PLAGUE DIARY 41: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)
It seems quite faithful to H.G. Wells and it’s filled with juicy British actors — including Ralph Richardson, Lady Tree, and Roland Young (who played Topper — my favourite character — in the movie of the same name, and who’s pretty delightfully dotty in the leading role here). Oh yes, and a young George Sanders plays ‘Indifference’ — one of the three young faggots who, it seems, rule the universe. The movie starts fantastically with three handsome gays on horseback in shimmering shirts approaching from what appears to be — outer space, chatting about what they should do with insignificant misguided mankind. With their girly British accents, their sparkly shirts, and their blithe ‘indifference’ they seem awfully queer too me. (Perhaps three cranky, indifferent fags ARE running the universe. It would certainly explain a lot.) At first they think they should give every human the power to perform miracles; but then think better of it, and give that power only to Roland Young. Roland Young is sweet and ruefully insignificant, he never seems quite up to the task at hand — and in this way he’s quite fully human. At first he does silly things — like turning candles upside down, and filling his bed with grapes and rabbits (well, to each his own), but he discovers quickly that he can’t “get into people’s minds.” (Which is probably a good thing.) A  pretty, vain shopgirl asks him to dress her like Cleopatra. He does, but says: “Now that I can have everything, something seems to hold me back.” Someone suggests — “Why not banish disease from the face of the earth?” Roland says: “Oh — I thought I’d just go ‘round and cure somebody here, somebody there.” Soon he gets mixed up with a bunch of old white men. (Fags may rule the universe but these old farts rule the earth.) The businessmen oppose giving money away: “without want, what would people do?” The old colonel (with that oddness that makes Ralph Richardson so special) — is perturbed when, in biblical fashion, Roland turns his wine to water and his swords into ploughshares. Then a crusading minister deems it appropriate to start the “golden age of peace and plenty.” But Roland has had enough. He proclaims — “I want to get what I fancy!”, and creates a castle, makes his girlfriend queen, and gathers all the best minds of the world around him. His orders are: “Run the world better!” But the best minds warn him this will all take some time. (Kinda like the best minds of the world working on COVID-19). So Roland goes nuts and stops the earth from turning. Finally, the three fags turn back the clock; now Roland can’t turn candles upside down, and that’s quite a good thing. This movie does what a work of art should do —  show you a model of something, of life, of a life, of an idea of life. Then it just let’s you wonder what it all means. At one point Roland Young says “You can’t shoot truth!”  Well, of course you can shoot people who tell the truth, but you can’t actually shoot truth, because it keeps coming back. Where’s truth? In this strange era we live in, where everything is topsy turvy, where the left love being told what to do, and the right are the only ones talking about rights — our right to live, to breathe the air outside, and run our friggin’ businesses? And no one can stand this home schooling anymore, especially kids, but everyone is fully committed to being nice to old people, and to the incalculably deluded fantasy of a crazy dream world where no one ever dies. Well I mentioned in my last blog that I might have killed someone — and now it’s up to me to convince you that I haven’t. It’s like what Chekhov said — when a gun appears in act one it had better go off in act two. I’ve stopped reading these blogs to my best friend — because it’s you and me alone in this now. And if you’ve read it this far then you are a sympathetic ear, I know you are. I have to believe it, because the fact that you are reading this is what’s keeping me alive. “Another Blog That Nobody Reads,” right, I really believe that. (That’s rhetorical humility, I learned about it in books and there’s no stronger persuasion.) Of course I bloody well want someone to read this. But just one person. Just one person who gets it, who understands how guilty I have been since the day I was born. When I first read The Lutheran Book at age 9 — my mother made us visit The Lutheran Family because she liked to smoke and drink with The Lutheran Mother — and I hated that little boy — who I was supposed to be friends with — because he made me read The Lutheran Book. It said we are all born sinners, and we’ll die sinners, period. Yes that’s me, I thought. I am a sinner. From the moment I was born— I knew that I simply must have done a mighty wrong.  Did it start when my mother told me to clean my room, and she said it frightened her because I made it too clean? I don’t blame her, I honestly don’t, I’m sure she just told me to clean it nicely. But there is something in me that is never satisfied with myself, and I don’t mean that in a precious, perfectionist way. I mean if you wanna make me feel bad, you can do it in a second. Just look at me wrong. Or tell me that this blog is actually killing somebody from COVID-19. That might work. Go ahead.  I’m used to that. It’s kinda what happened with the whole Evelyn Parry Buddies thing. It was right; it was right that I should be shunned by a whole generation of young people — not because my words ‘hurt’ people — because if words didn’t hurt, what would be the use of them? — but because from the time I was young I looked on my own self, my own body, with contempt. I never masturbated, I never masturbated until I was 29. I never touched my penis. You got that? I used to rub myself against the bed. I was a good boy—  or tried to be — because I knew the real alternative was the brutal truth that I am bad, truly bad. And everyone at Buddies is right to hate me, I suppose it’s my attempts to look young even when I’m nearly 105 (in gay years), or my pitiful penis (which honestly I never touched until I was 30 — does that help?) or my privilege —yes those ancestors on the Mayflower, or just my entitlement -- yes, that’s it! My entire life I have blindly believed that what I have to say is actually significant — and you and I know full well there are two million people who are two hundred times more talented than I am. But no one — no one but me, is so willing to open my big mouth, and shout out everything that I think or feel, every bloody truth I can imagine or even make up. It’s called guts, not genius. And you can’t shoot the truth, right. Jesus, if I even knew what that was.