I have seen

photographs of Carol Marcus, but I had never seen her, in the flesh, which is what it feels like when you watch her in Mikey and Nicky. I was going to say that I actually saw her, for that’s what it felt like to see her ‘act’ in this film. You probably haven’t seen Mikey and Nicky -- directed by Elaine May in 1972. The film is iconic; not only is it totally absorbing and deeply upsetting but it is an exercise in method acting. The two handsome stars — Peter Falk and John Cassavetes -- wrangle and wrestle and woo, bonding and then hating, snared in an impossibly conflicted platonic love. They are mafia thugs and Falk has been told to kill his friend. There was a huge dispute over the film; May took ‘too long’ to make it, she famously just left the camera running at times. Hence, the studio stole the film from her, putting out their own edit that they considered more marketable; May kept the original footage and ultimately released her own version which you can see on Criterion. May knew Cassavetes and Falk -- as friends and method actors -- would love being left to their own devices at times. Much of the dialogue is improvised, and it’s a lesson in acting — long silences, unexplained chuckles, odd stares, explosive non-sequiturs — the two men are connecting in a way we don’t completely understand, but it is for that reason, perhaps, that it is so convincing. This all fascinates me as a gay man, because if ever there was a film about same sex love, it’s this. I had a friendship with a straight man like this in my 20s — he was a confirmed hetero but we lived together for awhile, and shared a strange co-dependency  filled with love and rancour. Well dropped into the very heart of Mikey and Nicky is Carol Marcus (her acting name was Carol Grace). Nicky (Cassavetes) wants to get laid, so he drags his friend to the apartment of an ‘easy' girlfriend who he characterises as kind of mad, delusional slut who will sleep with anybody. The scene is heartbreaking; Nicky tries to have sex with her while Mikey tries to make himself invisible in the next room. When the sexual encounter is over (it’s not clear exactly what happened) Nicky tries to persuade a reluctant Mikey to screw Carol too — she lies hurt, whimpering on the floor (Nicky later comes back to the apartment for final brief painful scene). I did not know this was Carol Marcus until a friend told me. I remembered only her haunting beauty and her pain. Of course such a movie could not be made today, instead we have ‘Wonder Woman’ and assorted other exploitation crap that frame women as 'powerful.’ The problem is that in real life women are not presidents and rarely corporate heads, and they are still treated regularly by some men as ‘mad sluts.’ We don’t solve this reality by hiding it and pasting together corny peons to the heroism of women, instead we are just shrouding the problem and nurturing its toxic growth. Elaine May was a kind of genius (her other films A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid are also masterpieces) but no one speaks of her anymore. Perhaps her crime is still hanging out with Woody Allen -- he recently starred her in his TV series A Crisis in Six Scenes.  (It has been universally panned because well -- we all hate Woody, don't we?)  The fact that he is the only person who seems to care that Elaine May lives or dies should count for something. But back to Carol Marcus. Who was she? You might well ask, her mother had her at age 16, and promptly put her up for adoption. Her mother then married a wealthy tycoon who scooped little Carol out of the orphanage to live  in a mansion. (This tumultuous history should have been enough to warp any child.) Carol went on to marry writer William Saroyan after hanging out with Oona O’Neil (who married Charlie Chaplin) and  Gloria Vanderbilt (who married Howard Hughes). All romanced these considerably older -- very very famous -- men, as teenagers. Saroyan (a brilliant writer) abused Marcus. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Marcus — galloping about in cafe society with the two other heiresses -- was a madcap, witty, desirable and very desiring young woman (she said she only stayed with Saroyan because he was a good lay.). Capote admitted that she was the model for Holly Golightly, and one can imagine her at the age of 18 enchanting the 45 year old Saroyan, who was more than twice her age. For many — and most of us are gay men — Holly Golightly is a very special gay heroine, she is the type of woman gay men adore and want to be — promiscuous, tortured, brilliant, performative, and beautiful. We don’t quite know why we aspire to be her, but we do (just as we want to be Sally Bowles). I have had many female friends like Holly Golightly and I think they forgive me for at times aspiring to be them. No one speaks of Carol Marcus either, but I learned from Mikey and Nicky that she was more than just a famous muse  -- she was an artist of considerable talent. Capote wanted Marylin Monroe for the role of Holly; he was disappointed when they cast Audrey Hepburn. If you look at early photos of Carol Marcus you will see that she could have given Marylin a run for her money. The women that I love are hard as nails and soft as butter, they are tender as the moon and as fearless as a bear. Speaking of which, I now have the key to the bear that chases Antigonus in The Winter’s Tale - it was based on Ovid’s tale of Callisto, a woman transformed into a bear and then  hunted by her son Arcus. Arcus did not know his mother was a bear and almost shot her. Like all of Ovid, this fantastical fairy tale seems to make a lot of sense. I know it did to Shakespeare -- as I believe the real Shakespeare was lucky and unlucky enough to have Queen Elizabeth I for a mother (we’ll talk about that another time). Undoubtedly Shakespeare -- all his life, felt chased by her. The fact that my mother was a bear  and still chases me in my dreams — perhaps has something to do with my obsession with Carol Marcus. I’m sure no one cares, but it’s nice to have a blog where I can say to no one in particular that I do.

Contraband was called

Blackout in the USA, and the auteur creators Powell and Pressburger (The Red Shoes) thought the American title a better one. The film is effortlessly Hitchcokian. Not many films can say that, as it requires some effort to be Alfred Hitchcock, so many have tried, and so many have failed (Brian De Palma comes to mind). For a film to be Hitchcockian it must not only keep you on the edge of the seat, but be well written, well cast (even in the smallest character roles) and visually stunning in a metaphorical way. Powell and Pressburger achieve this with their eyes closed; indeed much of this film is shot in the dark, as it takes place in London during the blackout — a time very much like our own. But back then they were pulling together against the Nazis — not quite the same as fighting COVID-19 -- one is unmitigated evil, the other quite a mitigated illness; I would say (and be cursed for it) that there are nobler causes for which you might give your life. But when the blackout police scold a man for lighting a cigarette and he yells: ‘Haven’t you got any thing better to do?!’ it reminds me of Toronto police officers who ticket children riding their bicycles in parks today. Contraband makes no sense at all as a title, because this movie has almost nothing to do with contraband, although it is the reason why Conrad Veidt's freighter is stopped. And then, with the sudden appearance of Valerie Hobson as the mysterious and alluring Mrs. Sorenson the chase begins. It’s picaresque, like Hitchcock’s Saboteur (made 2 years later) and though this is an anti-Nazi film, we forget about ideology because Power and Pressburger offer so many visual distractions. It is no wonder that American culture has disintegrated into dumb, name-calling, God-fearing,racist partisanship, for their films of the 40s -- compared to a British film like this — so witty, literate and frankly deep --  are primitive trigger mechanisms in comparison. Hollywood simply loves to make exploitation films. (Back then it was evil suffering desiring women— now it is comic book heroes.) By the time Powell and Pressburger follow Veidt escaping though a shop filled with plaster busts— (I’m not sure  if such a shop ever existed) darting in and out between plaster heads - it’s quite heavenly. But you don’t know why, until we return to the same shop at the end, and a dead Nazi’s head lies among the sculpted ones. I don’t know what all this is saying, but that’s not the point, the point is that it’s visually arresting and sparks our imaginations. The other divine moment is when the Veidt opens his pocket watch that plays a Danish folk tune, and it sets the whole Danish restaurant singing; it makes no logical sense in our world, but in the world of this film, where the good guys are good and the bad guys are made of plaster, it’s perfectly right. I’ve been mentioning Conrad Veidt as if was natural as the day for him to star in a film like this; but he was not the first choice and the casting caused considerable consternation. Reviewers were uncomfortable with him because he is both the hero and a spy, and this does not seem right for a man whose eyes are so gentle and whose voice is yes — well I’ll say it — markedly effeminate. Well that's homophobia pure and simple. But even now, a reviewer like J. Kelly Nestruck can suggest that gay playwright Noel Coward can’t write heterosexual love stories. Similarly, Hollywood still wonders — if a man is known to be gay — can he convincingly play a romantic lead? The stated reason is that women don't want to have heterosexual fantasies about gay movie stars because they know gay men have sex with men, not women. Wrong. I have discovered — to my chagrin —that there are many women who fantasise about having sex with gay men. Gay men are are not cast-able as straight romantic leads because they make straight men uncomfortable. Conrad Veidt does exactly that in Contraband. But to suggest that he does not appear to be in love with Valerie Hobson is ridiculous. Sure, it seems like a kinder gentler love than we expect from let’s say. Clark Gable, but love it is, still -- and completely convincing. I set out to discover the exact nature of Veidt’s sexuality; it’s nearly an impossible task. A source as reliable as Wikipedia tells us he was ‘bisexual’ — the two references are from other people’s biographies. One says: “I”ll say frankly that Veidt loved men once in awhile.” The other says (and this is even more revealing): “Veidt’s friends regarded him as heterosexual when sober, homosexual when drunk.” But that is actually the definition of me, and so many gay men. If you are self-hating — as I am, then the only way you can flirt with a man or screw him is if you’ve had a drink or two. So Veidt was gay. He also starred in what is considered the first gay film ever made Different from Others (Anders als die Anderen) a 1919 silent film made in Germany and partially written by Magnus Hirschfeld (the famous sexologist whose institute championed the rights of gay, lesbian, bi, and trans people, until it was closed down by Hitler). Anders als die Anderen was remade in 1961 as Victim starring Dirk Bogarde (another closeted homosexual) 40 years later.  Nothing has changed for gay men. Veidt was allowed to play monsters (he became a star after playing the lead in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) because he portrayed them with great delicacy and humanity— and is that not what a homosexual, in our culture, essentially is? Nowadays if you’re not the Meryl Streep of gay actors (i.e. Benedict Cumberbatch) you can pretty well count on never being a star unless you work out a deal with The Scientologists like John Travolta and Tom Cruise. Yes John Travolta is gay; a photographer snapped a photo of him kissing a man departing on a plane from Hamilton (where I live). Tavolta claimed he had kissed this fetching young  swain because the lucky youth was his children’s nanny. Well it only stands to reason. That is why we fags love fiction so much. After all, we spend so much of our lives making it up.

It’s not the

shock of the new; it’s the shock of the same old misogyny played yet again. They now provide politically correct analysis with old films on TCM, not sure how long it will last, I hate it. That is sort of what I am doing here. No, it’s defintely not. I can’t tell you how much I admire the misogyny of Leave Her to Heaven.  Don't get me wrong -- I don’t admire misogyny in itself, just the expert expression of it. This is vile but extremely adept propaganda;  the problem being that the people who denounce it are all too ready to produce vile propaganda of their own, which is what a ‘pro-women’ film would be. For years I was accused of writing gay propaganda by people who hadn’t ever seen my plays; for me, this was the supreme irony, as I was regularly castigated and ultimately exiled from my own community for being anti-gay. I worked with Martha Cronyn many years ago (yes she was  related to Hume, and was a marvelous actress — but so incredibly insecure; I spent most of my time trying to convince her she had talent).  Anyway when one of my earliest plays The Dressing Gown was mired in controversy, she took me aside and meekly inquired (meekness was her trademark) ‘Why do you hate gay men so much, Sky?” I didn’t hate them any more than I hated anyone else, the problem was my fundamental misanthropy and my hatred of hypocrisy. But back then  I was trying to write 'message plays.' Anyway, when I set out to deconstruct the misogyny of a minor masterpiece of hate literature called Leave Her to Heaven, I am trying to make all and sundry (the 98 people who occasionally read this blog) aware that all art is political, but that it is our job as artists to try and not make art that is consciously so, to not think we have failed if they ‘didn’t get the point’ but rather, if they do. For there must be something else, beyond the mundane didactic, the quotidian preaching ('Wear a mask, save your mother!') that is our lot, even in this pandemic world. I wish I could say Leave Her to Heaven transcends sexual politics; it certainly tries. It is an adaption of  a novel, ergo very pretentious. And the title comes from Shakespeare (Hamlet’s curse on his mother) and Shakespeare -- though not at all misogynistic himself -- lived in a very misogynistic era. But he would have been bored by Leave Her to Heaven, because in almost every play he wrote, he in some way or another acknowledged women’s desire, and hardly ever blamed it for evil. The play also has a line in it that echoes Othello. When the statuesque Cornel Wilde is trying to figure out what’s wrong with his crazy obsessive new wife Gene Tierney (very windblown, sparkly-eyed and wet-lipped, yes, this is Oscar worthy stuff!) his mother-in-law says “She loves too much.” This is almost, but not quite -- ‘loved not wisely but too well.’ But Othello doing that is nothing like a woman doing it, especially when she is drowning in feminine virtue. Women love, you say? Well this one loves too much. Women care you say? This one cares to the point of suffocation. Women would do everything for the man they love? Well this one kills her disabled brother-in-law (who she labels ‘a cripple’ --  in a deliciously detestable, politically incorrect moment, even then) and then murders her unborn child by throwing herself down a very lovely flight of blue carpeted stairs. “I wish the little beast was dead” she mutters. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say — not that Gene Tierney is too feminine -- but that she picks only one of the feminine virtues (i.e. loving ‘her man’) and plays it to death, ignoring love for ‘family’ and love for ‘children.’ And this is where we get to the essence of the film’s vile misogyny. Cornel might as well be naked in this film; my ex-ray vision kept seeing through his clothes. He often removed shirts and displayed his magnificent chest and arms in films — not so here, but you know they are there, He was a sex symbol of the highest order, and from the moment Gene Tierney sets eyes on him she wants him. The fact that she is framed as a desiring woman should be evident from the fact that she proposes to him; or rather she announces they are getting married and then proposes -- to his chagrin. Yes — there is some Freudian stuff tossed in  (he looks like her father) as this is 1945 when Freud was chic, but the fact is that she wants to be screwed by him night and day. Any woman who wants this is a demon, we all know it, a child killer (isn’t that what all those promiscuous women do — have lots of sex, get pregnant all the time, and then abort their children?). You can say that Leave Her to Heaven is some sort of universal parable (and I hate them as a rule) about anybody who loves too much but there is far too much misogynistic cultural baggage swirling around the prototypical image of the unnaturally horny, destructive female for that idea to be ‘universal.’ What exactly is the difference between ‘loves to much and ‘desires to much’ when Cornel Wilde is the object in question? Gorgeous Gene Tierney just sits in her little boat watching little crippled Danny drown (Darryl Hickman played the guileless Danny; his brother was Dwayne Hickman who starred in Dobie Gillis), wearing the most divine sunglasses, and we know it’s all just so she can get back to the house and screw Cornel Wilde one more time. What could be a more appalling example of homicidal female lust? Blanche Dubois at least has our sympathy: Tennessee Williams loved her even more than he loved Stanley (who Williams treats quite self-consciously as a sexual object). (Apparently the reason he cast Marlon Brando as Stanley was Brando quite successfully fixed a leak in his Provincetown plumbing -- and yes that is a dirty joke, and yes I owe it to a Cole Porter song and also to a line from Hello Dolly). It’s that kind of technical mastery we truly feminine creatures love. I’m in a good mood because I got a 'booty call' last night. I had to put him off until tonight, (poor boy). For yes, I am, unabashedly, a desiring woman. But -- you will note -- not a murderous one. If you can only get that through your head! What I mean is: desire is not murder. Although an orgasm seems like a little death. Let me tell you, we should all be so lucky.

Now, she is

concerned. Joan Crawford asks: “What’s wrong with me, doctor? Why do I see things that couldn’t be?’ The doctor — who is beyond considerate  and understanding — especially to those who are not as wise as he — explains it all, calmly, careful not to alarm her — “Insanity is not a word we like to use: this is the inability to distinguish between what is real and what isn’t.” Ahh, of course. Alas, Joan attempts to ignore her burgeoning mental illness, but of course it will not go away. Soon she is lying on her satin bed curled in a foetal position beside the giant shiny headboard, moaning. Her husband, the perpetually elderly Raymond Massey thinks she should return to the doctor. Joan races around the room, pressing her hand to her forehead, doing that wild-eyed-thing that someone told her was acting: “You think there’s something wrong with my mind, don’t you? You’re trying to put me away, aren’t you?” Soon after, she shoots Van Heflin. It’s not clear if it’s because he’s not in love with her, or because he insists on being a concert pianist and an engineer (‘I’m much nicer than a girder and also more interesting” she says to him) or because she is jealous of Geraldine Brooks (a young actress who is much prettier than her) or because Van Heflin is simply a far better actor than she is — in fact the juxtaposition of his performance against hers may have cost her The Oscar. At any rate, she plugs him. Inevitably, she is lying in a hospital bed, comatose, drugged, staring at the ceiling. An errant gay makeup man has sprayed her with grey paint — her hair, her skin, even her eyes — she looks like the 'Tin Woodsman' in The Wizard of Oz. The doctor is once again brilliant and beyond compassionate --we marvel at his wisdom as he explains the complex machinations of science to the uninformed yet receptive Raymond Massey: “A clear case of psychosis, completely unbalanced, insane if you insist on using that term. Such a person is possessed with devils.” Ah. What is valuable about this ‘diagnosis’ of course, is that it is so terribly ‘scientific,’ don’t you see? But we have not yet reached the eminent physician’s bone chilling conclusion — the forecast of what lies ahead for Joan Crawford — who lies stiff as grey telephone pole on a hospital gurney. The doctor smiles, gently, his right hand gently caressing the corner of his desk: "It is only through greater pain — and suffering beyond belief — that she will get well again.” A few seconds later the doctor is walking alone through a hospital hallway, the walls naked, the building apparently empty -- obviously on his way to deliver another spine-tingling epitaph for some half-dead crazy person.  This kind doctor reminds me of Dr. Fauci. Why, if God hadn't created Dr. Fauci, then we would have invented him. Yes, we have always known — since 1947 when Possessed was released — that the only way to be cured is through ‘suffering beyond belief.’ And this is our journey now, as we always knew it was our lot; it makes no sense to protest that the cure is more painful than the disease. Why of course it is. No cure worth its salt is easy. When they told us this was a pandemic, little did we know this was, in effect, a cancer diagnosis, the subtext being that we would be asked to endure suffering beyond belief — not so much because chemotherapy always works (in fact it often doesn’t, and the patient dies anyway) but because if we refuse to endure endless pain, then we refuse to be released. If it seems biblical, it is. We all know —in our heart of heats —  that COVID-19 goes deeper than a cough, and the agony of a ventilator, deeper even, than death. There is something about this disease, about all disease in fact that transcends science.  Dr Harvey Willard queries his intern, ruefully: “How many does this make?” And the Intern replies — “Twenty today: 1 manic, 3 seniles, 6 alcoholics, and 10 schizos.” We can forgive the intern for his somewhat insensitive language -- he is, after all, what we would today call a ‘front-line essential worker,' undoubtedly under enormous stress. Dr. Willard caresses his requisite doctoral goatee thoughtfully, and sagely opines: “Going up all the time. This civilization of ours is a worse disease than heart trouble or tuberculosis, and we can't escape it.” We know it. Of course our civilisation was diseased -- there was something wrong with us -- and it all had to come to a stop. It's very right, somehow.  I have a friend who thought she was losingher mind, her hand was always trembling, moving towards her temple. She said: ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me, the stasis of this lockdown, this inaction, this uncertainty, this endless day after day of nothing.’ I assured her, no, we are not losing our minds. That’s silly. We are not Joan Crawford in some silly old movie trying her best to win an Oscar for an unremitting piece of crap called Possessed — no, no, we are not all going finger-to-the-temple insane. Calm down. I urge you all to calm down. This was the way it was meant to be; God knows why, and I mean that literally, Only God knows. (God and -- of course -- Dr. Fauci). Whatever is our fate, we must accept it, because — well that's the problem! Why, in heaven's name, are you asking why? We cannot understand, it is beyond us. Surrender. And in the surrender you will find a kind of release. Go back to Possessed, you’ll see. It’s what happens when Joan Crawford melts into Van Heflin’s arms. He’s not even attractive -- never was --  he's a merely witty playboy who smokes and cares nothing about her, but still she gazes out at the sea, unable to stop loving him. She takes a boat to his house and hurls herself around the room, hoping this will somehow make him love her. We are all Joan Crawford in Possessed, and our folly is only not giving in. The doctors know. We are not mad, we are merely human. And if we wish too ardently to end this lockdown, then our soul is certainly inhabited by devils. I here and now commit myself to only living here, in these blogs. Life has become fantasy, and fantasy has become life. I Life, as we knew it, was the disease. And this is the cure.

Oddly, Joan Crawford

does a lot of crying -- in a movie called The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) in which she is without a doubt ‘the damned.’ She has the eyebrows and the shoulder pads we associate with the later Crawford films, and in the first scenes she is married to Richard Egan — who is at least 17 years her junior (Crawford successfully managed to hide her birthdate, even postshumously). It’s quite a good film—  for a didactic melodrama — though it's a copy of Mildred Pierce. In these ‘women’s films’ it’s all about the motives of the heroine. In Mildred Pierce Crawford is driven to the very unfeminine vices of greed and ambition by her evil daughter. Thus she is a victim, and ultimately feminine, and can be forgiven. Not so the case in The Damned Don’t Cry where she is pure unmitigated evil. Her name is ‘Ethel Whitehead’ — until it gets changed to the more respectable — ‘Lorna Hansen Forbes.' Crawford’s quick changes of character are loads of fun; she starts out a suffering Mildred Pierce (her son dies because she is too poor to buy him a bicycle), and soon after she’s a wisecracking clothes model who shares her favours with repellent businessmen -- smoking, chewing gum and wielding heavy slang all at the same time. Her transformation into a lady would wow 'enry 'iggens, and when she finally hooks up with gangster Steve Cochrane all is right in this topsy-turvey world. (The less said about Cochrane the better, as in his case less is more, for Cochrane was not only breathtakingly handsome and hairy-chested, but in proud possession of one of the biggest ‘members’ in Hollywood. He occasionally served as a houseboy for Mae West. In the TCM summary, Cochrane’s character Nick is referred to as a "member of the underworld’ — a startlingly accurate description.). They don’t make ‘em like this anymore; i.e. they don’t make men who are men and women who are women. And like some sad-old, dyed-blonde, trashy Trump supporter, I am alas, going to pine for that past. Here Crawford is Lady Macbeth; she was obviously born cursing her useless ‘dugs’ and her pesky menstrual flow, eager to dash her soft-haired babies on a rock if it will get her what she wants. The movie is clear in its feminist politics, if nothing else, as Crawford’s anger — as in Shakespeare’s play — has its origins in her womanhood. When she’s climbing her way to the top, a tough talking hooker friend opines, wisely: “What else have we got besides a face and a figure?’ And even at 46 (perhaps older?) with the right lighting -- and a gauzy lens -- yes, Crawford still has that. Soon she’s smiling ruefully with her gigantic mouth and saying lines like 'the world isn’t for nice guys’ to her hapless leading man David Brian, and we understand that Crawford’s anger is deeply steeped in female rage, and that though darkly unkind, and entangled with the 'root of all evil,' it has a 'root' cause. It’s strange that a movie so engulfed in penis envy should have instigated so much envy of Venus. But how many little girls must have watched The Damned Don’t Cry and decided, finally to toss their Playboy Bunny outfit in the garbage and stand up for a woman’s right to chose? There is nothing like Crawford’s bug-eyed rage, her determination is beyond steely, it's a wreck of a train steaming its way to a cataclysmic end. All of this made me think of the ultimate idiocy of trans politics, for buried in the heart of it is an enormous fallacy: the rejection of gender. I speak now, directly to Kate Bornstein. “We shared a few drinks many years ago, I produced your plays (you owe me nothing, it’s not that) and I kind of loved you as much as a gay man can love a person with a vagina. And I admire your beauty and your ideas beyond belief, and I think you are an enormously kind person. But you 'kinda' invented the ‘no gender’ movement; and that’s a big problem. You remind me of Aristotle, Kate. I know that may sound like a compliment, but I never liked Aristotle. (From the very moment that I met him in Ayn Rand’s preachings, I knew there was something awry.) Aristotle rejected the law of non-contradiction, which, in laymen’s terms (i.e. terms which may be understood by those who have the time to get regularly laid) means that Aristotle believed contradictions must not be tolerated, and therefore don’t  exist. The problem with heterosexuality is that it is an unresolvable contradiction, that the larger and more powerful body (i.e. male) will inevitably oppress the female. This is a lot more than simply not desirable. But it will never go away: the dialectical tug of war between male and female is eternal, as are the two sexes. The inevitable clash of these forces (it’s called hot heterosexual fornication) is not only eternally appealing but absolutely productive. This does not mean that women must be perpetually oppressed, it just means that they must perennially fight back — as Joan Crawford does. And fighting back works (proof positive: #Metoo). Yes, when they fight back they can and do, win. But the denial of this fundamental antithesis, this vastly sexy opposition between male and female -- well sorry, but it's simply a non-starter. As Foucault reminds us -- it’s always a battle -- and victims and oppressors need each other, not just because it’s sexy, but because the human hunger for power will never go away, and the best we can do is try and win one little battle at a time. I talked to a woman yesterday who is quite excited about eventually (when all this is over, yes, hah!) finding a tiny public space (a room) somewhere and putting on a tiny feminist play in Muskoka. She told me that she knew 10 people who might come, and though she also knows that The Canada Council won’t grant money anymore to anything but ‘digital theatre; (whatever that is), she is going to forge ahead anyway. There is something 'Lady Macbeth-ish' about her quest, which I doubt she would have initiated if she didn’t have a vagina. We need women, and we need men, and the furious battle that rages eternally between them. Be trans please, but don’t imagine you will rid the world of injustice by banning these holy opposites; for out of the fire that emerges from their combustible confrontation a phoenix will always arise — and it is the fierce,  righteous, beady-eyed demon that lies behind Joan Crawford’s eyes.

Design for Living

 is a lousy play. There, I said it. Coward wrote many lousy plays, (and yes, Donizetti regurgitated tunes for a number of lousy operas). It happens with prolific artists — so what? Design for Living is so bad  it is often used as an example of bad playwrighting in schools; and well it should be. My 1979 BBC version stopped two-thirds of the way through; I re-read the ending for the thousandth time. It’s still lousy. It featured Rula Lelnska — apparently famous for her 'Alberto VO5' hair commercials — and two very young British actors who I had never heard of — John Steiner and the ravishing Clive Arrindell. There was nothing to complain about here — that’s why my views are now confirmed — they gave it the best reading it might get. But, like Texas, there is simply no there, there. Coward wrote it right after Private Lives; I would say it is clearly an attempt to rewrite Private Lives as a vehicle for himself and the Lunts. I have tried many times to write sequels. It  rarely works, the magic won’t return. The enchantment of Private Lives is considerable, but Coward could not re-conjure it, so he decided to write a very didactic play devoid of inspiration. The ideas are mainly around morality, specifically sexual conduct, inside and outside marriage. Gilda is probably Coward’s most feminist heroine — she is not only smart and talented, but sleeps with whoever she wishes, and betrays her two lovers, again and again, with each other. She plays Otto and Leo like a game of cards -- but Coward never judges her, he simply adores her. Finally the two men end up alone together — in a scene fascinating only because of its repressed sexuality. They roll around together on a couch and hug, vowing to get along without her. Then they go off ‘to sea’ (a pirate fantasy, but — who, one might ask— is the cabin boy?) and finally return to Gilda to save her from her loveless marriage to an art dealer. You might  ask — 'Why?' And also, 'How long oh Lord, how long?' (As it is a very long play.) I think all this has partially to do with the Lunts themselves: I know what it’s like to love actors so much that you are compelled to write for them, but also what it’s like when you just can’t come up with the goods. Alfred Lunt was gorgeous and gay, and Lynne Fontaine was his lesbian equivalent; they were both brilliant actors, and posed as a married heterosexual theatrical couple. Of course Coward loved them, and probably wanted to (or did) get into Lunt’s pants. At any rate, they were living La Vida Loca in 1933, and in Design For Living Coward attempts to describe their situation. There is a lot of false joy and false anguish, but though the play has a calculated structural integrity it lacks emotional resonance. Part of the problem is that Elyot and Amanda in Private Lives desert a pair of spouses who are earnestly in love with them -- whereas Gilda, Otto and Leo just keep hopping in and out of bed together. The play was scandalous then, and is scandalous now, because it is a definitely a peon to promiscuity, never mind polyamorousness (Design for Living is probably the only play that accurately describes and promotes the polyamorous lifestyle). I would love to love it, but I simply can’t. Especially when Coward is capable of so much more. And I am probably capable of more than this blog. But it is another ugly grey lock-up day. I am convince now that we have been lied to by the powers-that-be. Or it may not be that, you know? Maybe they're just stupid, like most people. I’m not knocking science (God help me!). Scientists keep plugging away —  like artists — some for the fame and fortune, others just for the joy. No, I am talking about the medical profession. Particularly nurses. They are not all saints — neither are policeman (or priests) and as we all know deifying a particular profession just whitewashes the guilty, and encourages perfidy. My friend’s elderly father lives in a seniors home and the 'Nurse Ratched' in charge literally had to be persuaded to let the residents out after they were all vaccinated. She had them all in a prison, even though they were all utterly safe from disease. I know another nurse (the partner of a friend of mine) and apparently she has been sent do deal with vaccine roll-out in Vancouver and is consequently doing absolutely nothing; they can’t figure out what there is for her to do; she presently lolls about on her computer. Another friend of mine is connected with the nursing profession in Ontario; she says they are not busy, but idle. And now we have the Canadian government getting into an argument with themselves, because some public health nurse has decided that maybe we shouldn’t be taking the Astra Zeneca vaccine (which I got) or Johnson and Johnson. This will completely halt any and all attempts to get this country vaccinated, by dutifully sowing the seeds of fear that have already been planted. It will keep us all home for another three months. Great work. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I put all this down to  incompetence. (It’s rampant, especially now.) It’s like I always said about Tennessee Williams: I happen to know two boys who were propositioned by him during his stay in a Vancouver hotel in 1980 (three years before he choked on a pill bottle cap and died). If I — that is, li'l ol’ me — happen to know  two boys who were propositioned by Williams, then how many boys did Tennesee proposition? Similarly, the fact that I have piles of anecdotal evidence concerning the massive incompetence of the medical profession as we reach the so-called ‘end’ of this pandemic means that there is definitely incompetence of the highest order. I put it down, not to malice, but  human error. But because of that error we all sit in the dark watching our lives drain away in coffee spoons. I was going to cry again, but I think I’ll save that for tomorrow. To quote the wife of another famous homosexual actor ( who worked with Noel Coward) — from the only actually good movie she ever made (which has been unjustly banned by the ‘woke’ crowd and ergo will not be mentioned here) — "After all, tomorrow is another day."

I discovered Coward’s

A Song at Twilight (1966) on my own BBC home video collection (technical difficulty before; I thought they were unplayable). It is the best of the lot so far, Paul Scofield and Deborah Kerr are very fine actors indeed. Scofield is stellar as the ageing closeted homosexual Hugo Latymer, a character based on Somerset Maugham. The play is not only pretty perfect dramaturgically — with a startling climax at the end of the first scene — but it still rings true. Watching it, I was struck by how many ‘Hugo Latymers’ are still trotting around today, that is, so many gay men (older and younger) who are prudish and mean, and who curl their baby fingers at the very mention of sex or sexuality. In fact it used to be the old that were uptight; now it is the young (apparently birthrates were going down before COVID-19 because young people are no longer screwing as they used to — God knows what’s happened to those statistics now!). The transgendered youth are anti-sexual, very much like Hugo Latymer, they insist with stinging puritanism that gender is not about sex at all. And what if it was? I don’t know what to tell you but my gender is all about sex, I wouldn’t bother with gender if it wasn’t, I mean what’s the point of anything, but especially — of being a man — if it’s not at least, sexy? When I enter a den of dyed-haired, nail-painted, gender-binary youth (you often find tons of them working at Starbucks these days — ordering you to stand in a corner and not infect anyone, then smiling, and chirping — ‘No worries!’) I remember that to them I am not only dangerously old — they are afraid they will somehow catch it — but a magnet for disease — as I am associated with AIDS too because of my age — and also there is the scorn with which I generally treat mask wearing (I never wear one outside) — but I must under no circumstances make a sexual joke like a horny gay man (God forbid). Anyway, that is Hugo Latymer, every inch propriety, and Coward has great fun separating himself  — through Hugo — from Somerset Maugham — who he considered old-fashioned and closeted, unlike himself. The irony is that Coward was closeted, and the very thing Carlotta (Kerr) accuses him of in the play Coward was guilty of — i.e. prattling on about big-busted beauties in his memoirs. I suppose Coward would insist the difference was that Maugham claimed to have had affairs with such women, whereas Coward took the 'baby step' of not doing so. But, for instance, when Coward  introduces his friend Marlene Dietrich (it’s priceless you must hear it  — on a Dietrich album) he manages to conjure up the notion that women are the only existing attractive sex objects in the universe. In A Song at Twilight Paul Scofield is always ‘making eyes’ at the waiter (something my mother told me never to do, on the very day I came out to her) and then acting prim and proper. Nowadays I am surrounded by queers like these — they are old and young, pretty and fading — but they all dye their hair, strangely enough, some to get rid of the grey, others in wokeish misplaced rebellion. (Does anyone but your mother really care if your hair is green?). Seeing this, I am stunned once again at how far we have not come, and how easy — as Coward said — it is to pass legislation, but you can’t legislate the human heart. I don’t know if I can write about Coward today. Mondays are always bad for me. I’m worried about my friends, they're sending me depressed emails bowing out of everything, and it isn’t just my own selfish need for them, I’m actually worried about them. I just spent a terrifying few moments on the phone with a nurse. I know we must assume they are all hard-done-by-suffering-saints  but I’ve just about had it (if essential workers are such saints, why are air ambulance paramedics in Ontario threatening to go on strike? Shouldn’t they work for free? Isn’t this an emergency? Aren’t hospitals overflowing, and people dying in droves?). Anyway I have a bump on my head. It’s probably cancer, my father had a cancer bump on his head, so I’m not being facetious. When I phoned my family doctor the nurse said - “You should be able to get an appointment by calling the dermatologist directly, as you just saw him three months ago." I did, and the dermatologist's nurse started asking crazy questions “What exactly is the problem?” “I think it’s a wart” “Oh so it’s a new problem, then you might not be able to see him --"  “I didn’t say it was a new issue, I don’t know what it is, it may be a cancerous bump, God knows!” “Please don’t raise your voice with me, sir!” You know when they say that, you’re in trouble. I immediately apologised, she put me on hold, and dutifully returned: “I have to check with the doctor — he may or may not see you, these are difficult times.” Well that did it, it triggered me “I know” I said, and I started sniffling “and I am dealing with COVID-19 myself  and I am under a lot of stress, and I hope you will understand that this is very trying for me!” It was an Oscar winning performance. I almost wept. And when I hung up the phone (she said she would get back to me) my knees were shaking. I’m always amazed at how emotionally involved I get in such a performance. Perhaps Plato was right and acting is dangerous, infectious, we catch what we do. But then again I think I was crying about my own helplessness, the helplessness of us all, this deadly day, dark outside, nothing, no rain, no nothing, no friends, I’m having to pull old Noel Coward plays on DVD off my desk to find something to occupy my mind, no end in sight. There was a 100,000 person protest/ riot over COVID-19 in Montreal, but of course you won’t hear of it, only on Rebel News, which I know I’m not supposed to watch, but what’s a horny old ADHDish fag  to do -- one who keeps on writing plays that no one will perform -- because no one will leave the house? I will cry! I enjoyed crying! Maybe I’ll spend the whole day crying. Screw Plato. He didn’t know what he was talking about anyway. A table is a table, okay Plato? I don’t care  that its goddamn ‘pure essence’ exists in heaven. I'm about to have lunch on it. Now.