered by death as by anything that wasn’t television, tennis, or a plate of mashed potatoes. At one point he asked them — ‘So what am I supposed to do, just lie here and wait for the phone to ring?’ He was talking about the woman he loved, because she too was a nurse, and had long ago promised to come to him when he was dying. But — unfortunately, when he died — she was otherwise engaged. These three heartless purveyors of the truth, these humble couriers of honesty, couldn’t answer his question. Instead, they chirped: “I’m afraid you won’t be needing these,” as he watched them pop the pills that he had so depended on for the last 20 years into a garbage can. I don’t hate them or even blame them. I do blame science, for pretending to be something that it is not. And by that I mean for pretending, in its own deceptive, circuitous way -- to be the answer to everything.
Wednesday, 13 May 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 56: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Love is A Many-Splendored Thing (1955)
This film is deemed offensive because Jennifer Jones, a white woman, was cast as ‘Eurasian.” But at the time Love is Many-Splendored Thing was a small step for mankind and a defense of miscegenation. (Much more offensive were the Canadian censors who cut all references to the fact that William Holden’s character was married .) The filming was apparently a nightmare: Holden and Jones hated each other, and Jones — married to movie mogul David O. Selznick — kept yelling “I’m going to tell David!” Holden shaved his chest hair so it wouldn’t offend the ladies (probably a good idea, he spends at least 10 minutes of the film in a bewitching bathing suit.) Nothing can save this film. Sure, the theme song is so beautiful you find yourself crying whenever you hear it (extraordinary how potent cheap music is!). I wanted to like Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, because I spent six months of my adolescence having anxiety attacks over A Summer Place—also a thin romantic melodrama with a gorgeous theme song. (Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee are yearning so hard for each other it strains the fabric of their swimsuits.) The longing in A Summer Place got under my skin, I couldn’t stop listening to the that song and wishing I lived in the movie. It all started in grade 6, with Kathy Marletty and Jeff Rubach —the popular kids at Harlem Road School in Buffalo. Cathy had a pool with a red brick wall around it (did I ever actually see it, or did I just dream it?). When I discovered one summer she had pool parties and I wasn’t invited, the vastness of my loneliness nearly killed me. This has always been my problem — and why I find it necessary to go out at night and drink and have sex. After all, that’s where the fun is, isn’t it? I can’t stand the idea of other people having fun and not me. (Thank God for COVID-19 — invented only to teach people like me how to meditate.) My need to be at the centre of the action caused me to miss the 80s (it was just palliatives, pot, poppers and penises — nothing out of the ordinary) which I should feel sad about, but I had so many men that it would be self-indulgent for me to regret. Jennifer Jones and her character are certainly self-indulgent in this movie; Jennifer is a Joan Crawford-esque actress (she doesn’t perform anything but her own beauty — and she won an Oscar for something why?) Like Crawford she loved playing these holier than thou (Song of Bernadette) roles. There is a kind of religiosity hanging over this movie; the title is from a poem by Francis Thompson 'Tis ye, tis your estranged faces that miss the many splendored thing.’ The poem is not bad. but it’s pious — pointing to the moments of holiness in daily life. This is the kind of movie that will be sanctioned for viewing by Disney in the ‘new normal.’ In 1955 I was three years old but I soon learned from movies like this that sex was awful and I would probably be burned at the stake for being gay. Jennifer Jones doth protest so much that you want to say ‘You are responsible for #Metoo!” She knows that William Holden is married (except in Canada where they wouldn’t tell us) so she constantly plays hard to get -- enshrining her virtue -- as when he says: "I think destiny intended us to be together," and she says: “I don’t think destiny intends anything for us,” and later: “I believe in the human heart right now, but only as a doctor.” Yes we know you are as pure as the driven snow Jennifer, just as we believe you are ‘Eurasian’ though your skin colour and eye shape changes from scene to scene. The script is filled with embarrassing pseudo-profundities. Jones rhapsodizes about their love, comparing it to the insignificant entanglements of lesser plebes: “Even the fat ugly people in this world believe that love justifies everything and makes them beautiful.” (So sorry that you had to say that line Jennifer). And less offensive (unless you think about it too much) is —“pity the poor people with their sad faces who have missed what we have.” I would not want to never-have-been-in-love and be forced to watch this film. Or maybe it’s actually designed for people with sad ugly, fat, faces who will see it, have anxiety attacks, and slash there chubby wrists. I am, however, in love (have I mentioned that?) and I think what drives me crazier than anything is that people think I’m lucky. Jesus Christ, I don’t know what drove me to yoke my fate to this crazy person, to hang my hat on this particular high chaparall (which google defines as “a dense impenetrable thicket of shrubs or dwarf trees.)” The fiction is this: love is about meeting every Thursday at noon on windy hillsides in crisp technicolour. No: it’s about cat litter and broken air conditioners in black and white. I’m not against love, I just hate it when people make out like it’s easy, or think that because you are in love you’ve got it better than them— or, to be more precise, those who think that somehow life is less of a struggle if you’re in love. On the contrary I am in love because I worked damn hard for it and still do and ignored a lot of bullshit and compromised a lot and gave up a lot and settled. In other words you love him so much that you gave up some of your dreams for him, except of course, your dream of him. Because that dream still exists in some nethernetherland at the end of your tether, where anxiety and longing supposedly cease (however that hasn’t happened to me yet). I am of two minds about movies like this. On the one hand I can’t keep a straight face when Jennifer Jones (speaking to Holden of her dead ex-husband) says, again and again “I have never known another man but my husband.” (You mean you’ve never met or talked to another man, Jennifer? What exactly are you getting at?) But then there is also Jennifer and Bill Holden in their twin swimsuits (Holden’s flat little tummy is tucked in ever so slightly so you can see his yummy man muscles); they are veritably bursting with passion. But Holden doesn’t, God forbid, screw Jones or even just press her gently into the sand (the 50s are so repressed) he lights her cigarette — but no, not with a lighter, by pressing the lit end of his cigarette to the unlit end of hers. This movie is straining for something we are all straining for; but I won’t say so few of us have. It’s something none of us ever have, these days, anyway. It’s called actual spontaneous human contact of some kind, it’s called a good old fashioned flash of sudden unexpected intimacy, it’s called a spontaneous unrehearsed hug or a spontaneous, unrehearsed orgasm. And you can quit talking about God, and just friggin’ realise that shit is holy.
This film is deemed offensive because Jennifer Jones, a white woman, was cast as ‘Eurasian.” But at the time Love is Many-Splendored Thing was a small step for mankind and a defense of miscegenation. (Much more offensive were the Canadian censors who cut all references to the fact that William Holden’s character was married .) The filming was apparently a nightmare: Holden and Jones hated each other, and Jones — married to movie mogul David O. Selznick — kept yelling “I’m going to tell David!” Holden shaved his chest hair so it wouldn’t offend the ladies (probably a good idea, he spends at least 10 minutes of the film in a bewitching bathing suit.) Nothing can save this film. Sure, the theme song is so beautiful you find yourself crying whenever you hear it (extraordinary how potent cheap music is!). I wanted to like Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, because I spent six months of my adolescence having anxiety attacks over A Summer Place—also a thin romantic melodrama with a gorgeous theme song. (Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee are yearning so hard for each other it strains the fabric of their swimsuits.) The longing in A Summer Place got under my skin, I couldn’t stop listening to the that song and wishing I lived in the movie. It all started in grade 6, with Kathy Marletty and Jeff Rubach —the popular kids at Harlem Road School in Buffalo. Cathy had a pool with a red brick wall around it (did I ever actually see it, or did I just dream it?). When I discovered one summer she had pool parties and I wasn’t invited, the vastness of my loneliness nearly killed me. This has always been my problem — and why I find it necessary to go out at night and drink and have sex. After all, that’s where the fun is, isn’t it? I can’t stand the idea of other people having fun and not me. (Thank God for COVID-19 — invented only to teach people like me how to meditate.) My need to be at the centre of the action caused me to miss the 80s (it was just palliatives, pot, poppers and penises — nothing out of the ordinary) which I should feel sad about, but I had so many men that it would be self-indulgent for me to regret. Jennifer Jones and her character are certainly self-indulgent in this movie; Jennifer is a Joan Crawford-esque actress (she doesn’t perform anything but her own beauty — and she won an Oscar for something why?) Like Crawford she loved playing these holier than thou (Song of Bernadette) roles. There is a kind of religiosity hanging over this movie; the title is from a poem by Francis Thompson 'Tis ye, tis your estranged faces that miss the many splendored thing.’ The poem is not bad. but it’s pious — pointing to the moments of holiness in daily life. This is the kind of movie that will be sanctioned for viewing by Disney in the ‘new normal.’ In 1955 I was three years old but I soon learned from movies like this that sex was awful and I would probably be burned at the stake for being gay. Jennifer Jones doth protest so much that you want to say ‘You are responsible for #Metoo!” She knows that William Holden is married (except in Canada where they wouldn’t tell us) so she constantly plays hard to get -- enshrining her virtue -- as when he says: "I think destiny intended us to be together," and she says: “I don’t think destiny intends anything for us,” and later: “I believe in the human heart right now, but only as a doctor.” Yes we know you are as pure as the driven snow Jennifer, just as we believe you are ‘Eurasian’ though your skin colour and eye shape changes from scene to scene. The script is filled with embarrassing pseudo-profundities. Jones rhapsodizes about their love, comparing it to the insignificant entanglements of lesser plebes: “Even the fat ugly people in this world believe that love justifies everything and makes them beautiful.” (So sorry that you had to say that line Jennifer). And less offensive (unless you think about it too much) is —“pity the poor people with their sad faces who have missed what we have.” I would not want to never-have-been-in-love and be forced to watch this film. Or maybe it’s actually designed for people with sad ugly, fat, faces who will see it, have anxiety attacks, and slash there chubby wrists. I am, however, in love (have I mentioned that?) and I think what drives me crazier than anything is that people think I’m lucky. Jesus Christ, I don’t know what drove me to yoke my fate to this crazy person, to hang my hat on this particular high chaparall (which google defines as “a dense impenetrable thicket of shrubs or dwarf trees.)” The fiction is this: love is about meeting every Thursday at noon on windy hillsides in crisp technicolour. No: it’s about cat litter and broken air conditioners in black and white. I’m not against love, I just hate it when people make out like it’s easy, or think that because you are in love you’ve got it better than them— or, to be more precise, those who think that somehow life is less of a struggle if you’re in love. On the contrary I am in love because I worked damn hard for it and still do and ignored a lot of bullshit and compromised a lot and gave up a lot and settled. In other words you love him so much that you gave up some of your dreams for him, except of course, your dream of him. Because that dream still exists in some nethernetherland at the end of your tether, where anxiety and longing supposedly cease (however that hasn’t happened to me yet). I am of two minds about movies like this. On the one hand I can’t keep a straight face when Jennifer Jones (speaking to Holden of her dead ex-husband) says, again and again “I have never known another man but my husband.” (You mean you’ve never met or talked to another man, Jennifer? What exactly are you getting at?) But then there is also Jennifer and Bill Holden in their twin swimsuits (Holden’s flat little tummy is tucked in ever so slightly so you can see his yummy man muscles); they are veritably bursting with passion. But Holden doesn’t, God forbid, screw Jones or even just press her gently into the sand (the 50s are so repressed) he lights her cigarette — but no, not with a lighter, by pressing the lit end of his cigarette to the unlit end of hers. This movie is straining for something we are all straining for; but I won’t say so few of us have. It’s something none of us ever have, these days, anyway. It’s called actual spontaneous human contact of some kind, it’s called a good old fashioned flash of sudden unexpected intimacy, it’s called a spontaneous unrehearsed hug or a spontaneous, unrehearsed orgasm. And you can quit talking about God, and just friggin’ realise that shit is holy.
Tuesday, 12 May 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 55: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
It’s a very odd movie and at first I didn’t know what to make of it. Then I realised it was ‘twee.’ Twee is odd too — but mostly undesirable — it involves a fantastical sentimental cuteness, a fierce attempt at charm. Great authors have been accused of ‘tweeness.’ J.M. Barrie certainly. There is much cuteness in Barrie, but Peter Pan is rife with a nightmarish attachment to childhood (often viewed as pederastical, but I do not think so). I do not know what to think of Barrie’s sad private life. Certainly he might have committed atrocities on the bodies of the four Llewelyn-Davis boys after he adopted them, but it’s much more likely he simply loved them to death (two of them committed suicide). But Barrie’s real problem was that he could not say goodbye to his own childhood, as he never had one, because he spent his early years consoling his mother over his dead brother. Why am I telling you all this? Because I write these blogs at dusk. Normally I would not notice dusk. I would be busy somewhere. Bear in mind that I simply refuse to imagine that anything COVID-19 related is a blessing; and those people who believe the pandemic will cause governments to adopt guaranteed income and end pollution are just nutty. But it’s been quite something to discover dusk again. Dusk was the time for childhood games to end. I played desperately at dusk, fiercely hoping that night would never fall. What is traumatic about adulthood is the disappearance of dusk. (Now that sentiment is somewhat ‘twee;’ Lewis Carroll said it much better — “Still she haunts me, phantomwise / Alice moving under skies / Never seen by waking eyes.”) Both Lewis Carrol and J.M. Barrie brought darkness to childhood through their unhinged longing for it, and it’s something that ultimately saves their work from ‘twee.’ Conversely, Sylvia Scarlett is trying frantically to be delightful, and I kept hoping I would be swept away, but was not. There’s something slightly Shakespearean about the proceedings, with a storm, a commedia del’arte troupe, a drowning, and Katherine Hepburn switching from a girl to a boy and back — over and over — until she finds her true love Brian Aherne. Sylvia Scarlett was a dismal failure. It almost destroyed Hepburn’s career, and launched Cary Grant’s (he takes off his shirt at one point and all I could think of was him and Randolph Scott waking up in the morning together.) Yes, it’s a very queer movie; director Cukor was a closet case, as were Grant and Hepburn. HEY calm down! When I told my mother Cary Grant was gay she acted as if I had knifed her. People still have this attitude ‘oh please don’t ruin Cary Grant for me’ — but why are these stars ruined because they are queer? Hepburn and Tracy were both flamers, their friendship was based to some degree on that bond; it all makes total sense. And they did truly love each other, simply not in the way the you think. I don’t blame anyone for not coming out; but my life has been severely crippled by closet cases. I’m going to talk about Urjo Kareda. I’ve been censored so many times, but no one is going to read this blog anyway. In case you don’t know, Kareda was the artistic director of Tarragon Theatre in Toronto for thousands of years. He hated me with a passion. I was on a radio panel with him about dramaturgy, and I happened to mention that I am considered ‘outrageous’ by some and he said “Oh you think you’re so outrageous Sky Gilbert, don’t you?” Urjo was a very fat closet case — ergo — Urjo was extremely jealous of me. But I am an out-of-the-closet-drag-queen-slut, and have certainly earned the right to call myself outrageous. Well a few years ago a woman wrote a biography of Kareda. She asked me for memories of him — as the correspondence he and I shared (the letters were not personal, but dramaturgical) were going to be published. I told her of all the people he had hurt with his closetedness. The woman was very sweet, but I was angry because she said ‘I cannot reveal that Urjo was gay, because it would hurt his family.’ With all this talk about truth and COVID-19 — when everyone is going on and on about the truth and we are steeped in lies — well I just can’t lie about Urjo anymore. I will no longer fear that the cold dead hand of some bitter old queen is going to penetrate the topsoil and wring my neck. If I have to live in a universe were people are frightened about leaving the house for no discernible reason, then I must tell my truth. Urjo Kareda was a homosexual and the reason that matters is because he hurt many young writers — and he worked as hard as he could to hurt them — and in some cases he nearly halted their careers (‘You are not a writer” was one of his favourite ‘helpful’ editorial comments). These writers were queer, or feminist, or just extremely weird ducks, and they were writing sexual material, and they came to me, because I was running a theatre that was a kind of haven for artistic misfits (mad people, really, I realise that now, all of them were insane in exactly the right way — and I am in that category too, by the bye). I spent a lot of time rehabilitating these artists after Urjo stabbed them, aesthetically speaking, in the gut. Again, it’s not Urjo’s fault, I’m not blaming him, or saying that he should have had the courage to come out, because it’s not courage, really, it’s a kind of demented sense of privilege that makes people like me think I can get away with it. I’m glad that no one will read this. But still —this is for all the writers who came to me for solace, a shoulder to cry on, and in some cases a production or two: for Pat Langner, Ann Holloway, Michael Achtman, Carol Sinclair, and John P, Moore — just to name a few. But there were many more. You see when you are a closet case it’s not just your business, it hurts those around you, because not only are you in denial about your own sexuality, but about everyone else's too. You don’t want other people to be happy, because, quite simply, you’re never going to be. That sentiment seems — like everything old — to be very new again with COVID-19. And it has has taken me far from Sylvia Scarlet, a film which was probably somewhat ahead of its time with it’s cross-dressing and mistaken gender identities. Or perhaps it was a film made by so many closeted people that it hides its own darkness — until that darkness disappears.
It’s a very odd movie and at first I didn’t know what to make of it. Then I realised it was ‘twee.’ Twee is odd too — but mostly undesirable — it involves a fantastical sentimental cuteness, a fierce attempt at charm. Great authors have been accused of ‘tweeness.’ J.M. Barrie certainly. There is much cuteness in Barrie, but Peter Pan is rife with a nightmarish attachment to childhood (often viewed as pederastical, but I do not think so). I do not know what to think of Barrie’s sad private life. Certainly he might have committed atrocities on the bodies of the four Llewelyn-Davis boys after he adopted them, but it’s much more likely he simply loved them to death (two of them committed suicide). But Barrie’s real problem was that he could not say goodbye to his own childhood, as he never had one, because he spent his early years consoling his mother over his dead brother. Why am I telling you all this? Because I write these blogs at dusk. Normally I would not notice dusk. I would be busy somewhere. Bear in mind that I simply refuse to imagine that anything COVID-19 related is a blessing; and those people who believe the pandemic will cause governments to adopt guaranteed income and end pollution are just nutty. But it’s been quite something to discover dusk again. Dusk was the time for childhood games to end. I played desperately at dusk, fiercely hoping that night would never fall. What is traumatic about adulthood is the disappearance of dusk. (Now that sentiment is somewhat ‘twee;’ Lewis Carroll said it much better — “Still she haunts me, phantomwise / Alice moving under skies / Never seen by waking eyes.”) Both Lewis Carrol and J.M. Barrie brought darkness to childhood through their unhinged longing for it, and it’s something that ultimately saves their work from ‘twee.’ Conversely, Sylvia Scarlett is trying frantically to be delightful, and I kept hoping I would be swept away, but was not. There’s something slightly Shakespearean about the proceedings, with a storm, a commedia del’arte troupe, a drowning, and Katherine Hepburn switching from a girl to a boy and back — over and over — until she finds her true love Brian Aherne. Sylvia Scarlett was a dismal failure. It almost destroyed Hepburn’s career, and launched Cary Grant’s (he takes off his shirt at one point and all I could think of was him and Randolph Scott waking up in the morning together.) Yes, it’s a very queer movie; director Cukor was a closet case, as were Grant and Hepburn. HEY calm down! When I told my mother Cary Grant was gay she acted as if I had knifed her. People still have this attitude ‘oh please don’t ruin Cary Grant for me’ — but why are these stars ruined because they are queer? Hepburn and Tracy were both flamers, their friendship was based to some degree on that bond; it all makes total sense. And they did truly love each other, simply not in the way the you think. I don’t blame anyone for not coming out; but my life has been severely crippled by closet cases. I’m going to talk about Urjo Kareda. I’ve been censored so many times, but no one is going to read this blog anyway. In case you don’t know, Kareda was the artistic director of Tarragon Theatre in Toronto for thousands of years. He hated me with a passion. I was on a radio panel with him about dramaturgy, and I happened to mention that I am considered ‘outrageous’ by some and he said “Oh you think you’re so outrageous Sky Gilbert, don’t you?” Urjo was a very fat closet case — ergo — Urjo was extremely jealous of me. But I am an out-of-the-closet-drag-queen-slut, and have certainly earned the right to call myself outrageous. Well a few years ago a woman wrote a biography of Kareda. She asked me for memories of him — as the correspondence he and I shared (the letters were not personal, but dramaturgical) were going to be published. I told her of all the people he had hurt with his closetedness. The woman was very sweet, but I was angry because she said ‘I cannot reveal that Urjo was gay, because it would hurt his family.’ With all this talk about truth and COVID-19 — when everyone is going on and on about the truth and we are steeped in lies — well I just can’t lie about Urjo anymore. I will no longer fear that the cold dead hand of some bitter old queen is going to penetrate the topsoil and wring my neck. If I have to live in a universe were people are frightened about leaving the house for no discernible reason, then I must tell my truth. Urjo Kareda was a homosexual and the reason that matters is because he hurt many young writers — and he worked as hard as he could to hurt them — and in some cases he nearly halted their careers (‘You are not a writer” was one of his favourite ‘helpful’ editorial comments). These writers were queer, or feminist, or just extremely weird ducks, and they were writing sexual material, and they came to me, because I was running a theatre that was a kind of haven for artistic misfits (mad people, really, I realise that now, all of them were insane in exactly the right way — and I am in that category too, by the bye). I spent a lot of time rehabilitating these artists after Urjo stabbed them, aesthetically speaking, in the gut. Again, it’s not Urjo’s fault, I’m not blaming him, or saying that he should have had the courage to come out, because it’s not courage, really, it’s a kind of demented sense of privilege that makes people like me think I can get away with it. I’m glad that no one will read this. But still —this is for all the writers who came to me for solace, a shoulder to cry on, and in some cases a production or two: for Pat Langner, Ann Holloway, Michael Achtman, Carol Sinclair, and John P, Moore — just to name a few. But there were many more. You see when you are a closet case it’s not just your business, it hurts those around you, because not only are you in denial about your own sexuality, but about everyone else's too. You don’t want other people to be happy, because, quite simply, you’re never going to be. That sentiment seems — like everything old — to be very new again with COVID-19. And it has has taken me far from Sylvia Scarlet, a film which was probably somewhat ahead of its time with it’s cross-dressing and mistaken gender identities. Or perhaps it was a film made by so many closeted people that it hides its own darkness — until that darkness disappears.
Monday, 11 May 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 54: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
42nd Street (1933)
It’s precode, so the plot is based on a premise many might find offensive today; Bebe Daniels has dinner with a fat old producer (Guy Kibbee) who says “I’ll do something for you, if you do something for me” and she says “What could I do for a big man like you?” The lights fade, and he’s producing 'Pretty Lady', and she’s starring in it. Ginger Rogers plays “Anytime Annie” who apparently “never said 'no' once — and then she didn’t hear the question!” But my favourite moment is when the director Warner Baxter is coaching Ruby Keeler (everyone knows the plot —Bebe Daniels breaks her ankle, drunk, and dewy-eyed Ruby Keeler must take over) and Baxter’s coaching her on her interpretation of: “Jim, they didn’t tell me you were here, it was grand of you to come!” She can’t get it right. But then Baxter (the director!) kisses her hard and long, and suddenly, she’s great. Ruby Keeler doesn’t appear at all flummoxed by being sexually molested, of course there was no talk of sexual harassment back then. And besides, it’s only the show that matters. Netflix just released Hollywood, a sordid expose of the sexploitation behind the scenes of 40s films. It’s entertaining enough (and also, quite hypocritically, soft core porn). But it’s missing something something 42nd Street has in spades; love of the art. From the moment director Warner Baxter appears, sweating and popping pills, we understand a theatre director is a kind of warrior; he devotes life and limb to presenting a crackerjack show, even if it kills him. After the premiere of 'Pretty Lady,' Baxter sits on a fire escape smoking, overhearing the audience trashing him — “Some guy will say he discovered her — some guys get all the breaks.” It’s the loneliness of a suicidal devotion to theatre. I love 42nd Street, even though it’s corny hokum, pure and simple, and has nothing to do with reality. The last 30 minutes of the film could never happen. Baxter has less than 24 hours to teach Ruby Keeler an entire Broadway show, and of course, he does. She nearly collapses, and later he gives her the speech some of us know by heart, that ends with: “You’re going out a youngster, but you’re coming back a star!” Baxter confirms her oncoming success just before she goes on, grabbing her by the shoulders and fiercely questioning her: “Do you know your lines, your songs and your dance routines? — Well you’re a cinch!” This infantile concept of theatre reminds me of when you invite your aunt Thelma from Mississauga to see you in a Toronto play. After you’ve gotten physically naked - and emotionally honest -- in something incomprehensible, she remarks “I’m impressed.” And asks — “But how did you memorise all those lines?” Yes, 42nd Street is implausible and ridiculous, but I believed it from the beginning, precisely because it has no relationship to reality. Even the most ‘realistic’ play or novel has no actual proximity to facts; that is the pact that art makes with us, that we believe it, no matter what. Some think that Shakespeare deliberately placed anachronisms in his plays in order to remind us ‘art is fake, and I made this — aren’t you amazed?' (Shakespeare invented the word amazement, by the way.) We have abandoned amazement. The question ‘Do you believe in fairies?’ would today be treated with scorn, or as a gay joke. Of course it is the job of art to make us believe it is true when it’s not, but it is also our job to suspend our disbelief. When we watch the actors rehearse, with the footlights shining that fake ugly light on their faces, and with the other actors watching from the wings -- it's when Bebe Daniels sings -- ‘You’re Getting to be a Habit With Me' — 42nd Street makes me cry.’ I miss theatre. Two weeks before the opening of my last play the lead actor disappeared and, yeah, I took over the part, and yeah, we did the play, and yeah, we did quite well. You see these things kinda actually happen. But isn’t it awful that Ruby Keeler gets sexually molested by the director in order to learn how to accurately portray yearning (shades of Albert Schultz?), and isn't it disgusting that they laugh at Ginger Rogers and call her ‘Anytime Annie?’ But this is fantasy, not reality. Two years ago I asked one of my theatre students if Hamlet was mad, and she said “It’s not right to ask that question, because people who are mentally ill should be allowed to self-identify.” “Wha….?” I was praying I had misheard her — I didn’t want to believe that it was up to me to inform her that Hamlet is a fictional character, and that there is a difference between what is false and what is true. Or maybe it’s just that we have forgotten about joy. I know we live in ‘trying times’ (which may of course go on forever) but what about joy? Beethoven composed ‘Ode to Joy’ when he was deaf. What was Beethoven celebrating? Was he lying, then? Damn right he was; the joy is in the lie, and what I see all around me is the disappearance of joy, it's over, and people seem to be happy about it. We now must face facts first, and the fact is that a certain number of people died today. Of course it’s callous and unfeeling — but most of all displays ignorance of the truth — for me not to be able to tell you the actual tragic statistics. But today's daily TV news is not facts (sorry CNN), it is art, and we are being carefully manipulated, in order to frighten us to death. Why? In Camus’ The Plague there is no necessity for a media conglomerate to frighten people; they needed only look out the window and see the rats dying in the streets. If this were a real plague, we wouldn’t need to be intimidated into staying at home because we would be paralysed by fear. Yesterday they told us two children died of Kawasaki Disease, and that maybe, just maybe - there's a new horrifying disoovery! Maybe we were wrong along! Children might in fact be in danger of dying from COVID-19! (It doesn’t matter that some of the Kawasaki children didn’t test positive for COVID-19, nor does it matter that Kawasaki Disease has been around for ages and is barely lethal.) Can you not see that COVID-19 is just a Ruby Keeler musical? These days we demand 42nd Street adhere to the facts — but not CNN. We presently live in a carefully constructed play; I’m not quite sure who the director is, but if it’s Warner Baxter, he’s standing under a streetlight somewhere, smoking, and thinking - “Dammit, even if I don’t get the credit for this, it was bloody good work. I mean, they bought it -- and that’s all that matters.” Cue music. The End.
It’s precode, so the plot is based on a premise many might find offensive today; Bebe Daniels has dinner with a fat old producer (Guy Kibbee) who says “I’ll do something for you, if you do something for me” and she says “What could I do for a big man like you?” The lights fade, and he’s producing 'Pretty Lady', and she’s starring in it. Ginger Rogers plays “Anytime Annie” who apparently “never said 'no' once — and then she didn’t hear the question!” But my favourite moment is when the director Warner Baxter is coaching Ruby Keeler (everyone knows the plot —Bebe Daniels breaks her ankle, drunk, and dewy-eyed Ruby Keeler must take over) and Baxter’s coaching her on her interpretation of: “Jim, they didn’t tell me you were here, it was grand of you to come!” She can’t get it right. But then Baxter (the director!) kisses her hard and long, and suddenly, she’s great. Ruby Keeler doesn’t appear at all flummoxed by being sexually molested, of course there was no talk of sexual harassment back then. And besides, it’s only the show that matters. Netflix just released Hollywood, a sordid expose of the sexploitation behind the scenes of 40s films. It’s entertaining enough (and also, quite hypocritically, soft core porn). But it’s missing something something 42nd Street has in spades; love of the art. From the moment director Warner Baxter appears, sweating and popping pills, we understand a theatre director is a kind of warrior; he devotes life and limb to presenting a crackerjack show, even if it kills him. After the premiere of 'Pretty Lady,' Baxter sits on a fire escape smoking, overhearing the audience trashing him — “Some guy will say he discovered her — some guys get all the breaks.” It’s the loneliness of a suicidal devotion to theatre. I love 42nd Street, even though it’s corny hokum, pure and simple, and has nothing to do with reality. The last 30 minutes of the film could never happen. Baxter has less than 24 hours to teach Ruby Keeler an entire Broadway show, and of course, he does. She nearly collapses, and later he gives her the speech some of us know by heart, that ends with: “You’re going out a youngster, but you’re coming back a star!” Baxter confirms her oncoming success just before she goes on, grabbing her by the shoulders and fiercely questioning her: “Do you know your lines, your songs and your dance routines? — Well you’re a cinch!” This infantile concept of theatre reminds me of when you invite your aunt Thelma from Mississauga to see you in a Toronto play. After you’ve gotten physically naked - and emotionally honest -- in something incomprehensible, she remarks “I’m impressed.” And asks — “But how did you memorise all those lines?” Yes, 42nd Street is implausible and ridiculous, but I believed it from the beginning, precisely because it has no relationship to reality. Even the most ‘realistic’ play or novel has no actual proximity to facts; that is the pact that art makes with us, that we believe it, no matter what. Some think that Shakespeare deliberately placed anachronisms in his plays in order to remind us ‘art is fake, and I made this — aren’t you amazed?' (Shakespeare invented the word amazement, by the way.) We have abandoned amazement. The question ‘Do you believe in fairies?’ would today be treated with scorn, or as a gay joke. Of course it is the job of art to make us believe it is true when it’s not, but it is also our job to suspend our disbelief. When we watch the actors rehearse, with the footlights shining that fake ugly light on their faces, and with the other actors watching from the wings -- it's when Bebe Daniels sings -- ‘You’re Getting to be a Habit With Me' — 42nd Street makes me cry.’ I miss theatre. Two weeks before the opening of my last play the lead actor disappeared and, yeah, I took over the part, and yeah, we did the play, and yeah, we did quite well. You see these things kinda actually happen. But isn’t it awful that Ruby Keeler gets sexually molested by the director in order to learn how to accurately portray yearning (shades of Albert Schultz?), and isn't it disgusting that they laugh at Ginger Rogers and call her ‘Anytime Annie?’ But this is fantasy, not reality. Two years ago I asked one of my theatre students if Hamlet was mad, and she said “It’s not right to ask that question, because people who are mentally ill should be allowed to self-identify.” “Wha….?” I was praying I had misheard her — I didn’t want to believe that it was up to me to inform her that Hamlet is a fictional character, and that there is a difference between what is false and what is true. Or maybe it’s just that we have forgotten about joy. I know we live in ‘trying times’ (which may of course go on forever) but what about joy? Beethoven composed ‘Ode to Joy’ when he was deaf. What was Beethoven celebrating? Was he lying, then? Damn right he was; the joy is in the lie, and what I see all around me is the disappearance of joy, it's over, and people seem to be happy about it. We now must face facts first, and the fact is that a certain number of people died today. Of course it’s callous and unfeeling — but most of all displays ignorance of the truth — for me not to be able to tell you the actual tragic statistics. But today's daily TV news is not facts (sorry CNN), it is art, and we are being carefully manipulated, in order to frighten us to death. Why? In Camus’ The Plague there is no necessity for a media conglomerate to frighten people; they needed only look out the window and see the rats dying in the streets. If this were a real plague, we wouldn’t need to be intimidated into staying at home because we would be paralysed by fear. Yesterday they told us two children died of Kawasaki Disease, and that maybe, just maybe - there's a new horrifying disoovery! Maybe we were wrong along! Children might in fact be in danger of dying from COVID-19! (It doesn’t matter that some of the Kawasaki children didn’t test positive for COVID-19, nor does it matter that Kawasaki Disease has been around for ages and is barely lethal.) Can you not see that COVID-19 is just a Ruby Keeler musical? These days we demand 42nd Street adhere to the facts — but not CNN. We presently live in a carefully constructed play; I’m not quite sure who the director is, but if it’s Warner Baxter, he’s standing under a streetlight somewhere, smoking, and thinking - “Dammit, even if I don’t get the credit for this, it was bloody good work. I mean, they bought it -- and that’s all that matters.” Cue music. The End.
Sunday, 10 May 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 53: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Mildred Pierce (1945)
I don’t know what that ending is about, with Joan Crawford and her first husband walking out of a giant door as the music swells, towards — what is that? The Empire State Building? It’s a happy ending alright, good triumphs, because no one could be more noble than Mildred Pierce. This was Joan Crawford’s career-saving movie, and that’s what she plays— her face, her tone of voice, her hair all say: ‘I’ve made the right choice, and after this movie I will no longer be box office poison.’ I must articulate what it is about Joan Crawford’s acting that we faggots love, because our appreciation of this movie is the key to camp and the whole gay sensibility. It’s odd that people even mention Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in the same sentence. Davis was a consummate actress, Crawford was not. Davis turned down this movie, and ten years later made The Star — about a woman more movie star than actress, in other words, a woman who was Crawford personified. Sure, Davis appeared in trashy melodramas, but I suspect she turned this one down because Mildred Pierce is beyond that: it’s artistic persuasion of the highest order, a kind of aesthetic sudsing that can surmount any run-of-the-mill human objection. Mildred’s great sin is that she loves her child too much. Think about that. It would be like someone saying 'My problem is, I just can’t stop reading The Bible.' Oh really, and you expect me to judge you? But obviously you are a sainted idol, and we need to lick your feet. And Crawford (much like Lana Turner) was able to give herself up to each and every tawdry filmic orgy of virtue, and the only entity who believed it all more firmly than her, was the audience. Crawford is beyond earnest, which is itself a huge feat, as from all accounts in real life she was nothing more than a mean, dumb, slut (that’s what Bette Davis said, not me). Here she plays to perfection the kindest woman who has ever lived, who won’t let a man touch her unless she is in love. But not only does Crawford’s performance point to her acting talent, it also points to her beauty. She would never allow her eyes ‘bug out’ the way Davis does in Juarez, she would never sacrifice her beauty for a single emotion, indeed her passion is encased by her beauty and contained by it — inside her glistening eyes, her semi-parted lips, her statuesque figure, and, of course, her impeccable poise and grace, which is not (like Dirk Bogarde in Victim) her own. Her goodness, after all, does not come from inside her; she displays it, everything is about showing. And when she acts she is clearly showing us that she is not only a good actress but a great one. No wonder she received an Academy Award. The scene where she faces off with the selfish daughter who ruins her life (Ann Blyth, an actress of Crawford’s ilk, all surface) has become camp history. I officially became a homosexual — not when I lost my gay virginity — but in 1985 while directing my play Drag Queens On Trial. Kent Staines suddenly, sans introduction, launched into a recital of the whole scene, which he claimed every gay man worth his salt knew by heart. (Veda: “You’ll never be anything but a common frump, who’s father lived over a grocery store and whose mother took in washing!” Crawford: “Veda, I’m seeing you for the first time, and you’re cheap and horrible!”) The agony is palpable, this movie is a dry run for Rosemary’s Baby. Joan Crawford is every mother —every tender, innocent woman with the best of intentions, who, through a quirk of nature, has given birth to a monster, a devilish abortion come to fierce and perverted life — who — in Veda’s case — ends up (nightmare!) singing in tacky dance halls in skimpy dresses covered with too many flowers and too many sparkles. But of course you always love your daughter, and will always do anything for her because she is ‘blood’. This kind of rhetorical manipulation is irresistible. All mothers deep down just know that their child is somehow not worthy of their dedication, and is even in the tiniest way a monster who can never repay the debt of maternity. To see this portrayed on screen is a delicious kind of torture for mothers and daughters everywhere. And why then, do we gay men love it so? Because we too, have always been mothers and daughters in our hearts, and we have always loved not wisely but too well, and we suffer, and we work our asses off — like Mildred Pierce, being waitresses in restaurants, because that’s the only kind of job we can ever get (who was the last openly gay anchorman on CBC?). And yes, now and then, we lash out. In Mildred Pierce it is not Joan Crawford who lashes out — but her alter ego, Eve Arden. She speaks Mildred’s mind — “Veda’s convinced me alligators have the best idea, they eat their young.” (Eve is kinda butch, kinda a dyke: “I’m getting awfully tired of men talking to me man to man” she says, but you’re not sure -- maybe she does like it a whole lot). We gay men are Joan Crawford and Eve Arden - suffering quietly — only occasionally letting loose with a cutting remark — because no one will ever really love us or respect us, because we represent sexual perversion even in the era of gay marriage, just as Mildred Pierce represented a threatening feminism even in the postwar period when women were doing men’s jobs. Though Joan Crawford works her way up the ladder to own a chain of restaurants, and buys her daughter a humungous ugly house — still her daughter betrays her. Similarly we get AIDS and plead with our parents: it’s not my fault, God made me this way, and now I’m suffering because I’m a homosexual. But still our parents spit on us, and tell us we have to die alone. Do we believe all this martyred schlocky treacle about ourselves? Of course we do, everyone does. It would be something quite different if Joan Crawford was actually a good actress, who perhaps was willing to allow Mildred some flaws, or reveal her own personal flaws through her portrayal (every great actor embarrasses us with such revelations). But then this movie would have been too upsetting; too much, too close. Joan Crawford — whose cheekbones point at her acting talent, whose every gesture underlines a sublime beauty that she constantly pretends she is not conscious of — takes us far enough away from our suffering that we can laugh it — as we cry inside — for all that is lost, all that cannot be, for all that we should not have loved, but through our courage of heart, we somehow did.
Saturday, 9 May 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 52: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Edge of the City (1957)
This is director Martin Ritt’s first film, and he’s a didactic artist. I try not to be, as so often message art gets the message wrong. Edge of the City is an anti-racist movie that is itself racist. Sidney Poitier plays the character he copyrighted, the perfect black man: handsome, articulate and kind. He also jumps around and dances a lot, places the bongos, and is full of animal joy. All fine and good, but for all Ritt’s good intentions Poitier is not only exoticized, but somewhat resembles Bill Bo-Jangles Robinson — a black entertainer dedicated to making everyone smile. It’s too bad that Poitier had to play this character constantly, but it’s not right to blame him for it (and Ruby Dee is amazing as his wife; but why was she ever a big star? We know…). John Cassavetes is actually the leading character (though Poitier got all the kudos). Cassavetes went on to be a brilliant avant-garde director, and his dark performance as a man who is doubly guilty — of killing his brother by accident, and deserting the army, and then has to decide whether or not to tell the police a warehouse racist bully murdered Poitier - is fiercely subtle. I am obsessed over the homoerotics of the film; no I’m not going to apologise. When do we get to see two beautiful male movie stars almost kiss? Apparently Ritt was aware of the homoerotic nature of the ‘buddy’ relationship between Cassevetes’ character and Poitier’s. The film is all about men, even the young Jack Warden (who plays the racist) is even kinda sexy in a brutal way. The problem with closet films is that the female characters are less interesting; gay men know that ‘buddy films’ are more about gay men who are required to have sex with women just so that no one will feel bad about watching the movie. I need to see gay art, and the fact that I have to settle for table scraps watching Casevetes throwing his arm around Poitier and hoping one or the other will take a shower, or even that they will shower together, is not enough. I’ve spent my life writing about gay men having love and sex, and my work has been consistently marginalised. I’m not complaining, as I love being marginalized, it’s where I write from, I’m just telling you. I had a friend over last night (yes, like all my pals, he talked about how his pals are on his case for seeing me, I couldn’t believe it). Anyway, he told me he was in a gay play recently with a slew of gay men (14), and some uptight woman came to see a preview and was praising them: “It’s so good to so many men on a stage together acting who are —” and then she stopped and admitted “I don’t want to say that word.” This is 2020, when have RuPaul and Will and Grace and can get married. So what in heaven’s name was stopping her from saying “it’s great to see a room full of gay actors?” Perhaps the politically correct notion that some might rather be identified as bisexual, or MSM (‘Men Who Have Sex With Men’)? So if I enjoy this continued marginalisation why don’t I just shut up? Because still I’m waiting for the day when Dad says “Thank God you’re gay, son, you won’t get some girl pregnant.” And all I want is a movie in which John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier meet and fall in love, only their are problems are that Poitier is not a perfect black man, but deeply flawed in some way, and maybe there are also problems because Cassavetes actually prefers black bodies to white ones, and Poitier feels racially objectified, until Cassavetets points out that Poitier prefers white bodies to black ones, and they both come to understand that desire cannot be racist. Desire isn’t anything really, except truth, which is what makes bathhouses so interesting, I was addicted to them for years because there’s just no lying there (except on beds). If you are not attracted to someone then you are obligated to tell them nicely you won’t have sex with them, period. After so many years of having sex with women I so loved those hallowed halls when I discovered them, reeking somewhat of poppers and jiz (does cum have a smell?). There is nothing bad about two people agreeing to objectify each other, because every consensual act is an act of love. And why not? I know, desire is certainly not democratic; the young and beautiful and well endowed certainly have an advantage, and I have never really understood the attraction for instance of men with big bellies, as I have always somewhat had one, but only recently have I begun to be attracted to myself, not my opposite. I enjoyed sex with a fat chaser once, I used to attract them when I was heavier. He was so butch and sexy, and sweet, and he would always ask me to eat more, because if I did he would love me more. (I couldn’t do it.) Then there was Rodney who I wrote a book about, who had a 12 inch penis that he would pull out at parties and display. This was charming of him. He worked as a stripper and would disappear from my life now and then. It took me awhile to realise that it was because he was in jail. He was missing some bones in his nose due to some coke issue, and I kind of loved Rodney until I realised that he wasn’t really very smart or interesting. The relationship became non-consensual when he decided that ‘our song’ was Amanda Marshall’s “My money's riding on this dark horse, baby” and I realised all of a sudden that I didn’t want to have an ‘our song’ with Rodney, as I was not in love with him -- just charmed by his huge penis and my own romanticisation of working class thugdom. We had a huge fight when I told him I couldn’t be his boyfriend (actually he specifically wanted me to screw him up the ass and I wouldn’t, and he was very hurt, as for him that would have been a confession of love). He nearly wrecked my apartment. I deserved it because I was lying to him, and lying is the only sin, really. You can do all sorts of terrible things but please don’t lie. But at first he and I were all about mutual desire which is the most honest thing in the world. Looking back on it, I think Rodney might have been a ‘feeder,’ because he was always asking me to eat, and telling me how much he loved watching me do it. (I have terrible table manners. Christopher Newton tried to teach me better table manners once— because he imagined I was going to be the toast of the gay world some day — but that never happened — instead I was fated to be despised by middle class fags and never invited to fancy dinners.) I hope you are still alive Rodney and I want to apologise for not figuring out I didn’t love you sooner. And if you are dead this is my ode to you, because the joy was not only in your giant dick but in the innocence with which you loved someone who was, back then at least, not worthy.
This is director Martin Ritt’s first film, and he’s a didactic artist. I try not to be, as so often message art gets the message wrong. Edge of the City is an anti-racist movie that is itself racist. Sidney Poitier plays the character he copyrighted, the perfect black man: handsome, articulate and kind. He also jumps around and dances a lot, places the bongos, and is full of animal joy. All fine and good, but for all Ritt’s good intentions Poitier is not only exoticized, but somewhat resembles Bill Bo-Jangles Robinson — a black entertainer dedicated to making everyone smile. It’s too bad that Poitier had to play this character constantly, but it’s not right to blame him for it (and Ruby Dee is amazing as his wife; but why was she ever a big star? We know…). John Cassavetes is actually the leading character (though Poitier got all the kudos). Cassavetes went on to be a brilliant avant-garde director, and his dark performance as a man who is doubly guilty — of killing his brother by accident, and deserting the army, and then has to decide whether or not to tell the police a warehouse racist bully murdered Poitier - is fiercely subtle. I am obsessed over the homoerotics of the film; no I’m not going to apologise. When do we get to see two beautiful male movie stars almost kiss? Apparently Ritt was aware of the homoerotic nature of the ‘buddy’ relationship between Cassevetes’ character and Poitier’s. The film is all about men, even the young Jack Warden (who plays the racist) is even kinda sexy in a brutal way. The problem with closet films is that the female characters are less interesting; gay men know that ‘buddy films’ are more about gay men who are required to have sex with women just so that no one will feel bad about watching the movie. I need to see gay art, and the fact that I have to settle for table scraps watching Casevetes throwing his arm around Poitier and hoping one or the other will take a shower, or even that they will shower together, is not enough. I’ve spent my life writing about gay men having love and sex, and my work has been consistently marginalised. I’m not complaining, as I love being marginalized, it’s where I write from, I’m just telling you. I had a friend over last night (yes, like all my pals, he talked about how his pals are on his case for seeing me, I couldn’t believe it). Anyway, he told me he was in a gay play recently with a slew of gay men (14), and some uptight woman came to see a preview and was praising them: “It’s so good to so many men on a stage together acting who are —” and then she stopped and admitted “I don’t want to say that word.” This is 2020, when have RuPaul and Will and Grace and can get married. So what in heaven’s name was stopping her from saying “it’s great to see a room full of gay actors?” Perhaps the politically correct notion that some might rather be identified as bisexual, or MSM (‘Men Who Have Sex With Men’)? So if I enjoy this continued marginalisation why don’t I just shut up? Because still I’m waiting for the day when Dad says “Thank God you’re gay, son, you won’t get some girl pregnant.” And all I want is a movie in which John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier meet and fall in love, only their are problems are that Poitier is not a perfect black man, but deeply flawed in some way, and maybe there are also problems because Cassavetes actually prefers black bodies to white ones, and Poitier feels racially objectified, until Cassavetets points out that Poitier prefers white bodies to black ones, and they both come to understand that desire cannot be racist. Desire isn’t anything really, except truth, which is what makes bathhouses so interesting, I was addicted to them for years because there’s just no lying there (except on beds). If you are not attracted to someone then you are obligated to tell them nicely you won’t have sex with them, period. After so many years of having sex with women I so loved those hallowed halls when I discovered them, reeking somewhat of poppers and jiz (does cum have a smell?). There is nothing bad about two people agreeing to objectify each other, because every consensual act is an act of love. And why not? I know, desire is certainly not democratic; the young and beautiful and well endowed certainly have an advantage, and I have never really understood the attraction for instance of men with big bellies, as I have always somewhat had one, but only recently have I begun to be attracted to myself, not my opposite. I enjoyed sex with a fat chaser once, I used to attract them when I was heavier. He was so butch and sexy, and sweet, and he would always ask me to eat more, because if I did he would love me more. (I couldn’t do it.) Then there was Rodney who I wrote a book about, who had a 12 inch penis that he would pull out at parties and display. This was charming of him. He worked as a stripper and would disappear from my life now and then. It took me awhile to realise that it was because he was in jail. He was missing some bones in his nose due to some coke issue, and I kind of loved Rodney until I realised that he wasn’t really very smart or interesting. The relationship became non-consensual when he decided that ‘our song’ was Amanda Marshall’s “My money's riding on this dark horse, baby” and I realised all of a sudden that I didn’t want to have an ‘our song’ with Rodney, as I was not in love with him -- just charmed by his huge penis and my own romanticisation of working class thugdom. We had a huge fight when I told him I couldn’t be his boyfriend (actually he specifically wanted me to screw him up the ass and I wouldn’t, and he was very hurt, as for him that would have been a confession of love). He nearly wrecked my apartment. I deserved it because I was lying to him, and lying is the only sin, really. You can do all sorts of terrible things but please don’t lie. But at first he and I were all about mutual desire which is the most honest thing in the world. Looking back on it, I think Rodney might have been a ‘feeder,’ because he was always asking me to eat, and telling me how much he loved watching me do it. (I have terrible table manners. Christopher Newton tried to teach me better table manners once— because he imagined I was going to be the toast of the gay world some day — but that never happened — instead I was fated to be despised by middle class fags and never invited to fancy dinners.) I hope you are still alive Rodney and I want to apologise for not figuring out I didn’t love you sooner. And if you are dead this is my ode to you, because the joy was not only in your giant dick but in the innocence with which you loved someone who was, back then at least, not worthy.
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