PLAGUE DIARY 104: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Storm Warning (1951)
One of the most fascinating boring movies I’ve seen in a long time. Doris Day, Ronald Reagan and Ginger Rogers, wow, but then it turns out be Steve Cochran that really turned my head. News flash -- Ginger Rogers is vastly underrated; Ronald Reagan isn’t. They said Ginger could do everything Astaire could do — only twice as well — well, she sure can act. Reagan is just tedious with an odd voice. Doris Day acquits herself well in her fist non-singing role. But Steve Cochran. Double wow. Now though Storm Warning is a film about the Ku Klux Klan, it does not take place in the deep south, nor is there a single black person in it, nor does it deal with racism. How exactly did that happen? Perhaps the present situation in the ‘land of the free’ can be explained somewhat by this film; three years after it was made the U.S. Supreme Court ordered desegregation of schools, and yet Hollywood was obviously too frightened to mention race. The now vilified Gone With the Wind at least shows the origins of the Ku Klux Klan (or at least one theory about it) and actually to some degree deals with racism, so it makes no sense to me that it should be universally cursed — whereas a film like this that ignores racism is scheduled with special pride on TCM. Storm Warning virtue signals in a way that would jollify the most avid COVID-19 devotee. Speaking of which, last weekend I was in Toronto and gay boys were walking the streets and holding hands, and a trio of quite unattractive men tried to pick me up in a patio bar. In other words, it was like old times. One of my ex-friends (he is what I would call a COVID-19 enthusiast) said, in reference to such debauches,  on Facebook: “I’ll be laughing out of the other side of my face when you’re all dead.” I’m not sure in  what universe a person like that could be considered to be anything but demented, but it’s certainly the result of living at a time when people have find no joy in anything but displaying how perfect they are. And most of this movie is kinda like that. One could, I suppose, watch it, and cheer -- when Ronald Reagan says to the gang of Klansmen whipping Ginger Rogers (yes, this is a very odd flic) “It’ll take more than those sheets you’re wearing to hide that you’re mean frightened little people!” Racists hold despicable views but this argument — called the ‘ad hominem argument’ is one in which — instead of taking issue with a person’s views, trashes the character of the person who embraces them. This is a favourite tactic of the COVID-adorers, those who hate-and-despise-people -who-don’t-wear-masks-and-don’t-socially-distance. In fact that is what COVID-19 is all about -- hating others because they are not good people like you. But never, before Storm Warning, have I ever seen the 'ad hominomen' argument taken to such a ridiculous extreme. This, ultimately, is the ‘storm warning' this film offers us: the writers  spend so much time hating the persons who disagree with them, that they forget to discuss the issue at hand.  Similarly, nobody talks about the actual issues involved with COVID-19 — i.e. what proportion of the world’s population will die, or what their health and age is, ‘herd immunity.’ or how COVID-19 operates in comparison to other similar diseases. No. Instead we talk about how bad people who don’t wear masks are. Yes you heard it here first — and this is not Trump’s argument that there are some 'nice people on both sides' — this is my argument: I am not a nice person and neither are you. And it is the act of judging other people, and putting yourself above others —  saying that all members of the Ku Klux Klan are 'mean frightened people' — that you encourage the made up fallacy that the world is made up of either exclusively good people or exclusively bad people, and that you, by implication, are good, and those you disagree with, are bad. Maybe instead it’s time to look inside at your own heart — the human heart — and see what kind of treachery lies there? Which leads me to Steve Cochran’s penis. I think we all need a little relief, so let's try it on for size. Cochran (according to some reports) had a 12.4 inch penis (others said it was 14 inches). Mae West memorably intoned: “Joe was hung pretty well, but no more so than one of my boys, Steve Cochran. Talk about an appropriate last name. He should spell Cochran with a K.” That West called Cochran one of her ‘boys’ says a lot about -- a lot -- of him, and his list of Hollywood conquests is impressive: JOAN CRAWFORD, MAE WEST, IDA LUPINO, JAYNE MANSFIELD, MAMIE VAN DOREN, MERLE OBERON, YVONNE DeCARLO, KAY KENDALL, BARBARA PAYTON, and YVETTE VICKERS —- basically all the women he ever starred with. He didn’t need that equipment, as his dark, sultry eyes, the shock of black hair hanging loosely over his forehead, the furry chest, the lean muscled body, and his general mastery (I don’t like it in art, but I do like it in bed) did the trick, I’m sure, for so many. He died of a lung infection captaining a boat he had taken to the Caribbean, staffed by 3 Mexican women (ages 14, 19 and 25) who he hired to accompany him; the purpose of the trip was to scout locations for a planned film based on Errol Flynn’s yacht and it’s all female crew. But the moment in Storm Warning you really must see is when it suddenly turns into Streetcar Named Desire (and this film was released the same year as the film of Williams’ famous play). It all happens so quickly and comes so much out of nowhere that it takes you by surprise. Suddenly Cochran is trying to rape Ginger Rogers who is (wait for it) Doris Day’s older sister, and she says “I think you’re a stupid vicious ape!” which he is, of course, though it does not in any way diminish his brutal sex appeal. This moment is a sad reminder of what Tennessee Williams had and this movie does not -- a conspicuous lack of virtue signalling. Williams' plays are not moral lessons;  we don’t know whether to love Blanche or hate her, all we know is she will die if by chance, some day, she eats an unwashed grape. And Stanley Kowalski is less evil than he is human, or rather more human than he is evil; and they are most decidedly not the same thing.

PLAGUE DIARY 103: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Murder is My Beat (1955)
Edward G. Ulmer is apparently a cult filmmaker, and this film had a strange and powerful effect on me. It’s low budget, ala Plan Nine From Outer Space. Well, if you get caught in the spell of a film like this, there’s no turning back. It’s naive camp — so unintentionally bad it’s good, and it’s the little things that take hold of you and won’t let go. Near the end Paul Langton chats with Robert Shayne, his police chief boss. They’re trying to establish the innocence of Barbara Payton — a beautiful dame with a knockout frame. They’re just talking, but Shayne is also shaving. And he’s shaving endlessly. I know they were scrupulous in the 50s about hygiene -- but, come on. And it’s one of those old fashioned shavers (I had one as a teenager — with the rolling heads) and he’s rubbing his very, very beardless face, over and over again, and chatting on and on. And then he applies after shave. But this is endless too; patting here, patting there. In other words the actors carry on with what is intended to be convincing, naturalistic detail  in an unreasonable, almost surrealistic way. In this kind of film, such moments are so rich. Nowhere but in a cheap, easy feature film by Allied Artists -- a 77 minute special — do you get to see two cops following a good looking broad, walking down the street — and shot by shot — they are in front of — yet another, and another — piece of stock film footage. It is a challenge for  viewers to suspend their disbelief — and a comment on the magnificence of the human imagination. Alright, Shakespeare — who also worked under economic constraints — does better, certainly, with the same materials (words and images). But artists construct towers of the flimsiest materials for us to build our dreams on -- and we hang on  --  praying we won't end up in in the abyss with those who don't believe. During Murder is My Beat Barbara Payton's beauty was clearly waning; she looks pudgy and bloated (despite starring with Cagney in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye five years earlier) nevertheless an old woman says: “she wore tight clothes  — indecent the way the showed her shape.” (In real life, Payton died after a suicidal slide into into drug and alcohol abuse 12 years after.) But Tracy Roberts, Payton’s girlfriend (in real life a serious actress who foundedd the Stella Adler theatre school in L.A.) is described in even more classic film noir lingo: “A hard little package, with a sharp little brain, hardened by constant grinding against the world.” Everything here is not only hard-boiled, but boiled down, and expressed in the kind of metaphor that was only completely meaningful  in a 1955-middle-class-suburban-context. Roy Gordon (the murdered man who turns out not to be) is described as one who “could talk to headwaiters and they’d listen to him, that type…” (Of course, we understand.) The ending of the film made me  ecstatic — Langton is supposed to take Payton to prison but instead jumps off a train with her, facilitating her escape; yet they live happily ever after. How?  Shayne clears up all the loose ends, turning first to Langton: “They’ve agreed not to prosecute you— willing to consider it a temporary blackout,” and then to Payton: “It took a little influence to expedite matters, but the warden’s a great guy.” Exculpatory temporary blackouts, and nice-guy wardens — certainly what the world is made of, right? Well I just can’t get enough of this candy floss spun from the stars, and it took me further away from my own real life than any well-crafted film might; it's much better than a perfect work of art, because I can see in excruciating, lacerating detail each and very point at which it’s badly stitched together. And it’s dogged earnestness at believing it is  — well, something — bewitches me. Two years after Murder is My Beat, Barbara Payton married, and quickly divorced "'Tony’ Provas, a 23-year-old furniture store executive in Nogales, Arizona.” Her autobiography chronicles her subsequent slide to ignominy: ‘forced to sleep on bus benches, suffering regular beatings as a prostitute.’ Believe me, I am not reveling in this woman’s pain, but instead thinking of my own dwindling twilight kingdom. Tonight I watched Toronto's Dora Mavor Moore Awards (live! online!). I am the much forgotten guy who founded Buddies in Bad Times Theatre — Toronto’s first —and now obviously last — gay and lesbian theatre, more than 40 years ago. I don’t ask to be remembered, it’s simply the death of the cause that has me feeling more than a little tragic, not unlike Barbara Payton (but where’s by 23 year old furniture store executive named Tony?). There was only one gay moment at the Dora Awards tonight. It was when Michael Healey told what I found to be a rather offensive gay joke. I don’t blame him (or anybody) I blame the times; the joke wouldn’t have been offensive if there had been lots of out gay men (like perhaps some of the many gay men who work in theatre?) volunteering to prance about and talk dirty and be very gay, but those fags were nowhere to be seen. So when Michael Healey joked that he brought a condom to the virtual online awards so he could have sex with Thom Allison (one of the few self-admitted out gay actors) it just kinda stuck in my craw. Back in the 80s, I presented an award at the Doras. I changed from a man to a woman — or a woman to a man, onstage (I can never remember which) — and it was actually live — not ‘digital live.’ Afterwards I got  a couple of threatening phone calls from gay men who said that I was ruining things for them; that it was best to keep such things ‘quiet.’  No problem; they now have their way, this year the only appearance by an out gay man at the Doras was in a tasteless joke made by a straight guy. To quote Paul Langton in Murder is My Beat: "When a man begins to doubt what he represents as right — must be right— he’s coming apart at the seams” but me, I’m coming apart at the ‘seems’ (‘seems, madam, nay, it is’). The only thing that can save me is that which is blatantly untrue. But to be as frank with you as a liar can be — I wouldn’t have it any other way. What is blatantly untrue is saving me from the untruth that cannot possibly be my present life; or worse yet, the lie that is the world.

PLAGUE DIARY 102: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)
One can’t help feeling artists and producers were drawn to this script because of the lurid subject matter. It’s concerned with repressed homosexuality — not homosexuality — and the distinction is an important one. The only thing that kept my interest was the fantasy of Marlon Brando — who at 43 was still quite beautiful — getting it on with Robert Forester, but the movie stretches Brando’s yearning for the young man’s ass (on display in several scenes of naked horseback riding) to the very final moment when Brando — instead of kissing Forster — shoots him. I really felt like I was ‘lunch,' that whatever gay suffering I have gone through, or that heterosexuals wish to imagine I’ve gone through, was just a juicy opportunity for John Huston, Brando, and Elizabeth Taylor to display much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands. Brando obviously ravishes crying, and spreading -- what is it — moisturiser? — all over his face while staring in a mirror, and of course being literally horsewhipped by Taylor. He has one lovely speech in which he extols life among young enlisted men: “And the friendships, my lord. There are friendships formed that are stronger than... stronger than the fear of death. And - they're never lonely. They're never lonely. And sometimes I envy them…” But ultimately Reflections in a Golden Eye just made me want to wash. Audiences laughed inappropriately when it was released: all that ‘sexy angst’. There is (I think) one gay actor — David Zorro. On IMDB it says he was Filipino, and a ‘beautician and a painter,’ and that this was his only film. He is very effeminate and appears as Julie Harris’ servant; he adores her. Brian Keith has a little speech about how the army could have made a man of ‘Anacleto’ (his name has both an anus and a clitoris in it). Of course great actors like Marlon Brando get to play homosexuals and get nominated for Oscars, but not me, or David Zorro. Once, after a drag performance, two young men ran up to me eagerly: “Are you gay?” They both deflated like balloons when I said I was. “Oh, no offense, but, if you weren’t gay then that would be like an amazing performance, but since you are gay you’re just kind of playing yourself, so…” Their analysis was, I thought, fascinating. Adhering to this peculiar rubric, no gay actor could ever be ‘a good actor’ in a gay role; because gay roles are created to offer a golden opportunity for straight actors to display their prodigious talent. This however does not take into consideration that being gay is always acting. Because what do actors do? They monitor their voice, calculate their mannerisms, and carefully chose what to wear. Noel Coward used to warn Cecil Beaton against matching his tie and his handkerchief — it was a telltale sign that might give one away. In the recording of the original Private Lives, Coward’s voice is arch and studied in a way that Gertrude Lawrence’s never was. He spoke in that ridiculously formal way because he wished never to betray his sodomitical working-class origins. Shouldn’t we fags get at least a little credit for all the acting we do -- daily? Our necessary performances suit us to the stage  —and draw us to it —  and make theatre home for us, even before we know what sex is. I always knew my father thought I was a scary freak and that he expected me to act in some way I clearly had no inkling of.  I never came to understand what being his dream son would entail — but I knew it was not me. This was incredibly difficult for both of us. Of course not all homosexuals are effeminate, but they all do — at one point or other — stick a finger up their own asshole and enjoy it immensely. (And even if you wash your hands scrupulously after, the guilty pleasure lingers.) After all, it’s more than just a dirty finger, it’s the knowledge that, deep inside, you wish to be the receiver of pleasure, the passive (God forbid)! victim of lust’s tenacious grasp. And if you are a ‘top’ and a ‘masculine,’ (what I like to call a ‘plumber fag’) well you quickly come to understand that your devotion to other boys is not natural and that (as Judith Butler says) most tops are usually bottoms in disguise, their devotion to their passive partners is so great that they will do anything for them; and this is a sort of relinquishing of power. But all pleasure, is in fact, suspicious. One quickly learns that only the perverted relish pleasure — especially bodily pleasure. If you are  heterosexual you are relieved to know sex is not about pleasure — it’s about procreation — but for fags and dykes there is simply no excuse. My first and most erotic childhood sexual experience was with a girl. Her name was Laura, and she was southern and she lived next door to us. She had stick ponies that she used to love to ride on (I later learned that those stick ponies can be, for some little girls a masturbatory, even pre-lesbianic, experience). At any rate she used to invite me over and we would play master and slave. It was all her idea and I hadn’t the slightest notion what was going on. Looking back on it now, the whole fantasy might have been somewhat racist in origin, as Laura was, after all, from Georgia. But I certainly recognized it immediately as tremendously naughty and dangerous fun. There were no actual implements and no actual hurt (except in our minds). We were all fully clothed, and Laura would wander from slave to slave (I vaguely remember there being other slaves), and she would whip us with an imaginary whip. I remember writhing in exquisite pain. That little scene in Laura’s basement reminds me very much of Reflections in a Golden Eye — as nothing much happens in the film — people just keep looking at other people, and having fantasies, and then punishing themselves for them. It’s an exercise in masochism.  But perhaps one of the first things we learn as young gay men, is  what pleasure we can find not only from physical, but emotional pain. Thus it’s hard to be irritated with Marlon Brando — straight guy that he was — for wanting so much to suffer for his art. But we know all along that if Major Weldon Penderton (Brando) had only offered his own plump and splendiforous buttocks to that young soldier (Robert Forester), there might have been the kind of release we all imagine— and live for, from day to day — often so much more transcendent in our own minds, than in dull reality.

PLAGUE DIARY 101: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
It’s difficult not to resent this movie — and Orson Welles. He apparently made it because he needed cash to get costumes out of hock for a theatre production of Around the World in 80 Days that never actually happened. His attitude to the film was petulant; he never bothered to take the time to make the plot comprehensible, apparently, and the studio had to cut the self-consciously theatrical final scene by 20 minutes — it’s hard to imagine any reason for it to last 25 — other than Welles’ arrogance. The philosophy spouted by the ‘black Irish’ leading man (played by Welles himself) is unabashedly nihilistic in an adolescent way. There seems to be no evidence Welles cared more about this film than he did about showing off. It strikes me that Citizen Kane may have been a magnificent accident, as there is something evidently self-important about it too, but perhaps in the battle between Welles’ talent and his conceit, inspiration won — but only in that particular case. I am not convinced of Welles’ genius — only of his pretension. It’s hard to remove from your brain the image of that prodigiously fat man eating himself to death between guest appearances on The Lucy Show — even when you learn he was trying to finance his ultimate filmic vision of Shakespeare (Chimes at Midnight -- but please remember that when they made it, some critic actually mentioned it was the first time an actor was actually too fat to play Falstaff). Much ink has been spilled over Orson Welles, but Pauline Kael effectively proved Citizen Kane was written as much by Joe Mankiewicz as Welles himself. And after watching him smirk his way through The Lady from Shanghai I’m starting to believe Welles was simply a narcissistic poseur who's gotten away with all his overpraised shenanigans for far too long. The only thing interesting about The Lady from Shanghai is the decadence of the romantic situation: a old, unattractive, disabled man hires a young, handsome, virile one to live with himself and his stunning wife on their yacht, all the while constantly alluding -- in not so veiled terms -- to the possibility that the young man and his wife might have an affair. And yes Welles does have one lovely speech — the ‘shark’ speech — all about that decadence: “Then the beasts set to eatin' each other. In their frenzy, they ate at themselves. You could feel the lust of murder like a wind stinging your eyes, and you could smell the death, reeking up out of the sea.” But what does it all come to? Welles offers nothing to replace this corruption other than the tired cliche of world weary cynicism. It’s no wonder that his work appeals to straight young men just out of film school — most of them are pretentious wankers anyway; Welles’ purported genius helps them justify their own self-adulation. There is something heterosexual about any kind of mastery. It’s why I don’t like Joyce, and why Kubrick gets on my nerves. Yes, we are amazed at your technical wizardry, and it’s something every straight young male artist can aspire to, but the fact that James Joyce knew thousands of languages and that Ulysses is really Homer’s Odyssey -- only with thousands of veiled meanings alluded to in every precious word -- doesn’t make it a great novel. I’ve only read one chapter of Ulysses and it was the ‘brothel’ chapter— which I had no idea was set in a brothel until somebody told me. A brothel scene should have tits, ass and hopefully a penis or two, and it must turn you on. Give me Charles Bukowski — so self-deprecating and frankly inept that you certainly couldn’t accuse him of being good at anything, least of all, life. As soon as artists talk about perfection and working for years on their craft, I turn off. I actually like Kerouac —because he was a deeply flawed human being who displayed those flaws as often as he could, and I would prefer any sort of bilge coming out of his typewriter to a carefully crafted sentence by Nabokov any day. I know all this can and will be used against me; it serves a lousy writer like me terribly well to whine about perfection, doesn’t it? But any writer who actually thinks they’re ‘good’ either doesn’t know anything about writing, or is not aware of ‘humility’; a timeworn, manipulative, rhetorical technique (absolutely necessary). And it doesn’t matter that the narrator of Ulysses is a simple working-class man who we actually witness taking a shit — on a toilet — because that scene is handled with such ‘mastery’ that we have no idea what he is doing anyway. Let’s face it Ulysses can be studied in school because it’s profundity trumps its obscenity. And Shakespeare’s work is written basically in a foreign language, so we can ignore the filth. (But I assure you it’s there, and was quite evident to theatregoers at the time, and not just the much vaunted ‘groundlings’--  as everyone was obsessed with bodily functions back then, including Queen Elizabeth herself.) Remember there were no bedrooms in Renaissance houses, so regular moms and dads screwed in front of their children. And there was no such thing as the middle classes (thank God!), which will be the death of us, and the death of culture; what is palatable to the bourgeoisie can be studied in a classroom, or released as part of the Criterion Collection, so there’s no ‘good parts.’ I’m very happy not to be a part of Canada’s literary scene, let me tell you, and it is only very rarely that I get a letter from some high school student (usually it’s a young woman) who found some renegade teacher willing to teach her my play Drag Queens on Trial — God knows how the obscenity in that play slipped through the cracks (somebody was obviously asleep at the switch). That’s why I read only novels by women, they are not afraid to be unpretentious and entertaining, and they talk about small things, not big ones. It is through detail that profundity — if it exists — will appear, somewhat by accident, through shy observance of that which is all around us, which has not been chosen primarily for its significance, or the universality and magnificence of it’s allusiveness. The sun keeps going in and out today, and the patios are open. We still have difficulty touching and hugging each other though, and those who have boundary issues  —or fear they are not ‘good people’ — have a mask to assuage them. It’s going to be hot though, and the sun simply demands we take everything off, and the mask must be first to go.

PLAGUE DIARY 100: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)
It’s an odd movie. I identify with Peter Lorre, and that’s a problem. Stranger on the Third Floor was influenced by German expressionism and most certainly influenced Orson Welles. There’s an extended dream sequence in which the hero John Maguire imagines he is unjustly accused of murder and can’t seem to convince anyone of his innocence — it’s all crooked rooms and dark shadows. Stranger on the Third Floor is sometimes credited with being the first film noir, and one can see why, as it seems archetypically so; more concerned with light and dark than anything else. John Maguire sends a man to jail through his testimony on the stand, but the accused cries out ‘I am innocent’ — sending Maguire into a shame spiral. Then Maguire sees an odd man opening a door on the third floor of his rooming house, who he begins to think  is the murderer. That odd man is Peter Lorre — who is always the most sympathetic of villains; not unlike myself. He would be difficult for anyone to love, with his heavily lidded eyes, fleshy lips, and silky, heavily accented voice. In Stranger on the Third Floor one also notices the spaces between Lorre’s  teeth for some reason (I also have spaces between my teeth) making him even creepier. And then there’s the scarf. He sports a white scarf, and  keeps flinging over his shoulder with a kind of abandon — this becomes the distinguishing characteristic with which he is identified. I can imagine having such a scarf, and throwing it over my shoulder in such a way. Then there are his final words — “The only person who was kind to me was a woman, and she’s dead now.” Perhaps these words appeal to me because of my bizarrely close relationship to my mother, or perhaps they are in fact simply chilling (Nathaniel West wrote the final screenplay.) Peter Lorre is me, because I’ve always been odd. Imagine then, that I am a murderer. It won’t be so hard, knowing of my recent profligate lifestyle in Montreal during the ‘pandemic.’ But imagine that — for some reason — I have captured your sympathy, or perhaps there has been a glimmer of recognition in your eyes? And like Prospero you too, admit to yourself — if only for a moment — “this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” I was looking through some old letters to my father (I found them in a bag in the basement). They are stamped with the imprint ‘The Guy Sky’ and are relentlessly cheerful; how I hated myself back then. Mostly it seemed, I would send my father gushing reports of my success, and go on about my loving relationship with my girlfriend (who I was only trying to love). There’s also a newspaper interview with me from 1981 in which I am described as ‘a very fidgety young man.’ It strikes me that I am often unaware of the impression I make. Apparently I never look anyone in the eye, and do have mannerisms —some of them effeminate of course — which are fiercely and objectionably inconsistent with my large body, my broad back; I am a creature who seems to channel brute force through my thick neck and lumbering build (drunks always used to challenge me to fights) and yet I am possessed of carelessly wayward, meandering hands, and a voice that betrays weakness, and even perhaps hints at cowardice. I am a ‘creature;’ not unlike Peter Lorre, and I recently had my back tattooed with an Aubrey Beardsley drawing of the Greek comedian Bathyllus (known for his obscene pantomimes). Why do I thus exponentially increase such grotesquerie? Because I cultivate my oddness, because there really doesn’t seem to be anything else to do. When COVID-19 appeared — and people avoided me on the street — which of course they did to everyone — I’m so self-obsessed and paranoid that I took it personally. Am I exaggerating my oddness — stretching it into evil? Well I don’t believe in COVID-19. That is, I believe there is an illness out there, but that it only kills a very small percentage of the older population, mostly people who are very ill anyway, which I know sounds callous. But is it not true that if we finally reach 80 years of age, we are then living on borrowed time? I will be 80 in 13 years—  if I live that long — and I firmly believe it would be selfish of me — at that juncture — to complain about dying, Of course I would prefer that those — already gravely ill — people would not die; I would prefer that no one ever does . But that is not a likely — or perhaps even a desirable — world to live in, is it? And so not only do I think we are being held hostage because people — who were going to die anyway soon — are dying, but we are quite unjustly accused of being unloving, uncaring people for being perplexed that our lives have been yanked to a full stop because of it. So, now — do you not agree that I am odd, and perhaps even evil? And then to top it off— and this seems like the worst sin of all; I’m desperately in love (I say desperately because it is an extreme relationship, one which offers almost weekly melodrama, and shouting, and kissing, and making up, and confessions of love, and confessions of resentment and vulnerability and truth-telling and whatnot) — and though I am emotionally consumed by this relationship — or perhaps because of that —  I seek sex with strangers, and depend on the kindness of them; and have depended on the kindness of thousands of them, throughout my lifetime, in fact. (And if I told you how many people I’ve  actually screwed you would probably faint at the possibility that such end-of-Rome-style depravity exists.) On the positive side, back when I was famous, some drunken guy saw me on the street and turned to his friend to say something like: “Well if Sky Gilbert can stand here, you can dance.” So the extremity of my debauchery has at least been utilized as a means of persuading at least one shy human being to go out there and have a good time. That could be the positive side of being a ‘stranger here myself.’ Or perhaps I am just openly admitting that the world itself is not benign or loving, but actively hostile to us as human beings, and being odd is the only honest choice one can make. And, frankly learning to love or at least tolerate someone as repellent as myself, might — in a best case scenario — perhaps, do you — or even the world, — some good? But of that — and so much else — I am never sure.

PLAGUE DIARY 99: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Pat and Mike (1952)
Adam’s Rib got me through my first anxiety attack. I was living in a townhouse in Don Mills with my mother and my sister. Photos back then show me tanned, dark curly hair, with sensuous lips, smiling through glasses. But I was terrified — and I didn’t know why. I was obsessed with a lifeguard, then with Domenic — an Italian trumpet player, and then with Joel Quarrington (Paul Quarrington’s brother who lived down the road and was some kind of musical genius). At the time I wasn’t able to put two and two together. Then all of a sudden I was engulfed in fear. If you’ve ever experienced an anxiety attack you’ll know what I mean. Even speaking of it now seems unlucky, like I may bring one on. You become immobile with it, and yet inside you are feverish and desperate. So my mother would talk me down. I needed her, she was the only one I needed, the only one who could save me. I remember after one of our talks — either saying to her, or thinking to myself — well I can go and watch Adam’s Rib, and I’ll be okay. When I submerge myself in that world, everything is alright. I guess that explains writing this blog when I’m sitting here, slightly lost, feeling like I should be doing something else, looking out my too dark window wishing there was something going on outside; knowing there isn’t. So what is it about Tracy and Hepburn — about Adam’s Rib — that saved me? When I was young I thought it was all about Hepburn, now I think it might have been Tracy; but no, of course, it’s the two of them together. It’s love as perfect as you could imagine it. They seem to be falling into it all the time, and they don’t want to, necessarily — they don’t know it’s happening — of course they resist, and I was going to be fine as long as I could imagine that happening to me. Pat and Mike is slighter than Adam’s Rib — it’s the later film, it’s also written by the same husband and wife team Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, and it’s a feminist film, even more so — and more subtle than Adam’s Rib, which has the feisty Hepburn fighting for women’s rights. Pat and Mike is a more personal journey; Hepburn’s boyfriend is not good for her, it’s a simple as that, and when she finds someone who is, it’s a surprise for her as well as us. Tracy plays the working class con-artist so perfectly, he’s a little man filled with himself and his own ego; he loves to hear himself talk, and he talks a lot of nonsense, and he should be contemptible — that is compared to her younger, handsomer guy. But he has one thing on his side. He actually loves her. But ‘loving someone’ is not just something you say, it means something here— understanding who they are. That’s a tough one. I certainly didn’t know how tough it was when I first saw this film. I wanted desperately to be in love, but I certainly didn’t associate such a thing with any of the young men I was so platonically obsessed with, nor would I have known what it meant at the time. I think I would have only understood it through Hepburn’s eyes — gazing confoundingly and adoringly at the short, pudgy, and inconsequential Tracy. Now I understand that Tracy truly loves her because he appreciates who she is and what she wants — that she is and must be an athlete and a star — and her previous boyfriend did not. Love is not just adoring someone, it’s encouraging them to be who they are and not being threatened by it. That’s the tough part. Because they might end up happier than you are, or more successful than you are, or just a better person than you, but the point is you want them to be happy, no matter what, and what makes them happy is what makes you happy. It sounds unselfish, but it’s not. I was overwhelmed by Tracy’s performance. Hepburn claimed that all he ever did was say the lines with intent — which would put him in the David Mamet school of acting — Mamet’s hair-brained theory being that one doesn’t have to play a character in order to ‘act.’ Tracy is unquestionably playing a character -- sorry Mr. Mamet -- he becomes Mike, the same way that he becomes the judge in Judgement at Nuremberg (all twisted forehead and crossed eyebrows) here he simply is Mike, who would make you laugh — because when he starts trying to sell you something you kind of have to laugh. The product he’s selling doesn’t matter, ever, it’s just the sales pitch, it’s what made Trump president — hate to say it — but it’s true. A good salesman makes you forget what he’s selling and then you pay for the stuff and then say what the f- did I just buy? When he’s telling Hepburn that she mustn’t smoke, or drink, or eat fatty foods, and she — against her own impulses — is buying it, well it’s Tracy’s belief in his own salesmanship that she’s falling in love with. It’s a virtuoso performance, and a meta-theatrical one, because Mike is not Tracy, but Tracy manages to sell us a piece of goods called Mike. The expression on his face when she proceeds to beat up two thugs who are attacking him (one of them by the way is a young Charles Bronson) is priceless and true; he is dumbfounded and then hurt. And he says “Don’t get me wrong, but I think a ‘he’ should be a ‘he’ and a ‘she’ should be a ‘she’" — or something to that effect. You’re damn right, Spencer Tracy. Now don’t pillory me. Don’t write my epitaph. Don’t set out with a machine gun to take me down. I love ‘male and female,’ it will never go away, and it never should. So why then am I man who loves men? Who’s the ‘he’ and who’s the ‘she’ in my relationships? But don’t you get it? That’s not the point. Tracy and Hepburn knew, Kanin and Gordon knew: it’s all a game. It’s a game where someone’s got the power and then someone takes it away, and someone acts submissive and someone acts in charge, and it hypnotises us because we live and breathe power games and eat them like fire. Hepburn is a liberated woman who knows she can only realize herself through the love of a man who actually loves her, because she doesn’t act exactly like a woman. But if there was no such thing as ‘woman’ she would simply be a nothing — Shakespeare’s word for vagina — but please note, nothing also means infinity, and how do you love that? I haven’t explained it correctly; what I mean to say is, it’s all just a game — and if you don’t like games then please don’t rain on our parade. And please don’t yell at me simply because you’ve forgotten how to play.

PLAGUE DIARY 98: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Pete Kelly’s Blues (1947)
Peggy Lee was nominated for an Oscar for it. In Pete Kelly’s Blues she plays a singer abused by a mob boss. She gets thrown down the stairs and ends up with "the mind of a 5 year old.” I love Peggy Lee’s singing, but there was always something somnambulant about it. (Do you remember her dreary, scary hit ‘Is That All There Is?’ — it was my favourite song for awhile — but she sounded like she was half dead when she sang it.)  Well when it comes to poker faces, Jack Webb makes Peggy Lee look like a circus clown. In fact, I find myself talking like him here. Now. In this blog. The dialogue in Pete Kelly’s Blues is imitation film. Noir. Dialogue. And it’s just as catching. Short, sweet — and to the point. No more than that. But. There’s no wit. There. No punch. But-. Okay. Enough. You get the idea. Jack Webb patented the character he created here and built his TV show Dragnet around it. When I was a kid I remember watching my father turn on the TV to watch Dragnet every night. I was told Dragnet was not for children, but I stayed up long enough once to sneak a peak of the opening credits: a giant, hairy, masculine arm, holding a hammer —  dripping with sweat — carving the ominous letters ‘MARK VII' out of mute stone. It gave me nightmares. Why? Did I know that Jack Webb embodied masculinity? That he was ‘anti-me’ — the man I would never become? Dragnet is hilarious, and so is this movie, quite unintentionally. Cheery little Janet Leigh is always trying to get an emotion out of him; but Jack’s a serious musician fighting off the mob. He’s sensitive enough to have a pet bird, but explains; “I’m nice to him because I may get hungry some day and have to eat him.” On Dragnet this emotionlessness was pragmatic — Jack Webb was Sergeant Joe Friday, whose motto was ‘Just the facts, ma’am.’ He’d investigate a crime. There would of course be a victim or a witness — one who ‘d have a tendency to digress. Joe’d ask “What happened?” And the person— often a woman — would say: “Well I was just sitting alone at home, it was a rainy day, so I was feeling kind of depressed, or perhaps that was because my dog died last week —."  Friday would throw a  sarcastic glance at his trusty sidekick (Harry Morgan) — sigh — and say: “Just the facts ma’am.” Which is why I think art is essentially feminine, because to digress is a uniquely feminine pursuit; it is to be possessed of a heavenly imagination; to digress is to be divine. There are exceptions of course; Hemingway and Picasso  —  but I they were only abusive to women to try and prove how masculine they were. Poetry and painting are about habitually straying off the topic. What is the topic? Survival! Use! How are you going to put food on the table and keep the rain out? These are clearly Jack Webb’s obsessions and everything else is a waste of his valuable masculine time. So I’ve almost reached the 100 blog mark, and I must digress; or perhaps all of these blogs have been digressions — indeed they have, because I’m the kind of girl who likes to wander. I’m back in Hamilton looking out my window at dusk. I’m missing the Montreal hookers and drug addicts — the crazy tough-as-nails gals yelling, drunk, in the middle of St. Catherine Street, flipping their own big tits around and trying to start the party. I’m missing the boys on drugs, I’m missing the guy last night who lay in front of me on a stone slab (part of the AIDS memorial —which I realised on my last night in Montreal — is clearly orgy central) writhing about, thrusting his pelvis in the air.  So I followed him into an alley and we started doing it, and then he said — ‘sorry man, I just— it’s the drugs — I need the drugs or else it just doesn’t work.’ So why would I miss that? And I miss the boy with the junkie dog and the black wrap that kept falling open revealing everything, and the boy who mooned me on the street and then told me I was gorgeous. I even miss the sad old man, the photocopy of myself, who offered me everything I needed to have a good time (and also things I didn’t need, too) and whose own climax seemed to come when he showed me his 3 bedroom, $650-a-month apartment. I miss the nights on the balcony reading Shakespeare to the man I love. And I miss not watching television. The self I was so afraid of confronting at the start of this ‘pandemic' — does that self live vicariously among street people, romanticising their desperate lives which are — truth be told — so unlike mine? I promise you I am not doing that; no, no, really — it’s about life — it’s about living it before you die, and not staying home safe, washing your hands. Dear me, there are still mad doctors on CNN and they are still talking about how children might get it, and probably won’t die, but could pass it on, and shouldn’t go to school. Is it just because somebody somewhere gets a kick out of stopping our economy? Back in Ontario, Fatty Ford has extended the state of emergency for another three weeks, so it’s time to put on your mask and and your hand sanitizer and think of England. This is what it means to live in a world dominated by use; this is Jack Webb’s world, this is just the facts ma’am. None of your art, your digression -- just tell me how to stay alive, and of course I’ll believe everything you say. I sat in District last night — which is one of the most horrible Montreal bars I’ve ever been in — but it was the only bar open on St. Catherine Street, and the only one you could actually enter, and the only bar I had set foot in for three and a half months. The people were young and beautiful — I obviously frightened them; that’s fine. It was enough for me that some drunk hipster was dancing down the aisles, and the cute waiter was using the ‘three meter stick’ to slap the table like it was somebody’s bum. I will not have the life drained out of me. If you want facts, you will not find them here. For God’s sake Jack-dry-as-dust-friggin-Webb! — all Janet Leigh wants you to do is dance! Sure she’s wearing a funny hat, but we all wear funny hats now and then, don’t we? Don’t you know that the only things worth doing are the things that have no purpose? Because you’re an awfully long time dead — but a very short while laughing for no reason at all.

PLAGUE DIARY 97: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Stampede (1949)
It’s a perfectly good western, written and produced by Blake Edwards. But I must say I was impressed by Rod Cameron. The plot centres on the conflict between cattle ranchers and settlers. At first Gale Storm and Rod Cameron don’t like each other — she’s a settler and he’s a rancher. She’s short, so when Rod first meets her he picks her up, saying “Let me put you up here so I can see you.” She promptly slaps him. By the end of the movie, though, she’s perfectly fine with being picked up and kissed because her romantic preference is clear. Though Don Castle (Rod Cameron’s little brother) is sweet on her, she says to her father: “If you insist on marrying me off to a McCall, make it the tall skinny one.” Quite right, too. Rod Cameron looks great in chaps, (we can admire them with impunity, he wears them because he’s a cowboy). My favourite scene is when his attorney (Jonathan Hale) bursts into Rod’s rooms when Rod’s taking a bath. Hale offers him a cigarette, and spends a lot of time looking down into the suds. It’s just two friends chewing the fat, so to speak, but Cameron looks pretty fetching with his long hairy legs perched on the edge of that old tin tub; I couldn’t help wondering what Hale was peering at — down there. Gale Storm was born Josephine Owaissa Cottle and she brings back memories of My Little Margie — my favourite childhood TV viewing (besides I Love Lucy). Storm was always getting into trouble — just like Lucy — and when she did she would make an arch little purring noise with her tongue. Later came Oh Susanna! with co-star Zazu Pitts (an ageing silent film actress who starred in Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed). The terms plucky, feisty, high spirited and ‘full of juice’ would aptly apply to Gale Storm, a pre-women’s-lib feminine warrior. At several points in Stampede she packs a gun, and when her adversary says — “You talk mighty big for a little girl,” she quips: “Take a look at this gun it makes me grow like a weed.” Sigh. If only I wasn’t so large. Drag is certainly the triumph of imagination over dull reality. I always thought I looked gorgeous in drag, but photos of my feminine personae Jane don’t always attest to that fact. I remember when Jason Sherman said to me, years ago: “I really love it that you don’t even try to look attractive when you dress in drag.” (It’s not his fault, he’s straight and he was just trying to be nice.) I have also been insulted by my own kind; some drag queen at Colby’s bar once told me in no uncertain terms: “Girl, get a girdle!”  But I must forget all that; Jane was eternally gorgeous and resplendent in fake furs (and still is, occasionally) and I won’t hear another word. Drag was my revenge against everyone who looked at my big body and said “you should play football.” Well I didn’t want to, and that was that. In my own mind, I am always Lucy Ricardo or Gale Storm, who were both gorgeous female clowns. A beautiful young man once said to me: 'I don’t know why you have to do drag, you’re such a big sexy guy.’ I say that to brag, but also because the point that is being missed there is an important one; gay men don’t do drag because they have no choice, but because they would rather live in their imaginations than the real world. And that is noble — and what separates us from animals (will you please just forget ‘reason’?). And also, it’s why I’ve been watching old bad movies for three and a half months. It takes a good five hours out of my day; and that’s five hours that I don’t live in this world, thank God. I am not a fan of this world. I just realised last night — for instance — that I am becoming somewhat of a regular in the sleazy Montreal street scene — and that my closest friends (which means people who talk to me, and wink at me, occasionally, and occasionally feel me up) are mostly drug dealers (tho I don’t partake). I would rather forget this; and I am a tourist in their world, which makes me doubly despicable — I’m not even the real thing when it comes to being real. But I am despicable in so many ways. However, this afternoon I lived in the world of Stampede for 75 minutes, watching Rod Cameron ride vigorously in chaps (wishing I was the horse), beating up the bad guys, and realising (after his brother died) that his feeling for Gale Storm was love. Can we talk about Gale Storm’s name? It’s a drag name. I’ve always regretted calling myself Jane. I was supposed to be Jane as in ‘Tarzan and -.’ The first night I did drag I went to a big gay party wearing basically a loincloth and tiny leopardskin bra, telling everyone I was looking for Tarzan. (I can’t remember if I found him, but as always, it was the search that mattered.) For a moment I wasn’t Sky Gilbert — the controversial, mean-looking slightly-overweight, publicity junkie, I was — in my own mind— a glamorous maiden who had lost her way in the dark, and was looking for someone tall and strong to comfort me. The ‘minds eye’ is a late medieval term for the imagination — it was called ‘memory’ — and artists cultivated their memory places — palaces and castles -- with multiple rooms: housing dragons, blood, and damsels in distress -- wearing very little or next to nothing. These palaces were of course destroyed. But for a time, when  you said ‘in the first place’ you were calling up that place in your memory bank that was inhabited by a demon or a seductress that helped you remember something beautiful you had to say. Okay. We all have to make toast and do the laundry, and somebody has to fight the wars —not me (I’ve gone on about that at length, my cowardice) — but someone also must write the poems — be Rupert Brook in other words — or there isn’t anything to fight for. Would you rather die for nothing, because that’s what the world is — nothing? Without poets there is nothing to live or die for, unless you believe in God. (But someone invented him too). When I rail against the fiction which is COVID-19, I’m not railing against all fiction; I’m just appealing to you to to you find a better one — one that doesn’t involve puritanism, paranoia and putting yourself above other people. Instead I would recommend living in a palace of pleasure, with maidens and monsters, where you are always the hero. Living in ‘denial' is not just living in a river in Africa, it’s having the courage of your own dreams.

PLAGUE DIARY 96: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Yes yes, he’s just too old. Gary Cooper was 56, and he was making love to a 28 year old Audrey Hepburn. The censors balked, and Billy Wilder added an uncharacteristic line for a Parisian playboy “I just can seem to get to first base with her” which is hard to believe after several scenes which fade on Audrey Hepburn dropping a piece of clothing onto the floor. But this is movie confectionary. However there is one lovely thing; Gary Cooper is the kind of lover who carries with him a four man gypsy orchestra, and the only song they seem to know is “Fascination.’ My favourite Noel Coward line ‘extraordinary how potent cheap music is’ applies here: indeed musical magician Franz Waxman has come up with at least 20 different way to bewitch us with that song; it says something about his artistry in a movie this inept that ‘Fascination’ sometimes moved me to tears. (Or it says something about me.) The movie isn’t really inept; but Gary Cooper is, and I never thought he could act. But Audrey Hepburn’s artistry is quite unique and indescribable. Everything she does is precious but somehow honest too. In Love in the Afternoon she seems to be auditioning for Breakfast at Tiffany’s — there’s a little girl smugness; a cute game she seems to be playing with herself, and it’s something we all do — that is, pretend that our emotions are important. And when we pretend in that way, they suddenly seem to be. The only vaguely interesting idea in this movie is also the only gay thing in it. I know — I’m on about that again. What has happened to me in these ‘late blogs’? Why am I going on about gay gay gay? Aren’t you sick of it? Well it’s because gay is over — and it ended long before COVID-19. The idea that there might be a way of looking at the world in a camp or queer way, is presently so old-fashioned it's embarrassing. I remember sitting at a gay bar beside some drunk in the late 80s, watching a video of Divine from Pink Flamingos, and the drunk said “thank God we’ve left all that behind .” (Am I repeating myself? I’ve written so many of these friggin’ blogs I’m not sure.) Well gay is plainly over and no one has any patience anymore for the idea we are oppressed, or that a culture has developed out of that oppression. But in case you haven’t figured it out, I'm clinging onto this sinking ship as if it was Cleopatra's barge, and when I’m dead my friends will say —'Remember Sky? He was so gay — even up to the very end  —when gay was over — and absolutely no one was listening.' Well, the gayest thing about this movie is jealousy. It’s the only thing Love in the Afternoon has to offer really. Hepburn can’t get the elderly Cooper to fall in love with her. (Apparently Wilder used every trick he could to hide Coop’s age, at one point he photographed him through a curtain reflected in a window, and yes he looks better, but only because you can’t see him. Well let’s just suspend that disbelief, let’s say Hepburn has a grand-daddy fetish. Stranger things have happened, see blog #82) So Hepburn tries to make Cooper jealous. She leaves him a tape recording in which she recites long list of made-up and quite unlikely lovers, some of them quite fanciful (a Dutch alcoholic, a mountain climber with dimpled knees, etc) to drive Cooper crazy. He begins by laughing, but soon he’s sucked in and it’s not long before he’s getting drunk and breaking things. Of course straight people torture each other with jealousy too — but we homosexuals make a career of it. I think it’s partially because our relationships tend possibly to be open, whereas for straights that’s a nightmare not to be imagined. This was Albee’s betrayal in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Bette Davis wouldn’t play the role because she didn’t want to play a fag (and how wonderful it would have been to hear her quote ‘What a dump!” from her own movie Beyond the Forest!). But she got it right, George and Martha are George and Martin, and they are gay as the day —  which Albee hated anyone saying — but he’s dead so we can say anything we want. You know the only way they could drag Albee out of the closet was to catch him doing it with some guy in a sand dune — and he claimed he was just shaking the sand out of his bathing suit. I should forgive him, and I do, for his personal difficulties; but not his authorial ones. It’s not like Blanche in Streetcar, she is a woman — don’t you dare call her a man in drag! But Martha is exactly that. We’ve all known blousy drunken loud horny women (some of my best friends…) but there is something about Martha that transcends the female gender. Or maybe it’s the sexist nature of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; for ultimately though she taunts her nerdy husband, she finally submits to him. If it had been the other way around I would have believed this was a straight couple, because we all know the dirty secret of heterosexuality is that women — although they have little or no power in the ‘real’ world, run everything else — which means the bedroom and the heart. If Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a gay play, then it wouldn’t be sexist when George dominates Martha/Martin, and their fantasy baby would make sense, since I think that’s what most gay men are doing now when they adopt children — is having fantasy babies. (Uh-oh, I’m going to get in trouble for that. I know a couple in Hamilton who bought two kids and then returned them — as the kids were too much trouble. I think straight people have children for all the wrong reasons, why should gay people be any different?) Anyway I was on about jealousy and I got lost in Edward Albee. Jealousy is the thing that makes me know that I love — the man I love —more than anything, because I can’t rid myself of it, even after all these years. But the thing you might not understand is that it’s not his body that I covet, but his soul. They can’t take that away from me, as the song says, or they better not, because it’s ‘all I got’ and all that matters really — or haven’t you figured that out yet? That’s it’s only the soul that matters? Oh by the way that's a gay thing that you might be able to ‘learn’ from us; but I won’t be so presumptuous as to presume you might want to — as gay is over, and in the gay sense, so am I.

PLAGUE DIARY 95: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Underworld U.S.A. (1961)
“One thing I learned early on, is everybody’s lying: everyone has their own perception, none of it is true.” (Sam Fuller quoted by Tim Robbins.) I don’t like this movie; I suppose that means I’m a liar, and I kinda am (but as Sam says, everybody is). Fuller is one of Scorsese’s favourite filmmakers because he was trying to tell the truth about America. My problem is I identified with the character in this movie called ‘Cuddles’ played touchingly by Dolores Dorn. She’s the pretty blonde who Cliff Robertson rescues from  being murdered by thugs, and she has some of the best lines. The first time he makes love to her she says “isn’t there a story about a guy all alone in a desert for years and years — and then he meets an ocean?” And the next time she says “I die inside when you kiss me. ” But all this — in Sam Fuller’s world — is past it’s due date, because Sam Fuller’s films actually murder film noir. For one thing the violence is not in any way romantic (there are no venetian blinds) and Fuller makes it all super-gross. Cliff Robertson is out to kill the thugs who killed his Dad (in this way he is the anti-Hamlet) and promptly does so. In the meantime a thug runs over a little girl with his car, because he’s been told to. The thug is chatting with a sweet little girl about Mommy and Daddy. Then the boss tells him to kill her and does. After a shot of the girl lying dead on the ground by her bicycle — cut. A whole, naked, featherless, chicken carcass is pulled out of a bag and dumped in a pot. In another scene a guy is about to be burned to death, and is whimpering ‘No, no?” but they set him on fire anyway. Then one of the thugs asks another: “Gotta light?” (Funny, right?) But, for me, the most horrifying moments come with Cuddles, right after she has one of those old-fashioned film noir lines: “We got a right to climb of the sewer, and live like other people!” I’m thinking — right, yes, go for it Cuddles, but then she asks Cliff Robertson if they can get married, and Robertson says “Marry you?” and laughs hysterically. I like Scorcese — Fuller’s disciple, —why don’t I like this? I didn’t have a great day or a great night, I had sex with a very ordinary, reasonably unattractive guy. He had a really nice cheap, apartment that he was really proud of. Everything went fine, but it was nothing to write home about. And I guess I was just shocked by his ordinariness — which I know sounds horrible. But he was just a gay man - there are certainly a lot of them out there, middle aged, not particularly attractive, with lovely apartments and lots of sexual accoutrements, i.e. toys and drugs. He offered me crystal meth, of course, they all do, that’s also quite ordinary in gay ol’ Montreal. (Two guys wanted crystal last night.) Maybe I was seeing myself for the first time, as myself, as a regular, not very attractive middle-aged guy (like him) for whom promiscuous sex has become less a desire than a routine. Sam Fuller would want me to tell you about the gay bath house in Montreal about six months ago. (For all of you who care about bath houses, apparently the word is that ‘G.I. Joe’ in Montreal is re opening for sure after COVID-19, but ‘Oasis' is struggling for reasons that might soon be obvious.) Anyway, when I was at ‘Oasis’ six months ago some guy OD’d on drugs in the room next to me. It was a serious downer, and ruined my night. Now, I kinda meant that remark to sound callous — the truth is that he was fine, he didn’t die or anything — but we all had to kind of stand around looking at our naked selves in a very unsexual way while the medics took hours to carry him out (maybe that still sounds callous). Anyway, when I went back a couple nights later, somebody else OD’d in the same room. I’m not kidding. By this time it was clear to me that this was an epidemic (and no, I don’t have a heart of stone, I went to the front desk and expressed my concern about the serious drug problem there — but of course the attendant had zero thoughts on the subject). And, dare I say it, in terms of gay men right now, the crystal meth problem is more serious than friggin’ COVID-19? But no one wants to talk about it because a) gay men think it makes them look bad to talk about it and b) politically correct people think we’re all rich, and vain, and suntan too much, and are not at all interested in our ‘so-called’ problems. But if I got anything out of Underworld U.S.A — which constantly shoves ‘reality’ in your face — it might be an obligation to say this; gay men have serious addiction problems. I have an addiction problem. I went to a gay therapist once who told me all his gay clients usually got stewed in some way or another — booze or pot or drugs — to get laid. It has certainly always been a requisite of my sex life; I rarely have sex if I’m not in some way knackered. And you can say that’s screwed up, and I’d say yeah well, I hope your pot is not black, because that’s what you’re calling the kettle. Why, oh why, are we like this? Because we hate ourselves for what we are doing, sometimes right after, and often during — because for most of us it took years of lying and disappointing those close to us just to come to the realisation that we love men in that way. Speaking of gay therapists, I’ve never had one who did not get inappropriately involved in my personal (i.e. professional) life. Of course you’re not supposed to say that either. But this is Sam Fuller night. One of my gay therapists asked me to produce a play he wrote, and I finally did  —cuz I really needed the therapy. And the other one became obsessed with a young man whose name I won’t mention. This young man he was in love with was an actor who I barely knew, and had only briefly worked with. And this therapist started asking me if I knew who the young man was screwing. Please don’t think I am saying all this because I hate gay men. The point is I’m saying it cuz I love them. But when you see gay men walking those little dogs — and the gay men have their gay noses in the air — the nose that announces ‘my life is so perfect’ — please try and realize it’s merely tragic overcompensation. So please don’t bemoan their ‘privileged’ status; no. They need your help. It’s our fault, we’ve been going on and on about how ‘normal’ we are for years, and now it’s come back to bite us in the very area that got us into so much trouble in the first place.

PLAGUE DIARY 94: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

The Picture of Dorian Grey (1945)
It’s somewhat tedious. And Hurd Hadfield (Dorian) is just not beautiful enough. He’s kind of prissy and (yeah, say it) well, gay. He also struck me as thoughtful and intelligent, I mean what would it be like to have Peter Lawford  —who plays a minor role — as Dorian? Dorian’s supposed to be a sex object for chrissakes, and Wilde said “intellect destroys the beauty of any face” so what about even Warren Beatty or James Dean? Not Hurd Hadfield — all effete and intellectual—  and just too delicate. Male beauty is not delicate. Wilde used to hang around with the working-class trade — smokey, card-playing, bisexual street-boy thugs (he called it ‘feasting with panthers’) who sold their bodies for a nickel. Yes, he was ‘in love’ with Lord Alfred Douglas, but they used to pick up boys together — because that’s what gay men do. Gay men love beauty. And if you are a young ‘non-binary’ reading this, fine, and if you hate pornography and gay bars, well more power to you — but someday you’ll come ‘round (if you are any sort of person at all), because beauty always wins. Especially when it’s gone. Can I give you a very good reason why beauty is inherently good? Because when you are enraptured by it you are not doing anything else.You are not waging wars, or being jealous, or sad, or mean; you are contemplating beauty. Because let’s face it — when we’re NOT contemplating beauty (or screwing it) — we’re often up to no good. The Picture of Dorian Grey is a rather inept adaptation of the famous Wilde book; the only real discovery is Angela Lansbury — angelic as Sybil Vane. She sings beautifully— and is the character that Dorian of course drives to suicide. George Sanders is urbane enough as the Oscar Wilde stand-in (although he’s not in the movie much). He lives “only for pleasure” and  has all the great quips, like: “I believe anything provided it’s quite incredible.” Lonely old women say of him: “I despise your principles, but I enjoy the way you express them.” Remember, being obsessed with beauty — as Oscar Wilde was — does not mean being superficial, it means positing that the superficial has more depth than depth itself. Let me put it this way. Wilde was a modern sophist, which means he believed persuasion was more important than truth. According to the Greek sophist Gorgias we must be wary of ‘truth’ because in reality — what we accept as reality— is what we have been persuaded is true. Like right now. We have been persuaded that COVID-19 means “I care for other people.” It doesn’t matter than nobody we know has it, or is likely to have it, or die of it, or even to feel any lousier than they normally feel (except  about not being allowed out of the house). It doesn’t matter that all the ‘facts’ we have been told (like that we can get it from smooth surfaces) are no longer facts. What matters is this one beautiful fiction: we are good people if we believe in COVID-19. This is persuasion, this is art, this is beauty. Gorgias would have us be conscious of how much we are swayed by beauty. So again, if you are 20 year old non-binary who thinks all my talk of beauty is body-fascist, and also that I’m too old and should just shut up — remember, it is you who are the true aesthete, baby, not me — because you are addicted to the incredibly sexy, alluring, untrue, fantasy-construction called COVID-19. (Now, back to the movie.) The only thing that interests me in this dull adaptation of Wilde’s book are the fetching descriptions of the dens of iniquity which serve to symbolize Dorian Grey’s dissipation. Dissipation has always interested me. (Have you ever read David Mamet’s uninentionally hilarious Edmund? It’s a play about dissipation by a man who’s obviously never ‘dissipated’). I, on there other hand, have solid credentials; I’ve been dissolute all my life, and especially lately. Now what was considered dreadful in those days (and now) was drugs — but the word ‘drugs' is mentioned only once in The Picture of Dorian Grey. What is instead necessary to conjure images of decadence are two things: cripples (I only use that word because this derogatory slur is one which would have been used by the filmmakers in 1945 and also, I am a cripple) and dwarves. They seem to hangout where Dorian hangs out. Inevitably these places are dark, and there is an old man playing classical piano in a minor key, and there is a lonely bottle on a table, and the girls are far too friendly. The redolent place names include: a “low den in a distant part of Whitechapel” and some “dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields.” George Sanders tells us that Dorian would “wander to the half-world of London on mild summer evenings.” Well here I am in Montreal and it is a very hot summer evening. Tonight, I intend to wander — like I did last night, and the night before. You will have to decide whether what I’m describing is the ‘half-world’ of Montreal. (I think it is an entire world in itself.) Yesterday during the day I was struck twice by the re-incarnation of my ex-boyfriend Shaun O’Mara. I was waiting for the streetlight to change and was initially accosted by his beauty. It was startling. Speaking of ‘feasting with panthers’ he was definitely one of those — effeminate in a street-drag-ish sort of way. Anyway this kid — he was maybe 20-something - was wearing tight black tights and a kind of black cape wrap thing that kept falling open — quite deliberately displaying his mouth-watering, lean, muscled physique. He had a bruise on his left cheek. Later, when I was sitting in front of Starbucks (using their wifi to post a blog like this) he swept up beside me “Sir...would you mind watching my dog? He’s an ex-junkie dog, so people always want to steal him.” I didn’t understand, but I loved him calling me ‘sir,’ so of course I complied. After, he thanked me, and called me ‘sir’ again. Later, he waved at me, as if we were old friends. Two nights ago, I followed another young man down the street at midnight and he pulled down his pants and showed me his ass. Complications ensued: we ended up trying to have sex on someone’s dark doorstep (ill-advised!). And last night another young man I followed into an alley was direct and to the point; all he really needed (in addition to the usual) was attention paid to his nipples. Wilde apparently said that “the pride of individualism is half the fascination of evil.” I’d say, true — if I believed anything really was true. But it’s more like a ‘pride of panthers,’ and yes, nothing could make me happier than having them feast on me.

PLAGUE DIARY 93: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Niagara (1953)
It’s trying to be Hitchcock. Yes there is a climactic run up a stairway (stolen from Vertigo) but there is no suspense, no rhythm — nor are there interesting camera shots, just the thunder of the ‘threatening falls.’ And yes, Joseph Cotton goes over the falls at the end; big deal. We don’t care for him anyway, and it’s not his fault, because he’s just out of the nuthouse. But what makes him nuts? This is never clear; insane is a euphemism for undesirable and unexplainable, and because of the inhumanness of Cotton’s character, inhuman. Jean Peters is the ‘nice’ girl married to the annoyingly normal Max Showalter. They are the Cutlers — and the opposite of Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotton. They came to Niagara not to screw or see the falls, but to read books and meet his boss. Jean Peters is fine (they almost cast Ann Baxter — thank God they didn’t) but the Cutlers are so infuriatingly normal that you want to kill them, though they are meant to be endearing. When they meet Joseph Cotton, they are quite confused by his anger, and when Cotton speaks in an unhinged way about the fury of logs going down the river, Peters says: “I’m one of those logs that just hangs around in the calm.” (And that is why we are living in this torturous unendurable lockdown, because everybody is a friggin’ ‘calm log.’) But what’s really despicable about all this is the misuse of Marilyn Monroe. It’s horrifying seeing her,--in her first starring role -- forced to play the femme fatale — when she is the epitome of sexual innocence. Her every move says: “I’m sweet as a lamb and hot as hell” and that, of course, is why we love her. After Marilyn waddles by in some skintight number, Showalter asks Peters “Why can’t you get a dress like that?” and she answers: “If you want a dress like that you have to start working on it at age 13.” At one point Showalter tries to get her to pose for the camera in a sexy bathing suit, and Peters can’t. “Just inhale,” he says. But Marilyn says it right out, tormenting her wildly jealous husband — “I’m meeting somebody—  just anybody handy — as long as he’s a man.” (I guess that’s what they call a ‘handyman?’) Cotton says — “She’s a tramp. I’ll tell you now so you won’t have to ask.” And indeed Marilyn ends up the way all tramps end up, dead. Well I’m tired of this normalcy, whether it’s new or old. But let’s call it what it is — not the ‘new normal’— but puritanism. I’ll tell you now how I started writing this blog, I wrote a very innocent essay — not part of this series — simply a journalistic style piece about COVID-19 — called COVID-19 and the New Puritanism. You can look it up if you want to, it’s at the very beginning of all these blogs (in March). I sent it to Toronto theatre critic, J. Kelly Nestruck. He sent me an email saying: “Shame on you Sky, for writing this.” Well thanks J. Kelly. You inspired me to sit down every day and bring on shame, scorn, approbation and perhaps even an assassination attempt or two, by writing what are now 93 blogs, all swirling around the subject of COVID-19 and puritanism. But this particular battle for the human soul has been going on for awhile. My friend Sally says: “It’s the cavaliers against the roundheads all over again.” It started with woke-ness and will end with everyone shutting up because they’re afraid they’ve all said the wrong thing. (And I mean artists most of all.) This so-called ‘pandemic’ is about puritanism — always has been and always will be — how could it be about anything else? In Vancouver tonight, anti-racist protestors are singing and dancing at a beach-side festival, getting juiced up, and coming on to each other. I hope the orgy goes on long into the night. But in Ontario, we have been told by Fatty Ford that —although we might be able to open up bars someday soon -- inside said bars, we won’t be allowed to sing and dance. (Yup. What is this, Footloose?) The message is clear, and it’s a puritan one: if you are a good person with an important politically and morally approved philosophy, then you can do whatever the frig’ you want. If, however, you have no socially improving didactic to offer, but instead merely wish to celebrate love, sex, your body, its urges — or just the hope that you might get laid tonite — well no, sorry we gotta shut that down. Ever since those freaks in hair shirts got drummed out of England in the 1500s and spread to our hapless continent we’ve had to put up with those who shake their fingers and think they know better. The ones I love most are ‘The Shakers.’ Remember them? They were a protestant sect that banned sex (oddly, their ranks have thinned somewhat). The Shakers used to gather once a month to shake their booty in wild and epileptic fashion. They also invented the hammer, which shows you that repression is good for something. (That is, if you like hammers.) But the COVID-19 lockdown is the triumph of the no-fun puritan thought police. Next they’ll be telling us that some thoughts are loud and spread particles that kill people.  But it won’t work. It never works. I remember years ago when Christopher Newton visited my house in Toronto. He was gazing despondently at my landlord’s lawn. It was planted with spurge. Spurge is supposed to spread like grass. It didn’t. Christopher — a gardener — frowned and observed, sadly: ‘spurge never works.’ Neither does puritanism — because it is not human. Marilyn Monroes is humanity. Humanity is in her ass — as it shakes like Jello when she prances with unbridled joy down a busy street, turning heads, busting eyeglasses, inflaming genitalia. It’s in her hands, as she tries valiantly to cover her humungous breasts with a sheer wrap composed of nothing. Her hair is blonder than blonde, and her lips redder than an orangutan’s butt.  How do I break the news to you? That’s a blowjob walk, and those are blowjob lips, and blowjob eyes, and yes, Marilyn has a blowjob way of talking. Yes it’s obscene — and she’s obscene, and she should be banned. So I hope you’re happy — all you puritans — because she ends up dead at the end of Niagara, and she ended up dead in real life too, and you know what? You killed her. Protest that accusation all you want. (Perhaps that’s why they call you ‘protestants’?) But you puritans doth protest too much. And I assure you, that — though I often do — I am not, in this particular moment, overstating the case.

PLAGUE DIARY 92: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

My Favorite Wife (1940)
It’s all very funny and very gay. Garson Kanin (director) and Leo McCarey (writer) are skilled craftsman — but you need actors who can pull it off. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are so essentially funny and sweet that even an inept vehicle (which this is not) couldn’t miss. It’s screwball comedy; so the premise itself is ridiculous, but we don’t care. Irene Dunne, an anthropologist (okay) disappeared on a tropical island 7 years ago, and happens to appear on Grant’s door in a sailor suit the day he is about to get married again. Grant, when acting out how he might tell his new wife that he will have to annul their marriage, offers the limply inadequate ‘I’ll be fine,’ but it’s the indescribable expression — and the half-hearted proffered handshake — that give us the giggles. And when Irene Dunne threatens to run off to a south sea island with Randolph Scott it is Grant’s perplexed reaction that is both crazy and hilarious. But the heart of the movie is Dunne, who must — although she knows he loves her best from the start — still, inevitably, torture Cary Grant. That is the first gay aspect of this movie (no, I didn’t mean happy). It has a Noel Cowardesque, comedy-of-manners tone, which means this couple are so much in love — and so evenly matched —that their relationship can survive lacerating arguments and perilous games with impunity. Dunne is annoyed because her husband has married someone else in her absence (who wouldn’t be) so she puts him through hell by pretending to be in love with Randolph Scott. The woman here is in total control. (I know this  is not an accurate reflection of heterosexual life in the 40s — but it’s a fantasy of it; and one which comforted women, not so much men). But the other thing — besides Grant’s victimization at the hands of a woman— which makes this movie a frightening to men (and a joy for women) is the feminizing of Cary Grant. It doesn’t take much to do that. If Grant was before your time, think of Ryan Reynolds — certainly as handsome — and with just about as much charm. Reynolds (though straight, unlike Grant) is a threat to no one, there is something puppyish about him, and you long to see him wag his tail. But Grant’s lack of threat was related to his sexuality. After all, his first gig was as sex object for Mae West. It was to him she delivered the famous, often misquoted: “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” The indignities imposed on Grant in My Favorite Wife are endless, and it’s hard to imagine Clark Gable or John Wayne putting up with them. At one point his new wife can’t figure out why he won’t consummate the marriage, so she hires a psychiatrist to analyze him — who happens to catch Grant trying on a new dress and hat for Irene Dunne (who has just fallen into a hotel pool). The question here of course, is — is Grant a cross-dresser, or worse yet, gay? Now I know this is a screwball comedy, but that swimming pool is the heart of the ‘gayness’ of My Favorite Wife — in quite a literal sense. First of all, before falling into the pool, Irene Dunne eats lunch there wearing a fur hat and carrying a fur muff. (What planet are we on? Everyone else is in bathing suits!) And then there is the moment when Cary Grant goes to the pool to size-up Randolph Scott. He envies Scott’s Olympic-style diving. As Grant watches, he pats the sweat from his brow — presumably because he is intimidated by the physical prowess of his rival for Dunne’s love. (But is that the real reason?) Later Grant is on the phone and he can’t get the image of Scott’s perfect body out of his head. The truth is (and there’s no reason to disbelieve this) when those pool scenes were shot, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were lovers. In fact they had the audacity (in 1940) to rent a room together at the hotel where the pool scenes for My Favorite Wife were filmed. So in real life Cary Grant couldn’t get Randolph Scott out of his own pool noodle, and it all had nothing to do with Irene Dunne. As legend goes, Grant and Scott were lovers from 1930 until their deaths. But they were forced to vacate the apartment they shared in 1932 and marry women in order to save their careers. I came out when I was 29 years old. Until then, I had sex only with women. Do you know what that does to you? I’m not talking about having sex with women (that was boring but doable) it’s not having sex with who you really want to have sex with, and pretending to enjoy sex with someone else  — that's what really drives you nuts. Like many gay men, I am a perpetual adolescent. Ever wonder why? Because we never had a real adolescence. When something like that is taken away it can never be replaced. I don’t want to hear anymore about how fabulous gay marriage is. Gay boys are still shamed for being gay, and take far too long to come out. Who cares if they think they can get married when they are 25? You need to be 12 years old, and have crush on someone of the same sex, and have long silly conversations on the phone with them, and then when you’re 13 or so, you start kissing the same sex guy you are in love with, and then when you are 15 you start having fumbling sex, and then when you are 18 you start doing it. That’s a somewhat ideal timeline — we all know it can happen a lot more quickly — or slowly— for heterosexuals.  But you get the idea. The point is, it’s supposed to happen like that for gays too. And if it doesn’t it scars you for life.  Why don’t we ever hear that Leo McCary, Irene Dunne and Garson Kanin either knew — or didn’t know — that My Favorite Wife was made as tongue in cheek reference to the actual life-long love affair between Cary Grant and Randolph Scott? Because to speak now of the gayness of My Favourite Wife only means it’s a happy, witty flic.  I have no doubt Grant’s sense of humour was his way of dealing with his sexuality, because it’s so much easier to laugh than to cry. Besides you can’t cry all the time. Like so many gay men, Cary Grant was a little boy who was never allowed to grow up. All gay men are thus — ’Peter Pans.’ What accompanies that condition is our much documented and misinterpreted obsession with death. And dying, for some gay men, even to this day — might seem like an ‘awfully big adventure.’ But the world is selfish. And perhaps without the pain of men like Cary Grant, we would not, alas, have as much pleasure.

PLAGUE DIARY 91: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Knife in the Water (1962)
This is art; which I know sounds pretentious. But — Just. Stop. Crucifying. Roman. Polanski. I don’t care what he did, it has nothing to do with his work. Can I tell you what Shakespeare did? He accused his wife of a bearing a child by another man, which killed her. He also murdered a man by accident, and he imported an Italian castrato to England, to diddle. (This is, of course, if you think Shakespeare was Edward de Vere, The Earl of Oxford). Never mind my parenthetical speculations. Do you think a nice man wrote Macbeth or The Sonnets? Do you know that the word ‘black’ meant ‘evil’ to Shakespeare? And the word ‘nothing’ meant ‘vagina’? (i.e. Much Ado About Nothing?). If we jettisoned every artist who was an asshole there would be no art. And since we’re on the topic, who is actually not an asshole? I’m an asshole, and I admit it. Everyone is an asshole — and people who don’t admit they are assholes are the biggest assholes of all. In real life Roman Polanski has a tendency to objectify teenage girls and manipulate them. That is not good. But I don’t know if he is evil, because I am not God. Speaking of crucifying — there are at least two scenes of  Knife in the Water when it is implied that the young hitchhiker is Jesus. 1. He lies on the boat in a bathing suit (you can see all he’s got) with his arms spread in a crucified fashion. 2. He hangs off the boat and moves his feet in a way that makes it look as if he is walking on water. (I’m sure there is another instance, as these things tend to come in threes.) I cite Polanski’s references to Christ because it is typical of the poetic nature of this film, and that’s what makes it art. This film has no message and is deliberately confounding. It is about something, though — sex. All three protagonists are very sexy, and spend most of their time  in bathing suits on a boat. The moment the older man and his girlfriend decide to pick up the young hitchhiker in their car, the rivalry between the two males is tangible. It’s sexy too, which Polanski is completely aware of. One gets the feeling that if these two men weren’t fighting each other they would be screwing. The hitchhiker is blonde and has impeccable cheekbones. One can assume that to some degree he is a stand-in for Polanksi himself, because Polanksi ended up dubbing his voice over the young actor’s (inappropriately mature sounding) voice. Or we may not assume that at all; with Knife in the Water one should not assume anything. In one of those idiotic IMDB reviews somebody says ‘surprisingly, no violence.’ How stupid can a person be: there is absolutely no overt violence in Knife in the Water, but this is an incredibly violent movie. From the moment the knife appears we expect someone to get stabbed, and though no one does, they might as well have been. This is the kind of film that makes me think heterosexuality must be unbearable for the participants (I’m sorry to condescend to heterosexuality again. Or maybe I’m not.) And Polanski is completely aware of this ridiculousness. The girl that the older man and the hitchhiker appear to be vying for is technically speaking, quite attractive, that is, when she takes of her spectacles. But riding in the car wearing cat’s eye glasses perched on her nose, with a tan that looks pasted on, and black curly locks pasted down, she looks more doll than human — which you can attribute to Polanski’s perversion — but I would attribute to his genius. (The misogyny in this film is observed and intentional, not accidental and incriminating.) Polanski wants us to look at how heterosexual men behave around women, how insane they get. He does not draw conclusions; he just wishes us to see it. I, of course know nothing about heterosexuality. However I was bending over behind a fence this afternoon in Montreal, and I have no idea really why I wasn’t arrested. Yes, I was doing the dirty, if you can imagine, smack in the middle of day, because the bars are closed, and the bathhouses are closed, and a guy like me who needs those places ends up in crazy positions doing crazy things just after lunch. Some guy in his backyard on the other side of the fence was varnishing a table, and I certainly didn’t want to ruin his day by making sex noises. The problem was  that making sex noises was exactly what I wanted to do. So the whole thing got somewhat aborted. But it was an awful lot of fun at first. This time I am telling you this embarrassing detail for a reason —in order to set my record straight on heterosexuality— in other words, I want you to know that we fags do ridiculous things too. it’s sex, after all, that drives us to do crazy things, not sexuality. But I also want you to know something else about my day. I sat on a Montreal balcony tonight with someone who I love very much and I’m not supposed to talk about, but I’m going to talk about — and we hugged and kissed in a way we haven’t for awhile. This person is the stuff of poetry, and he slyly seemed to be asking why I hadn’t written a poem about him lately — because, it’s true, I used to to — all the time .And I said, and I was not lying: it’s because I don’t write poetry anymore, as no one will publish them. But it’s also because he told me not to write about him. But tonight he said; “That was then, this is now.” So maybe I will write a poem about him again. Sometime soon. Or maybe that’s what this is trying to be. For I will say, one reason he wanted me to write about him is because --you might not be aware --that although crazy sex with strangers is kind of a habit with me, I am also very much in love with one person only. And if that seems strange or unbelievable to you, well, I’m not going to say something condescending. But it’s like Knife in the Water —it’s just there, and it’s kind of scary, and it means a lot of things, but it’s also lovely. And that is the definition of art. And if that still sounds pretentious -- I’m not going to be one of those bad teachers who tries to tell you what it all means. The greatest service I can offer you — or anyone else — is to rest in a place of conflict and confusion, because, paradoxically; that is the only place tranquillity lies.

PLAGUE DIARY 90: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

They Drive By Night (1940)
It’s two movies in one. The first is a thriller for men; the second, a melodrama for women. But women dominate throughout, and They Drive By Night presents bold arguments both for and against ‘#me too.’ George Raft and Humphrey Bogart drive trucks all through the night, and the only way to make money is to keep driving even if you get sleepy behind the wheel. The film treats us to one horrifying accident, and all we can think about is, will Raft — or his brother Bogart — die like that? Well Bogart does fall asleep while driving, and he loses an arm. But throughout the first half of They Drive by Night Ann Sheridan dominates. She’s always was kinda tough, but here — as hash-slinger Cassie — she wields the feminine wisecrack like a knife. When a rude diner admires her ‘classy chassis’ she quips: “you couldn’t pay for the headlights” and when another says “I ain’t got a wife,” she says “that’s not hard to understand.” How do women survive an environment when every man is an octopus and a little morning objectification is as common as coffee? (Sheridan finally quits her job because her boss tries to tie her apron — “except I wasn’t wearing one.” ) But Sheridan falls for George Raft, and suddenly The Drive by Night is uncommonly moving. He buys her a room for the night. She asks him to leave: “Nice guys always leave when ladies ask them to.” But he doesn’t leave, he falls asleep; so she puts him to bed and she sleeps in a chair. It still kinda breaks the ‘#metoo’ rules but she’s in love with him, so who cares — suddenly a little objectification is a very fine thing. (I go on about how heterosexuality irritates me — but I’m really on your side guys — believe it or not; I want  you straights to pull through despite the impossibility of your project!) Anyway that’s the first half of They Drive By Night; the second half is all about women, but tailor made for homosexuals, with the campiest moment in film history; you haven’t really lived until you’ve seen Ida Lupino go mad. She’s a fabulous actress, and went on to become a successful director. Lupino only appears a half an hour into the film — as a truck mogul Alan Hale’s girlfriend — but right away she’s sassy as hell, and wearing wearing two dead foxes at one point, and a sequinned hat with a satin dress at another. She’s got her eye on George Raft, and nothing will stop her. She kills her husband; but how she kills her him is a riot. The automatic garage door was intend in 1926, but it must not have been perfected until later, which would explain why it dominates the plot of They Drive By Night.  Anyway, Hale (Lupino’s rich idiot husband) is so delighted with the new technology he shows it off at his party. After a post-party drive, Lupino has had it with Hale and wants George Raft instead, so she decides to do away with her husband. When he’s dead drunk she turns on the car ignition. At that point she must only walk past the ‘seeing eye’ and the garage doors shut. Cut. She’s crying pitifully for the district attorney pretending it was all an accident — then she walks straight into the camera with a wry smile. When she tries to frame George Raft for the murder things get really juicy. On the witness stand she loses her mind with a stupefying extremity of emotion that is not to be missed. The scene calls for an operatic breakdown, and Lupino was not one to let such histrionics intimidate her. Seemingly make-up-less and hysterical, her hands combing through her gorgeously disheveled hair, she builds to nutty unhinged, climax, wide-eyed, laughing/crying, pulling out all the stops:“The doors made me do it! It was the doors! The seeing eye doors! They made me —” etc. etc. Perhaps it is the understatement of the century when the defense attorney says: “Your honour I move that this case be dismissed on the ground that the the sole valid eyewitness to the alleged crime is obviously insane.” The newspaper reporters scream: “Doctor Says She’s Daffy!” And George Raft ends up with the wisecracking Ann Sheridan. All is well. The nice women get their way, they want their men home — Bogart has no choice due to his missing arm — and Raft stays off the road, appropriating mad Ida Lupino’s truck business. Perhaps women should run the world, except when they are Ida Lupino. Why do gay men love crazy women so much? I’m not entirely sure if it’s any of your business — which has been a major issue in my life. When I wrote my first novel (Guilty, 1997) I defined ‘bears’ and bear customs; some gay men didn’t like it that I spilled our secrets. It’s not a matter of sabotaging gay culture; frankly I think the looming dissolution of ‘camp’ is a threat that has been greatly exaggerated. We will eternally love/hate our own culture. And the voice of the madwoman is the loudest woman’s voice in a sexist room; the vulnerability and sensitivity that has been forced on her has finally driven her batty. Lupino plays a desiring woman with an oaf of a husband who she plays as long as she can. But we still live in a world where the only way a woman can get truly, deeply rich is to marry some goof, filthy with shekels. So one might finally get tired of that numskull and, sadly, decide to off him. If this is not every woman’s reality it is certainly many women’s fantasy. Good for her I say. Everything Ida Lupino does is in this movie says I'm not nice and I'm not going to take it anyore!. As much as I loved seeing George Raft and Ann Sheridan fall in love, —once they do, Sheridan is no longer interesting. She’s bought the housewife Kool-aid. Why do I love crazy women? Perhaps it’s because I’m a crazy woman, and never have I felt crazier than now, when the headlines today shriek that Public Health has decided — yes, are you sitting down?  — that touching surfaces — and/or strangers — is not actually liable to transmit COVID-19. So why have we been insanely sanitizing surfaces and avoiding crowds? The Premier of Ontario (Fatty Ford) has just told us that we are allowed to hug our families. How crazy is it that the government must give us this permission? Am I crazy, or is Ford? The wackiest thing of all though, is that I’ve never really cared whether you, dear reader, have ever liked me. I can’t do without you, but I know that your scorn is just as addicting — for both of us — as is your pleasure.

PLAGUE DIARY 89: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

I Confess (1953)
Failed Hitchcock, and yet the French love it, why? There are certain images, yes, especially towards the end, of Clift fighting his way through a hostile crowd, and then the confrontation with the crazed killer in what appears to be an old proscenium theatre. There are the steeples, and the very oddness of something filmed in Quebec City. And then Montgomery Clift’s face, which simply, I think, expresses and contains the torture of labouring over a role that he doesn’t understand with a director who doesn’t understand him — but that may work, in a way. Apparently Clift — like most method actors at that time — had an acting coach with him on set. But the anecdote that survives is this: Hitchcock asks him to look up at a sign and Clift says “My character wouldn’t do that”. I think this is characteristic of a certain ‘method’ narcissism that cannot be defended. But the primary issue with this film is Clift’s dilemma as a priest accused of murder (and this may be why Catholics seem to like it and not Protestants) is wholly internal and novelistic (I Confess is based on a novel). The priest cannot prove that he is innocent unless he admits that he has — at one time — been in love with a woman who is still in love with him. But once that is ‘cleared up’ (i.e. — once his flirtation with a married woman comes to light) and he does admit being with her the night of the murder) he still cannot defend himself against the accusation, because the murderer has confessed to him (hence the title) and as a priest he cannot reveal what has been admitted in confession. Non-Catholics don’t understand Clift’s reluctance; Catholics of course do understand. So we WASPS continue to be befuddled by the film. But not if we think of I Confess as  concerning a man whose very integrity and devotion to his personal truth results in him being charged with murder. But then there’s Anne Baxter. The less said about her the better, but I just can’t resist. It makes me furious that she gets screen time in anything. Seeing her playing the angelic young (platinum blonde) Quebecois girl — in a pinafore — with a ridiculous little cross around her neck, is just painful. Anne Baxter is so breathy — all she does is breathe, in her moments of what should be her deepest emotion, she appears to be straining particularly hard to pass a breathalyzer test. She complained of Clift’s drunkeness during the shoot, but it is more likely not simply that he was homosexual and dreaded kissing her, but that he was an actor and dreaded acting with her. At any rate; she’s horrible. The only time all that false earnest breathiness ever worked was in All About Eve, where she was supposed to be playing a fake person. (She was perfect in that role.) It would seem that a movie with a title like this might prompt me to discuss my propensity for confessing, it is after all my favourite thing; and so — why?. Two people I barely know but very much like told me today they ‘always read my blog,’ and I was dumb with terror. If they are telling the truth, then it’s petrifying to have a long drive to Toronto with them (I was being driven to Toronto by them to take the train to Montreal, what a queen I am and how sweet they are). When they told me that I said “you know all my secrets now” — thinking about the last blog where I talked about having sex in a crawl space in my apartment with Shaun. I didn’t mention the poppers. Poppers will be the death of me. If you’re not gay, then you don’t know what they are. it’s interesting that there is a drug that completely related to ones particularly sexuality. What are they? Hard to describe — it’s like describing getting hard, because that’s what happens. Poppers are purely a sex drug, but people do use them for dancing. Name drop; my favourite poppers story is doing them with Lucy Peacock’s husband Christopher Thomas a thousand and one years ago. I was living with him and Duncan McIntosh (Queen of P.E.I. — therein lies a ‘tail)’ at the Shaw Festival, in a boring house, in the boring suburbs, where we were expected to live in for some reason, because I think we were all technically pretty low on the Shaw Totem Pole. I used to go drinking and driving with Chris. That is he used to drink and drive. I won’t have you say a word against him; Chris is a prince of a man and Lucy is lucky to have him (I’m not saying just she is, anybody would be lucky) he was one of the sweetest kindest straight men I’ve ever known (I talked against straight men in one of my recent blogs and I want to take it all back). Anyway, now and then he’d say “Sky Buddy are we going for a drive?” And he’d hop in his car with a six pack (when that meant beer) and we would  (as Patti Smith says) grease the night. He was very Sam Shepherd — and so I cast him as Sam Shepherd in a play — maybe those drives were an audition, but I would never accuse him of that, he was too nice a guy. Anyway, one day we were sitting around NOT acting (Duncan and Chris) or directing (in my case) and bored out of our skulls, and we started chatting about poppers. And Chris said what are those? And we tried to explain that they facilitated gay sex (they open the sphincter — well you asked for it— sorry you didn’t but I told you anyway) — and what’s really great for dancing is that they supply a momentary rush, and then it’s over, so it’s a drug you can completely control. Not that it doesn’t kill you eventually (like everything does — and I would imagine faster than some other things) but the immediate effects of it, are completely under your control. That’s what I like. I am addicted to poppers but I hardly ever do them, because essentially it’s somewhat akin to lying on the kitchen floor and huffing cleaning products. And we do all have to draw the line somewhere. But occasionally I still use them (uh-huh, we get it) and they will probably kill me. But I will be in good company. It was Christopher Newton who said (sorry to keep mentioning him but I did love him very much) who said to me when Tennessee Williams died — “it was poppers.” I was skeptical. But Christopher insisted “He choked on a bottle cap. A BOTTLE CAP — haven’t you ever put a popper bottle cap in your mouth and taken a wiff" — and yes, in fact the two of us had in fact done that the night before. The question is, why am I telling you all this? Is it just pure self-expellation, or a kind of public humiliation, or is it just after I sink low I want to somehow sink lower? I call it my own integrity, as crazy as that is, to tell you the truth and nothing but the truth. And in this sense I am as crazy as Montgomery Clift — he would not tell the secret, even if kills him, and I must  tell you all -- or it seems like death to me.