It's back. Oh, is it ever back! Glomour spots with gIomour people come on, we'll' aD going out with the stars! Remember Hollywood? That's the town where the world's most beautiful women and the world's handsomest men used to live. By day they made pictures. At night they made whoopee -- at the world's most glamorous night spots, naturally. You remember. You couldn't pick up a newspaper or a movie magazine, or Life, or Look, without seeing Ty or Bob or Cary with his flame of the moment. They took them to places that became household names, as famous as the Empire State Building and the White House. The Trocadero. Earl Carroll's. The Brown Derby. The Cocoanut Grove. Oh, to be even a waiter or a cigarette girl at one of those magical places! Now you can do better. You can go there in style. Jim Heimann is your host, in the sparkling pages of . . . r~ The Glamour-and-Fun-and-Gossip ~~ Book of the Year o Almost 100 photos in radiant color -- from delightful miniatures of collectible matchbooks to larger-than-full-page spectaculars 0 250 handsome black-and-white photos -- in- cluding dozens that are full-page or larger o Printed thruout on gleaming 100-pound stock for superb reproduction and that luxurious \"feel\" o Oversized 10 x 10 ------------------------------------------- How the Uub Works • •Yl~/~.'~.'AI••~.' Every 4 weeks (13 times a year) you get a free copy of the Oub bulletin, PREVIEWS, • • •a C t• • which offers the Featured Selection plus a nice choice of Alternates: books on fibns, TV, 15 Oakland Avenue· Harrison, N.V 10528 *music, occasionally records and videocassettes. If you want the Featured Selection, do *nothing. It will come automatically. If you don't want the Featured Selection or you do Please accept my membership in the MovielEntertainment want an Alternate, indicate your wishes on the handy card enclosed and return it by the Book Club and send me, FREE and postpaid, the beautiful *deadline date. The majority of Oub books are offered at ~300J0 discounts, plus a $39.95 volume, Out with the Stars by Jim Heimann . I agree *charge for shipping and handling. As soon as you buy and pay for 4 books, records or to buy 4 additional books, records or videocassettes at vidoocassettes at regular Oub priDes, your membership may be ended at any time, either by regular Club prices over the next 2 years. I also agree to the *you or by the Oub. If you ever receive a Featured Selection without having had 10 days *to decide if you want it, you may return it at Oub expense for full credit. For every Club rules spelled out in this coupon. Fe _ 34 book, record or videocassette you buy at regular Oub price, you receive one or more Name ___________________________________ Bonus Book Certificates. These enti~e you to buy many Oub books at deep discounts, Address *usually ro.8Oll7o off. These Bonus Books do not count toward fulfilling your Oub obliga- City_________________State _ _ _Zip _____ tion but do enable you to buy fine books at giveaway priDes. PREVIEWS also includes news about members and their hobbies. You are welcome to send in similar items. The *Club will publish any such item it deems suitable, FREE. This is a real CLUB! Good *service. No computers! Only one membership per household.
oumals 'The Pit' and the Production Designer L ike visiting diplomats of the second lim Brandenstein 's setfrom The Money Pit. rank , we were allowed into the studio but not onto the set. Peculiar, indeed , odeon in Ragtime, the first film she creating john Travolta's dazzling white since in The Money Pit the set is not only designed for her favorite director, Milos disco suit in Saturday Night Fever. Since our story-we were there to talk with Forman. She arrived in New York a dozen winning an official production designer production designer Patrizia von Bran- years ago to build a career away from the credit with Heartland in 1979, she has denstein - but the film's story as well. closed-shop guild atmosphere of Holly- alternated between independent-style Richard Benjamin's picture is a Mr. wood, but she had already lived a life full films like John Hanson's Wildrose and the Blandings update about a young couple of incident. Born in Arizona, she moved graffiti breakdance picture Beat Street (\"I (Tom Hanks and Shelley Long) who find to France with her mother and U.S. civil- wanted to paint those subway trains; the their dream house in Long Island in what servant father when she was eleven. Transit Authority liked them so much, vo n Brandenstein describes as \"a tongue- \"When I was 16; she recalled, \"I ran off to they kept them\") and big-budget produc- in-cheek colonial mansion built in the Alaska with my first husband . All I can tions like Silkwood and Amadeus. 1920s,\" then >vatch it crumble into a tell yo u is it seemed like a good idea at the comic Amityville horror. Though not time. No regrets: I have this fabulous Amadeus demanded almost a year of exactly the Manhattan Project of movies, daughter. Anyway, I had the name and I von Brandenstein's time in Prague, \"with The Money Pit is \"A Steven Spielberg had a child , so I kept them both ~ many side trips to buy stuff. I needed Presentation,\" and thus was cloaked, cities, not studios. I needed London for locked , and sealed in secrecy when we Her fir st New York success was joan wigs, Rome for costumes and fabric, stopped by last summer. Later in the year, Micklin Silver's Hester Street (1975), on Paris for ribbons. I needed acres of when the film's release was delayed until which she served as art director and materials: hair spray, riplox, boxes of Easter for extensive reshooting, the set Wurzel as production designer. \"The fact hairpins and hairnets, paper and ink to was about as accessible as the basement is ,\" she said, \"we were both production write the music on. In the Rome flea of the Temple of Doom designer. I had transferred into the East market I just got suitcases full of things , Coast union as a scenic artist, so I got to make 18th-century powder puffs , In june, though , at the Astoria Studios fined for art-directing without a license. silver knife handles. It's all gone, I (New York home of Paramount Pictures The film, though, did us both an suppose, into the Barrandov Studios- at the birth of talkies and now again a immense amount of good. It was made the feathers, artificial flowers , beauty beehive of activity), actors and crew wore for very little money, but it had a very spots, cosmetics, glitter, paint of all the awesome responsibility of their TOP rich , full look , and in black-and-white.\" kinds , and every scrap of cotton, silk, SECRET status lightly. Tom Hanks, in vo n Brandenstein kept busy designing wool, all of it. They're heavy into sweat suit and sneakers, ambled by to \"acres of half-hour or hour TV for PBS\" polyester in Eastern Europe. But even if chat, almost too genial to be Hollywood's and won some instant notoriety for we were making an 18th-century story in favorite yo ung leading man of romantic comedy. Shelley Long darted from the (Continued on page 72) set of her dressing room, as preoccupied and elegantly fidgety as her Diane Chambers on Cheers. And von Branden- stein, a friendly, imposing figure in slacks and tunic, appeared to take the Money Pit challenge as a welcome respite after the rigors of Amadeus (for which she won the first Oscar ever awarded to a woman production designer) and the film of A Chorus Line . Clearly, her business gives her much pleasure. As she told us that afternoon in the Astoria commissary, \"The day I first went on a movie set, I thought, 'This is what I'll do the rest of my life.'\" She is no stranger to Astoria, having painted scenery for PBS dramatic series in the mid-Seventies, helped her husband Stuart Wurzel on a Hair set, and supervised construction of the nickel- 4
'l. CINEMATHEOUE ~ AKIRA·KUROSAWf'(s IKIRU~'t-s ~ 9 .. =~
New York Boston Chicago Houston Los Angeles Philadelphia San Francisco Washington Corporate Headquarters: Julien J . Studley, Inc. 625 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10022 212-308-6565 Julien J. Studley Inc. is proud to sponsor NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 1986 together with the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts
The 19th-century Man ofAction and the 20th-century Ubman ofIntellect. by Richard Corliss now depleted , even if some of them can still entice a viewership that needs to get C oming out of Out of Africa after a out of the house and can find nothing first viewing, I was sure of two better. The sequel, that last refuge of a things: that I liked it a lot, and that it brain-dead mogulocracy, is king; every would win this year's Oscar for Best studio in town is romancing the clone. As Picture. When Richard Schickel wrote in screenwriter Bob Kaufman says of the big boys , \"When something works, they do it C O M M E N TTime that this film was \"at last, the free- till it doesn't.\" Never has the old jape been so depressingly true: Hollywood has its spirited, fullhearted gesture that every- Academy pray for the commercial suc- finger up the pulse of the American one has been waiting for the movies to cess of a film that tru sts no moviegoer public. make all decade long,\" he may not have under 30. meant everyone on the planet, but he Even more than Brazil-a film so Gets worse. Surrendering to the pre- surely meant everyone in the Motion profligate with cinematic imagination vailing torpor, the Seventies generation of Picture Academy. Alone among the that it blazes a dozen paths to the movies' filmmakers has lost direction. Anyone critically acclaimed films of 1985, Out of future, none of which is likely to be who thinks that the latest work of Steven Africa was an intelligent, old-fashioned, traveled by the American film industry- Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian De thoroughl y modern heterosexual Out of Africa suggests a departure from Palma, Robert Altman, Paul Mazursky, romance. Man meets woman, man loves the business-as-usual blahs that have Francis Coppola, Michael Cimino, and woman (in his fashion), man leaves brought both Hollywood and its severest the rest of the old New Breed is an woman. That the man was English critics close to aesthetic exhaustion. advance on their best earlier films-even adventurer Denys Finch Hatton, and the Lotusland is littered with charred bodies that it has the same juice of danger, the woman legendary Danish author Isak and ravaged strategies. The genres that energetic threat of \"Here we come, watch Dinesen, added celebrity to class, even stormed the Eighties (sci-fi, horror, out!\"- is invited to exchange his rose- as it must have made the fudds at the action-adventure, slapstick comedy) are 7
colored glasses for my sour grapes. Have Lloyd (left) and Fox looking back to the future. all of them , the art men and the money men, shrunk from experiment because movie) refusal to memorize \"Shall I screens, CinemaScope melodramas and there is too little money to be gleaned compare thee to a summer's dayt merits travelogues still ruled. Teenage movies from the film that dares to be different? the frontal lobotomy which Hollywood were B movies. B-, even. The mighty No. It's because there is so much to be and some of its most prominent chroni- Sams, Arkoff and Katzman, were just earned from the big boring success. The clers seem already to have suffered. getting a bead on this market. Only one lure of the homogenized blockbuster has of teen dream James Dean's three films traumatized moviemakers. They have Shalit is just doing his job: alerting his was really about kids. Most pictures with the shakes not from poverty but out of listeners to a film he loved, and attempt- \"youth elements\" were made for and by affluence . ing to communicate his enthusiasm for it. adults. Even The Blackboard Jungle, If he wallows in the prose purple, well, at from which \"Rock Around the Clock\" Fewer people went to the movies too. least he's caught your attention. And if he emerged as the international anthem of a But it would be disingenuous for critics to raises his voice to hyperbole , it is because new music, had more to say to anguished argue that 1985 was worse than 1984 he thinks the film needs it. He knows husbands and teachers than to potential because domestic box-office returns what we all know: that the most a critic juvenile delinquents. dipped. Maybe some critics did prefer can hope for is to direct a small group of Ghostbusters , Indiana Jones and the worthy moviegoers to a sma ll group of And yet the change was so severe it Temple of Doom, and Beverly Hills Cop worthy films. Once these films had amounted to an overnight revolution. If ('84's top three hits) to Back to the subtitles, were \"d ifficult,\" and cost twelve yo u were alive at the time, you couldn't Future, Rambo , and Rocky IV ('85's). But kronor to make. Now they are the couple miss it. I recall standing at the back of the their preferences don't matter to the dozen biggish-budget \"adult\" Hollywood Avalon (N.J.) Theatre for a showing of public. As Jean-Luc God~rd said, \"When pictures that tiptoe into the Multiplex The Blackboard Jungle and watching a good film is also a popular film , it's each year in the hope of walking away with exultant surprise as 400 young because of a misunderstanding.\" Though with an Oscar. For these films, a critic is a heads and shoulders rocked in unison to critics still get to define what's good, it's a soc ial worker ; he figures they need the closing reprise of the Bill Haley song. plain fact th at most people don't go to the money quotes (blurbs happy and snappy Within a year, cut-rate producers had movies most critics like. The I11riety top enough to grace a movie ad or marquee) taken the next crucial step: they made ten and the ten-best consensus rarely the wayan inner-city child needs food movies only about kids; the parents had coincide. But it is in the nature of stamps. And so Shalit bursts with tearful disappeared into their own cultural irrele- journalists to have more opinions than joy for two minutes, and I crank up a vance. It was as if, at the dawn of the ideas; and the proliferation of movie longer, more decorous paean to Out of Atomic Age, adults had been nuked out pundits on TV (Yes! No! Thumbs up! Africa. We both do our good works for of existence and only the young were left Thumbs down! It's great! It's rotten!) films we perceive as good works. The alive. Were they mutants or supermen? justifies, if only by its pervasiveness, the teenpix will take care of themselves. Whichever, the world was theirs, and so belief that a critic's function is to tell were the new, raw, primitive forms of people whether or not to see a movie. So T he year's biggest teenpic , Back to the popular art. we keep blurbing away, huffing out our Future, was clever in many ways, and raves and pans , as if we were important to wise in one: it set its ingratiating Oedipal Now they rule that world. The B moviegoers and movie studios-or as if joke in 1955, which is just about the year movies of the Fifties have become the A we should be. And the tone of our that American popular culture went to movies of the Eighties. They coin the top reviews turns more strident, if only to the kids. Mad comic book was king; TV grosses; they make stars of their actors keep ourselves, our readers, and the had taken over the home and mesmer- and directors. And adult pictures-the keepers of the medium awake and ized the young stretched out on the few, the proud-wander in a ghetto for engaged. living-room floor in front of it; and \"Rock arthritics, while critics sigh and rage and Around the Clock\" had hit the top of the make jokes about the death of an art Sometimes these dithyrambs (from the Make Believe Ballroom chart. But on the form. Are movies really worse than ever? root word, to dither) have entertainment Or are they merely as bad as ever, but the value. On The Larry King Show in January, Jeffrey Lyo ns said of Shoah, \"It makes every other film I've ever seen irrelevant. It makes everything else in m y life irrelevant.\" (One might have thought Weird Science could do the job.) And on The Today Show, Gene Shalit had these words for The Color Purple : \"so fine that it may be great. .. more than a movie-a sonnet.. .an emotional surge into blinding brightness ... a movie that will break your heart and burst yo u with tearful joy... it should be aga inst the law not to see The Color Purple.\" Somehow Saturday Night Live missed its chance and never ran a skit about the Kingdom of Shalit, in which truancy from a movie is punishable by jail, and (since a sonnet is more than a 8
created. (Ernest Hemingway based the title character of \"The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber\" on Bror; Gregory Peck played .him in The Macomber Affair.) Bror hunted and whored, and gaye Karen the fruits of both labors: skins and syphillis. As incarnated in Out of Africa by Klaus Maria Bra'!dauer, Bror is a rogue elegant, who leaves Karen to her own devices . She may run the farm- coffee, an impossible crop at that alti- tude-and, oh, she may even take a lover, if she is sensible about it and doesn't frighten the servants. Karen , who has fled the safety of an upper-class Danish famil y, is ready for these challenges. By the end of the decade she has shown Bror the door and found a man more to her headstrong tastes: Denys Fin<;h Hatton. Her lover was born into the English same kind of bad? Have critics lost touch critics to be more flexible , either: to see aristocracy, second son of Henry Stor- with movies? Or have they been so suckered into accepting Hollywood as the good in film s whose genre or attitude mont, 13th Lord of Winchilsea and 8th the prime producer of films that they can't go searching for good films among we have programmed ourselves to find Earl of Nottingham. Second sons from independent and foreign venues (the places where they used to look regularly, distasteful, and to own up to a healthy stately homes typically turn either disso- when Bosley Crowther was boss and Hollywood was a place to be found only skepticism about films whose form or lute or independent, and Denys was the at the end of a long critical nose)? content plays to our prejudices . Maybe latter-his charm set him apart. At Eton , I suspect that we, no matter what our ages, have reached a midlife crisis, a Eddie Murphy or Brian De Palma makes then Oxford, he was of and above his menopausal anomie. Some of us came of age with the first postwar generation of lousy movies. Maybe Sydney Pollack exclusive clique. Julian Huxley wrote that European and Asian filmmakers; many others with Hollywood's first burst of makes good ones. Denys was \"without doubt the handsom- self-conscious maturity in the late Six- ties; still others with the Spielberg-De Out of Africa is no radical film. It is a est boy in school,\" and Elspeth Huxley Palma-Scorsese youth movement. For each critic, discovering these pictures at big, precise adaptation of a book poised described \"the legendary Finch Hatton\" an impressionable age was like discover- ing all the art and power of film at a single between curio and classic. It stars an as \"a man never forgotten or explained by stroke. Now, ironically, the kind of film championed by the younger critics-hip, actor associated with well-meaning enter- his friends who left nothing behind him irreverent, loose-jointed , facetious- has so dominated commercial moviemaking tainment and an actress whose predicta- but affection, a memory of gaiety and that it makes even them pine for something else, anything else; and Holly- ble eminence drives some critics bats. It grace.\" We sense here the rheumy wood isn't providing it. We are beyond being shocked or impressed. The thrill of will not alter the course of film history or atmosphere of after-dinner or after-death discovery is gone. industry; whether it succeeds or fails , at testimonials, where elegy embroiders Which doesn't mean there's nothing left to find. It may mean that we are in a the wickets or with the critics, a dozen memory. Then we look at photographs of time of refining rather than of revolu- tion-notjust in films, but in rock music films will be produced in its image over the young Denys, and scan his exploits, and TV and theater. One used to worry, or hope, that the center would not hold . the next five years, as a dozen have in the and find a picture that, for once, lives up Now in popular arts, the center, or center-right, is just about all there is , and past five . You just like it or you just don't. . to its blurbs. there's a danger it could obliterate all the art on the fringe. In the Age of Reagan , it Yet it is no Age of Reagan obeisance. It is He is a Leslie Howard type: well-bred is probably best to lower your voice, bide your time, and look harder to see what's out of its time-an encouraging anachro- bones; prematurely receding hairline; a around and worthwhile. It wouldn't hurt nism-because it assumes and demands cool voluptuary's mouth , its secrets pursed of its viewers an intelligent inference , a inside; and sad, enigmatic eyes that sensitivity of the sensory antennae, that suggest Denys is auditioning to be a poet most pictures today don't. Like many cut dovvn in war. His poetic chums- European and some Hollywood films of a Julian Grenfell , Rupert Brooke, Charles decade or so ago, Out ofAfrica needs you Lister, Denys' brother-in-law Osmond to pay attention to its visual textures , to Williams-did go off to die on the playing the vagrant hints in what is said and left fields of Ypres, Salonika, Cambrai. unsaid . For a younger moviegoer, raised Denys flew off, a year or two earlier, to on the slamming swagger of New Holly- Africa, from which distance (according to wood, those subtleties are opaque, the film) he viewed the A,nglo-German inaudible. They may as well be in Latin. war as \"a silly argument between two Out ofAfrica may as well be Wetherby. spoiled countries.\" Even watching the world devour itself, he remained above, I n 1913 Karen Dinesen came to Africa aloof. Nothing had changed or would to marry her cousin, Baron Bror von change. To an Oxford classmate, he was Blixen-Finecke, and to help him run a Peter Pan; to Karen he was Ariel. Both are farm high in the Kenya n hills . Bror, the creatures of magic, of the air, flying over twin brother of Karen's erstwhile lover convention and refusing to grow up . In Hans , was a man for whom the term Africa the flier became a hunter, a \"charming wastrel\" could have been Heming\"Jay figure with a Scott Fitzgerald 9
hero's nursed private wounds; and the Redford as Finch Hatton.. A poet cut down in war. hunter became a pilot from a fairy tale: the Little Prince. He died in his plane , yo ur prayers .\" Karen got her answer in letter to her brother Thomas she writes, fl ying into the sun. Icarus descending. Denys, but couldn't hold him. He came \"There is nothing whatever that I can do,\" and went as he pleased . Hi s safaris could complaining of the genteel ignorance in People spoke and wrote this way about last months-and when he went away, as which even a bright upper-class young Denys. It is natural that Hollywood the film has it , it was \"not always on woman was cloistered. She needs to would seek to commemorate him in safari.\" Real life for Karen and Denys, as satisfy herself with accomplishments as borrowed starlight. His friend Rupert gleaned from their respective biogra- lasting as Denys' are gloriously ephem- Brooke wrote, \"If I should die, think only phies , was even less idyllic, more convul- eral. And her letter provides the cue: this of me ...\" as if asking to be a post- sive. Denys was a hunter and a flier, yes, what she can do is write. This she mortem thought-policeman to his read- but he was also an important landowner discovers only after Denys' death, though ers. One imagines Denys being as and, in the early days, he made his living the film suggests he points the way. His blessed and cursed as Brooke-a as a trader who drove a tough bargain . one gift to her, early in their relationship, charmed life , cut off at the apogee of Later, he most likely had an affair with is a pen , to write dO'wn the tales she has promise-and saying to future movie Beryl Markham , a pioneer av iatrix and entertained him with on long fireside biographers , \"Film only this of me.\" To sexual adventuress. (In the film Beryl is nights. Now the sorceress has a wand. film the true legend , pick a handsome, called Felicity and portrayed as a tomboy She will cast spells with it. ironic, self-effacing Brit like Charles seeking romantic counsel from Karen.) Dance, the romancing officer from The Despite her racking syphillis , Karen While Denys is alive, however, Karen Jewel in the Crown and Streep's kind, became pregnant twice by Denys; one can only feed on her feeling for him; she baffled hu sband in Plenty. (And while the abortion was spontaneous, the other can't live on it. She knows that, for all her imaginary cinematheque is open, let's induced. And not long before Denys' last, running the plantation, negotiating with cast Hanna Schygulla as Karen.) But fatal flight , he took back the ring he had the tribal chiefs, supervising the village Hollywood , anyway, was right to print the given Karen and moved out of her house. school, she is enacting only a more vivid myth. For the purposes of this love story, Karen's response to his departure was to version of her sister's and mother's life Denys Finch Hatton was not only (or slash her wrist in a suicide attempt. back in Denmark: that of the housewife , even) an English aristocrat, Etonian, bustling with domestic good works, who Oxonian, stiff upper lip and all that ; he For either of the two Karens , in life or never knows when her husband-lover will was also (and mainly) the spirit of on film , th e loveliest interludes with stroll in from his \"man's work\" and shout, adventure, the great white hunter. So Denys could never be quite enough. His \"Hi, honey, I'm home.\" Denys was the pick the last contemporary movie star freedom was the chain of her commit- 19th-century ideal of the Man of Action with the aura of Golden Age romance in ment, and it chafed them both. For butting up against the 20th-century hope his eyes, playing a traditional romantic Karen , it was a matter of converting her for the Woman of Intellect. In the lead for the first time in a dozen years . respectability into self-respect. In a long inscription to a book for his sister Topsy, Karen Dinesen Blixen met Denys Finch Hatton five years after her arrival in Africa (not upon her arrival, as in the film) , and, we see from letters to her mother, was instantly smitten by this \"unusuall y charming person.\" She remained so throughout the next decade: \"my ideal realized in him\" (1918), \"I am bound to Denys, to love the ground he walks upon , to be happy beyond words when he is here , and to suffer wo rse than death many times when he leaves\" (1924) . A nice match: the white hunter and the \"\"hite magician, her tales rising to meet his exploits. He is sky and flight: freedom , recklessness, willful solitary grandeur, beau geste but on his terms. She is earth and planting: impregnation , birth, continuity, belonging. She lends him moral ballast and balance; he helps her soar. \"Flying suits Denys so perfectl y,\" Karen wrote in a letter home; \"he moves spiritually in three dimensions.\" And so, when Denys takes her flying for the first time, she is ecstatic at their communion and his little bit of commitment. He has finall y invited her to \"his place.\" But only to visit. \"When the gods want to punish you,\" Karen says, \"they answer 10
Her black brother became the great passion ofher life. and her relations with the native blacks. By the 1920s a mere thou sand white the young Denys wrote: \"There is no The book and movie end with Karen's farmers owned more than 4,500,000 good arguing with the inevitable. The departure from Africa in 1931, her farm acres of British East Africa. The attitude only argument available with an East destroyed, her lover dead. \"Karen Blixen\" of the empire tbward Kenyan blacks was Wind is to put on your overcoat.\" Except died there as well, to be replaced by \"Isak so condescending that it would not even that, later, Denys was the wind, inevita- Dinesen\" (her pen name from 1934) . The hire them to build the railroad that ble and inexplicable, and Karen the one change in character was astonishing. She opened the country to European exploi- who is forced to cloak herself- in his was no longer the vital young woman who tation ; Indian coolies were imported to genteel intransigence. The most she can ran a farm and lived in love and danger. In do that terrible work. Karen was progres- hope is that they will become separate Africa, it seemed, she had spent life . sive for her time. She did love the equals, gods staring at each other from Now she was past tense , an elegist, a Kikuyu , their fierce devotion to her, their neighboring Olympian peaks. spectator, specter. Karen's full, eager, moral dignity. As her love affair waned, amused face was stripped of flesh; Isak she could write that \"I find it hard to take Granted, for Karen to make the was chic and gaunt, a mannequin dressed anything concerning Denys really seri- pilgrimage to Kenya from her tiny by Chanel to play a Samuel Beckett ously; but. .. my black brother here in peninsula was to find a horizon wide wraith. This was the last and most Africa has become the great passion of enough to fulfill and torment a soul famous incarnation-the author of my life.\" Today, though, she seems, if not emerging from the burrow of bourgeois Gothic tales and immortal stories-and paternalistic, maternalistic. In a year of privilege. Indeed , when we consider the as fully a work of fiction as the outrage toward whites in South Africa, we panorama of experience she surveyed, streamlined, sanitized apotheosis of may be repelled by a film that finds our own adventures must seem thin ·by Karen in Out ofAfrica. First this Isak was romance in a kind of oppression by comparison, juice squeezed through a a convenience, then a characterization, omission, especially as compared to the straw. Isolated among her adventures, then a performance, and finally a parody rapturously pro-native, anti-colonial view enduring a multitude of shauries (a of worldly-wise Europe in decay. Karen of 1920s Africa in The Color Purple . favorite Dinesen word that translates was questing life; Isak was her own loosely from Somali into English as obituary, written and photographed for But that's another movie, from another tsimmes) , she still devoured Kierkegaard Vogue. book. Isak Dinesen's was no balanced and wrangled with ultimate questions- .history of Africa, or her time there, either. as if the young Ingrid Bergman were the T he film Out of Africa is no fact Judith Thurman calls it \"a landscape from star of an Ingmar Bergman psychodrama. festival of Karen Blixen's life in the air... we have escaped from the gravity Opening herself to Denys, Bror, the Kenya. Aside from the liberties it takes of practical considerations and have farm, the land and air and their sacred with perso nal biography, the pIcture gotten up into a purer element, one that inhabitants, Karen's heart consumes all, lavishes less attention on her farm work offers less resistance to the ideal.\" So the until it breaks. book is Karen as seen from above; the film is Karen from inside. Or rather, the film is screenwriter Kurt Luedtke's grace- ful mediation between Isak Dinesen's Out ofAfrica-the chivalric romance of a nobly savage land and its gallant conquer- ors-and Karen's life as it can be determined from her letters , from Errol Trzebinsky's book on Denys Finch Hatton, and from Thurman's beautifully written psychography of Dinesen. It is a job for which the cinema is uniquely qualified; it provides a document , a photographic record, as it creates a fantasy-actors dressing up and miming bigger than life. And Sydney Pollack, a lyrical literalist, is just the guy to bring such a love story to the screen. His best movies (The Way J# Were , Three Days of the Condor, The Electric Horsemen, Tootsie) typically force a bright, strong-willed man and a bright, strong-willed woman into roman- tic combustion. (The gag in Tootsie is that both were played by Dustin Hoff- man.) He makes people movies, as opposed to picture movies. One doesn't think of a Pollack style-swooping cam- era shots or mood lighting or distinctive cutting-but of a Pollack approach to script and character problems. In that 11
J)()lf~i=' J)Cllnfin~1 '()i=' sense he's a true autobiographical auteur: fh~ M()~i~l. 1924-1928 a famously bright and notoriously strong- willed director, he makes movies about An Exhibition of Works by his best selves. Batiste Madalena (b. 1902) for the George Eastman Theater, Rochester, New York In Out ofAfrica the genre imposes the style: the intimate, ironic, intellectual March 14th - April 19th epic, property and courtesy of David Lean. People made movies about shap- \"Movie Posters: The Paintings of Batiste Madalena.\" ers and shakers of history before Published by Harry N. Abrams is aVailable at Lawrence of Arabia, but no one had so keyed on the man of ideas as the man of Hirschi & Adler Galleries. or in bookstores nationwide for $14 .95 action, whose life followed the parabolic arc of trial , triumph, and disillusion , and (Add $2.50 postage & handling.) for whom environment was a crucial aspect of his psychology. Lean's vigor- 'HirschI 1llustrated checklist $1.50 ous, meticulous films set a standard flown high in the Sixties and still waving in the ~dIer Kidpix Era through variations good (Reds), bad (Gandhi), and ungainly ALLERIES INC. (Heaven's Gate). Pollack inhabits this style comfortably, down to Lean's trade- 21 East 70th Street. New York 10021 • (212) 535-8810 marked scene transition , in which a word Thesday-Frtday: 9:30 to 5:15. Saturday: 9:30 to 4:45 or gesture or camera movement from the end of one scene is completed or returned at the beginning of the next. Cut from \"He's a Kikuyu\" to Karen holding a cuckoo clock. Cut from Bror mounting Karen on their wedding night to the BANG! of a colonial shooting party-two rude awakenings. In a genre susceptible to bloat, this device (borrowed from Eisenstein) keeps things moving even as it imposes order and integrity. That's just punctuation. Show-and-tell set pieces like Denys' conquest of Karen in her house-short, luscious shots, each hurtling into the next, teasing and accelerating the lovers' ardor-are bra- vura paragraphs. It's more important that Pollack has the vocabulary and sensibil- ity, not just to extend the Lean style into the Eighties, but to tell his story with appropriately lithe, subtle emotional contours. He does this cogently, and cautiously. In a sequence toward the end in which Karen and Denys dance nostal- gically to a tune (\"Let the Rest of the World Go By\") that had underscored their first night together, Pollack sends them out of Karen's house and onto the patio, coaxing the mood of love and loss; but he won't heighten it into romantic surreal- ism , say, by letting them waltz back into time, to the scene of their initial tryst. Picturesque naturalism has served Pol- lack well for 20 years. He is unlikely to renounce it for the sake of a sweet tingle. Y et Out ofAfrica is the most maturely passionate film to come Out of Hollywood since the town's brains went to its gonads. (There, I've written a money quote.) Some of the physical grandeur comes straight out of Lean. A 12
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feeling for place is viscerally evoked, not his face as acceptance of his typecasting ecstatic release in self-control; he is dear just from locations or even land scapes, free Denys, sending an urgent signal that, but in establishing Africa as a central as the troglod yte tough guy). As Karen , in crucial matters, he must work his character: Karen's responsive dream smooth domination , because he's the lover. The camera rises elegiacally over a Meryl Streep is at first preoccupied with man after all and must know what's best. sumptuou s field; the shadow of Denys' Antonioni couldn't be more oblique than plane gently flaps its wi ngs across the her danskatomeflunja accent. Will this Pollack & Co. here, yet the sequence is swollen terrain below. This isn't cinema- direct and sexy enough to send steam out tography for its own sake-pretty pic- be another familiar tour de force out of of your ears and make your socks roll up tures, travel posters-any more than and down, if only you know how to look . Milena Canonero's ravis hing costumes Berlitz? \"I'm afraid yo u caught me for Karen are just pretty dresses . (OK by I t is a mark of Pollack's confidence in me if fashionable women reject Miyake snewping,\" she trills to Berkeley Cole. \"I himself, his colleagues, his story, and and Mackie in '86 for the garments on his audience that he scatters scenes like show in Ran and Out of Africa.) It is happen to be giud at stories,\" she tells this throughout a film that cost $30-40 Pollack's and David Watkin's rei magin- million. And, I have to say, it's evidence of ing, reinventing of British East Africa, as Denys . the timidity behind The Color Purple, Isak Dinesen did in prose. Steven Spielberg's song of the south, that But God, she is giud. If Streep's face provokes it toward easy solutions and The look is sensuous; the drama is hyped emotions. Spielberg evidently sensual. You just have to look for it, and doesn't quite tell stories, it manages to figured that, to lead his big young fan club listen. Luedtke's dialogue fits hand- into a serious fable of brutality and somely in the modern epic mode , mixing register emotion quick as a virgin's blush regeneration, he needed spoonfuls of irony and indirection with bursts of sugar not supplied by Alice Walker, who confessional invective. Irony: Karen while providing an iconographic com- wrote the novel on which his film is takes a walk in her cunning little safari based. So he deletes the sex, and adds number (beige jacket and pleated skirt, mentary. She's creator and critic at the violins; Shug Avery is de-raunched; white puffed blouse with belted tie) , only everybody gets a happy famil y ending. to find herself in the company of a curious same time, composer and interpreter of This hardly advances film art, let alone lioness -and, a second later, Denys. Spielberg's; E. T. was so much finer in, for She's scared shitless, he's amused: each small gesture. By now \"big scenes,\" example, its wordless detailing of the \"Doesn't that outfit come with a rifle?\" mother's sexual longing masked by cheer- Indirection: Karen makes the acquaint- like Karen's proud humiliation as she begs ful suburban propriety. But for the public ance of Berkeley Cole, a friend of Denys' and many critics, The Color Purple's who moves in a cloud of mandarin for land for her disenfranchised Kikuyu , upscale showmanship worked. It's a hit, wistfulness. \"I had a friend I used to take and a hot Oscar contender-quite possi- to the dances at Oxford ,\" he says. \"I think are as puff pastry to Streep. Her real bly an ultimate Oscar winner over Out of yo u're wearing her perfume.\" Karen offers Africa , just as the rabble-rouser Amadeus Berkeley her scented hand. He inhales. challenges are in the small moments: beat out David Lean's discreet picture- \"Ah. No.\" A wan smile. \"Very nice, but it's poem A Passage to India in '85. not the same.\" This lovely scene, with its inhabiting a character, not submerging it Other films may nudge Pollack's away hint that Berkeley is homesick for an in the familiar mannerisms of ransacked from the statuette. Perhaps even Prizzi's England that may never have existed, Honor, a film whose virtues were rarefied pays off much later when Denys asks the hair and halt\" . She meets those enough to elude me, and whose favor dying Berkeley if he wants to be taken among critics I must attest to a combina- home (to England). \"I am home, I Pollack. tion of cynicism (Italians stink, America suppose,\" Berkeley replies. Even he can stinks, we all stink, heh heh) and belong on the plains of nowhere. Utopia. challenges just fine. Half of what can be sentimentality (give a laurel to John said about Karen comes from reading Huston for being an unregenerate original And as Karen and Denys seek an edgy Streep's face , or monitoring her intona- who's outlived the sharkskin suits). Yet equanimity in the Kenyan hills, so do the tions of willfulness and resignation, or only by honoring Out of Africa can the antagonistic styles of Meryl Streep and following the shawl she lets slide from her Hollywood establishment signal its Robert Redford-her method and his shoulders as a minute signal to someone, restored appetite for grace and grandeur, coiled jauntiness-collide, then compro- maybe herself, that she is ready to let for the whiff of subtlety, for dogged mise, then embrace. At first, Redford Denys make love to her. As lovers , he craftsmanship that builds a house for looks weatherbeaten, restless, straining calls the shots, and she ducks or gets hit. genius. Do I care who wins? No; Oscar to do a favor for an old pal; it's his sixth As actors, Streep chooses the tune and Night for me is just an evening of wagers film with Pollack . His smile is tighter and sets the tempo; Redford watches, accom- on a race stocked with old horses. But I'd more noncommittal then ever, and his modates a bit, then surrenders to this like to see the geriatrics get it right for eyes have acquired a permanent squint heartthrob role with a poignance that once, and pick a film that demands into the sun of his own celebrity-a badge suggests he is as much a prisoner of his attention must be paid to a mind and of wariness toward a world that, after a princeliness as women are slaves to it. heart in unpredictable working order. quarter century of seeing him on screen, Two smart, attractive people flirting with still thinks of Robert Redwood as the their destinies , as played by Gable and *Like Karen's, like Pollack's, like what's hunk from Hollywood High (even as Duse: just watch. Clint Eastwood's scowl has burned onto left of the best of Old Hollywood. Watch closer for a moment and find passion in the service of character. Earlier, Karen and Denys fell in love, and into bed , in her tent at a riverside campsite. \"If yo u say anything now,\" she warned , desperate for him , \"I'll believe it!\" Now a very brief be d scene finds him lying taut above and inside her. HE: Don't move. (Pause.) SHE: I want to move. (Pause.) HE: Don't move. (Fade out.) So Denys is the safari leader, teaching a novice how to react when confronted with an aroused beast; he is the strong lover helping Karen learn 14
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persuaded John Daly of Hemdale to terms, to the father-son theme. Initially, Brad lives with his half- James Foley interviewed underwrite a $6.5 million budget. That brother, his mother, and his maternal by Dan Yakir (sigh) meant that Penn, WaIken, and grandmother. There's a subtle relation- ship between the mother and the grand- Foley, among others, worked for mother, which I find fascinating too - the matriarchal hierarchy and how it works. J ames Foley is drawn to the working deferments. In this poor, white, rural family, the class. His 1984 directorial debut, \"That's the only way we could get it influence of the two women, especially Reckless , with Aidan Quinn as a teen made; explains Foley, \"because, although the grandmother, on Brad remains unspoken until he finds himself in rebel with lots of Dean-cum-Brando there are no large crowd scenes and it's c,onflict between his own instincts and the seductiveness of his father. When he attitude and Daryl Hannah as the blond very simple production-wise, we had a finall y decides to break away and develop his own cutting edge of morality, we feel Polish-American princess who can't surprisingly high number of locations. the old woman's influence. There's a wonderful moment at the end of the resist his sexual prowess, concluded that We shot outside of Nashville, in rural movie when his father is brought into the courtroom, where Brad is going to testify the only heat in a steel town may come Tennessee, often at night. Since there against him, and he sees the two women waiting outside. There's an exchange of from young rage. was no source of lighting, we had to bring looks that sums it all up. At Close Range returns to familiar blue our own generators. We had 61 locations In both films , you match a bad boy and a good girl in a love story on the fringe- collar terrain. Based on a screenplay by to do in 48 days, so we were moving at very much in the tradition ofthe Fifties. Nicholas Kazan (Elia's son), it features least once a day, which was an enormous My favorite films are the melodramas of the Fifties: Kazan , Nicholas Ray.... Sean Penn as Brad Whitewood, Jr. , a kid physical strain on the crew in the middle Just the other day, Pat Leonard was doing a piece of music for the scene where Brad with no payday to speak of and no of a very humid summer. It was also very and his girl are running away from her house to the cornfield. For a minute it prospects, living in a small Pennsylvania expensive.\" looked like East of Eden. It's probably a coincidence of my own age and develop- town with his half-brother Tommy The son of a Staten Island , N.Y., ment and my awareness of film. Some people said that Reckless was a rip-off of (Christopher Penn), his mother (Millie lawyer who rebelled against his education Rebel Without A Cause. It baffled me. I liked working in a genre that started with Perkins), and his grandmother (Eileen (\"I was going to be a shrink\"), Foley Rebel, because the audience is familiar with the dynamics of the genre, which Ryan). Then one day Brad Whitewood, discovered film through a casual course at allowed me to take it as a given and spend time on the emotional evolution of these Sr. (Christopher Walken), who years NYU. While \"not at all a movie brat\" (his two kids. earlier abandoned the famil y, shows up favorite movie is 101 Dalmatians) , he Brad is not a bad boy at all. He's quite gentle, soft-spoken, interior... not rebel- and the film takes on the task of rebutting liked what he saw. Foley cites Bertolucci, lious in the way that the genre usually exercises. The irony is that this gentle the resurgent value that the family that Polanski, Scorsese, Olmi, Weir, and the giant-Sean had to put on almost 30 pounds to appear tough - steals tractors preys together stays together. Brad yearns Tavianis - \"people who appreciate the and commits other crimes not out of rebellion but out of longing, a need to be to join his father in the family trade of frame\"- as major influences. D . Y. close to his father. It's a naked, vulnerable need for emotional connection. burglary and smuggling. Somewhat sche- He drifts into a life ofcrime to be closer Wmatically, however, it is left to the woman hat about At Close Range hooked to his father? you? in his life , Mary Stuart Masterson, to pose the decisive moral choice, once I was fascinated by the nature of the junior discovers the extent of senior's father-son relationship , by the simple, corruption. universal element that blood is thicker When he was still studying filmmaking than water. It was brought to dramatic at USC, James Foley became intrigued extremes in this story with murder, rape, by a 1978 Philadelphia Inquirer account and mayhem. The emotional logic of the of a crime family, the tragic trajectory of film is extremely simple and accessible. [I which culminated in murder, pitting likel taking what is accessible, the father against so n. Foley knew \"there was identifiable emotional colors, and pre- a great movie there\" but had to wait seven senting them in a hyper-real, hyper- years before he could make it. Sean Penn dramatic story. Everybody strives to had also been interested in the story, but make hyper-dramatic situations, because their mutual desire to make it into a film of their entertainment value, but so often drew no interest, though they had you have the hyper-dramatics without the secured the go-ahead from Elliott Lewitt, emotional logic to back it up. who owned the story rights. In Reckless you painted the conflict \"Nobody wanted to do it,\" Foley recalls. between son and father. \"It was considered too dark.\" But Foley, Sean (among others) told me that the whose Reckless had just been released (in best thing about Reckless was the father- February 1984), and Penn , who had just son thing, which was a subplot. In At finished shooting The Falcon and the Close Range , it's inverted: the romantic Snowman , pursued the project and finally relationship is subordinate, in dramatic 16
Yes, and that's the most important thing in the movie. It's not about the mechanics of criminals but about longing for a father. The avenue he pursues is crime, but that's totally incidental to what he's after. It's very up-front. Maybe that's why it was so hard to get the film made. Reading a script, it's easier to feel on familiar territory when the structure is action-oriented. It's a moody character study, not a con drama. What was most difficult in laying out the character contradictions? If you looked at all the emotions and actions that were swirling around the true story, you could drown in negativism, ugliness, death, defeat. But what Sean and I saw was the tenacity of the kid's character. He's a survivor who, without the benefit of intellectual awareness, has the strength of moral conviction, a sense of right and wrong, which helps him cut through a morass of some of the ugliest aspects of human nature. In the end , he's literally shot up with bullets, bur he survives - physically and, more impor- tantly, morally. How does a young man develop and become an individual? By learning from his father, with whom he has an instinc- tive bonding and identification . The greatest dramatic challenge was, given that pull, how you make the decision to strike out on your own. Brad is heroic because he breaks out against all odds. People read the script and didn't see that at all . But focusing on the quietest character, with the least amount of physical action, is the linchpin pf the thematic movemenr. An actor had to draw anention to himself without saying too much, while everybody around him is screaming and yelling and shooting at each other. It flies in the face of many conventions. And that's why I felt it could work only when Sean became involved with the project. sWhen is Brad moment ofawareness? Just when he is feeling most gratified in his developing relationship with his father, he witnesses the execution of an alleged informant. This is a logical extension of his access to his father's life and his gang. Brad makes the break right then and there. He knows he doesn't want to be with him anymore , but he can't get away: he is mowed down by his father, his girlfriend is killed .... When he picks himself up and goes to his father's house for revenge ... it's the best scene in the movie. He faces his father and has a gun to his head, but he doesn't shoot because he understands that he would become no different from the man he despises. 1\\'Vo
month s later, when he's on the witness emotionally turbulent period. have with your father? stand , testifying against his father. shak- ing, still recovering from his wounds , he's I tried to do the same thing in Reckless. The question is perfectly legitimate, the strongest man on earth. To express the love rs' sexual passion, I but I think I'll decline to answer it. Only T hefilm rejects the era of Bonnie and Clyde, that films should rethink had to give the film a stylized, unrealistic because I haven't decided .... I certainly good and evil, law and order. look. The steel town isn't grimy but , sweat blood putting as much of myself Yeah . I have one clear dictum: the residue of the film has to be life-affirming. especially at night, it's magical and and as much of my convictions and my Even if you drag people through the worst tragedy, and end your picture with death, sexual. It's an emotional adventure, not a emotional life on the line in making a film the message has to be that it's better to be alive than dead. It would be fraudulent geographical one. You have to balance the as I expect any actor would. Conclusions otherwise. If I choose to live, the only way I can be honest is to make a film that real world and the emotional fantasy may be drawn from that. Maybe when I'm celebrates that decision. I'm very skepti- cal of nihilistic films. yo u're inviting the audience to share. It's a older, I would like to talk more about that. How did you want At Close Range to delicate balance. You lose people if you're Is making afilm therapeutic? look? too fantastic and you bore them if you're It would be tragic to imagine that, I didn't want to make a pretty, funky too realistic. because making films isn't therapeutic at drama. My focus was the beautiful all. It should be a joy -the process of emotional colors of Brad's life as they How do you make specific stylistic making films, the interaction with other were becoming defined. With that as a decisions? starting point , I wanted to make the film as naturalistically beautiful as I could. It's There's a certain intellectual consider- people-but that's not therapy; that's life. lit in as warm and romantic colors of summer as I could get. ation of what it's about, and what mood Making movies seems like a wonderfully There are some fairly radical theatrical I'm after, and how to manipulate these climactic involvement in my life, but it devices in the lighting, however. When Chris Walken murders Chris Penn, tools to get that. But there's also can't be a substitute for emotional they're out in the middle of these beautiful fields at night , with a vague something that's ongoing and inevitable if wholeness. All you've got to do is go to moonlight .... I cut to Chris Penn's face- a black silhouette against this moonlight. yo u're a filmmaker who cares about the the first screening of your first movie in a As the scene begins, the lights dim up on his face. Then there's a cut to Walken and expressiveness of the frame , given the paid preview-your precious little piece the lights dim up on him , too. Walken begins a short monologue before he kills limitations of a two-dimensional space: of personal expression - and there's a him. I tried to distill the emotional nexus, the emotional essence of what was you have an eye that makes you opt for bunch of kids who paid is, and it's not happening, apart from trying to cover the action. It's a scene about one man killing decisions, such as camera movement, your movie anymore. It's theirs, because another with a gun, but I was least interested in the gun, the bullets , and the that sometimes have no reason to be they paid for it. And they'll get up and buy murder. I wanted what each of them felt in the moment before it happens. And other than that they make your eye feel popcorn and will yell and scream and will the scene cuts before you see the bullet hit. I just wanted these giant faces looking better. A filmmaker's work has a certain make out with each other during the at each other. That's where the action is. look to it. You can tell it's a Martin most important scene.... And it's great. You seem to create a tension between the naturalistic and the stylized. Scorsese film anytime. You could analyze Yes, but I'd probably get burned if I use Yit in terms of camera moves and OU term the story fictional? the word \"naturalistic.\" I like to start from I approached it as fiction. After my the reality of the moment-what time of composition, etc., etc., but I believe it day it is , where we are-and then push has more to do with the eye of the initial research in the L.A. Public Library and manipulate reality to be more expressive emotionally. At Close Range is individual artist, which is unconscious. years ago, I never went back to the actual about a sleepy town and a kid who's been in hibernation until he comes alive with Uuan Ruizl Anchia's photography for At facts. I made a deliberate effort to not an enormous emotional turbulence. I wanted the colors and the look of the film Close Range is radically different from know about it, because I had to take the to reflect that. The end of the film , for example, takes place in autumn, the most Michael Ballhaus' Reckless, yet a pictorial story and make it my own, without being similarity exists between the two films. If tied to real events or rea! characters. you're being yourself, there's going to be a How much does it diverge from the constant thread .... actual events? Which is? I'm not sure. The main facts are true- It's difficult to say. It's always easier for a who got killed and who didn't, blah-blah- third party to determine the similarities blah. But I have no idea if emotionally between a brother and a sister- in voice, these characters had any similarity what- movement, emotional reaction. When I soever. I doubt it , to be honest. have more than two films to my credit it Do you see these films as critiques ofa will become more obvious, but for now political or social order? all it is is a vague awareness that there's a Absolutely not. I have absolutely no pictorial similarity and, even more impor- political consciousness relative to either tantly, the emotional and political convic- of those two films . Not once was there tions that are the backbone of why I any consideration of the societal or would come to one decision instead of political ramifications, but my own emo- another. Why does something seem real tional political views are represented. It to you? It's unconscious. Why would I tell all reverts back to my own optimism, my an actor to convey a sense of warinttss own celebration of life as being the when he's with his [screen] father? One central thing in both stories. I consider has to talk to an analyst to find out why I the life wish that pushes people to perceive a situation between a father and overcome obstacles the most important a son in the early stages of their aspect of the popular cinema. relationship in those terms. It has to do What then was Reckless about, aside with my own relationship with my father from a working-class boy and a rich girl? and how much of that I project into the Emotional freedom versus emotional dynamics of this fictional story. paralysis. If in At Close Range the action What kind of a relationship did you that gives form to the emotional move- 18 d
ment is violence and murder, in Reckless Walken (left) and Penn. The seductiveness ofthe father. it's the sexual relationship. It's about confronting the barriers of fear, which is part of the fabric of a larger relationship. become part of the work. And this was the prerequisite for growth. These two It was wonderful. Yery few words were true of Sean, too. And may be true of radically different characters discover exchanged, but a lot of information great actors in general. Often, people through the intimacy of their sexual passed back and forth. loathe certain aspects of their personality relationship that they're sharing very and they instinctively edit themselves. similar fears of growth. That's why they're Sean is a director's dream for knowing They consciously form their personality able to feed each other the confidence the medium he's working in-the camera by accentuating some aspects and play- needed to go to the next step - to leave is why we're there, not some unfortunate ing down others. With both Aidan and town physically and metaphorically. detail. He knows how to make any act or Sean there is a sense that everything is gesture, however simple-like cigarette fair game, that every aspect of their ~re the working experiences similar smoking- more expressive. Sometimes personality, no matter how dark, IS on the two films? the actor's emotional needs are perceived available for use . as competitive with the camera's graphic Not at all. In Reckless I worked with needs. But they should be synergistic. What a director and an actor have is Michael Ballhaus the night before on the The most brilliant moments on film very much a love .relationship . It's why I visual scheme, so I came fully prepared, happen when they lock together. can understand how often it leads to trying to get the actors to accommodate intense sexual relationships between to it. I felt more confident when I was While Sean was constantly challenged directors and actresses or actors. In this doing At Close Range, so I didn't need to to be better, to take risks, he was not context, feelings are very easily brought plot it out so much. I worked with the concerned about whether he deserved to to the fore. And you agree to let go of actors on the emotional logic and reality be an actor or not. Reckless , on the other barriers that would otherwise take years of the scene, then instinctively had the hand, was my first picture, as well as to let down . camera follow their movements. I didn't Aidan's. And to have communicated as know where the camera was going to go well as we did , I feel, was an enormous Aidan Quinn looks very much like you. when we got to the set in the morning. accomplishment. If we had made the film It's funny. When we were casting But you don't do that in your first film, now, there probably would be a broaden- Reckless, I was looking at a tape and there because you're simply terrified. ing of the character, perhaps allowing was Aidan, who I'd never seen before, more of a sense of humor, which Aidan mumbling some monologue.... 1couldn't ~re there more cuts in Reckless? instinctively has. When we were making understand a word he said, but I knew he Oh, yeah. In general , the script of At the film, there was friction between us was the guy. Maybe I was finding a Close Range was more about people because he felt the urge to express that mirror. ... I've no regrets. I still think he's talking to each other, violence or no more while my vision was narrower than the guy. violence. In Reckless, people didn't talk it needed to be. Do you express yourself through these very much. So At Close Range has longer actors-or characters? takes , by the nature of what's happening. What is the particular strength ofeach Yes, I do. I don't think Sean looks like You also have a main character who's an ofthe two? me, but there's something about him that observer: the entire film is from his point I feel a tremendous affinity for and loyalty of view. When you do that, you have to Both of them have incredible courage. to. I said to him once, before \"ve started , firmly establish the POY, Sean's; then see They get right into the most intense that when a movie is good and I leave the what he's seeing, then see his reaction to emotional situations. They don't spare theater, I wish I could go to where the it. It was a challenge in the editing, themselves. With Aidan, I felt that it movie was and hang out with the main because you have a third step all the time. came from the confidence he had in How do you work with actors? himself as a human being- he felt good *character or be his pal or her boyfriend. I The best relationship I can have with enough about himself that he was an actor is one that's totally devoid of prepared to allow any aspect of himself to always want more out of them . intellectualization. I'd like an actor to purely be reacting to me and to not be afraid to feel that my personality is the reason why I feel something. That's good enough. Similarly, I like to let the actor be instinctive in what he does. When I made At Close Range, I was confident that I could tell a story, so I was more relaxed. And with Sean being my best friend - having had a relationship and a dialogue with him for years - the making of the film was just a follow-up to the months before that , when we spent every minute together. The cameras just happened to be rolling. There was no sense that the union, the relationship , and the dialogue were there for the purpose of the film. They had been born long before, for reasons bigger than the film. The film became a very comfortable 19
by Leonard Klady The confusion with which it was from Les Diaboliques .) Originally, Clou- received in New York on its release in zot conceived the film as a ten-minute \"some time would be necessary to October 1957 was enormous. The New short, but he wanted to avoid newsreel discover and examine the body of York Times said the \"film rates better as cuts between canvas, artist., and com- light entertainment than as a serious art mentator, all overdubbed by narration. criticism that has erupted from 'it' like a film.\" The New York Herald Tribune \"Abstract values could not be put into volcano and penetrates deep into the wrote that, \"In terms of art, Le mystere words ,\" said Clouzot. \"The analysis of the heart of the mass of cinema and painting.\" Picasso is an important film. In terms of drawings and pictures is gradual and So wrote French critic Andre Bazin- entertainment, it is spotty.\" progressive-you might call it chronolog- about the film Le mystere Picasso. ical- as the creator's idea develops in Premiered at the 1956 Cannes Film Released in the United States by front of your eyes.\" Festival, the film - a collaboration Lopert Films, it had a brief, unsuccessful between filmmaker Henri-Georges theatrical run. In France it enjoyed a The idea of a collaboration between Clouzot and Pablo Picasso-wllS success d 'estime but faired only slightly Clouzot and Picasso, who were friends accorded the Prix du Jury, the event's better at the boxoffice. In a matter of a and neighbors, had been brewing for second prize, and hailed as a master few short years, the film's distribution several years . However, their desire to stroke in the depiction of an artist at agreements lapsed, and no efforts were portray the evolution of a painting had work. made to renew them. The film would been hindered by the conventional inabil- remain unseen and unwanted for nearly ity to establish a point of view other than Franc;:ois Truffaut, then a critic, stated, three decades, until recently acquired for over the shoulder. They discovered the \"The film is about poetry and we feel release by the Samuel Goldwyn Com- solution to the problem quite by acci- overwhelmed by it.\" Yet the mainstream pany. Yet the film's existence at all was the dent: Picasso experiments with a promo- critics, particularly in the United States, product of unique circumstances. tional bottle of ink sent by an American were unprepared to embrace the film. concern, the ink unremarkable except Perhaps the absence of any yardstick to In June 1955, Nice's Studios de la that it bled through the tablet of paper measure its quality worked against a Victorine were invaded by a small film and produced a perfect, opposite image. critical appreciation. crew, headed by Clouzot (some two years Here is the way, Picasso realized, to draw after he made Wages of Fear and fresh 20
while a camera recorded his every playpen . the U.S. and after several false leads, movement-from behind the surface. He called Clouzot on the phone. returned with a solution: the color which The director arranged for a soundstage P icasso appeared to have lost all would not conform to a fixed position on- at the nearby Victorine and started the awareness of the intrusion of equip- screen would be removed and reinserted process of crewing the film. Eventually ment and lighting. He adopted the style where desired . The process was dubbed the group included composer Georges Auric, photographer Edward Quinn, of a movie star when friends such as Jean \"presse Picasso ; the Picasso printing cameraman Claude Renoir, and editor Henri Colpi. From the outset, Colpi Cocteau,Jacques Prevert, or Luis Bufiuel method . Finally, the production was recalled in an article at the time of the film's premiere, every crew member had dropped in for a social call. Finally, it offered the new Cinemascope process. It the \"feeling of being involved in a unique adventure.\" Still, Colpi says, on seeing became difficult to tell who was directing allowed Picasso to paint large murals . first rushes, the crew was \"speechless.\" the film: it was Picasso who altered the The shooting was now complete. They had captured the moment of creation in a far more powerful manner shooting schedule to his prime creative Clouzot elatedly listened to Georges than anyone had anticipated. The proc- ess altered the shape and concept of the hours-midnight to dawn . Auric's score and felt confident that the film, and the prospect of a larger work particularly fueled Picasso's imagination. Then one day he announced that he'd film would please both critics and public. He became consumed by the filmmaking process, arriving each day with a dozen like to work in oils. The specially treated And why not? Superficially, the 75- new ideas. The soundstage became his studio away from home, as he brought parchment which permitted the ink to minute study appears simple and direct. amenities and supplies to enhance the set. bleed through was also strong enough to Without aid of verbal commentary we are Conversely, Clouzot was growing darker in mood. Plagued by ill health all resist tearing from the artist's bold allowed into the work space of Picasso, his life, he had given up one project earlier that year and now feared he would strokes. Oils would bring more vivid who creates 20 pieces ranging from ink not be able to complete this one. The film was ... expanding with each passing color, a commercial asset, but they would drawings to elaborate and colorful oil day; he did not have enough money for a feature-length film. The prospect of not bleed through the paper. No canvas murals. However, the most startling making a feature was, in any event, dubious. The subject was not likely to could be found for the oils which could be invention of Le mystere Picasso is its attract a major investor, and, even so, putting together new financing might photographed from behind . Yet Clouzot's exclusion of the artist from the frame. take months. Clouzot steeled himself for a meeting with Georges Lourau of passion was to invent a method to catch The paintings seem to spring to life: lines Filmsonor. Then France's largest and most distinguished film company, Film- sweep across the screen, colors explode, sonor had backed Clouzot's previous two films, both commercial successes. Still, and images appear, evolve, mutate, or he was not optimistic they would respond to something so avant-garde. To even disappear. Clouzot's surprise, Lourau offered whole- hearted support. The financing was In the opening moments of the film, modest but enough to proceed without interruption through July and August. Clouzot suggests that men would give It was now possible to venture beyond fortunes to understand \"the secret mech- the original intention. Picasso's ideas, which had previously seemed untenable, anism that guides the creator in his were now given serious consideration . Clouzot wrote a section involving him- perilous journey.\" Whereas this is impos- self, Picasso, and the process itself. The bustle of activity managed to subdue sible in music and poetry, he continues, it fears that watching Picasso paint for more than an hour might not be entertaining. can be realized in painting by following Clouzot was still uncertain that his ideas for a ten-minute short would be applica- the artist's hand. And one feels very much ble to a feature. His doubt was not placated by Picasso's boundless energy, in the thrall of Picasso as he turns his which transformed the set into an artist's canvas, the screen, into beasts, bull- fights , beaches, and nudes. Yet it dis- turbs . As Truffaut wrote, \"The Picasso mystery remains unsolved, which is why we are by turn amazed and left with a the immediacy of the creative act, so slight feeling of having been deceived~ stunningly captured from the object's Picasso is both consumed by his passion point of view in the ink sketches. and simultaneously capable of standing back to amend his first instinct, improve Eventually, Clouzot applied a stop- on a thought, or abandon a hopeless motion camera on the same side of the cause. It is done with a laugh and not the canvas as Picasso, shooting each stroke. imperiousness of a god. This painstaking stop-start procedure Lwas in sharp contrast to the earlier e mystere Picasso's failure in France in the fall of 1956 and, a year later, in spontaneity of painting and filming. It also shifted P-O-V back from object to New York moved Andre Bazin to call it subject, and so risked the viewers' too original to be appreciated fully in its second-guessing the artist. But Clouzot time. Perhaps that time is now. As Ilya believed he could create the illusion of a Lopert's widow, Ruth, recently observed: painting coming to life through transpar- \"Interest in painting has grown immeasur- encies taken at every stage of the drawing. ably\" in the 30 years since the film's initial By laying the pieces of film chronologi- release. Inevitably, Le mystere Picasso cally and dissolving from one to the next, had to resurface . he was banking on a seamless effect. Plans in 1980 to create a Picasso mu- Initially, the seams were visible. The seum in Paris caught the eye of indepen- first results from the lab showed that qent filmmaker and distributor Marin certain colors would hold neither position Karmitz, who wondered why he hadn't nor consistency. But Clouzot was seen Clouzot's film in decades. He undaunted. Lab technicians were sent to proceeded to check into the status of its 21
disuibution rights. In retrospect, Karmitz Company for all rights in North America, Arnold Glimshire of New York's Pace says he would never have made his initial it is said to be about one-third of the Galleries. At one time, Glimshire acted inquiries had he known what a \"hornet's original asking price. as American representative for the works nest\" he was stirring up. but says he has \"no idea who owns either T he most persistent mystery associ- now.\" The destruction of the paintings is Having to parse 500 pages of legal ated with Le mys(ere Picasso is that lent credibility by a story that the work documents and negotiate with the estates all of Picasso's paintings and drawings for had been executed on uanslucent glass. of Picasso, Clouzot, and Filmsonor cost the film were destroyed. Ines Clouzot And Ruth Lopert says she recalled two years. The first operating agreement maintains this is true, \"except for two or hearing that one crew member's job was between MK2 Diffusion (Karmitz's com- three pieces Picasso retained for himself.\" to wipe the glass clean at the end of each pany) and the artists' heirs, represented Henri Colpi attests that a number of shooting day. Yet Ines Clouzot used the by Clouzot's \\vidow, Ines, was not drawings were \"torn up\" by the painter word dechirer (\"to tear\") when speaking reached until 1982 - in time for the film during filming. However, these were of Picasso's works for the film. And to be rescreened at the Cannes Film minor works, the victims of a sudden Colpi, one of the few living witnesses to Festival. The film 's subsequent re-release bout of temperament. It's unlikely any of the entire filming process, only shrugs in France and other European countries these were part of the finished film. and scratches his head when questioned to responsive critical and audience recep- about the glass paintings. \"There were tion convinced Karmitz to arrange an Producer David Wolper claims title to only two types of surfaces used; he says American release. However, the heirs one piece seen in the film, \"The Centaur; emphatically. \"Paper and linen canvas.\" stipulated a minimum asking price of $1 which is Picasso's homage to film and million. Though Gabriel Desdoits, Kar- filmmakers. Seen near the film's finish, The mysteries surrounding Le mystere mitz's American sales agent, knew the the centaur's head is a lens box; its back Picasso neither enhance nor subuact price tag was out of line-even for the legs, Picasso's easel; the torso, the from the film's stature. Its collaborative then active \"classics\" divisions of the stanchions supporting the lighting stalking of something wild and controlled major studios - he had to uy before within both Picasso and Clouzot is far Karmitz could return to plead with the scrims, etc. It cannot be grouped with more riveting than the anecdotes and estates to rethink the hefty guarantee. other pieces seen in the film, as we do not gossip it has spawned. As Chaplin said in Two years and no deals later, the heirs see it evolve, and it is neither drawing nor Limelight, \"Somehow, I knew it would agreed. Although no one is willing to painting. work out that way. Time is the great confirm the financial arrangement be- tween MK2 and the Samuel Goldwyn 1\\vo paintings created for the film - \"La author. It always writes the perfect Plage de la Garoupe\" and \"La Corrida\"- were recently confirmed to exist by ®ending~ 22
by Marc Mancini F red Thompson isn't a household word, but these days his is one of the Be honest. Haven't you just once Fred Thompson in Marie. most discussed names among Hollywood imagined yourself a movie star? casting directors. He looks a bit like Joe Never mind that the only role you've ever played the heavy. Afterward only one Don Baker and startled everyone with his played was that of a shepherd in the child dared to ask Axton for an auto- debut performance opposite Sissy Spa- second grade Nativity play. Or that your graph; the others skirted him sheepishly cek in Marie. Before Marie, he had never memory is so bad that you can't remem- but surrounded the hero , Fess Parker. acted in his life. ber your own phone number, let alone Then when an audience cheered his pages of dialogue. Or that you've read screen death, Axton abandoned acting Producer Frank Capra, Jr., and director how the thirst for recognition and love-a for 14 years . As Eddie Murphy once Roger Donaldson had long fretted over potent fuel for many actors-reverses so explained, \"People expect me to be this who would play the lawyer who repre- frequently into forced, desperate loneli- arrogant jerk when they meet me. That's sented Marie Ragghianti in her true-life ness. just my stage personality.... People never lawsuit against unlavvful dismissal as head seem to understand.\" Why then is the daydream of the of Tennessee's Pa.role Board. In research- civilian-turned-movie celebrity so beguil- Filmmakers, too, play more than a bit ing? Perhaps it allows us to mentally bore part in all of this. Photoplay and Cahiers ing the script they had interviewed the through the imperial, impervious facade du Cinema, odd bedfellows for sure, have actual attorney, Fred Thompson. \"At first of stardom, to reaffirm that movie actors described how a director or producer has they told me they wanted me for a walk- are human beings, no different from us. bestowed cinematic laurels on an unex- on cameo part; explains Thompson. Or, more likely, it allows us to fantasize pecting commoner. Such anecdotes, to \"Later they handed me the script and said that they are different-once mortal, now remain credible, put the lucky one on the try it. Before I knew it, I had the part~ magically transformed into demigods by a screen, not the stage. That would be the ray of light. Becoming a movie actor, stuff of nightmares, not dreams , since The result is astonishing. Thompson is therefore, seems an odd, seductive bit of imbedded in the mythology is the belief as natural and believable as any actor alchemy, a form of reincarnation in which that stage acting requires honest training, could have been, both in trial scenes and, the life newly lived is one of panache, of while movie acting is a lark. significantly, away from the courtroom. moment, with a completely new, publi- His unusual success is precisely the stuff cist-given identity and the ability, no Yet the idea of instant acting, is a hard of which instant acting legends are made. doubt, to glow in the dark. fantasy to shake. It has even become a \"Actually, it was a combination of the self-fulfilling reality, one abetted by far right director and some of my own useful But wait. We're talking of movie too many genuine, compelling examples skills. I didn't get distracted. I remem- stardom here, not real , instant acting to be easily dismissed. bered my lines. I never really had camera proficiency. Or are we? Does one fantasy fright. But above all, I credit Roger spill easily into the other? After all, being Donaldson for keeping me from straying yourself seems a simple thing. Isn't that too far from being myself.\" what most movie actors do anyway? Choosing non-actors to play them- In the public mind , the separation of selves for the screen, or at least charac- ters very close to themselves, probably film · role and actor is indistinct. Hoyt harks back to the Lumiere brothers, who Axton recalls a 1965 studio screening for saw a boy pull a prank on their gardener 800 paper boys of Smoky, in which Axton and asked the two to recreate the moment for the cameras. The result, L'A rroseur Arrose, is often credited with 23
Sonja Henie. Johnny Weissmuller. being the first \"acted\" film. Early film- certainly Fred Astaire, about whom critic Oscar in 1984 for The Killing Fields is makers were indeed comfortable with David Thomson reflected that \"it is often proof enough. asking non-actors-especially celebri- preferable to have a movie actor who ties-to play themselves. Their appear- moves well than one who understands The fierce social commitment and ances dot early movie history: Andrew the part.\" modest technical resources among Third Carnegie in Our Mutual Girl (1914); World filmmakers, such as Bolivia's jorge Arthur Conan Doyle in The $5 Million Postwar, the inherent conservatism of Sanjines, Chile's Miguel Littin, and CQunteifeiting Plot (1914); boxers James these casting strategies was cast aside by Africa's Criseme Sembene, guide them Jeffries in Pennington's Choice (1915), the Italian neorealists. Though they too into a posture not unlike that of the post- and jack Johnson in Jack Johnson's selected those with some performance war Italians. Sanjines' words could just as Adventures in Paris (1913); Annie Sul- skills (Open City's Anna Magnani and easily be those of Rossellini: \"In meeting livan, Helen Keller's teacher, in Deliver- Aldo Fabrizzi both came from the music with the protagonists of those events [a ance (1919); and William \"Buffalo Bill\" hall), they also boldly cast unknown, Bolivian army attack on striking miners], Cody, who played himself in at least five totally inexperienced individuals in key we discovered that it was absurd to movies between 1910 and 1915. roles: Sandro Panzeri in Il Posto; the reconstruct their experiences by using Sicilian villagers of La Terra Trema; professional actors. To make this film it The practice eroded, however, as Lamberto Maggiorani in The Bicycle was not enough simply to depend on movie acting matured, as studios learned Thief (David O. Selznick, who was technical resources, money, and person- to manufacture their own talent and interested in backing the project, had nel. It was necessary for people to celebrities, and especially when the improbably wanted director Vittorio De provide a level of participation that introduction of sound demanded individ- Sica to use Cary Grant in the leading quickly became the fundamental element uals who could deliver lines and perform role). of the undertaking.\" without the convenience of someone yelling out directions as the silent camera The ragged anarchy of postwar Italy T he casting of unknown, non-profes- rolled. put casting onto a firm, passionate, sional actors in the United States has philosophical base, one which forced almost become intellectually trendy. In the 1930s, however, the studios audiences to experience the genuinely John Boorman's well-publicized use of settled into two recurrent, safe felt life of screen performers in a near- detribalized Indians as actors imparted a approaches. The first was to select right- documentary manner. What would have certain gravity to Emerald Forest that it looking athletes whose charisma might seemed insane to the \"white telephone\" would not otherwise have had. But translate to screen presence and star Italian directors of the 1930s now became independent filmmakers, such as jan quality and whose strength of character desirable: Roberto Rossellini chose his Egleson and Randall Conrad-those with might encourage the flourishing of at actors from the neighborhoods of his limited resources and documentary roots least modest acting talents. There were planned Paisan, then allowed these re- -tend to make the most use of non- many disasters, best forgotten (Babe protagonists, if you will, to determine actors. The advent of portable camera Ruth was one of them) but a few much of their own dialogue and delivery. and sound equipment, high-speed film athletes- Buster Crabbe, Sonja Henie, Paisan, said Rossellini, \"is a film without stock, and easy location shooting permits and johnny Weismuller-managed to actors in the accepted sense of the term.\" a simplicity of work and a realism of give performances with considerable environment that readily puts the non- surface charm. A second strategy was to Neorealism's strategy could hardly be actor at ease. \"We also have more time to seek out radio and stage celebrities, semi- ignored. Robert Bresson in France, Elia work with them,\" explains independent pro actors with ready-made performance Kazan in America, Astrid and Bjarne filmmaker Bob jones, whose Mission skills, and to insert them into tailor-made Henning-jensen in Denmark-all cast Hill has won a cluster of festival awards. vehicles. The films of the Thirties would unknown, untrained actors . And though \"We can explore strategies, permit have been far less engaging without Bing Neorealism soon lost its luster, the improvisation, rehearse if it seems appro- Crosby, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and integrity of such casting can still touch and astonish. That Hang Ngor won an 24
priate . So me of these things, whe n they out for criticism ? Maybe because the onl y by careful obse rvatio n and/or e mo- work, can make a no n-profess io nal's mov ies are overt about it , pro bably tio nal co ntact. If no n-acto rs occasio nally perform ance fl y, and th at precisely is because they not only select faces but succeed , it is because they are o ne-no te what the normal H o llywood film does n't m agnify the m into 20-foo t ico ns and p layers o r, in extremely rare cases, have time for. For th e m , with so much re plicate the m into infinity. So the unrealized prod igies . \"This bu siness th at money and profess ional time on th e line , practice is simultaneously an affro nt to anybody ca n be a m ovie actor has to be it's usually just too risky.\" our fantas ies and a magnet for our de myt ho logized :' says one L. A. stage daydreams. The re are people who wo uld actress . \"It's de mea ning to trai ned acto rs. H owever, an instant acto r-a perso n not be caught dead o n the U niversal who can be him self for the ca mera or, Studios Tour, but there are many m ore It implies that actors who co me to public more rare ly, someo ne el se for th e who dress up f or it. camera - is a rarity. For every C hief D an consc io usness sudde nl y afte r years of G eorge , Will ie Ne lso n, N !xau , or Je rzy And film must of its nature dwell on serio us study have no mo re to offer than Kosinski, the re are hundreds of othe rs for external appearances. S iegfr ie d Kraca ue r some untrained discovery.\" whom the came ra is like a ceme nt m ixer, po inted out early o n th at a camera cannot pouring laye rs of rigid indec isio n and self- \"I can unde rstand th at pos iti o n,\" agrees consciousness o nto norm al be havior. fun ctio n like an x-ray machine. It records Eric Morri s. \"There's a side of me th at Says Eric Mo rris, o ne of H ollywood's says, 'I resent Jim Brow n. I rese nt Joe best-known acting coaches : \"The le ns surfaces, skin , express ions d irectly, but Namath . H ow da re they succeed whe n will capture anything that is real. A th o ug ht s, fee lings, pass io ns o nl y tale nted people who co me to my classes woode n performance usually happens obl ique ly. Hungarian critic Be la Balazs so me times never m ake it .' O n the oth er because self-consciousness short-circuits celebrated this limitation, arguing that hand , in Ame rica, anyo ne can be any- the actor's pe rso nality, or the subpart of \"printing gradually rendered illegible the th ing. No n-actors have the right to hi s perso nality that he is tr ying to bring faces of me n,\" and th at m oti on picture succeed , and so me times they are already out. Really, the highest ac hieveme nt for ph otography wo uld e nabl e the inner man sufficiently co nnected to the ir inner self an actor is to be trul y co mfortable be ing once aga in \"to become visible.\" to do so.\" him self or herself in fro nt of a came ra.\" Both Kraca uer and Balazs penned the ir But d oes it really take spec ial tale nt or The casting of no n-actors for purposes most important criticism in the pre- self-knowledge to become an instant of verisimilitude, however, ofte n dovetails sound pe riod , whe n choos ing a sile nt actor? Or fo r th at m atte r, are all actors quite unexpecte dly with a very old , face, rather th an a theater-trai ne d actor, simply lucky soul s who , to reapply D ire see mingly co ntradic tory H o llywoo d made great se nse. Yet the sound e ra, Straits' song, receive \"money fo r nothin'\"? practice, one th at is most associated w ith though it te mp oraril y inhibite d the use of Fred T hompson te lls of hi s return to the very non-realist glamour traditio n: non-actors, blunted the cine matic obses- Was hingto n, D .C., and of noticing casting for a face. sion with the p roper \"look\" only slightly. C harlto n H eston seated nearby. \"I had Someo ne as inte llectual as Ro land met hi m once before, so 1went up to him F aces are ge nerally what the casting of Barthes could unabas hedly write in 195 7 and re introdu ced myself. H e recognized non-actors is about. Pretty faces. that \"the face of Garbo is an Idea, th at of me and congratulate d me on my perfor- C haracter-filled faces. Even ugly faces, as H epburn , an Event,\" without very much mance in Marie. H e the n leaned over and Fe llini has de monstrate d. T he archetypal di scuss ion of e ither's acting ability. G illo whi spere d, 'D on't te ll them how easy it story, certainly, is that of Lana Turner. Pontecorvo, whose 1966 Battle of . ,\" Attractive girl at soda fo untain : Mov ie Algiers (for its almost exclu sive casting of executive spots her. Says he's go ing to non-actors) is ofte n situ ated in the IS.. .. make he r a star. H e does. And genera- neorealist tradition , disagrees with the tions of wo uld-be actors have since tried importance of e ither acting sk ills or real- A sk a casting agent for a list of risi ng to Schwab the ir way into Moviel and . life expe rie nces: \"In cine ma th e som atic compone nt , the face, is at times m ore ~ co m ed y stars and they alm ost Lana Turner was not really discovered important than the ability to act. It's always m e ntion Paul Rodriguez . M ade that way, but she might as well have bee n, eas ie r to find someone who looks li ke the his reputation in the short-lived te levision because the H ollywood indu stry, hav ing characte r yo u have in mind from am ong series AKA Pablo. So lidified it in D. C. learned that it could take actors and turn millions of people th an from the re lati vely Cab. Lande d major ro les in Quicksilver, them into media events, dec ide d that it sm all group who are profess io nal The Whoopee Boys, and Miracles. And is could just as easily take right looking actors ....The face is what really counts.\" convinced th at acting classes are gener- nobodies and transform the m into both ally a waste.of time. \"Norman Lear signed actors and stars (no matter that the faces So the co ncept of face as meaning has me on the bas is of my stand-up come dy. were mode ls' and beauty queens', or that ga ine d aesthetic credibility. To semioti- The n he decided to e nroll me in Este lle their pe rformances were usually as blow- cians, John Way ne's aging, craggy face H armon's acting c lass. The fi rst thi ng she dried as the ir hai r). became an icon for the rugged western did was m ake us lie down. Pre te nd to be land scape . To sociologists, Arnold Sch- shrubs. 1was supposed to be a Sequ oia. It Career success because of a face seems warzenegger's body has beco me a meta- was all too silly, and they were taking it all a triumph of superficiality, a well-shape d phor for our society's wis h fo r power in too seriously. 1 walked out w ithin a half- insult to fairness and de dication. Martin the face of inte rnational chaos. And to a hour. I dec ided that Norman had to Sheen puts it bluntly: \"If all they wante d team of psychologists and political sc ien- accept me fo r what I am.\" was a face, why did I spe nd te n years at tists at D artm outh , Ronald Reagan's the Actors Studio?\" Yet every professio n flu e nt face may be \"the 'Tefl o n' in the The re is no doubt that for some regularl y typecasts in its hiring. The 'Tefl on' factor.\" people, acting is re lati vely easy. T hey practice is hum an in its most irritating may retain th e ir childh ood ability to sense. Why should the c ine ma be singled Certainly a trained actor wo uld argue pre te nd or may be especially aware of the that fac ial express ive ness, Reaga n's \"acti ng\" we all do in our daily lives . For include d , can be controlled and m astered the m , training may in fact extingu ish ingenuity, like George Wyman , who des igned L. A.'s e legant Bradbury Build- 25
ing, soo n afterward too k architecture ness on the set than e motional e mba r- Hoyt Axton in G re mlins. classes, the n never designed anoth er rassme nt .\" struc ture. So it m ay be with Paul Rodriguez, the C hicano who acted his Morr is, li ke many acting teache rs way through the barri o, the class cutup whose roots are in me th od acting, feels who worked hi s way through co medy th at tec hn ical cons iderat ions are second- cl ubs. And Rod riguez's stance is hardly ary to e motional aware ness, th at the with out precede nt . G able, Bogart , and little, simple tricks of ca mera pe rfor- John Way ne all repeate dly in sisted th at mance should be learned late r on th e set. formal training wo uld undo the ir skills . It just takes a minute to expl ain to a \"I'm not saying that I know everything,\" nov ice th at to keep the audience-actor says Rodriguez, \"because I do n't. But I'm connecti o n, mov ies req uire th at ph one lucky. I had enough instincts and lu ck to co nversations, for example, be do ne with get in ; the n I soaked up new skill s as I the face tilted up, unlike real life , whe re went alo ng. It's on-the-job training. I've the head is alm os t always til ted down. learned fro m To m Co nti , Terri Garr, Kev in Baco n. H ow much are lesso ns w ith Albert Magnoli directs gymnast/actor Mitch Gaylord. them worth ?\" But whe n dozens of such techniq ues Hang Ngor of Th e Killing F ie lds. T he o ld studio system sc reen-teste d co nverge, it can get co mplicated , and promi sIng newcomers, p laced the m whe n th e no n-actor has bee n thrown into To express pleasure, a wo uld-be actor under co ntract , gave the m o n-the-lot the less le isure ly world of te levision, need simply learn to de liver lines without acting classes, nurture d the m alo ng in thoroughly unne rving. Says Marguerite inflectio n while sm iling. To express ever-increas ing ro les, and allowed the m Hickey, the ballet dancer who star red in anger, an ind ividu al needs a slightly more to break through to full star statu s whe n the TV featu re Mirrors, \"There was so tr icky skill: the ability to say lines while pu blic atte ntio n de manded it. T he proc- mu ch to learn , and so little time. It was all the anal sphincter mu scles are tighte ned . ess was slow and safe . Now, the jump new to me : the cam era angles, the You now may have a clue to why so much fro m non-acting to m ajor ro les is usually light ing, hav ing to do a tour j ete and land te lev ision acting seems co nstipated . sudde n. And produ cers more th an the o n a chalk mark.\" In fac t , with its las t- public pay for on-the-j ob training with the minute casting, e leve nth-ho ur scripts, \"I'd rathe r be smart than be an actor,\" res ults obvious o nscreen. no nexiste nt re hearsal tim e, truncated said D isney's Pinocchio upon his release shooting sche dules, and spec ial attrac- fro m Stro mboli's puppet show. One Farrah Fawcett stumbled th ro ugh ti on to me d ia names, TV is a minefield for guesses th at be hind the use of no n-actors the unprepared . lurks a certain disdain for acting itself. sLogan Run , Sunburn , and Saturn Three Most ass ured ly, many be lieve that actors For thi s reaso n, doze ns of q uick-fix until fin d ing he r stride in The Burning acting schoo ls have emerged on both Bed. C hu ck Norris acte d like he had coas ts, th e thespi an equiva le nt of Nauti- starch sprayed all over him until he lu s, promising maximum results in mini- achieved so me sense of be lievability in mum time. O ne of the m ost co ntrover- Code of Silence . Raque l Welch was a s ial- a nd s uccess ful - is th e F ilm decorative e lement until Kansas City Indu stry Workshops Inc. FIWI stresses Bomber and The Three Musketeers. the imp ortant but eas ily learned lesso ns T hough all three had the good sense to of came ra acting: don't look into the lens; take acting lesso ns alo ng the way, o n-th e- recognize the key light and stay in it; set training is an expe nsive gamble, m ade cultivate pe riphe ral visio n in orde r to hit poss ible onl y because famous non-actors yo ur marks. It also preaches - and this is are preso ld properties - so m any Audie whe re th e co ntroversy looms - a grossly M urph ies -put before the public for the ir simpl ifi ed app roac h to \"instant acting.\" recognition value. FIWI argues th at there are onl y two essenti al respo nses: anger and pleasure. \"I have to ad mit th at some people learn acting on the set ,\" says Kirk Douglas. \"But yo u have to have tale nt in the fi rst place. And like an athle te, yo u have to have th at tale nt off th e fi el d . I'm a great be liever in acting cl asses .\" Eric Morris, who has a reputation for getting non-actors quickly into shape for a ro le, agrees: \"The re may be differe nt strategies, but every nov ice needs inte nsive guidance before appear- ing befo re th e came ras . Most ofte n a no n- actor is e motionally di sorie nte d . Take Mitch Gaylord [the Olympic gy mnas t- turn e d-acto r in American Anthem] . W he n he came to me, he was an e moti o nal desert. H e was e mb arrassed about his e moti o ns. And th e re's no thing th at leads more directl y to self-co nsc ious- 26
are puppets or, more tellingly, pieces of expressionless shot of the Russian actor Bergman once observed, \"Make a blank plastic. Ivan Mosjukhin after each of three face, and the music and story will fill it in.\" images: a bowl of soup , a dead woman in And in another variation of the actor-as- H umphrey Bogart to Joan Blondell in a coffin, and a girl playing with a toy. manipulated-object syndrome, many feel Stand-In: \"Baby, I'll make a picture Viewers who watched the short sequence that actors are mere Galateas in the hand s out of this celluloid garbage. It's the only \"raved about the acting of the artist; of Pygmalion-like directors. It is easy to way to make a good woman out of a very according to Kuleschov, reading pensive- conclude, that some directors would like bad actress.\" ness into the first shot of the actor, sorrow nothing better than to eliminate actors into the second, happiness into the third. altogether, to computerize them as does Film, women, and actors . Two lines of All, of course, from the identical neutral James Coburn in the narratively muddled dialogue manage to assault all three. But Looker, to ignore them as a bored, no snippet better expresses the popular expression. sleeping Hitchcock sometimes did, or to belief that editors can whittle their way Thus the actor's performance becomes special-effect them out of existence, as around a wooden performance. In his George Lucas might have done with his legendary 1922 experiment, Soviet film- a piece of plastic material , as Pudovkin robot-only first draft of Star Wars. maker Lev Kuleschov placed the same called it , to be manipulated and, if need be, improved through editing. As Ingrid PROFESSIONAL FILM BOOKS! by Film Professionals FILM DIRECTORS FILM SCHEDULING/FILM A Complete Guide '85 BUDGETING WORKBOOK Michael Singer, Ed. Ralph S. Singleton I!l I!l I!l I!l I!l THIRD ANNUAL ~'*~t. Compa ni o n ro \"Film Scheduling\". INTERN ATION AL EDITION Co ntains the entire screenplay ro Fra ncis ... 1400 DIRECTORS-DOMESTIC F I L tvl Coppo la's Academ y Awa rd nominated I~i & FOREIGN THE CONV ERSATION as we ll as sam ple producti o n a nd budget fo rms ... Birthdate, Place, Year, Addresses, ro be completed by the reader. Agents ALL SHEETS PERFORATED. ... Full length features , telefilms ... Alph abetical cross-reference of ISBN 0-943728-07-X 296pp. $15.95 14,000 films ... Index of Direcrors tAl'Hl. S1 HQ.UTOH ... Interviews & Phoros of Jo h n MOVIE PRODUCTION & Badham, Arthur Hiller, Randa Haines, etc. $34.95 BUDGET FORMS ... INSTANTLY! ISBN 0-943728-15-0 81/2 \"x II \" Cloth 436 pp. Ralph S. Singleton FILM SCHEDULING This book plus o ne phorocopier eq uals ~.~~ Or, How Long Willlt Take every produ cti o n a nd budget form To Shoot Your Movie? needed ro make a full length feature II o r teleplay. Completely redesigned and Ralph S. Singleton integrated fo rms th ai are 81/1 \" x 11 \" fo rm at-easy to tear o ut and use aga in The complete step-by-step guide ro and again . professional mo tio n picture sc hed uling, det ailing how ro create a production ALL SHEETS PERFORATED ~ :;:\", ::.=: co.>~... board, shot-by-s hot, day- by-day. .. ... .........., \"\"\"........ Complete production board of THE 00\" ... ..00- ISBN 0-943728-14-2 136 pp. $15.95 CONVERSATION in color. .---------------------- --------------- ----------------------------------------------- :YES' Please send me FC :85 ISBN 0-943728- 11-8 224pp. $16.95 : • the following books: CALIF. UPS : QTY. BOOK PRICE TAX SHIPPING Recommended for college courses. ___ FILM DIRECTORS '85 $34 .95 2.27 5 .00 $_ _ __ : _ _ _ FILM SCHEDULING 16.95 1.10 2.50 $ _ _ __ ~. / -LONE E.A9LE : _ _ _ FILM SCHEDULING/BUDGETING WKBK. 15.95 1.04 2 .50 $_ _ __ : _ _ _ MOVIE PRODUCTION & BUDGET . 15.95 1.04 2 .50 $_ _ __ FORMS ... INSTANTLY! YOUR ~ FOA PROFESSIONAL fU.M BOOKS TOTAL ENCLOSED $_ _ _ __ , ,: SHIP BOOKS TO : : Name LONE EAGLE PUBLISHING 9903 Santa Monica Blvd. : Company 9903 Santa Monica Blvd. Beverly Hills, CA 90212 : Address Beverly Hills, CA 90212 213/471-8066 : City State Zip• _ L -_ _ _ _ _ _~~~_ _ _~~_ _ _ _ 213/471-8066 27
As Ingrid Bergman once observed, \"Make remarkable level. But they all approach a blankface, and the music and story will acting with discipline, humility, and fill it in. \" respect for work. That had to rub off in their performances.\" Rossellini, Baryshnikov and Skolimowski in White Nights. A second trait that helps certain Oprah Winfrey as Sofia in The Color Purple. celebrity non-actors is the ability to express feelings in their own media. In this filmmaker-primary view, it really out particular talents and skills that Former dancer Meg Tilly explains that doesn't matter whether an actor has support the film acting experience. \"while other people had better dance experience or not. Maybe the non-actor technique, I had something to say. And I will inconsistently hit his mark, but then One of these is professional dedica-· feel that by acting I can express mysele again the trained actor may spend hours tion. \"The one thing that all the principals This dovetails with the relatively compe- sulking in his trailer, searching for his in White Nights had in common was tent track record of singers who have motivation, wasting precious time. commitment,\" says director Taylor Hack- acted in motion pictures; there is a ford. \"Sure Baryshnikov, with only one striking continuity from Rudy Vallee, But unlike the neorealists, who sought\" other acting experience, was a gamble. through Crosby, Sinatra, Presley, and the an honest face, Hollywood filmmakers, So was Jerzy Skolimowski, who is far Beatles, down to Sting, Prince, Midler, when casting a non-actor, often seek 2: better known for his directing. Or and Bowie. known one. It leads to a very special form Isabella Rossellini, whose father really of direction and casting, one that seeks: elevated the use of non-actors to a A third factor which often guides the casting of non-actors is their success at performance and in fashioning characters in their own medium. \"Stand-up comedy is the freest feeling; says Paul Rodriguez. \"You're your own producer, director, writer, editor, and actor. And when I'm up there on a stage, I'm sometimes other people I've known. I become a combina- tion of myself and someone else.\" In this light Whoopi Goldberg's Celie in The Color Purple is hardly surprising. And performance skills can be drawn from less-obvious professions. A number of former teachers and several lawyers have acted splendidly (though Fred Thompson rejects courtroom perfor- mance ability as the source of his own success). The Color Purple's Oscar- nominated Oprah Winfrey most certainly drew much of her robust movie perfor- mance from her experience as a Chicago talk-show host. And basketball player Maurice Lucas' words to a reporter are revealing: \"Before a game, I put on my game face.\" Having chosen a non-actor with such head-start qualities, a director generally deploys an arsenal of coaching gimmicks. A favored technique is to give a non-actor something to do while delivering his lines. Often it is something quite ordi- nary, like tapping a pencil or toying with a lapel. This stratagem achieved unusual bravura in Gregory Hines' drunken dance routine in White Nights. \"Gregory is hardly an amateur actor, but he did come to movies from dance,\" says director Hackford. \"It occurred to me that he might best vent his real personal feelings on the snobbery of classical dancers toward tap by giving him something to do wh ile speaking, something he feels totally comfortable with: tap dancing itself. It worked so well that it became central to my directing of both Hines and Baryshni- 28
\"[ can tell you one thing,\" says Billy Hayes, on whose life Midnight Express was based. \"Directors of Armenian descent love me....\" Billy Hayes. Billy Hayes was the central character that there was no time for acting lessons; as comfortable with their emotions . They (played by Brad Davis) in 1978's says Magnoli. need to learn to open up .\" harrowing Midnight Express, which retells the actual brutalization of a young American \"Shooting in Minneapolis, especially in And has Magnoli's penchant for casting hash smuggler in Turkish prisons (the book, non-actors ever led to disaster? \"Almost, which Hayes and William Hoffer coau- locations which the principals knew well, once. There's a scene in Purple Rain where thored, was a best seller). Hayes who later encouraged comfortable performances. the 'Kid' character imagines his suicide. figured in the ~Steve Canyon\" comic strip Concentrating on first takes helped-I also When we told Prince that we wanted to hang and Trivial Pursuit, may be the only person shot as much as possible in singles. When him from the rafters, he was understandably to become an actor after being the subject of you have two inexperienced actors within reluctant. We explained the effects trick to it a film. \"I wouldn't say that seeing someone the same frame, there is much less and he agreed . But the harness and noose else playing me on the screen made me feel probability that you will get two best were improperly arranged. A professional like I could do it better; says Hayes, \"but the performances. Almost all of Purple Rain's actor would have known immediately that entire process that went into the making of stronger moments were one-shots cut there was something wrong. But Prince Midnight Express certainly led to my together.\" simply tolerated the increasing pain. He current profession. The Billy Hayes I saw eventually told us,\" sighs Magnoli. \"Thank onscreen at first seemed drastically different That he was working with non-acting God. I can see it now: MOVIE DIRECTDR KILLS from my self-concept-I wanted to be Francis of Assisi, with birds landing on my performers, stresses Magnoli, was a bless- ROCK STAR.\" shoulder. But there was Brad's interpretation ing. \"Prince has well-developed mime up there, the whole mess of my experience. skills- the film alludes to that in his use of a Some Unusual It forced me to come to grips with the notion Pierrot puppet. Appolonia also has a very Non-Actors that Brad's idea of Billy Hayes might be expressive face.\" A re-viewing of Purple Rain closer to reality than my own . confirms this. Both lead~ often act awk- MUHAMMED ALI, as Senator Gideon wardly when delivering lines yet become jackson, Freedom Road (1979) \"The process; adds Hayes, \"made me credible when non-verbal. \"It's important, realize that there was all sorts of emotional too, that everyone was acting at what they TRUMAN CAParE, Murder by Death turmoil in me, all manner of experience. really do; it outweighs what many actors can (1976) Then by talking to Brad Davis on the set, I come up with.\" realized that he was tapping a similar pool to G. K. CHESTERTON and GEORGE get to his characterization, that maybe all I But Magnoli resists the oft-repeated belief BERNARD SHAW, Rosy Rapture (1914) had could be a resource, could be channeled that Prince and friends were only acting out into an acting career. It's strange. I was a role their own lives. \"Nothing was intentionally THE DIONNE QUINTUPLETS, The model for Brad Davis' specific performance. put in the script that was actually from Country Doctor (1936) He was a role model for my own future Prince's life. Nothing. Whatever genuine profession .\" crossover occurred arose from the expected ALTHEA GIBSON, The Horse Soldiers amount of coincidence. Furthermore, the (1959) In the past few years Hayes has appeared characters you see in Purple Rain are not in five independent features, three soaps, necessarily identical to the actors. Prince is GRAHAM GREENE, Day for Night and numerous stage presentations. Does his a thoughtful, outgoing, hard-working profes- (1973) name get him points? \"I can tell you one sional who approached his acting with thing: directors of Armenian descent love humility, yet this is hardly his media image GERMAINE GREER, Universal Soldier me. But being Billy Hayes sometimes helps, or onscreen image. Morris Day, who stole (1971) sometimes hurts. I hope, however, my many scenes, had it less easy. He projected acting ability itself will be what will too much; he tended to. play beyond the XAVIERA HOLLANDER, My Pleasure Is determine the roles that I get:' camera, rather than to it, or the opposite, to My Business (1974) tone things down into stiffness. Morris is \"I n film school I watched the Europeans. actually a quiet and low-key person. That's JOMO KENYATIA, Sanders of the River I admired how they built their films on why, counter to my normal strategy, I shot (1935) non-actors. But American films are built on Morris in two shots with jerome Benson. energy and entertainment; the conventional They playoff each other well, they relax one HAROLD PINTER, Rogue Male (1976), Hollywood wisdom is that non-actors another. It also pays off thematically; the Turtle Diary (1985) impede that process. I don't believe it:' two-shots emphasize Morris' gregariousness and the one-shots Prince's isolation, until LEON TRarSKY, My Official Wife (1914) So says Albert Magnoli, director of the the very end, when I changed the strategy to YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO, Take-Off $75 million grosser Purple Rain and the stress the characters' reversals:' soon-to-be-released American Anthem. \"I (1979) wrote 42 parts into Purple Rain, and 40 With American Anthem, Magnoli has were performed by individuals with no been a little more cautious: there are more TIMarHY LEARY, Cheech and Chong s acting experience. Start-up was so quick professional actors, and star Mitch Gaylord was put through three months of actor Nice Dreams (1981) training. \"It's different with athletes. They're OSCAR LEVANT, Humoresque (1947) performers, in a sense, but they're not quite PABLO PICASSO, Le Testament d'Orphee (1960) THEODORE ROOSEVELT and WOODROW WILSON, Womanhood, The Glory ofa Nation (1917) HELEN KELLER, Deliverance (1919) MARK TWAIN, A Curious Dream (1907) MAHARISHI NARISH YOGI, Candy Baby (1969) 29
confused and distrustful when a group of American soldiers approached them. Though the villagers knew that they were part of a movie, they were disoriented by the actors, who delivered lines to them in a language they hardly knew. It is this confusion of affective realism and reality itself that often disorients a novice. Directors regularly note that non- actors preoccupy themselves with details of real life that are irrelevant to dramatic effectiveness. Oz Scott recounts the moment on the set of Bustin' Loose when a boy with little acting experience unexpectedly stepped forward as Richard Pryor \"cheated\" a slap to the youngster's face . The boy toppled to the ground. Pryor, in panic, raced to his side. Knocked silly, he looked up at Pryor and said, \"Hey man, don't worry, that's acting!\" T he legend of the instant actor dies hard. Yet no instant actor has walked into the movies with the full-blown range of a Streep or a Hoffman. Many celebrities have become competent actors, but only a precious few can lay claim to anything more than craftsman skill. Too often they have been trundled aout merely as inside jokes, la Into the Night, or for their name value, no more integral to the plot than Woody Allen's whimsical moment with Marshall McLu- han in Annie Hall. And though a few unknowns have given singular perfor- mances, their brilliance has been that of the nova and not of the star. Teresa Wright and Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives. Yet, if Hang Ngor was utterly believ- able in The Killing Fields, it is because kov.\" self-consciousness.\" his performance rises from an experience Oz Scott , a director with considerable An \"honest\" non-actor's reaction can agonizingly survived and intelligently experience in dealing with actors who become an entirely believable yet essen- recontemplated. If Cher surprised audi- have no formal training, favors a particu- tially bogus one in the hands of a skilled ences in Come Back to the Five and larly subtle tactic. \"People want to be a director. Though he viewed Stanislav- Dime , Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, it's not part of a family, and so I try to create a sky's theories sympathetically, Pudovkin as if she were some Mozart, gifted by famil y environment whenever I direct. felt that clear motivation and psychic God , vaulting over so many actors who Non-actors feel apart from the famil y of attunement could undermine a perfor- really do toil in diners . She's been actors who surround them . So I make a mance, especially that of a non-actor. In practicing for years, in television skits, on point of discussing roles over meals , or of directing the film Deserter, Pudovkin the concert stage, and in acting classes. If making small talk, questions about selected a novice to play the role of a the remarkable Harold Russell, a service- anything but acting, which might give me young Communist who unexpectedly is man who lost both hands during the war, a clue how to assist them later on.\" chosen to preside over a major assembly. captured The Best }ears of Our Lives , it Not surprisingly, when dealing with The young man's nervousness tied him in was because Russell had already drawn non-actors, directors favor improvisation, knots. Rathe r than discuss motivation or from an emotional well that few of us ever in-sequence shooting, a considerable ask his actor to pretend that there was no need tap . And if boxer Mark Breland number of rehearsals , and a limited camera, Pudovkin made an apt decision: bestowed a quiet nobility to The Lords of number of takes . This is directly counter shoot the teenager as is, nerves bundled. Discipline's center, it flowed from the to the practice of experienced actors, \"I purposely strengthened and increased commitment and discipline that also took who give their best performances in later the atmosphere that was making him self- him to athletic virtuosity. takes. \"For untrained actors, the first or conscious,\" wrote Pudovkin, \"because it Without the magnificent, memorable seco nd take is almost always the best ,\" gave me the necessary coloring.\" Simi- moments which non-actors have given says director Bob Jones. \"Their natural- larly, the Italian villagers in Paisan, not us , the cinema would certainly be poorer. ness often degenerates from then on into one of whom was an actor, seemed And so, indeed , would be our daydreams.~ 30
by Vito Russo How should \"we\" (society) react to \"them\" becoming explicitly sexual (threatening) (me)? (In the issue devoted to AIDS, Life in the Sixties, when they proceeded to C oming out films are all alike. magazine said that the disease was now drop like flies. This year, Hector Baben- They're put together by com- striking \"the rest of us.\" It was as though I co's Kiss Of The Spider Woman combines mittee to reach the widest wasn't the one holding the magazine in the comic and tragic legacies of screen possible audience in the most my hands.) The history of the portrayal of gays. It's exactly the kind of film inoffensive manner possible and dedi- lesbian and gay characters in mainstream heterosexual highbrow critics think cated to proving that homosexuals can be cinema is politically indefensible and homosexual audiences will love. It's Art. just as boring as heterosexuals. aesthetically revolting. There may be an It's this year's field trip for Yuppies and abundance of gay characters floating social workers eager to approve of I don't want to see any more films about around on various screens these days but something daring. homosexuality. Mainstream theatrical plus fa change.... Gay visibility has releases and made-for-television movies never been an issue in the movies. Gays Yet what else is it? William Hurt plays which have as their subject the allegedly have always been visible. It's how they an amusing faggot , no more than a controversial issue of my existence may have been visible which has remained throwback to Emory from The Boys In be necessary evils but they're not for me. offensive for almost a century. The Band. He's never had a political They're for mothers in New Jersey, aunts thought in his bleached blond head but in Minnesota and frightened 15-year-old T he very first film dealing with male- knows enough to commit suicide like an gay kids in Mississippi who buy Chris- male relationships was a ten second old movie queen in the end. Truth to tell, topher Street magazine from a blind comedy by Thomas Alva Edison made in drag queens are among the most political newsdealer. 1895. It was called The Gay Brothers, of homosexuals. If some of the insight and the joke was two men dancing a with which Manuel Puig created the Consenting Adult, for instance, an ABC waltz. Gays have been the joke ever character in his novel had been retained made-for-TV film that aired in 1985 , is since. From the Lisping, mincing gay onscreen, we might have had something. about a drop-dead handsome, all-Ameri- cowboy of Stan Laurel's 1923 The Soilers But no-o-o-o-o-o. This sissy amuses us can jock who announces his homosexual- through the patently homosexual roles of with his fantasies and dies for love, not ity to his rich, white, attractive parents. If Franklin Pangborn and Grady Sutton in politics. Marlo Thomas can accept a gay son, the Thirties and Forties, right up to the anyone can. Released in 1982 by 20th blatant and vicious stereotypes of films M eanwhile, what has changed? In the Century-Fox, Making Love is about a like The Producers, The Eiger Sanction Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, char- rich, white, handsome doctor coming out and Norman, Is That You?, the existence acters were laundered in film biographies: to his stunningly beautiful, tremendously of homosexual characters has provided Cole Porter (Night And Day), Lieutenant understanding wife. If Kate Jackson can comic relief for generations of yahoos. Charles Gordon (Khartoum), Queen handle this problem, so can you. And And it isn't over yet. Anyone who has Christina of Sweden (Queen Christina), NBC's An Early Frost, broadcast during seen Beverly Hills Cop , Once Bitten or and Leonardo DaVinci (The Agony and the height of AIDS-mania, and by-the-by the Ecstasy) as well as Hans Christian the November sweeps, has a young, sRustler Rhapsody will have no trouble Andersen and Alexander the Great in white, rich, handsome lawyer reveal both films of the same name emerged as his homosexuality and his AIDS to his recognizing the tiresome yet timeless fag heterosexuals . In 1967, Clyde Barrow's entire rich , white, attractive, slightly jokes which permeate these films. homosexuality was deleted wholesale conflicted but ultimately loving family. If from Bonnie And Clyde because, accord- Gena Rowlands , his have-a-cookie Mom, At the other end of the spectrum is the ing to screenwriter David Newman, can live through this, so can we all. inevitable tragedy of the homosexual \"Audiences would buy a hero who was a lifestyle. The very first film to deal with killer but not one who was also sexually With such films it's never \"How was the the issue of homosexuality in a political ambiguous.\" movie?\"; it's always \"How were the context was Richard Oswald's 1919 ratings?\", and the dreary but inevitable German feature, Anders Als Die Anderen Scores of fictional characters in novels question \"Was it good for the gays or bad (Different From The Others) in which the and plays were simply turned heterosex- for the gays?\" I'm tired of trying to figure homosexual character, a concert violinist ual for the screen. These included the out whether the latest well meaning soap- played by Conrad Veidt, commits sui- hero of Charles Jackson's The Lost opera has convinced middle America that cide. It is not insignificant that out of 32 Weekend, the murder victim in Crossfire , I don't have horns and a tail, am not films with major homosexual characters based on \"The Brick Foxhole\" by Richard interested in molesting their children, or from 1961 through 1976, 13 feature gays Brooks and, of course, most of Tennes- that the Bible doesn't really say I'm who commit suicide and 18 have the see Williams' allusions in both Cat On A headed straight for their world famous homosexual murdered by another char- Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named but quite imaginary hell. I'm also weary of acter. The one remaining gay character in Desire. The blatant bowdlerization of being left out of the action. the group, John Colicos' plantation owner Robert Anderson's Tea And Sympathy in in the 1976 film Drum, is castrated. 1956 prompted Time magazine to Mainstream films about homosexuals remark, \"Obviously the movies don't are not for homosexuals. They address Sissies played court jester to heterosex- themselves exclusively to the majority. ual characters in scores of old films before 32
the AIDS-era battle dress of her dentist; but Paul Mazursky's Down and Out in Beverly Hills sinks the lowest. \"Don't,\" Bette Midler shrieks at Richard Dreyfuss, who is giving mouth-to-mouth to the nearly drowned vagrant, Nick Nolte. \"You'll get AIDSH!!\" Whatever Mazursky's problem, Midler must have forgotten that the same gay men who gave her a hand and a career at the Continental baths go to her movies today-and could do without the gratuitous humiliation she ; could have refused to administer. Steven Spielberg guts the emotional core of the lesbian love affair between blues singer Shug Avery and Celie in The Color Purple because, according to Whoopi Goldberg, \"Steven said that middle America would simply not be ready for me on top and Shug on bottom, so we made it less explicit. This way we won't offend anyone, and at the same time no one who's looking for the lesbianism will be disappointed.\" Wanna bet? I And in Gillian Armstrong's My Bril- liant Career, we were treated to the true story of an Australian woman who gives up marriage to be a writer. What we're not told is that the protagonist was a lesbian who sidestepped a male suitor to spend the next 40 years of her life with the woman she loved. What this all adds up to is that' mainstream cinema is plainly chickenshit when it comes to gay life and lives , and it's time we said so. The few times gay characters have worked well onscreen have been when filmmakers have had the courage to make no big deal out of them, when they are implicitly gay in a film which is not about homosexuality. Pedro Almovodar's What Have I Done To Deserve This? features a ten-year-old How gays have been visible this year (clockwise from top) : My Beautiful Launderette, gay kid and a mother who's too busy Kiss of the Spider Woman, Parting Glances, and An Early Frost. sniffing glue to let his bent give her a heart attack. In Nicholas Roeg's The Man think the American public is old enough down as a closet case, right? Who Fell to Earth, Buck Henry plays to know about homosexuality.\" Have we Sir Richard Attenborough slices out David Bowie's lawyer, a character who grown up? half of the theatrical, groundbreaking just happens to be gay. During the Well, consider: monologue delivered by one of the gay shooting, Henry said to Roeg, \"Why is In American Gigolo, Paul Schrader characters for the film version of A this character gay? Why am I playing a gave us a gay killer, a lesbian pimp, and a Chorus Line because, \"In this day and homosexual?\", and Roeg replied \"Why gay wife beater. And to make Mishima, age, to deal with that subject, you have to not? There are homosexuals.\" It's really as Schrader cut a deal with Mishima's deal with AIDS ,\" says Sir Dickie to the simple as that. widow to softpedal his homosexuality. New York Times. No shit? According to Presto! Mishima was a poet obsessed whom? The New York Post? Can you identify the homosexual with sadomasochism. And since the old character in In The lear Of Living boy expressed it so brilliantly and so Worse than Sir Dickie's diffidence is Dangerously? It's not an insignificant intellectually, and since the film is so Hollywood's recent penchant for invok- role, yet the film doesn't grind to a halt to obscure in its schema, who cares if ing AIDS as a metaphor for untouchable: say \"look at the homosexual.\" It's simply Mishima was actually a homosexual Sidney Lumet's Power rumors about a there the way it is so often in life. No big gentleman? The guy's life was weird retiring U.S. Senator (E.G. Marshall); deal is made either of Cher's Dolly enough without us having to nail him Hannah's sister Lee (Barbara Hershey) in Pellicker in Silkwood-she just happens Woody Allen's Hannah, etc. beefs about to be a lesbian. At no time is the film 33
\"about\" her sexuality, even whe n th at's provide more truth abo ut the reality of of people , not of homosexuals. T he re is no beginning and no e nd ing to thi s film . what's be ing d iscussed. the gay experie nce in Ame rica in four 1\\vo lovers mayo r may not part in the near future. A frie nd of the irs wh o has T he q ues tio n th e n, should be obvio us. hours between th e m th an in decades of AIDS mayo r may no t die tomorrow. Some of the ailing man's fri e nds may have the W hy do n't we have more film s whi ch are moralizing and mock indignati on from chance to te ll him they love him before he not abo ut ho mosexuality yet portray gay es tablishment sources . dies, or perh aps they just wo n't have the time to give him a ca ll. We all live with people as pa rt of th e terrain? F iftee n years Desert Hearts is a si mple love story this kind of thing. It's just that so me of us are gay. ago , the answer was th at s ince lesbi ans whi ch recreates with great perceptio n Gay se nsibil ity is not something th at and gay men we re hidde n in real life, o ne and te nde rness what it was like to fall in we have, or share, or use. It isn't even so me thing th at onl y gay people express. could hardl y expect the m to be reflected love in the F ift ies, if yo u happe ned to be a It's a blindness to sexual di visions, an inability to pe rce ive th at people are on sc ree n in any othe r way. That's no lesbi an. D ei tch is a tale nte d director who diffe re nt because of sexuality, a natural co nvictio n th at the re is no such thing as lo nger true . Ye t film s today whic h feature evokes the F ifties that we all re me mbe r norm al even whe n a majority of people think so. gay charac te rs with out co mme nt are not while co nce ntrating o n the co nflict W he n Pauline Kael covertly attac ked mass aud ie nce pictures. Mainstream be twee n th e two wome n. She even Geo rge C ukor fo r di spl ay ing a homosexual se nsibility in Rich And film s are toO fac ile and too depe ndent refu ses to stereotype the bigots we all Famous, she was wrong for do ing it but correct in he r pe rcept io n. Jacq ue line upon th e p rej ud ices of the ir audie nce to grew up with : they're like o ld frie nds Bisset's sexuality in that film was gay insofar as it did not respect heterosexual refl ect anything but the American lie. here. And th ro ugh th e power of D e itch's hegemony. C ukor was portray ing a kind of sexuality which peopl e pe rceive as T he re are virtually no bl ac k faces in lu sh vision of life in m ore innocent times, homosexual in nature but which, in fact , does n't bel ong to straights or gays. It's m os t film s to day, and the few I see are th e we are able to see that eve n the slobs who si mpl y liberated from sexual orie ntation. Gay se nsibi lity is not taking th e hetero- faces of clow ns. Eve n in The Color torture d us in our adolescence learned sexual wo rld into acco unt whe n creating an idea. PUlple, Spie lbe rg turns blac k dramatic how to be have by watching mov ies. Stephe n Frears new film My Beautiful charac te rs into clow ns - why? To beg Because ho mosexual cine ma's po int of Launderette, which was the talk of th e Edinburgh F ilm Festival this year, is set in audie nce app roval? Nor do I see As ian view o n homosexuality is re laxed , D eitch th e Pakistani co mmunity of Londo n and is about rac ism , ass imilatio n, and the faces o n the sc reen today, except in lear is free to proceed with a story not based rock th at As ians carry in Britain today. The two yo ung male stars of the film fall of the Dragon as psychopathi c drug on shocking revelatio ns and co nte ntious in love and are sexually intim ate; the film is explic it but the affair does not sub vert runn ers or nymphet newscaste rs. As behav ior. Like playwright H arvey Fier- the larger co ncerns. At the e nd of a rece nt screeni ng I heard a wom an say to recently as 198 1, a caucasia n played he r frie nd , \"But I don't get it. W hy were ' they gayr C harlie C han in a popular comedy. And Mainstream cinema is A few yea rs ago, the New Museum forget abo ut seeing old people, even sponso red a forum calle d \"Is The re a G ay Sensibility and D oes It H ave an Impac t plainly chickenshitnasty ones ready to belt childre n sense- on Our C ulture?\" Afte r a co nside rable when itless with the ir ca nes, onscreen. H ow amount of huffing and puffing by the pane l about the wo rk of everyo ne from reali stic is it the n to expect to see Marcel Pro ust to Patti Page, journalist Jeff We instei n said summaril y, \"N o, the re comes toincide ntal homosexual characte rs woven is no such thing as a gay sensibility, and yet , it has an e norm ous impact on the gay lifeinto the fabric of film s which refl ec t an culture .\" Eventu ally gay cine ma will move the rest of th e industry to\"\"ard a more industry dedicate d to serving white, perceptive depictio n of gay life in this country. Ju st do n't tell the m about it, or and lives,heterosexual teenagers? they'll as k why. ® and its he re is, alte rn ati vely, a ho mosexual T time we said so.cinema. It neither co ncerns itself overtly with iss ues of gay po litics nor does it prese nt gay sexuality as soc iety's ste in , who says he ass umes everyo ne he pe re nnial dirty sec re t. T he key to gay meets is homosexual unless told other- film s, whe the r th ey are m ade by hete ro- wise, so do gay film s ass ume a hom osex- sexuals or ho mosexuals, is that they do ual wo rld in which he terosexuality is a not view the existe nce of gay people as natural exte nsio n of th at wo rld . If that co ntrovers ial. sound s coy, it's because it's a view not T he re is an implic it understanding in give n cre dence by the majority. gay c in e m a th at homosexuality is not a W he n Robert Aldrich's Th e Killing Of sexual prefe re nce; th at people are gay the Sister George opened in 1968, Richard way people are sho rt or blo nd or Spani sh . Schickel wrote in Life th at the film Th e re is an un de rstanding in such film s \"recreated the e ntire lesbian wo rld .\" th at hom osexuals are born homosexual H onestly. Mainstream film s have tried to and th at hom osexuality is not a chosen typify gay socie ty for moral exa mination , acti vity but a state of be ing. T hese film s while gay film s simply atte mpt to te ll the may refl ect the fear, agitatio n, and bigo t! y lives of individ ual gay people and thereby of a society co nfronted with such truth , illuminate the wo rld we all share much but it is not th e ir view th at such e m otio ns mo re clearl y th an has ever bee n poss ible are rati o nal o r even important to exp lore. before. T here are e nough decent gay film s Parting Glances, for in stance, takes avai lable now th at I am no lo nger fo rced pl ace on New York's Upper West Side and to watch H oll ywood's gu tless horrors just episodicall y follows a group of co nte mpo- to see so me sm all , twiste d refl ectio n of rary gay me n th ro ugh a truthful landscape m yself o nscreen. 1\\vo re m arkable first without th e boundaries define d as the gay features, D onn a Dietc h's Desert Hearts ghetto. Th e reactions and e motio ns of and Bill She rwood's Parting Glances the people in Parting Glances are those 34
by Marcia Pally T he filmmaker who chooses lesbian- Helen Shaver (left) and Patricia Charbonneau in Desert Hearts. ism as a subject has inherited a dilemma: how to make a film neither generally awful. accommodations, and Rivvers, speeding tragic nor sweet. Reflecting pre-Stone- Soggied with saccharine, post-Stone- in the other direction but liking what she wall pity for homosexuals and post- sees in Bell's car, shifts into reverse to get Stonewall over-compensation, most wall lesbian films made one pine for the a better look and introduce herself. After lesbian movies drown in tears or tre- bad old days when at least the stories a small part in Without A Trace, Cay is acle, though in the last 200 years the were juicy. And I'm not sure the new films Charbonneau's first leading role-talk lesbian has suffered the light hand of have benefited lesbians as much as was about making an entrance. She is a prejudice. hoped. Amateurish, many never enjoyed lesbian's knockout. The performance of significant distribution, and weak movies the film, however, is Audra Lindley as Queen Victoria made no laws against have weak impact. Their most significant Rivvers' earthy stepmother, a woman the lesbian when she criminalized sex contribution was simply putting lesbians horrified by and jealous of Bell's intimacy between men because she thought \"there onscreen-part of the political and artis- with Cay. aren't any.\" The Nazis didn't systemati- tic process perhaps, but only the first cally ship gay women to concentration part. Bell gives a boost of confidence to the camps. Fag bashing is usually a gift to young woman who was kicked out of male homosexuals. And it's supposedly D esert Hearts, Donna Deitch's first college for \"unnatural\" acts , and Rivvers easier to portray lesbians in art than gay feature film, improves on both the shakes out the professor's bun . The two men. With no man in the picture, the moralizing and insufferable goodwill by fall in love, and Deitch treats us to an argument goes, the (straight) male viewer simply spinning a good yarn. Based on almost painfully frank sex scene done has no rival. Witness the sizable genre of jane Rule's novel, Desert of the Heart entirely at close range. Breathing crack- pornography that serves up sapphic (1964), it tells the story of Vivian Bell led into the mike as the two women , coupling as appetizer. (Helen Shaver), a 35-year-old Columbia naked in bed, kissed for a very long time. University English professor visiting I yearned for them to do something else, Yet lesbians have not been happy. Reno to get a divorce. Proceedings took or at least come up for air. Invisibility in life rarely pleases, and just six weeks in Nevada back in 1959, misrepresentation in art-when your and divorce had become a state industry. Yet Deitch made her point. Though ambassador finally appears on screen- the scene is explicit, no one dies or rankles. No one wants to be salad for In between preparing lectures for the commits suicide. Equally, the passage someone else's meat. In the few non- following semester, Bell meets Cay doesn't play like joshua marching into pornographic lesbian films made before Rivvers (Patricia Charbonneau), a kick- jericho, felling the walls of repression or the Seventies, the heroine regularly ass \"change apron\" from one of the prejudice. This done, perhaps cinema's succumbed to the male embrace, died, casinos, ten years her junior, and a next lesbian sex scene need have no point committed suicide, or was miserable and lesbian. She meets her, that is, on a but itself. lonely for the rest of her wretched life. highway. Bell is being driven to her Two generations of filmgoers got their Distributed by the Samuel Goldwyn first glimpses of lesbianism watching The Children's Hour or, in Europe, Madchen in Uniform. These encourage pity, at best, for any lesbian you might meet- even if she were you. No wonder gay women have been dissatisfied. With feminism and gay liberation, a few progressive filmmakers set out to broaden the picture. Rolling radical politics onto the set, they made a flurry of films about the evils of prejudice, the joys of lesbian couples, and the wholesome- ness of wymmins culture. We saw lesbians in long-term relationships pray- ing to the goddess and raising children with their lovers, as happy and contented as Norman Rockwell's matrons. And about as credible. The politics may have been right but the filmmaking was 35
Company, Desert Hearts, was shot in 31 Lianna. dotted with flowers of purple. And no one days on a $1.5 million budget raised ever has to tend it. None of the men, entirely by Deitch over two and a half ception. Celie is a woman so confined by including Danny Glover as Celie's sadis- years. The sections that weren't refilmed her father's and husband's rage that her tic husband, is as brutal as Walker and the cutaway shots she couldn't afford information about the world is that of a describes. The last third of the movie left overwritten lines and \"meaningful\" child. She has no theories, few abstrac- gets worse. Spielberg collapses so much dialogue, choppy transitions, and scenes tions. Even her anger, when she can find material and instantly solves so many that are too short. it, has the spite and pointlessness of a problems that the sequence reads like the seven-year-old's. Celie doesn't have a New York Times neediest cases all comfy \"I wanted to make a lesbian love story,\" name for what she feels. She doesn't in Emerald City. Deitch explained. Controversial issues- know there are groups of people who do custody suits and gay rights bills-would this sort of thing and hang out together. Some of the actors, at least, do their interfere. She considered updating the She doesn't call up threats to masculinity job well. Whoopi Goldberg, as the script till she realized that setting the film or the family, mannish women, or taciturn Celie, pouts and tentatively on a dude ranch 30 years ago not only liberation parades . smiles, shrugs, and slouches~shadow makes the lesbianism easier for mass- puppets of her groping, growing con- market audiences to accept, but also Yet Spielberg passed up even this sciousness. Oprah Winfrey, as Sophia, allowed her to isolate the protagonists ingenuous presentation. Throughout the has the film's camp role, and her sashays from politics. Deitch had the right idea: film, he adroitly uses passages from the through Sophia's youth are the high point Desert Hearts recalls when lesbianism novel in voice-overs that give audiences a of the film. Though Margaret Avery's was about crushes, love, and dying to get sense of how life looks to Celie. It would performance as Shug lacked punch and your hands on \"her\"- not marches and have been so simple to include a few of passion (the better to temper her love for meetings, meetings, meetings. The film Celie's thoughts about nights with Shug. Celie?), in the juke-joint sequences she is at its best when Deitch goes for the shimmies and lets it rip . (Too bad the story, not the \"message.\" One wonders why Spielberg chose to glitter of the cabaret scenes-set in a adapt Walker's novel for his first \"adult\" shack behind Celie's house in the novel- Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple, film. Not only was its central relationship looks more Harlem Renaissance than however, is so gutted of message that unacceptable to him; he renovated the backwater Georgia.) Though Spielberg's it loses its lesbian content altogether. In entire setting. A tale about poverty, camera irritatingly underscores \"signifi- the Alice Walker novel, battered black racism, incest, wife beating, and cease- cant\" moments with coy double takes, farm wife Celie and blues singer Shug less labor became, under his direction, a the female leads save Color Purple from Avery fall in love. They settle into a Wizard of Oz for pickaninnies. Most munchkin cuteness. They preserve the relationship that lasts 20 years and yuppies I know would sell their condos to voice Walker gave black women. survives both their marriages. Celie is live in the likes of Celie's house, with its Walker's main character-the novel is the polished wood interiors, rugs, and china. Sadly, Spielberg did not let his actors story of her life in rural Georgia-and this The land around it is lush, fruitful-and preserve .the voice Walker gave black affair the turning point of the book. women who love women. Walker would have the passion between Celie and Shug In Spielberg's whitewash, Shug's initial be a love story for everyone, and their dislike of Celie inexplicably changes to love understood simply as love. But charm, and their friendship proceeds Spielberg's empathy doesn't extend that without the awakening of passion. In the far. He can see the oppression of blacks one scene where they tentatively kiss, as a metaphor for all oppression, and they bobble at each other like woodpeck- black sisterly devotion as a symbol of ers and the camera pans to wind chimes loyalty and support. Godammit, he can and poppy fields . No show of affection is even see the love between a boy and an repeated; the scene remains so isolated alien (pederasty or bestiality, depending and embarrassed that one wonders to on how you look at it) as a metaphor for what it alludes. love. But not the love of lesbians. In a New York Times interview, Spielberg has never been comfortable Spielberg said he \"didn't categorize it as a with sexuality. Charmingly in E. T. and lesbian relationship so much as a love clumsily in Indiana Jones, he reinvents relationship of great need .\" What love of the world of his childhood where moth- your life isn't? Spielberg claims Walker er's milk and fathers who know best stave \"thinks highly\" of the film. Walker refused off disasters and nightmares. Never to comment, saying she wanted to see it before has Spielberg sullied his vision again. I'm afraid the director of so many with desire, and he won't disappoint us blockbusters owes Walker and his view- now. In Color Purple, every family ers more than this squirming. If Steven relation is illuminated , every sexual one Spielberg-worth half a billion dollars- dimmed. The blackout on Celie and can't take the risk, who can? Shug may be all for the best. Had Spielberg glazed their relationship with The pity of it is that Walker made the the syrup he slopped over the rest of lesbianism easy for Spielberg. Told from Walker's book, he would've ended up Celie's naive point of view, the affair is with a black period-piece Lianna-a film described in the novel concretely, step by that drowns in good will. step, without prejudice or even precon- 36
John Sayles made Lianna, a coming tion and repetition of cinematic phrases. out story, in 1983, the year of Making Love, Personal Best, Tootsie, and Victor/ Ackerman later extended this technique Victoria. Lianna (Linda Griffiths), a faculty wife with two kids, takes a night with powerful results in Jeanne Dielman, course, falls in love with her teacher, and leaves the marital bed for the levies of but je tu il elle is neither as intense as lesbianism. Dielman nor as exuberant as her 1983 Wedded woes, however, are more Les Annees 80s, credible in this film than sapphic bliss, and the confidences shared between Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames is also Lianna and her straight best friend more comfortable. Though politically perfect, no booster film. Ten years after a rapidly the scenes between Lianna and lover Ruth Oane Hallaren} suffer from earnest- failing socialist revolution, a group of ness; in a film about forbidden fruit this rather poisons the apple. Ruth's character women-some of whom are lesbian and is so thin it's hard to know what draws Lianna to her, and Sayles, like Deitch, spied on by the FBI on account of it- didn't quite know how to do the requisite sex scene. He overlaid it with continuous protest continuing sexism and unemploy- unintelligible whispers in French-more mad medieval nun than Eros. ment by blowing up a communications Lianna is the most popular of the tower. Though Born in Flames succumbs welcome-wagon films-those that try to persuade audiences it's okay to have Madchen in Uniform. to jarring camerawork and characters who lesbians on the block. But the best of the dissolve with their scenes, the imagina- lot is the made-for-television film A Question of Love, with Jane Alexander tion and skepticism are just the ticket. and Gena Rowlands. Rowlands' ex, on learning that she's living with another With so much of the new lesbian woman, sues for custody of their seven- year-old son. He wins the case, and cinema disappointing, it's no wonder the Rowlands, the audience. Though inten- tionally educational and most discreet old tearjerkers look glamorous. Leontine (Rowlands and Alexander never touch), A Question of Love aired in 1978, Sagan's 1931 Madchen in Uniform was managed to be entertaining. How could you go wrong with those leading ladies? picked up by producers Gifford Cochran Most films of this ilk are dramatically and John Krimsky and banned two weeks disappointing the day they're made- straining to be good films but more later by the Hayes office. Based on urgently to be good. Nouchka van Brakel's A Woman Like Eve, with its Christa Winsloe's play Yesterday and organic vegetable-growing commune and Meg Christian folk songs, is a Dutch Today, it tells the story of a schoolgirl Lianna more sentimental than Sayles'. Alexandra von Grote's Depart to Arrive who falls in love with her teacher in a and Angela Linders' Mara each explore a woman's musings about a lost relation- boarding school for the daughters of ship-but so gently that the films' visual and psychological sophistication can't Pruss ian officers. The headmistress, save them from raveling as the reels run. Even Susan Lambert's adventure story, screaming scandal, locks Manuela up in On Guard, is more nice than thrilling. In the effort not to kill Sister George but the infirmary. In the original, the girl appreciate her, filmmakers are poisoning her with kindness. jumps out a second-story window. There Documentaries are no exception. and spice and a little too nice. Concerned were two film versions, one where she is Whether about performers on the les- bian-feminist circuit, alcoholism among and informative, they rarely linger in one's saved by her friends and one where she women, sexism on the job, or lesbian mothers, most can be summed up by memory. Two that did were presented by isn't. Voice critic Laurie Stone's phrase: sugar the New York Gay Film Festival in 1981. Madchen was one of the few films of See What I Say is an energetic short the era written, directed, and produced about singer Holly Near's efforts to bring by women. Overt ~nd sympathetic, the American Sign Language interpreters to fondness between teacher and student her concerts. Signing ought to be makes a plea for the \"third sex\"-as considered an art, and See What I Say Magnus Hirschfeld called it-but, pre- gave it better PR than Children of a dictably, the Hayes office (which was not Lesser God. In Prison for Women (P4W) , big on the first or second) would have no by Holly Dale and Janis Cole, five women part of it. It released the film only with talk about their no-exit existence in the significant cuts. Still, the film is tender, Canadian Penitentiary for Women. Five sad, and visually striking-especially its years later, their incredulous frustration repeated peerings down the school's still rattles me. One young woman tilts spiral staircase. If they could do it then, her head at the camera and asks, \"They're why not now? going to take my life away from me?\" sLike P4W, not all films about lesbians Lcloy. Those that falter for other reasons illian Hellman's play The Children Hour suffered more mutilation in its give me hope. As lesbians are seen less as transformation from stage to film. About lepers, it's not such a battle-or an a child who starts a rumor that two of her accomplishment-just to recreate them teachers are intimate, it conjures a in celluloid. As filmmakers turn to plot, sapphic Salem and exposes the evils of characters, and camerawork, the balance witch hunts. In 1936, Hellman rewrote shifts: lesbianism becomes a smaller, less the script entirely, changing the gossip sensational part of the picture. about lesbianism into a triangle where Je tu it elle, an early work by Chantal one woman loves her best friend's fiance. Ackerman, has a woman visit her lover Director William Wyler made a second who is not at all pleased to see her. version in 1962, which preserved the Ackerman's interest, however, is not so lesbianism-at least by innuendo. Wyler much the lesbianism as the fragmenta- thought naming \"it\" onscreen too much 37
for the American public and cut a ual fantasies, and seduce a bellhop. and \"George; must not be lost to courtroom scene where Karen and Mar- tha (Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Finally, Sanda picks up a camera, the Polianna. Hence the filmmaker's di- MacLaine) are found guilty of \"sinful sexual knowledge~ He did not cut filmmaker's phallus, and photographs lemma: how to rid lesbian ftJms o(preach- Martha's suicide. Chaplin in the nude. They return to their ing on one hand and gushing if \"sensitive\" Olivia, of one director Jacqueline Audry's bizarre movies, also ends in boring husbands, which makes it all right. advertisement on the other? Only a few suicide. Set in a lavish girls' school infin de siecie France, the sapphic passions Diane Kurys tested tolerance in Entre directors-male or female, with low or among students and teachers are the only visible curriculum. Made in 1951, it was Nous, where two women so enjoy and high budgets-elude the crunch. released in the States as The Pit of Loneliness and critics shivered with inspire each other that they chuck the Offhandedness is one way to do it: shock. But the jealousies, competition, and teary declarations aren't nearly as bourgeois boredom of Lyon and, leaving Meryl Streep's brief appearance as outrageous as the giggly silliness of the characters. Schoolgirls may titter as they husbands behind, set up shop together in Woody Allen's lesbian ex-wife in Manhat- do in the film, but not even Doris Day was as petulant and excitable as the Paris. They have affairs with men, not tan; the ordinary lesbian duo in Robert teachers are here. In the final seenes, Audry gets down to some insincere each other. Nevertheless, Intimacy Altman's The Perfect Couple; and the moralizing. One head-mistress takes laudanum and another discourses on her between women is more explicit in these occasional lesbian affair in Scrubbers, life long victory over...Today, Olivia plays as camp, but in the Fifties, the film- films than in Olivia or Caged, and more Mai Zetterling's punchy, level-headed both boldly lesbian and incredibly idi- otic-must have played like Daisy Duck long-lasting than in Personal Best or film about a British girls' reformatory. Goes Dyke. Lianna. But, only subtly sexual, the The disasters that befall the lesbian And so it goes, in the Fifties and Sixties: suicide, loneliness, or \"cure.\" affection in friendship films isn't worthy heroine of Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears Lesbianism means coercion and violence for prison matron Evelyn Harper in of scandal. of Petra Mm Kant-more perversely Caged (1950); isolation and death in the criminal underworld for Jo and Hallie in The explicit Richard's Things is an luring than Fox and His Friends-are no Walk on the Wild Side (1962); pathos and pity for Marta and Rike in The Cats anomaly. Though made in 1982, sex more dire than the misery he foists on his (1964), and a lonely-if elegant-life of manipulation for Lakey in The Group between women is as morbid here as it heterosexual characters. In Salvatore (1966). The year 1968 was a big one for sapphic sorrow. The · Killing of Sister was in the Sixties. In this Anthony Piscicelli's volcanic Immacolata and Con- George sees \"George\" lose her job and lover, while The Fox has Anne Heywood's Harvey film, lesbianism is not an abomi- cetta, two women fall in love in prison and Ellen fall for a man, and Sandy Dennis' Jill fall under a tree. nation against God, arrested develop- then try to live together openly in a The friendship films, where deep ment, or a crime-but necrophilia. southern Italian town. The film doesn't attachments between women don't take a sexual cast, rarely add to this necrology. Richard's widow Kate (Liv Ullmann) has apologize for the relationship or its From Old Acquaintance (1943) and its remake, Rich and Famous (1982), to an affair with Richard's former mistress demise. Margarethe von Trotte's Sheer Madness (1985), sororal sentiments quaintly blos- Josie (Amanda Redman) in order, as Josie Consider, also, Robert Towne's Per- somed without pre-Stonewall apprv- brium or post-Stonewall yahoos. More so nicely puts it, to keep Richard alive sonal Best. A tribute to female athletes, daring films, however, tease the border between affection and lust. with us a little longer. A dead man is the homage to effort and excellence Times Square (by director Alan Moyle better than none. The film ends as the supersedes the affair between Chris and writer Jacob Brackman), worth seeing for Robin Johnson's performance, women split up, Josie to go back to men (Mariel Hemingway) and Tory (Olympic has one teenage girl kneel before her pal and, with adoring gaze, deliver a love and Kate to go it alone. pentathlete Patrice Donnely). The most poem. In Michel Deville's silly Voyage en Douce, Dominique Sanda and Geraldine riveting footage is not of sex but of Chaplin vacation together, exchange sex- D iscounting the sapphic teases of the Donnely running, her muscles taut, her Thirties like Dietrich in tails in face set. When the two women fall for Morocco or Katharine Hepburn in drag in each other, their teammates don't hiss Sylvia Scarlet, Therese and Isabelle \"lezzies\" but sigh \"young love\"- ignoring (1968) is one of the few upbeat lesbian gender. Chris and Tory break up because films made before Stonewall. An enjoy- of tension and competition, not from able piece of fluff, it gaily depicts the shame or desire to be \"normal.\" Chris' frolickings in a French girls' boarding next lover is a man; Tory prefers women, school. The coda-where one of the but the race is paramount. girls, now grown, is on her way to her Karoly Makk set his elegantly bleak wedding-baldly winks at the audience. Another Way in 1958 Hungary, where Yet even the maudlin oldies fascinate young journalist Eva (the gamine-like more than much of today's fare. JadwigaJankowska-Cieslak) balks at writ- Like Stephen Gordon-heroine of The ing Party lines. She falls in love with Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall's Livia, the woman who shares her office, lesbian trash classic-cinema's inverts are but while the affair is not easy it's not the seductive and romantic, taught and worst of her problems. She edges toward tragic, ironic and dangerous. Despite the political and sexual rebellion till Livia's rush of lesbian novels since 1970, Well of husband and the state do her in. Another Loneliness remains the most popular. . Way, made in 1982, was financed by the And Candice Bergen in Lakey's spidery Hungarian government. suits is the hero of choice-after Die- The idea of treating lesbianism casu- trich, Hepburn, and Garbo. As for sex ally must be catching on. Over the last scenes: no amount of naked flesh wets year, a record number of films have taken seats like Dominique Sanda's serpentine their same-sex sex for granted. William seduction of Stephania Sandrelli in The Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. is a Conformist. slick policier where, quite incidentally, Dashing and doomed is not enough, one guy buys his girlfriend a woman for tepid but cheerful only a political her birthday. In the end, the two women improvement. And Jo and Hallie, Lakey are the only ones who survive the 38
Grossman's sneering alto and murderous beauty don't hurt-or rather, they do. By the way, on her off hours, of which there are few, Wanda prefers women. Alexandra von Grote's Novembermoon is much fuller than her earlier Depart to Arrive. A French woman, Ferial, and a Jewish refugee from Germany, oddly named November, fall in love as World War II begins. Ferial hides her lover all ~ the long years till the Allies arrive. Everyone knows about the two women l ,• and no one bats an eye-not Ferial's mother or brother, not even her prewar Merle Oberon and Miriam Hopkins in These Three. suitor who collaborates with the Nazis and would like Ferial to himself. Sensibly, they're much more worried about shelter- ing a Jew. The nonchalance about sex is the film's best point, though the collabo- rator's silence pushes it a bit far. Novembermoon is melodramatic, as are all but the best gentile-hides-Jew films, but there's a twist to the end. After the Germans leave Paris, Ferial's neighbors cut off her blond tresses as punishment for her friendship with the collaborator. In the final frame, as November tries to comfort her, the woman with the Auschwitz hairdo is not the Jew. C asualness in films about gay men is the trend. In 1982, Frank Ripploh's Taxi Zum Klo ran for over a year in New York, attracting thousands of burghers with its zany portrait of a gay school- teacher, his loves and tricks. The unself- conscious Ripploh played the teach as equally endearing and more outrageous than Torch Song Trilogy's Arnold Beck- off. Youssef Chahine's Alexandria, Why? is about the chaos and politics of that city during World War II and about a boy who wants to go to America and be an actor. In a subplot, one of the boy's male cousins 4 has an affair with a British soldier. Lothar Lambert, whose work is gritty Lina Wertmuller's Sotto, Sotto. and often candid to the point of insult, inevimble shoot-outs. Nothing in the be indifferent as well. surprised viewers this year with Drama in promo exploits or even suggests the Peter Lowy, director of the seven-year- Blond, a comedy about a man's passion lesbian subplot. Cheers. In Sotto Sotto, old New York Gay Film Festival, found for women's clothing. He turns out to be Lina Wertmuller finds a husband's Domestic Bliss and screened it in his bisexual, not gay, and the film makes a response to his wife's lesbian leanings 1986 program, which also included bid for playfulness, not sexual preference. more noteworthy than the affections Seduction: The Cruel Woman and Nov- It has some marvelous drag. Rosa von themselves. While she treats the lesbian- embermoon. Seduction, by Elfi Mikesch Praunheim's Horror Vacuii is about ism warmly but briefly, she lets fly with and Monika Treut, is a stunner-one of authority and our willingness to follow it; her satire of hubby's liberal prejudices. the sharpest selections in Lowy's best Reverend Moon, the state, and the British television recently aired a festival to date. Pina Bausch dancer academy differ only in style. The man sitcom where the children, friends, Mechtild Grossman plays Wanda, a whose lover gets sucked into the Optimal neighbors, and exes prevent a couple dominatrix whose troupe services cus- Optimismus cult happens to be gay. from getting a moment's privacy. The tomers and elaborately stages S&M Perhaps it's time to dicard lesbianism- couple happens to be two women. performances. Much more important to and homosexuality-as a subject. Off- Though Domestic Bliss is no better than Mikesch's insinuating camera than the handedness may be the most progressive average tube fare, the indifferent presen- petty tortures are the settings, COStUmes, politics of the day, and relieved of tation of a lesbian household is striking. If and \"look\" of each encounter. This is welcome-wagon duty filmmakers can this keeps up, perhaps our reactions will S&M by Avedon, outfits by Dior. begin to make movies. @ 39
Hollywood's by Gregg Kilday Ho osexuals R ock Hudson never admitted he was gay- not publicly, at least. And even \\ in the media feeding frenzy that accom- panied last July's first news reports of his { trip to Paris to seek treatment for AIDS, there was an initial reluctance on the part of the press to describe anyone gay as gay. After all, to identify specific individuals as homosexual is to flirt with libel. And yet to avoid identification is to retreat into annoying coyness. That, however, is the dilemma defining any discussion of homosexuals in Hollywood. It is an outrageous limitation that all too many homosexuals in the Hollywood entertain- ment industry are content to accept. Nearly 40 years after Roy Scherer .Jr. of Winnetka , III. submitted to the alias of both an assumed name and an arranged marriage, more than 15 years after the Stonewall riot and the consequent gay liberation movement presumably made such dissembling unnecessary, most gays in Hollywood accept the restraints- some enforced by industry practice, others self-imposed - of a closeted exist- ence. Of course, if you put the question to them bluntly, many will deny it. I tried raising the issue myself with several acquaintances prominent in the industry, asking them if they would be willing to discuss - anonymously - how they've handled their homosexuality in the course of pursuing their careers, only to be told, \"It's never been a problem for me,~ or \"I don't see it as an issue.\" But such claims ring hollow. Such willful avoidance of the subject is in fact illustrative of the problem. Hollywood's homosexuals - there is no gay community as such in Hollywood- find it easy to pretend that no closet doors exist. For within the confines of the industry, there are few secrets. The prevailing gossip does not center on questions of sexual preference-studio politics, deals, money all claim a more prominent place in even the idlest of conversations-but when the talk does finally wend its way to the question of who may be sleeping with or lusting after whom, there is a general pretense of sophisticated tolerance. Invited to Sunday brunch at the successful producer's home, the straight guests studiously avoid staring at the cluster of impossibly handsome young men gathered at the far end of the pool; encountering the presumably homosex- ual star and his usual female companion, 40
the tactful executive skirts any allusion to But mostly, when such betrayals of sexual virtually verboten to question a new the couple's exact relationship; before identity are mentioned, they are tossed acquaintance on his or her sexual procliv- telling the newest AIDS joke, the politic off with bitter resignation. After all, such ities. \"Tonight, I'm afraid, I've got to go writer scans the dinner table just to assure are the costs of doing business and home and read a script for a story himself there is no one present who winning admission to the club. conference in the morning\" is usually the might take offense. safest response should the question ever IBlanketted by the blandly forgiving f the club's membership committee anse. denies that its homosexual minority is [n an industry that still plays by macho California sunshine, the Hollywood homosexual, once a successful career is forced to check its sexual identity at the rules-shouting, for example, is a routine established, can live a life of seeming door, that is only because the club, which ploy in Hollywood negotiations-homo- impunity: the personal manager poses for for the most part prides itself on its liberal sexuality carries the stigma of weakness. the paparrazi at the movie premiere with bias, is offended by such a regressive Only the stereotypical butch lesbian, the actress he represents on one arm and metaphor as the closed closet door. who comes on like one of the boys, is his boyfriend on the other, knowing full Instead, to adopt a more theatrical exempted. If one were naming names, it well that the boyfriend will be cropped metaphor, Hollywood's homosexuals live would be easy enough to point to out when the photograph is published; as behind a succession of protective counterevidence like the gay studio head, he instructs his secretary to make a screens. No one, needless to say, is the preeminent gay agent, or the venera- dinner reservation at Monon's, the studio encouraged to proclaim his or her ble gay actor, who have all proven v.p. casually adds that she request a table homosexuality to the general public, themselves adept at surviving in shark- belonging to his favorite waiter; and the which is presumed too unenlightened to filled waters. But since such men barely agent hardly worries that the vanity plates approve of such confessions. And even acknowledge their homosexuality, the on his Jag give him away as he cruises the within the confines of the town, as record of gay achievement in Hollywood hustlers on Santa Monica Blvd. Such are Hollywood fancies itself, anyone who goes equally unacknowledged. Contin- the perks of success. chooses to make an issue of his or her ually required to prove that he's as tough But the perks, come at a cost, even if homosexuality is courting disapproval. as the next guy, the Hollywood homosex- that cost is largely unacknowledged. The rationale, of course, is do what you ual comes to view his own homosexuality Those just beginning to seek admission will in darkness, just don't offend the as so much excess baggage that's best to the country club - and Hollywood is customers in the lobby. stored out of view where it won't raise any very much a country club, where the Traditionally, since show people will be distracting questions. members' various peccadilloes are toler- show people, there has always been the ated only after membership is won - are occasional flamboyant queen. (Though ctors, of course, have the most to lose. Not only is the industry Amuch more conscious of the price that by the time such a queen becomes must be paid. The young gay actor may prominent enough to attract the attention unwilling to cast acknowledged homo- no longer be forced to submit to an of the press, he is inevitably described as sexuals in heterosexual roles, it doesn't arranged marriage (if only because there \"the flamboyant showman.\") And on the even cast gays in the few major gay roles are no studios still in a position to arrange other side of the spectrum, there are to be had. Only supporting character \\ it), but when giving interviews, he still those posturing studs whose masculinity actors, heirs to the parts that once talks, without even the saving grace of is so exaggerated that its underlying belonged to FraI\\klin Pangborn, are free irony, of his desire for marriage and homosexuality is easily ignored. But to be themselves: before their respective children. The night-time soap writer most of Hollywood's homosexuals , falling deaths, for example, both Paul Lynde might suggest that the series' heroine somewhere between the two extremes, and Richard Deacon were regulars in the have a lesbian affair, but the suggestion is choose to follow the example set by West Hollywood bars, and at a . recent not meant to be taken seriously, it's Alberto Moravia's conformist: prizing fund-raising dinner, Charles Nelson merely a negotiating ploy included normality and craving acceptance, they Reilly, called upon to present an award to among a long list of suggested plotlines submit to the prevailing mores , even Joan Rivers, joked about riding a float in with the expectation that when it is though that requires dissembling, to the annual Christopher Street West summarily rejected, the remaining various degrees, their own sexual Parade. But then such flamboyant - ah, plodines ,\"viII be gratefully accepted. The identities. there's that word again - comedians aren't associate producer, sitting in on a casting If anything, the legacy of gay libera- considered threats to the sexual status session, finds himself hesitating before tion - insofar as it has had an effect on quo that Hollywood is in business to arguing in favor of one actor who he Hollywood's own social life-has made promote. knows to be gay lest it appear he is the conformist's choices all the easier. For All other colorations of homosexuality championing the actor out of his own rather than adopt the pretense of a are, however, regarded uneasily. It's sexual self-interest. straight persona, the Hollywood homo- virtually impossible to prove discrimina- It's not necessary to name names sexual is much more likely to cultivate a tion exists, although the Screen Actors here-though, I assure you, nothing has fashionable sexual ambiguity, or espe- Guild, under its new president Patty been invented - such calculations are cially now that a new era of sexual Duke, recently agreed to meet regularly routine among Hollywood's homosex- Puritanism has arrived, a pose of studied with the Alliance of Gay and Lesbian { uals. Occasionally, among that minority asexuality, attributed in most cases to Artists,. in a quixotic attempt to combat of gay men and women in Hollywood overriding workaholism. If it's conversa- such discrimination where it can be who can claim some modest degree of tionally gauche to ask someone here, identified. Good luck, for in fact Holly- political consciousness, you will hear \"What do you dot - since, in most cases, wood's distrust of gays is generally such little deceptions discussed in tones the self-proclaimed producer, director, or masked behind unspoken and elaborate of frustration and sometimes even anger. writer isn't actually doing anything- it's codes. I once heard of an agent (who, not 41
surprisingly, was gay himself) who real weight among the town's true If challenged, Hollywood's more para- rejected a glossy of Christopher Reeve powerbrokers .) It's one thing, for noid heterosexuals sometimes hint at the (back when Reeve was still a New York instance, for two men to be seen together shadowy existence of a compensatory stage actor, seeking Hollywood represen- at a routine studio screening, for no one is Gay Mafia: purportedly, Hollywood's tation), with the dismissive judgment likely to be taking roll call. But at major homosexuals look out for each other that Reeve's glossy appeared \"too faggy!\" industry functions , Hollywood's homo- through a tightly knit social club with a sexuals are more likely to resort to dates secret agenda all its own. But I'll be Such blunt-and all too often, inaccu- with the opposite sex. (Given the legions damned if I've ever encountered the Gay rate-assessments are the exception of ambitious women who have sacrificed Mafia in action . True, there's a circuit of rather than the rule. More often, Holly- personal lives in favor of career, there are quiet socializing among Hollywood's wood's homophobia hides behind lan- no shortage of beards .) It's not that the homosexuals , but - in contrast to life on guage that is deceptively polite. A gay homosexuals who prefer the Albertine the straight side of the street-such actor is said to be \"too soft\" or \"not strong maneuver are actively engaging in a socializing rarely leads to business alli- enough\" for the role in question, while a masquerade; it's just that, as one friend ances. Rather, mid-level homosexuals in gay writer or director is typecast as puts it , \"two tuxedoes together are the business who become friendly with \"better with relationships than action~ awkward.\" more powerful homosexuals will tell you Who's kidding who? A fellow journalist that friendships would be jeopordized if tells of asking a currently successful To the extent that same-sex couples they ever asked for business favors. And producer if he had considered a certain upset seating plans, relatively upfront although the pretty boy of the moment gay director for his new film , starring one homosexuals can find themselves barred might be rewarded with a bit part, anyone of the teen idols of the moment. \"Are you wanting to make a serious mark in the kidding?\" was the answer. \"I wouldn't Cukor with Bergen and Bisset. business is warned that sexual entangle- want that cocksucker near (the teen idol from certain social settings to the conse- ments can easily shortcircuit a career. For in question) .\" Such candor, while appall- quent detriment of their careers. an aspiring gay actor to be sexually ing, belies Hollywood's customary eva- Although the notion that \"Hollywood is a available is to become quickly expenda- siveness on the subject. The remark, by town based on relationships\" is an ble. While producers and direqors who the way, was later excised by the overworked cliche, it nevertheless speaks have cast their wives or girlfriends in journalist's scrupulous editors. to social reality. Another gay friend of starring roles are legion, I'd be hard mine who entered into a heterosexual pressed to suggest even one major film in Homosexuals are damned if they do marriage once confessed that the mar- recent years where a male star could be and damned if they don't. I've always riage led to invitations to the sort of A-list accused of sleeping his way to the top. thought that when George Cukor would dinner parties at which previously he had angrily reject the compliment that he was not been welcome. And since such W hen it comes to keeping minorities a \"woman's director; he was actually socializing often leads to business associ- in their place, the entertainment divining the underlying judgment that he ations, unapologetic gays find themselves industry continues to divide and conquer. \"vas not quite up to directing real men. at an undeniable disadvantage. Ambi- For all the organizing that women have But even if Cukor's special rapport with tious homosexuals may resist the pre- done, for instance, in their attempts to his celebrated actresses is conceded, tense of playing straight, but pragmatism break down the barriers, well-placed then along comes a notorious bit of fag- does decree that, in key social circles, women executives say they've received bashing like Pauline Kael's review of Rich one's same-sex spouse is best left at very little mutual support from their and Famous , in which she wrote, \"Rich home. There is lustre, however, awaiting equally well-placed peers. The old-boy andFamous isn't camp exactly. It's more the straight exec who leaves his spouse at network rules , and the individual like a homosexual fantasy. Oacqueline} home-and brings his girlfriend, instead. women, gays, blacks, or hispanics who Bisset's affairs, with their masochistic attain some degree of success usually overtones are creepy, because they don't have to camouflage themselves in the seem like what a woman would get into. trappings of their masters . And (Candice) Bergen is used almost as if she were a big, goosey female imperson- To cite one egregious example, there's ator~ Given such impossible traps- the straight woman executive who where even a homosexual artist's recently rejected an actress for a starring strengths are recast as weakness - is it role because she didn't think men would any wonder that Hollywood's homosex- consider her \"fuckable,\" a casting criterion uals continue to dissemble? Say what you that the woman executive had no doubt may about an earnest problem-drama like discovered in the course of hanging out Making Love , as far as I'm concerned, the with the guys. Consistently required to most heroic aspect of the whole enter- play to the presumed tastes of the prise was that its screenwriter, Barry heterosexual majority, fearful that their Sandler, frankly acknowledged being gay own tastes will expose them as unsuited whenever discussing the film . for the job, Hollywood's homosexuals come to view each other warily. Last fall's Such forthrightness is extremely rare, gala AIDS benefit dinner over which though: mostly, Hollywood's homo- Elizabeth Taylor presided was actually sexuals tend to survive by adapting to the quite exceptional: because it had been prevailing social codes. (Pressure groups granted a heterosexual st'\"al of approval, like The Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Hollywood's homosexual.; were free to Artists, it must be sadly noted , carry no 42
participate. the press will go to turn homosexual beyond the pale. Leered the Globe , in a Although Los Angeles itself has an stars, even without their active coopera- story about Henry Willson , the agent tion, into paragons of heterosexuality is a who discovered Hudson, \"The path that active and wealthy homosexual commu- continuing source of amusement that led AIDs-ravaged Rock Hudson to his nity that supports organizations like the masks anger. But the media coverage, deathbed began many years ago, when he Municipal Elections Committee of Los particularly among the tabloids, that fell into the clutches of a gay agent who Angeles, which channels money to greeted the news of Rock Hudson's introduced him to Tinseltown's tarnished politicians sympathetic to gays, and the illness has served only to underscore the twilight world of homosexuals .\" Gay and Lesbian Services Center, which fears of exposure among Hollywood's administers to the lower socio-economic homosexuals. Yet here in the twilight zone, Holly- end of the community, organizers for wood's extablished homosexuals , free to such groups readily admit that few of Time and Newsweek may have treated enjoy their pools and perks and quiet Hollywood's most powerful homosexuals Hudson sympathetically; People , how- liaisons as long as they don't frighten the have responded to their fund-raising ever, intent on selling magazines, studio heads, acquiesce. Their homosex- appeals. (In fact, they simply refuse to resorted to incendiary headlines even uality is just not an issue, they continue to return phone calls or return solicitation when its actual coverage was more even- maintain-at a psychic cost that can only letters unopened.) While some mid-level handed , and the checkout line tabs were be imagined. ~ Hollywood homosexuals may be found at the annual MECLA and Center dinners, the FILM & CRITICISM so-called Gay Mafia is nowhere in evidence. Centre Universitaire Americain du Cinema et de la Critique aParis And now there is the added spectre of Th e Film Studies Prog ra m and Co nt e mpo rar y C ritici s m and C ulture (CCC) AIDS to further darken a picture that is already bleak. Close readers of Variety's aPro gram a t th e Ce ntr e Uni ve rs it a ir e Am e ri cain du C in e m a et de la C ritiqu e obituary column will find two or three deaths per week that are most probably Pari s bo th boas t a curriculum o f inn ova ti ve se minars and co ur ses whi c h e xa min e AIDs-related , but rarely are they identified the theo rie s and critical th o ug ht th a t ha ve influ e nced the stud y o f film and o th e r as such, for even in death Hollywood's fo rm s o f ex press io n o ver the pas t 4 0 year s. homosexuals maintain their silence. Indi- vidual figures such as producer Barry The Film S tudi es Prog ra m Krost, working through the entertain- pr ov id es s tud e nt s wi th ment commitee of the AIDS Project/Los Angeles, are attempting to mobilize ... co ur ses a nd se min a rs ana- Hollywood's homosexuals, but in the ly ti ca l o f film th eo ry, h is- absence of a sense of group identity and to r y, fo rm a l st ru ctures, commonality, it is likely to be an uphill id eo logy, and th e re lati o n - fight. ships be t we e n film a nd oth e r a rt fo rm s, a nd la n- H ollywood's current AIDS hysteria is, gu age and psyc hoa na lys is. in large part, a media fabrication. Participant s di sc u ss s uc h Actress Morgan Fairchild, who has th e me s as th e s il e nt film s turned out to be one of the more sensible o f G riffith , La ng, Ei se n- celebrities interviewed on the subject, s te in , and Kea to n ; cl assic told Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline that Ho ll ywood film s; , evo lu - AIDS would probably have less to do with ti o n o f ea rl y cin e m a; a nd limiting television kisses than the simple Euro pea n a nd Am erica n fact that actresses don't want to ruin their a vant-ga rd e ci ne m as . make-up. But while SAG has yet to document any instances where gay actors \" Edit'! \",1\\\" hi\" T~H\"t'r Th e CCC focu se s o n rece nt d eve l- have been blacklisted, the expectation of ItI tht' (,'r m \" f ,\\ o pm e nts in Fre nch po liti ca l th o ug ht additional discrimination is rampant. and soc ia l in s tituti on s, lingui s ti cs, One writer confided to me his fears that H' fI !lU \" \" bIt'lL soc ia l sc ie nces, a nd lit e ra ry th eo r y. work is going to be harder to come by, The Prog ra m, inte rdi sciplinar y in since producers could well decide that r.l1 I\" I1,II . u \"\"ful. ffit'll nature, anal yzes tex ts a nd doc u- gays simply aren't going to be around long m e nt s as we ll as no n-ve rb a l re pre s- enough to finish their assignments. And, rdurn II h, him III e ntati o ns s uch as ph ot og ra ph y, film of course, the buck gets passed onto the a nd te lev is io n , by draw in g fr o m th e distant bugbears of completion bond or ,h\" (, nnl l ,f.I ~rt' .' t fields o f lin g ui sti cs, p syc h oa na lys is ,' Insurance companies. b\" r \" YUt' J rl',\\ 11\\ a nthro po logy, ph iloso ph y, and po l- itic al sc ie nce. Unfortunately, the whole issue of w hlt'h YUill' n,lIur\" lI y coming out is now even more problem- A required sess io n th a t includ es atic. The mainstream press, which has its t tl tJ l h\" \" 1111 th\" inte nsive lan g ua ge trainin g a nd a n own investment in promoting the sexual introdu cti o n to film a na lys is, th e- status quo, might be loathe to conduct a b \\l rJt'r ~ ,. f tnt· o ry and se mi o logy precede s th e witchhunt. Indeed , the lengths to which yea r-l o n g Pr og ra m s. Ad va need tr.,JIII \"' !.11 .. und e rg radu ate a nd g raduate stu - de nts w ith a minimum o f two yea rs 1\",/\",,,1/1,, .,,,,,, of uni ve rs it y-l e ve l Fr e nc h o r th e equi va le nt m ay a ppl y. Fo r furth e r info rm a t io n, w rit e: Uni vers it y o f C alifo rnia Edu cat ion Abroa d Prog ra m S a nt a Ba rb a ra , CA 93 1 06 Sponsored by University of California Education Abroad Program & Council on International Educational Exchange 43
Fearand Loving andAIDS by Darrell Yates Rist disease, though not at all a gloom that right except the distribution of the sexes weights the script, preoccupies in varying (where a little bit of drag, in fact, would be T he morning after I saw Parting degrees almost every character who a handsome start towards normal). Not Glances in New York, Phil Donahue speaks: a doom to some, a distant threat that this bewilderment results from was hosting his show in Miami. Playing at to others, a sorrow, or a curiosity. It's seeing something bogus when we're used the seashore for an Everglades of ever inexorable. to seeing something (fue. Rather it tanning faces, Phil and his guests aired results from seeing what is genuine when old age sex. A retirement camp (or But, in the fiction of the film , life goes what we love to see is a sham. whatever they call them now) director, a on, as it always does. As it did in spite of gung-ho yuppie, recounted for the cheer- syphilis (epidemic without cure until the Representative gay lives are judged too ing plebiscite the sexual adventures of an Forties) or polio, as it does in spite of dangerous to be depicted, inimical to 82-year-old man , one of his internees, cancer (which in America strikes one in preconceptions held as precious as they who, before his recent death from three) , natural catastrophes, deaths in are false. So everything is fabrication or Alzheimer's Disease, plugged his wife ships, trains, planes (and spaceships), extremes. In Cruising, gays are psycho- relentlessly - and three geriatric para- cars, in spite of war. And so, Sherwood's pathic, other, meaner than straight men. mours as well. characters still love, look for love and sex, Making Love and An Early Frost (made find love and sex, share a spat, a joke, do last fall for NBC) go in for cheating , A storm of hands and crackling voices. coke, have traumas, and have fun . homophobia and proffer assimilation as a \"Give it up because I'm 6U\" grimaced a payoff: gays are regular guys. Even when char-faced dame. \"No way. \" It's these microscopic understandings they're coupled, no coos, no pet names, of a character, minute movements in no intimate frivolities. These pals punch One young woman asked a lady on relationships, that inform Parting each other in the arm for casual affection, Phil's panel of horny elders whether sex Glances' finest scenes. Going to a jostle, jibe, and otherwise wall in their was better for her now since, obviously, farewell dinner, Robert wants to carry an masculine emotions like chums. And she didn't any longer have to worry about umbrella just in case it rains, as always. when it comes to the difference, one getting pregnant. \"Why do you think God The other protests that, as always, must think that two real men like these gave us menopause?\" she rasped. unneeded then forgotten, it will be lost could only take to sex good-naturedly, as somewhere. A ritual unfolds, as always: if in sporting competition, high school Was she looking for a husband? Nope. mock duel in which the umbrella is varsity combat. She wouldn't marry but she would shack seized, impounded, then another one is up when the right man came along. found and fought for until acquiescence. The casting ads for Parting Glances Massive applause and laughter. Then the umbrella is toted, gets left specified that it was gay (though casting behind, remembered only by the camera. wasn't done according to an actor's sexual \"Hello, you're on the air,\" Phil And it doesn't rain. So comfortably preference) . But unlike most films in the enthused. enacted, the sequence seems familiar, genre, Parting Glances is not scripted both to us and to the couple, and we see it with a lesson plan; it is not pedantic or A female caller snapped, \"What about as a revelation - a constancy, a structure, polemic. It is not a film -like Cruising, God's laws?\" the kind of minor rite on which all love Making Love, or An Early Frost-to hangs. teach us something: Who are gays? How Everybody booed. do they know they are \"that way?\" Where No one asked about disease. These aren't startling dramatic do they meet? How do they live? How do devices, but they underpin a drama, they they die? (What exactly is AIDS?) What do A ll of this is antithetic to the ethos of ring true. Elsewhere they might evoke a they want? How do they think? What do Bill Sherwood's Parting Glances, grunt, a sigh, a laugh of recognition. But they do in bed ...don 't tell me. Do they where a quieter erotic sense prevails, so finely executed in Parting Glances, ever talk to their mothers? Parting more akin to chess than football. The they stun. The discomfort of the critics I Glances, like most good narratives, core of Sherwood's story is simple, really, saw the film with-and I'd call their doesn't apologize for its material. This is edging to the universal: a young, New silence that-derives from what a lot of the big time, life as it really is. Outsiders York City couple facing separation due to people will interpret as the film's mockery just have to do the best they can. one spouse's work shifting to Africa. The of human intimacies. The lovers are night before departure, Robert- in a taxi, Robert Oohn Bolger) and Michael The movie isn't uniformly flattering to on the run - confesses that the transfer (Richard Ganoung). Men. The illness gays. Truth is never so to anybody. hadn't been instigated by the company, killing their friend Nick (Steve Buscemi) Among gay characters, there's plenty of but rather was requested and arranged to is AIDS. insensitive, sometimes bitchy banter rest their six-year \"marriage,\" as they call over AIDS. One sharp-tongued man bites it, which had become \"too settled, too It's abashing to see these homosexuals back at some imagined reference to his predictable.\" As truth sheds its alibi, it is in love and expressing it the way we're unseemly weight: at least it's lessened his evident that a friend's impending death used to seeing heterosexuals do, con- appeal, he contends, and \"spared me from an incurable, infectious illness (not founding to watch their friends, both gay from the plague.\" A hot, young guy, named once, but we find out it is and straight, treating them as casually as ignored by prey when he's used to getting transmitted via sex) has inspired the they would your average couple, baffling every man he wants, snipes \"He's worried foreign move. It is both an escape from to look into a world where everything is gnevmg and from catching it. This 44
about catching you-know-what from me.\" dence and torment, insouciance with Aidan Quinn in An Early Frost. But on the score of AIDS , straight fear. Good and evil. Gays are mystery incarnate, shaman priests who hold the sBrokaw Life, Death and AIDS. characters realistically fare worse. While forces of creation and destruction in their the gays dish AIDS, they prowl warily. Not hands. The spritely androgyne in drag 45 one of their pursuits ends in a lay. (The queens-father/mother all in one, whole- sole gay erections at play are monoga- ness in a single human being-and mous, the lovers'.) The homosexuals are annihilism, black and cold , in sadomaso- not unskilled: in the old days (read \"post- chistic leather men. Stonewall and before the plague\"), Nick remembers, \"We had more fun in one What we cannot comprehend, we weekend than the whole state of New symbolize, turn into a metaphor with jersey's had since the signing of the morals for its meaning. We contain it in a Declaration of Independence.\" For all the thoughtful system more or less, control appearance of failure, their continence it-the impulse of religion. But religions translates as purposeful, a prophylactic, change perforce, fall apart as figures in whether conscious or unwitting. the allegories take on life. In the progress of society (religion in a broader sense), To the heterosexual characters, how- women rebel , demand a role more vivid ever, AIDS is, at its most benign, someone than the harlot or the virgin, Eve fallen or else's oddity. The German artist Klaus redeemed. jews renege on judas. Blacks (Theodore Ganger) wants to use Nick as throw over Cain. a prop in a performance piece on death (disease as entertainment). At its most Women's lives described by men, jews' malignant, AIDS is someone else's fatal by Christians, blacks' by whites, gays' by flaw, an element of classic tragedy (it straights. Like the others, gay men have arouses sympathy, creates catharsis, but securely held a place in this oppressive the horror is on a stage and other people pantheon of fantasy, till sated by the play the roles) . AIDS, then, is what gays whims of heterosexuals they've begun to (consummate entertainers, actors) get, come to life. Indigenous inhabitants this innovative illness being thus selec- against the alien elite. Conflict with tive. Fresh meat and on-the-spot relief in booty: who commands the image (how Parting Glances (as is ever closer to the the homosexual is seen and sees himself) truth in life) are the province of the owns the territory, sets its boundaries, straights. At Robert's farewell party in a scripts the populace (or lets the natives SoHo loft, Peter (Adam Nathan) meets choose their roles themselves). Ardently Liselotte (Nada), Klaus's wife, and lays firing this contention, though, is the her forthwith in the only open space, the defense of heterosexuality- not as bathtub (sans rubber). defined by acts of copulation but societal relations, the part straight men, and The gay-straight contrast stings. While consequently women, play. At stake is gay men have wisened to the limits of the what a \"real man\" is and what are his natural world , straights exercise their preogatives. The character and scope, naivete in a game of biological rol:1lette- the potency, of masculinity depend on another example of truth never flattering what the homosexual is allowed to be. anybody all the time. But that's what you get when you paint folks as they really When all things were equal, we dealt are, comparisons that critique: an irresist- with homosexuality as with everything ible argument - even if there were no occult: pretended that it wasn't there (as others-for altering the image of fags. in \"the love that dare not speak its name\"), There's too little social control when the talked of it in whispers so as not to rouse photograph's left untouched. The prob- it, or so to mollify its force when it raiser lem with Parting Glances-or the mov- its head; joked about it, cursed it: ie's brilliance, according to your point of sometimes tried, despite ourselves, to view-is that its picture of gay men is all anal~'ze it with dispassion, psychiatrists too human to be fantasy, all too real to be usurping dogma from the theologians. accepted uncontentiously as true. The These were largely timid, private tactics, rule for homosexuality's appeal in film- embarrassed and confessional, with occa- or art, or media in any form - is that it sional flares from academe or the pulpit never mirror life. (which subsume the talk-show), occa- sional crusades. These tactics survived I f faggots didn't exist, straights would \"gay liberation,\" as though it were a have to invent them. Heterosexuals are childish tantrum which, if humored or obsessed by homosexuality as the Irish cajoled, would go away. are by good fairies and horrific demons . To heterosexuals, male homosexuality is These persist, these surreptitious, a catalogue of mythic understanding. superstitious methods of confronting Elegance and beauty sallying with deca- faggotry. But now they are eroded: talk of gays is loud and public. Last july, Rock
Hudson (movie idol, sex symbol, god or the terror instigates and satisfies catharsis asking? \"Am I at risk? How can I protect alter-ego) publicized his AIDS. The while no one (that is, anyone who myself? What is safe sex and what is not? epidemic \"gay disease\" that hadn't stirred matters) in the audience gets hurt. Or Who gets AIDS and why?\" Brokaw tells us the nation , now moved the recalcitrant. better- given the apparent lead time to that the nation's leading experts are The whole straight populace was sud- the holocaust-straights are overcome by assembled. \"We will be using some denly at risk, if not for AIDS, then for the the convenience of this face-saving explicit language,\" he warns. Except for terror of it. The illness wasn't any longer chance to stare at gays. Poke, probe, turn words like homosexual-and gay-they felling some old queers, but Rock- them on their backs to see their don't. queer, sort of, but decent. underbellies. Prurient, pleasurably dis- comfiting, as always-but this time with What comes out of Brokaw's show is Murmurs , anguished voices in cre- necessity as an excuse. It's now an axiom, yesterday's news . Who gets AIDS?: 76 per scendo, roars. \"He deep-kissed Linda despite gay activists' complaint, that AIDS cent are homosexual men, Tom says. Of Evans on the set. Does she have it too?\" and homosexuality are correlate: the self- the 16,574 Americans who have been Kissing, spit, poison! Gay actors and preservants' needs to look at AIDS diagnosed, 8,423 (something more than bisexuals! \"If Rock is almost dead of requires - allows - the self-indulgents' half) are dead . \"For the record , almost all AIDS-a good man just like me-then I'll inquiry about gay men. known cases in the United States can be be dying soon.\" Contagion and panic. traced to sexual contact. . .\" Here Tom \"New\" problems, which had been prob- A tragedy puts gays upon a stage. pauses pregnantly. Homosexuality and lematic all along, arose: straights with There ensues an ancient dialogue in sex and AIDS sink in. \". . .or to drug AIDS, and newborns, schoolage children. metaphor. The symbol is AIDS. The issue abusers sharing needles ....\" Or to recipi- Anger. Talk of, then some moves toward is homosexuality. ents of AIDS-infected blood or plasma quarantine (Texas): find out how to find products, or to newborns of infected the ones infected, at least the ones who I n newspapers and magazines, we mothers. No to casual contact and saliva. had already gotten sick, and isolate homosexuals can get our angry letters them - keep the AIDS kids home from printed in response to something Back to sex. A man with AIDS admits school and jail the grown-ups who refuse homophobic. Besides, we have our own on camera he had had \"a very active to forgo sex. Life's July cover, white as respected publications, like the weekly recreational life.\" He has never doubted , surrender, ran the ugly word in red, New York Native, the best compendium he says, the consequences since \"that \"A IDS,\" below the warning \"Now No O NE of AIDS research and politics around the night in the shower\" when he found a Is SAFE FROM...\" world, and the Advocate. Radio has dealt Kaposi's sarcoma lesion. He looks down but fleetingly with AIDS, a minor role. It's at his arm as if rediscovering his fate , and Once the country's fears whipped up, national TV that has us by the balls. moans, \"Oh, my God.\" Return to Tom an inquisition was requisite: a micro- who comments about the \"fast lane\" and scopic search for understanding, one eye Life, Death and AIDS (January 22, \"living the homosexual lifestyle\" - as shut. Who's come down with this 1986): Tom Brokaw's second chance to though , unlike heterosexuals, gays have disease? Who's infected? How exactly get it right. His first try followed NBC's An only one. Tom asks a California gay man, (everyone by now knows that in general Early Frost last November, when , like a Duncan Gwynn, what advice he'd give to it's sex) do they spread the germ? Who's passionless pedant, he pulled the points young men who are \"growing up and want to blame? What moral judgments can we out one by one-whatever in this drama to lead a homosexuallifestyler He has no make? According to the Centers for of a gay man's fatal illness would reassure time to elaborate. We only hear \"Caution.\" Disease Control, the federal govern- the straight folk of America that they John Lorenzini, of the San Francisco ment's Vatican of epidemiology, three- won't get it. If Brokaw was callous then , AIDS Project, adds \"Condoms.\" So much quarters of all AIDS cases in the United by this attempt he'd grown belligerent. for specificity. CUT. States are found among gay men (that includes bisexuals), though 17 per cent His willowy lips go stiff. \"Homosexual,\" An interlude on I.V drug abusers, are I. V drug abusers who are straight he pronounces so precisely that homo who, reporter Bob Bazell explains to sexually(when a gay man is an LV drug hints of schoolyard taunts . Once, in the Tom, \"pose the greatest danger for the abuser, the CDC classifies him only as hour broadcast, he goes for gay- future spread of AIDS through heterosex- homosexual} . Since by definition, hetero- condescendingly to Richard Dunne, ual contact.\" Then on to video of New sexuals have sex with heterosexuals , not Executive Director of the Gay Men's York's Lower East Side where two gays, meager amounts of common sense Health Crisis in New York. \"The homo- junkies, sitting in some garbage, shoot would indicate the demographic source sexual, the gay community.. .\" Brokaw up. Closeup: the needle punctures a vein, of threat for AIDS to most Americans. starts his question. There's an audible the syringe empties, the needle with- catch in his throat. draws-the wound, the bead of addicted Still, AIDS among straight drug abus- blood. No tape of middle-class Ameri- ers-and among their sex mates and their Yes, we're sensitive to nuance, watch- cans mainlining coke. The scene belies progeny, whose ranks are growing fer- ing gay man after gay man die in a culture Bazell's assessment. No threat here. tilely-though putting heterosexuals on that is hostile . Some of us - in New York, These degenerates are people no one alert, hasn't seemed to stimulate the LA, and San Francisco- have lost what knows. fancy of the nation nearly so enthusiasti- we'd consider now afew close friends . My cally as AIDS among gay men . The body count is 10 and I have 10 more who I nfection is for a lifetime. Incubation of numbers of the heterosexual sick perhaps probably are dying: I know men who in the germ is up to seven years and appear too small yet to portend an five years have counted 40 dead and hold maybe longer: \"20 years ; ventures Dr. imminent catastrophe, at least compared a constant vigil for themselves . Brokaw's Robert Gallo, leading AIDS researcher of to all the gays who're diagnosed or dead. manner doesn't set well. the National Cancer Institute. Brokaw Homosexual AIDS, like a distant curse, makes no mention of France's Pasteur has all the teasing fright of horror flicks: \"A new year begins and concerns about Institute's spat with Gallo for claiming AIDS spreads thoughout America,\" Bro- kaw begins. The questions everyone is 46
M A KIN G HUMAN RIGHTS FILM GUIDE. Anne Gelman, Milos Stehlik , eds. GHOSTBUSTERS Containing over 400 films and videos available for rental or loan, this is the most comprehensive resource for anyone working with or interested in human rights . Each film is cross-indexed, listing credits , including distributor. 112pp. Illustrated . $6.95 'n.,c,eenlllayD, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Oon A,~,o,ctond Ha rold 110\",1, , .. .... o\"'ol .. I... I>oolongu:,,\"1 TELEVISION : Series, Pilots, tull, onnotal\"~I~:I:~~e~\"!,~~o;;,:::~~!!r. Ond .. \"t.. ,., JOOtl.\"ln d·!t,.·.ceM\"pnololl,opl\"a nddro .. ,n9· and Specials. Vincent Terrace . Id,'CO 1;1,001\\ S\"OY VoLi 1939·1973. MAKING GHOSTBUSTERS. The primary reference work on the Don Shay. ed. The exclusive behind· the- scenes story of the making of the most history of television. With nearly successful comedy film of all time. This lavishly illustrated book features : 5000 entries , this volume includes a • The complete shooting script , an- complete listi ng of all series , pilots , notated with reference to special ef- fects , script changes, locations and and specials from 1946-73 , plus a production design ; special section on the first ex- • Includes over 200 photographs and drawings. with 16 pages in full color ; GAYS AND FILM. Richard Dyer , perimental programs from ed . A politically and socially aware 1937-1946. 480pp. Illustrated. Cloth • Also an inside look at the lab that pro- look at gay people 's relationship $29.95. duced the wonderfully bizarre specia l with the cinema. Exploring various VoLiI 1974·1984. Complete listing effects; topicS such as lesbianism, of 3000 series, pilots, and specials stereotyping , pornography and on network , cable and public tele- • Plus interviews and anecdotes from camp , this is an intriguing explora - vision. Each entry in both vo lumes cast and crew members. tion of gayness and cinema. 112pp. includes a plot synopsis, cast, Illustrated . $8.95 guest stars, full credits, running 224pp. 200 photographs/drawings. time and episodes. (A third volume Paper $12 .95 will be published this summer.) No INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE 1986 Peter Cowie, ed . The 23rd edition of the AMERICAN FILM NOW. The People, one should be without this complete worlds most respected film annual. Ex- panded to cover news and reviews from The Power, The Money, The Movies. encyclopedia. 464pp. Illustrated. over 65 countries make this the , \"best ongoing inventory of the world's film in- Updated Edition. James Monaco. Cloth $29.95. dustry.\" L.A. Times . 504 pp. Illustrated . Paper $12 .95. Monaco, one of America 's leading film INTERNATIONAL TV & VIDEO GUIDE critics , explores the financial , political , WERNER HERZOG . Images at the 1986. Richard Patterson , ed . The and artist ic complexities of this Horizon. A provocative interview with th is essential guide for anyone interested in glamorous medium , with an eye to the important contemporary filmmaker , con- television or the expanding world of past , present and future of the industry. ducted by critic Roger Ebe rt. video. Greatly expanded with reports 560 pp Illust rated . Cloth $24 .95. Filmography. Illustrated. Paper $4 .50 . from 49 countries covering the trends , programs and personalities . 272 pp . Il- ----------------- ------------~-------- lustrated . Paper $12 .95. Hello Zoetrope: WIM WENDERS. Jan Dawson. A reveal- ing interview with a director who has o Send me the following book s. I've o Also please send me your free become a major force on the interna- tional film scene . Includes a selection of enclosed the proper amount plus catalogue Wender 's own wr itings on topics from $1.50 for postage and handling ($200 film criticism to Rock 'n' Roll. for cloth & orders of 5 or more books). NAME _____________________ Filmography. Illustrated. Paper $5.00. Thanksl ADDRESS _________________ Plea se allow 4-6 weeks for delivery . NY residents must add 8 I;' % sales ZIP _ _ tax . NEW YORK ZOETROPE Suite 516, Dept. MH 80 East 11 th Street New York , NY 10003
credit for discovering the virus a year after ogy is easily available, but, in general, ever coyly, had anticipated some they did. No sir, AIDS is all-American ... in unpublicized. What gets media attention response about their sex life, respectfully its perverted way. \"These silent carriers,\" is the information, often hackneyed, he didn't press the point. as Brokaw calls them, possibly are conforming to bias. AIDS like all disease, legion - one or two million; it is among us isn't only medically defined. It's con- \"Do you live in great fear, Mr. Sloan?\" like The Invasion o/the Body Snatchers. structed socially. AIDS, first diagnosed \"No, it makes us love each other even With such horrific facts established, among gay men (although, most assur- more.\" Brokaw makes the central and the edly, that's not where it started), fits the glibbest statement of the show. \"There is common view of homosexuality: the Soon thereafter Brokaw goes back to small danger of AIDS spreading into the darkest genital obsessions, with fatal John Lorenzini, the gay AIDS patient who heterosexual community.\" consequences. Revelations of wide- advocates condoms. He-and all the spread heterosexual infection weakens other gay AIDS patients who are inter- Brokaw is credulous-willfully, one the force of the metaphor. Brokaw, like viewed-sit alone. Not one gay couple, thinks. Once he has corroborated that many less visible journaLists who have gay family, gets on the air. Brokaw asks gays are the guys who've got \"it,\" the rest jumped into the AIDS orgy, falls prey to what seems an unassuming question of the deadly \"facts\" he gathers skewers bigotry. about Lorenzini's life. them on a hook. A gay ~Ieader\" even helps him out. 'The \"virus is so prevalent in the Brokaw's homophobia breaks the sur- \"I try to maintain some kind of gay community,\" GMHC's Richard Dunne face in interviews with patients. A normalcy,\" Mr. Lorenzini says. asserts, \"that any sexual contact now comparison will illustrate the point: the carries a risk.\" Brokaw doesn't challenge spot with Amy Sloan, a young, Indiana Normalcy? Brokaw has his lead. What's that. \"Prevalent?\" How about the tens of woman who is married and a mother, expected of gay lives is certainly not love thousands of gay men in states like whose husband is sitting with her in their or friendships, nor preoccupation with Kansas, New Mexico, Iowa, Arkansas, their work. Normalcy for queers is sex. Brokaw doesn't pussyfoot with Mr. Mississippi, West Virginia, and Lorenzini, as he did with Mrs. Sloan. His target is the artery. \"Does that include Nebraska, which have fewer than 20 sexual activity?,\" he asks. cases. Are they all Typhoid Marys too? Yes, but Mr. Lorenzini qualifies it. \"Safe sex.\" And does \"any sexual contact\" cover Brokaw doesn't care. \"But you're really jerking off with a buddy or getting fucked putting that person at terrible risk, and isn't that terribly unfair?\" with a rubber so no semen passes Mr. Lorenzini isn't pro. He might have through? Dunne's remark is stupid. gotten dirty on the air and defined \"safe sex\": mutual masturbation (100 per cent Brokaw's response is immoral: he's a safe sport), or anything with a rubber. He seems abashed. Brokaw, who'd said the journalist with well-honed skills to make show would talk about safe sex, doesn't try to help Lorenzini clarify. The mes- the glib substantiate their comments. In sage: alone, no family, obsessed-what is left but death? this case, he simply doesn't want to. The CUT to one more queer with AIDS. He \"science\" he's advancing mollifies says, \"You watch your friends walk away one by one... it's horrible.\" straights' fears of AIDS and sex, while so tenacious is the lurid stereotype of stealing every option from gay men. The gays that in as admirable a show as PBS's AIDS: Profile of an Epidemic (aired worse homosexuality is made to look, the in New York City o~e day after Brokaw's program), with Ed Asner as the host, it more heterosexuality appears to be holds sway. Meaning well, the show contextualizes with a survey of often fatal annointed. contagious illnesses: the Black Death, polio, and Legionnaires Disease. Asner Neither does Brokaw probe his experts Profile of an Epidemic. tells us that epidemics get blamed on about new studies which suggest that ethnic or social groups within the population. \"AIDS,\" he says, \"has its own heterosexual I.V. drug abusers in New home. \"Hi, I'm Amy Sloan; she says, myths.\" York were infected with AIDS a year or so \"and I have AIDS.\" Brokaw molds our The camera goes to San Francisco's Castro Street, where gay men are walking before gay men and died undiagnosed- sympathy: he narrates that in 1982, Amy, hand in hand. From there, the show sets out specifically to debunk the most' though Don Desjarlais, a New York then only 24 and single, got three insidious misperceptiQns. That AIDS is somehow caused by homosexuality: substance abuse expert, is one of Bro- contaminated blood transfusions. Not there's no reported case of the disease transmitted sexually among lesbians. kaw's guests. Nor does he ask whether long after Amy's marriage, Tom con- That AIDS is a plague of fastlane types, findings such as these suggest more tinues, she got pregnant. And the same widespread straight infection, also undi- week she found out she'd have a baby, '~he agnosed, than is reported. He doesn't ask found out she'd die of AIDS. \"People with about the studies by the CDC indicating AIDS are just like you,\" she tells the TV that as many as 30,000 straight blood audience, \"except that we have a disease donors, men and women who belonged that kills.\" to no AIDS risk groups, were positive for \"How has it affected your relationship AIDS infection in 1985. And he doesn't with your husband?,\" Brokaw asks, then ask about the study done by Dr. Luc adds (as though to underscore our Montagnier, French discoverer of the heterosexual sense of family, fidelity in assumed AIDS virus, which gives hope sickness and in health till death), \"who is that AIDS infection in the absence of there with you tonight.\" The man has disease may be transient, that all infected been sitting in plain view. people ar~ not doomed to be lifelong \"We had a good marriage before I got carriers. sick, we have a good marriage now,\" Mrs. Such data which impugns AIDS ideol- Sloan responds simply. If Brokaw, how- 48
Insight and Outlook. Views of British Design. 36th International Design Conference in Aspen. Sunday, June 15 to Friday, June 20, 1986. Al>pen '86 explores the diversity and vitality of British design today. Conference Co·Chairmen Kenneth Grange, Pentagram London, and Rosamind Julius, Julius International, are asking - Why Britain? Is British design strong despite or because of a hostile cultural environment? Why do young designers go it alone? Historical heritage - millstone or milestone? Do national characteristics of eccentricity, irony and understatement affect design in today's inter- national business world. Topics range from fashion , photography, film, graphics, advertising , architecture, interiors and product design to theatre and gardens. Speakers include architects Norman Foster and James Stirling; photographer Norman Parkinson; artist David Hockney; film producer David Puttnam; fashion designer Bruce Oldfield; graphic designers Alan Fletcher and Michael Peters; cartoonist Ralph Steadman; Head of Royal College of Art Jocelyn Stevens; Director of The Victoria and Albert Museum Sir Roy Strong. Work of emerging young designers will be shown in presentations , workshops and exhibitions . Special events: fashion show, workshops, a week of British films , \"Spitting Image\" comedy event, picnics and British foods , cricket match . Steering Committee : Niels Diffrient, Milton Glaser, Frank Stanton. Regular registration: $425 (US dollars). Early bird registration: $375 (if received by May 1) . One additional member of household : $200 . Full time student: $125 . (photocopy of current ID required with registration). List all applic;;ants by name. Make check payable to IDCA and mail to : IDCA c/o Bank of Aspen , PO Box 0 , Aspen , CO 81612 . Further information: IDCA, PO Box 664, Aspen , CO 81612, (303) 925-2257. I am enclosing : 0 Regular registration: $425 (US dollars) 0 Early Bird registration : $375 (if received by May 1) o One additional member of household : $200 0 Full time student: $125 (photocopy of current ID required with registration) Name(s) Address City, State, Zip Code Firm Affiliation Profession Staying in Aspen , if known
promiscuous and sleazy: a single contact the implicit appeal for gay men (and their image mid-America can swallow less with an infected person without following lovers) to come out and be accepted by painlessly than queers as affectionate cautious sexual practices might cause their families, the model for the gay husbands: too much audience hysteria infection . That out of fear of AIDS, gay relationship is insidious: they act as little would interfere with clear thinking when men don't take care of one another: just more than buddies. While no one expects it comes to getting the course on AIDS for one, the Gay Men's Health Crisis, NBC to show the Pierson boy and Peter across. Cross-purposes. Neither one with its staff of mosrly homosexual tonguing on the TV screen, a little succeeds. volunteers, takes care of men in the hugging, maybe a few tears-something community and many heterosexual AIDS in their private moments would have T hat's not to say a drama can't tell a patients too. helped validate their love, or dramatize good story while teaching a number that these two guys are more than of facts, and a number of gay films are Asner is convincing when he's debunk- roommates, more than best friends who proof. Arthur Bressan, Jr:s Buddies, is a ing moralism (AIDS as judgment) or fuck offscreen. An Early Frost would poignant narrative of a man with AIDS accusastory epidemiology (gay blood and seduce its audience with \"acceptance so (Geoff Edholm) and the bedside volun- semen as the poison in the well). But the that, once gays are out in the open, it teer (David Schachter) who becomes his picture of the gay relationship in contrast seems, straights can control them better. friend in the course of helping him die. It to the straight is , however subtly, tired, to In the underground , conformity can't be is also a mini-course on AIDS: transmis- borrow a word from camp. In one enforced. sion, diagnosis, politics, the personal toll. segment with a straight AIDS victim, a And nowadays gay porn, its devotees hemophiliac from Kentucky, all the Like NBC News' Life, Death , AIDS, An concerned with more than titillation, trappings of relationships are there: Early Frost is co nfused. It does try to tackles teaching. Raymond Jacobs' home, wife, a little daughter, whom we Chance of a Lifetime, produced for the get to see dad playing \"\"ith and kissing. educate its audience about AIDS- GMHC in New York, like other dirty Then the camera returns a few months through awkward moments when a flicks , can rouse a man to romance with later, after he's died: his wife describes her character (sometimes a doctor, more its stories while it moves his cock to loss and how her daughters mourn their often mother Catherine), almost wholly cream with evils of the flesh. It's also a father. Scenes like these, of course, halts dramatic action to explain a bit text on \"safe sex.\" Or take Parting enshrine the family. But when a gay AIDS about the illness. When sister Susan Glances . We lose our fear of getting sick patient is on, he's never with his lover, refuses to vis it Michael in the hospital , by casual contact when we see that and-as far as this or any other show will Mrs. Pierson , turning almost smack into Robert and Michael and a host of others let us see- no lover, when he's gone, will the camerra, says angrily (but not so are intimate with Nick without dropping be bereaved. In all these media manipula- much so that the lesso n doesn't come dead . tions, there is easy mockery of gay men's across), \"There's no danger just being in grief. the same room with him.\" At these The success of these films is their moments, one expects a graphics wipe honesty. The characters, spontaneous It's precisely on this score that NBC's An across the screen reading, \"CASUAL and imperfect in all three , are believable, Early Frost fails-for all it may seem not CONTACT: The AIDS germ isn't air- and so is their experience. And so we to. This made-for-TV drama , as surely as borne~ Along with straights' compulsion learn. What undermines An Early Frost is the news shows, marries gays to AIDS, to determine who gays are, the movie's that in making its gay men so good-to be but denies that they marry each other, at pedagogical five-ea sy-steps-to-under- tolerable- it makes them too good to be least as lovingly as straights do . Michael standing AIDS imposes limits on its own. true. We easily suspect we're being sold a Pierson (Aidan Quinn) confesses to his Gay-Iovers-as-just-roommates is an bill of goods on AIDS as well. And the family two crimes at once: he's gay and effort is as flawed as Brokaw's when he he's dying of AIDS. Needless to say, their tries to make his gays too bad. grief is on both counts, and, for a time, these simultaneous tragedies leave family Compelled by AIDS, obsessed with unity tattered. But before the dissolution gays, the media has muddled both as is complete, the ever-wise grandmother, moral issues. And in the ~nd, straights are Beatrice (Sylvia Sidney), and the ever- left to argue on their own turf with compassionate mother Catherine (Gena themselves. So the latest craze is shows Rowlands) are the instruments of recon- with just-your-average-heterosexual try- ciling their sick, homosexual son to the ing on the plague for size. And since the famil y: his recalcitrant father, Nick (Ben pattern cut for dramatizing AIDS and gays Gazzarra) and his pregnant, married is the only one they've got, the fit is sister Susan (Sydney Walsh), who, fearful suffocating. Take the recent storyline exit for her fetu s, has been scarce throughout of Dr. Bobby Caldwell (Marc Harmon) from St. Elsewhere. A red-blooded her brother's return home. American boy, sowing oats and seed So, a son's homosexuality and AIDS are indiscriminately and according to birth- right, gets Kaposi's sarcoma. \"I can't even subsumed by the love of his family. count the number of women I rolled in Radically so: the Piersons' love accom- clover with .... 1t could have been a lot of modates son Michael's long-time lover people.... Maybe I deserve this; he tells Peter (D.W., Moffett), too-though till the screen. Michael got sick and came out, his spouse was by tacit agreement his A discomfiting way to face a fatal roommate, whom they'd never met or illness: a boomerang. ~ even spoken to by phone. But in spite of so
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