Andrew Haigh is one the most inspired out-gay award-winning filmmakers of his generation, although back in 2009 his career got off to a shaky start with his first movie "Greek Pete". This documentary of a scrawny looking British rent boy who had the most uninteresting of lives was as about as erotic as a Sunday School Outing and one big yawn from start to finish. Who knew then that Haigh would re-emerge two years later with "Weekend" which became one of the definitive queer movies of the decade.
Next on his schedule was the HBO TV series "Looking" about three gay best friends who navigate life, relationships, family, and careers in modern-day San Francisco. The series was hailed as been one of the most enlightened and relevant LGBT programs on TV, with Haigh was its Executive Producer and also wrote and directed several episodes. Yet despite it's wild popularity HBO decided in its wisdom not to renew it for a third season, and allowed all the story strands to be tied up in one 2 Hour Special that Haigh has written and directed and that is due to be aired later this year.
For his third feature film "45 Years" Haigh has made yet another intimate drama, but unlike the previously two this time his subjects are neither young or gay. His story here centers on a retired middle-class couple leading a rather slow-paced idyllic life on the Norfolk Broads in England. Kate Mercer (Charlotte Rampling) and her husband Jeff (Tom Courtenay) are making plans to celebrate their 45th Wedding Anniversary at the end of the week. This most gentle of marital dramas between this quintessential English couple never ever wanes due mainly to the performances of the two superb veteran actors who add both such warmth and also pathos to their roles, and for Ms Rampling has garnered her a Best Actress Oscar Nomination.
With 45 Years still playing out in movie theaters, Haigh has announced that his 4th feature film will be a biopic on the legendary out-gay designer Alexander McQueen who so sadly took his own life six years ago aged just 40 years old. The movie will be scripted by Brit playwright Chris Urch and produced by Damian Jones. McQueen had a meteoric rise to the top of the fashion industry and before becoming one of haute couture’s brightest stars, this visionary was voted British Designer of the Year four times. It was evidently quite a troubled existence which makes it even more crucial than usual that the story is in an inspired and talented pair of hands that will do justice to McQueen's story. Haigh is therefore a perfect choice, and this will sure to become one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year.
27 year old Joseph Wilson is a rising star Brit queer filmmaker and he is also a central figure in East London's burgeoning Alternative Drag Scene which has set the city's cultural scene alight just as the likes of Boy George and Leigh Bowery did in the 1980's. queerguru tracked down Joseph to a cafe in Hackney's Amherst Road and talked to him about his work and his life and tried to find out exactly why drag was his ecstasy.
Unquestionably one of the best movies with LGBT content to premiere at this Sundance Film Festival was filmmaker Aaron Brookner's delightful tribute to his filmmaker Uncle that who he adored and who sadly died of AIDS in 1989 at the tender age of 34.
Howard Brookner packed a lot into his short life and left a small but powerful and impressive portfolio of work when he passed. His thesis at New York Film School led him to making the definitive documentary on William S. Burroughs the seminal 'Beat Generation' Poet and novelist which was an enormous critical success. It didn't just introduce the young filmmaker to other underground cult figures such asLucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg and John Giorno, but the movie was shot by Tom DiCillo and the sound recordist was Jim Jamusch, who makes an appearance in this documentary. What comes over in Aaron's profile on his Uncle so loud and clear was how this enigmatic man was determined to leave his mark on the world, and even the diagnosis of the illness that would rob him of his life would not stop him working hard to finish his last movie "The Bloodhounds of Broadway" which starred Matt Dillon and Madonna. It's very easy to see why Aaron Brookner wanted to get this all on film, as it's an excellent record of a remarkable man that made an important contribution to early queer cinema ....... and he was also quite a handsome charmer at the same time.
P.S. Our full review of Uncle Howard will be published soon, and we will also be keeping track of the movie's journey, so check back here.
2015 turned out to be quite a year in the spotlight for the transgender community and one of its brightest stars and advocates was trans filmmaker, actor and activist Jake Graf.
Fresh from performing in the award winning "The Danish Girl",Jake now seems to be everywhere: posing on magazine front covers and writing inside them too.
We tracked him down to London via Face time to try and discover for ourselves why Jake Graf is a man that we want to sit up and take notice off. In this very frank (and funny) interview for P.T.V. it is very easy to discover why he is indeed 'The Man Of The Moment'.
A couple of months ago we stumbled upon a extraordinary and wonderfully exhilarating short movie called "Stance" about 'drag boxing' which was set in a Working Men's Club in London. It literally blew our fishnets off. It was made by Joseph Wilson a 27 year-old Brit filmmaker who is one of the leading figures in the alternative drag movement that is currently revitalizing the East End. We finally caught up with him in a cafe in Hackney recently and talked to him about how his very first movie "Drag Is My Ecstasy" has literally become his mantra and his life these days too. He doesn't just possess an exceptional talent but he's quite the charmer too. Whilst we edit our detailed interview to publish very soon, take a peak at this trailer of his showreel to discover why we are so excited about Joseph Wilson.
Buck Angel is a 43-year old brawny muscular redheaded good-looking bearded hunk. With his heavily tattooed body, his twinkling eyes and his infectious smile, he is in fact one very hot man. But this wasn’t always the case, as in our label-fixated society Buck is actually a transsexual who is very much a man but one with a significant difference than most. He is, as he loves to describe himself so succinctly, "a man with a pussy".
When Dan Hunt's compelling documentary "Mr Angel" was released back in 2013, we were happy to give this remarkable movie a 5 Star Review. It details Buck’s tough journey from biological female to porn star extraordinaire before ‘transitioning’ yet again into a gifted motivational speaker, educator, advocate and visionary filmmaker. What shines through the screen is the obvious fact that the man is disarmingly charming, totally fearless and with such a strong sense of purpose, and that he can beautifully articulate on many of gender-bender questions that perplex us. We therefore jumped at the opportunity to sit down and talk to the man in person when he took a brief stop on his world travels, and we found that he was very happy to bear all.
QG: At 16 years old you were a very pretty young woman who was incarcerated for your suicidal attempts/tendencies, then somehow you came through this dark period to end up being a top model.
BA: Well, my luck changed when a Talent Scout ‘spotted me’ in the street, and I had some photos taken which they took to an Agency who offered me work straightaway. And I was like "whatever, I’ll try it!" It was the 1980’s and the whole androgyny look was getting very big and I fitted right into that. I was very popular and they even flew me to Europe to work. However I was doing this whole feminine thing, which wasn’t in anyway part of whom I was, and although they didn’t make me wear much make up, they dressed me in women’s clothes, which I hated. I could have been much more successful, but I was so very unhappy. The only saving grace was that there were a lot of drugs and drinking involved and I was up for that, and so I just went along with the whole thing for a while.
QG: When did you first realize that the issues you were having were because you were a man trapped in a woman’s body?
BA: A difficult question to answer as ever since I was a kid I always felt like a boy, and my parents treated me as a tomboy. I guess it was when I was in my mid-teens and with the onset of puberty I started getting breasts as a girl when before I was flat and boyish. Then all the other ‘girl things’ started to happen and I thought "Oh Shit! What is going on. I’m not really a boy!" That’s when I went ‘wow’ and everything started to become different for me. People started to treat me like a girl and not a boy
QG: What strikes me about seeing you as young girl in your film "Mr. Angel" is how pretty you were, which seems to make it harder for others to appreciate why you wanted to change your gender
BA: You know people say that to me all the time, you were such a beautiful girl, why did you become a man? It’s not even about the outside; it’s about the insides and how you feel. Pretty is anyway a relative term. It didn’t matter to me how pretty people perceived me to be as I couldn’t relate to it, because my insides were telling me I was a man. If they had said "how handsome", and "what a good looking man" as some people do now, I would have been very happy.
QG: How can you be a man without a penis?
BA: Being a man has nothing to do with your penis. It’s just that simple. What if your penis was cut off, or if you lost your penis in some horrible accident say? You would still be very much a man. To me the man thing is all in your head. It’s about how you feel, and your genitals are really not part of the equation. We are all sucked into believing that they are, and that’s why my view is considered so controversial as it is against everything we have ever been taught. People say to me now, you are a man BUT I don’t understand it!
I identify myself as man and not as a transgender person. I went from being a woman to a man and that’s what I achieved and that’s why I am a transsexual person. People who are transgender are more fluid with their gender and don’t particularly identify with being either a male or female.
QG: How did you make your second "transition" then into a porn star?
BA: I worked in the porn business behind the camera and then the idea just came to me in one of those light bulb flash moments when I was working with a transsexual woman, and she still had her penis and was making a lot of money. I thought to to myself that there is no man in porn like me, and I felt the need to represent myself in an industry that wasn’t representing me positively.
QG: You were the first transsexual porn star to have sex with straight men, gay men and women too, and always playing the role of a man. Did you deliberately strive to be unique, and was that to satisfy a drive/ambition, or even a need to fulfill your sexual desires
BA: That’s a really great question and I would say yes to all of them. Mostly to show that difference is everywhere, and that to be a man means so much more than just your genitals. I needed to do that.
QG: When did you start being the strong confident man that you are now ?
BA: When I decided that my vagina was not a bad thing. It was part of my body and powerful, because I am such a huge advocate for sex and sexuality. The thing that made me whole as a person was reclaiming my vagina and reclaiming my sexuality.
QG: You went out of your way to be unique?
BA: I didn’t have too, I was just that. I came up with the tag line "the man with the pussy" specifically to go out of my way and shock, but also to make people understand that’s who I am. I am never going to be a man with a cock, that’s just the way it’s going to be. So if you think it’s shocking that’s Ok, and if you think it it’s hot, that is also a good thing
QG: I get the impression that whatever you set your hand at you want to be the best?
BA: Yes, I do have that problem (laugh )
QG: How important was it to you that you deliberately set out to provoke people into questioning gender identities and labels that society insists that we carry?
BA: It was important to me in the porn business, but it wasn’t important to me in the outside world. I am going to be honest with you, I did not start out to do my porn work to be an advocate in any way. I did it solely because that was the industry I chose to be in, and frankly I wanted to make a million dollars by shocking people. Then I realized when people started writing to me saying "OMG I‘m a gay man and I feel attracted to you." Or "I’m not into your porn but what you are doing is mind-blowing". Then a few people wrote "you are changing the world" and I said "no I’m not" and fought against it for a while, and kept repeating to myself "no I’m not, no I’m not." And then one day I just thought "holy crap, I think I am." And then I realized that what I was doing was far bigger than just mere pornography.
QG: Let’s talk about acceptance for a moment. The European porn industry seems to embrace you far more than in the US. Gay men and straight women love you, but the Trans community doesn’t seemed to have warmed to you at all. Is that a fair assessment?
BA: The US is still so closed minded around sex. Especially anything unique and out of the box. I’m pushing that envelope even though porn is not really the specific thing I do anymore. As my name is very firmly attached to sex and sexuality, I will never get to go onOprah, or Katie Couric’s TV Show because I am still this guy who is ‘the man with the pussy’ and who talks about my vagina. I do think as a transsexual person it is important to talk about my vagina. It’s not a view shared by everyone e.g. Laverne Cox doesn’t talk it about it, nor does Janet Mock, and I think that is totally cool. For me however it’s very empowering and I don’t want to de-sexualize myself as a transsexual person because I believe that sexuality is powerful
The trans community are for the main part becoming fans of my work, however there is still a small section of them who are extremely prudish. It also has to do with jealously, and for the basic reason they simply do not want people to be successful. The fact that I am out there being very loud about who I am makes others who prefer to hide away feel somewhat threatened by me.
QG: How do you deal with this?
BA: I just don’t in any way engage, because their negativity is so small compared to the positivity of the rest of the world.
QG: And what about your parents?
BA: I am very blessed with my parents. They accepted me completely as a man and as a porn star, but oddly enough the one thing they couldn’t get their head around was earlier on in my life, when I came out as a gay woman. That was too much for them. Go figure! (laugh)
QG: On a personal level, you have been legally married twice to very strong women, one of whom was a dominatrix. Does that mean you identify as ‘straight’ or are you more fluid than that?
BA: (laughs). No, I am a bisexual person. Most definitely I have an emotional attachment to women, more than I do to men. However I think that I have a more sexual attraction to men in a way that I don’t have for women, partly because the sex is different with men then it is with women.
QC: I know! (laugh) You’ve been quoted previously as saying that you like your men to be very masculine and rough and your women to be very soft and feminine. However watching you and Elayne at close quarters in your movie, she appears anything but that.
BA: (Roars)
QG: I didn’t mean to be offensive ……(laugh)
BA: (still laughing) You’re not rude, and you are perfectly right. But Elayne and I did more in the fetish world and BDSM, so our relationship was that I was her Master and she was my Slave. And then after some years that all dwindled and we lost our way with each other. It’s all-good and I am fine now.
QG: Can you give me one of the highlights of your porn career?
BA: OMG, there are so many! (roars) I was in a Titan Mediamovie and they are an extremely macho studio and had never worked with a man like me, and I did a three-way with these two very hot men. We were in the middle of this very steamy scene when one of them who was eating me out looks up between my legs and says. ‘Wow Buck, they did an amazing job. IT looks so real!’ And I said ‘It is REAL!” Even though they had been told all about me, when push came to shove and we were hard at it they just couldn’t get their head around it at all. (laughs). Trust me it’s a HUGE compliment when someone is down on you and they still cannot grasp the fact that I was born a woman. (n.b. the movie is Cirque Noir)
QG: And the highlight of your porn career?
BA: Without a doubt winning the AVN Award (Adult Video News Awards) in 2007 as the first ever-transsexual performer in the history of the pornography world.
QG: That night is in your movie and you bawled your eyes out when you won.
BA: (laughs) I’m a very emotional guy. The community who had ignored me for years, and had labeled me as a freak finally acknowledged me. The reason that I started to produce my own porn was because everybody else wanted to make me part of some sort of freakfest. I wanted to make porn that people could enjoy. I might be a fetish but I am NOT a freak.
QG: So how did you then transform yourself from the infamous man with a pussy to being a successful motivational speaker and educator?
BA: I just decided one day that people outside of the porn business were not taking me seriously at all, and that I had something important to say on many aspects and not just about sexuality and transgender but as a human being too. Nobody would let me go into their schools and speak because I was a porn star. So I decided to reinvent myself and established a sparkling new web site and re-branded myself as a motivational speaker. I then contacted these people again and re-introduced myself and I just kept pestering them until they relented and I slowly started getting booked. Now that gender and women’s studies are both big issues in schools that you will be surprised how many classes are taught where I am actually the subject of discussion. Instructors are using me to talk about gender and sexuality.
QG: So do you really think the world’s attitude on all this is changing?
BA: 100% it’s changing rapidly and yet still so many people in the Trans community remain angry, as they still don’t think it is fast enough. People are talking about it as a normal thing regularly on television, its covered often in the print media, trams politicians are getting elected to public office children are able to hormone blocker etc etc. In my opinion Transgender has moved faster than any other movement that I have seen . It’s a huge topic right now. My own movie is one of the most downloaded movies on Netflix these days.
BA: I had this idea to make a documentary as no one was talking about trans men and sexuality except in porn. Mine that is. I wanted to reach a much bigger audience, although the movie does have sex in it. I threw it out there and everyone pounced on it enthusiastically and it is playing in many Film Festivals. I'm hoping for a distribution deal but that maybe tough because of the sex scenes.
QG: Do you feel that you are making a difference? And what do you hope to achieve in the future?
BA: Every day I wake up, and say in complete amazement to myself ‘Wow this is my life!’ I’m supposed to be dead. I’m not supposed to even be here. I tried to kill myself three times. Every single day I look in the mirror at my body and say did I really physically achieve this? I’m so grateful to be this man, and be this person that people perceive me to be. No one ever questions me. I am a guy. Even when I am naked in the locker room in some gym men don’t even say a word to me. Unless they are trying to hook up with me (laugh) ……
QG: And you have your own dating website too?
BA: Itsbuckangeldating.com and I started it because many trans people don’t think that they can ever find partners. So I created this website for people who feel intimidated to go out to bars, and this way they do not have to ‘out’ themselves and in a safe and secure environment they can successful find someone to share their lives with.
QG: Sitting here and sharing this time with you and seeing you as this confidant and hugely successful man so comfortable in your own skin, its hard to imagine the dark and difficult past that you overcame in the early days. What you would say now to frightened kids trapped in the wrong bodies today?
BA: Our journeys are all different but nowadays there is always help for you : there are Centers, there is the Internet, and there are Psychologists . Find a support group in your local community or in your school, talk to a counselor, talk to you your parents and if they seemed removed from it ask them if you can go see a Therapist or a Psychologist. Go search transgender resources on the web: its is all out there for you and there is no reason that you have to suffer’’
QG: You’ve enlightened me on a great many things today, and asides from all the serious issues you have given me answers for make I ask one silly one? How do you go to the bathroom?
BA: The bathroom question always cracks me up. Can you imagine if I went to the women’s room I would get arrested. So how do I go to the bathroom? I usually use the stall as I’m lazy and jest want to sit down, but I can stand up and pee. Sometimes I just stand at the urinal and pull my pants all the way down like a four-year-old boy. I like that best. (This interview was first published December 2014, words @Roger Walker-Dack photos @Buck Angel)
Last summer we got to preview a movie that was so wonderfully refreshing that it blew our socks off and we felt the need to share the news even before it was released. 31-year-old Mexican writer /director Sergio Tovar Velarde’s remarkable film Cuatro Lunas aka Four Moons chronicled four stories about love, heartbreak and self-acceptance. What makes them so unique in our gay culture that is often very ageist, is that he has chosen four different generations of gay men to tell his tales. There is a teenage schoolboy secretly attracted to his male cousin; two college students starting a new relationship that gets complicated when one of them insists on remaining closeted; a couple who put their relationship in jeopardy due to the arrival of another man; and an old man dazzled over a young male prostitute as he tries to raise the money to afford the experience.
There are four differing kinds of love although each one is full of hope and the true value of accepting who you are, and Verlade gave each of these stories the ending they deserve, but not necessarily the ones that we would expect. His stance on these conflicts facing gay men of all generations was a sheer joy to watch, and a remarkable achievement from such a new (ish) filmmaker.
We caught up with Sergio in Mexico City as he was preparing to leave for New York where the movie was about to open, and since then it has gone to became one of most popular movies of the last 18 months. We talked to him then about love and life in general, and Four Moons in particular.
QG: Why did you have this concept of covering four generations of gay men and their lives?
ST: I had been looking for some time at different stories about how people deal with being gay and realized that whilst no two stories are the same, there are elements that are common to us all. Often when we talk about the LGBT community as a whole all the figures and statistics seem to eclipse these individual stories. I wanted to focus on just four of them dealing with both love and acceptance and the fear that accompanies that, and just how these men each evolve through their own journey. For example, back in the 1950s in Mexico things were definitely more difficult for gay people and in the movie there is a retired married professor who didn’t have a chance to live according to what he wanted. Then at the other end of the scale there is a young schoolboy facing his future reality, plus a partnered couple who have already accepted it, and then two college chums who will accept it eventually.
Every person has different tools and weapons to deal with what they are afraid of, so I think exploring them from different angles gives us more of an accurate description of what these stories mean. I think it is a matter of diversity because within the same gay community there can be big differences, so the way that I tried to approach the child is completely different than the way I approached the middle aged characters.
QG: What motivated you to doing a virtually unheard of idea of having a young gay guy’s story and that of an old gay guy in the same movie?
ST: I’ve been in all these situations... (laughs)
QG: No, you haven’t! You are not that old yet!
ST: But I’ve wanted to be (laughs). In a way the stories work as a metaphor. I have been in situations when I have not been young enough, or old enough, or hairy enough, or attractive enough, or handsome enough. For many reasons I believe that you do not have to be an older man to feel the connection with that character as anyone can feel less of a man because of lack of attractiveness. All my life I have never really fitted in and have felt quite awkward. I am too short and I am chubby and hairy, but not quite enough to be a bear. I’m a light-skinned Mexican guy so I don’t even look like a typical Latino gay. In fact I have felt unattractive my whole life, as I believe most of us do. I can easily relate to paying for a sexual experience even though I am not an old man like the professor. In a way his particular chapter was inspired by my own story because when I was first a filmmaker and I had made a couple of films, I was trying to get a very handsome young man into bed by impressing him that I was a very important person, which is very much what the old professor does.
QG: Did it work for you?
ST: No, but sometimes it does... (laughs). Everybody uses everything they have to get what they want. If you are not tall or handsome then you must try with what you have. Sometimes it’s about intelligence; sometimes it’s about talent or often it’s just the magic of the surroundings.
QG: Was it an important element to you that each of the four stories end on such a positive note of hope?
QG: Yes, and that is why I chose Four Moons as my title. The moon has a life cycle and resets every month, and then there is a new moon. When there is the moon it is the night and there is darkness. For a very long time gay people had to be hiding in the dark, otherwise they would have to bear too much pain and suffering, which I believe is not the way it should be. So pretty much the film has four different types of moon, and the last segment is the dawn where the sun is rising up again. Even though they are still ‘dark’ places such as Uganda and Russia where life is really difficult for gay people I really believe that this is an evolving world that is allowing us to lead a better life. I believe this is a new era full of hope, and that the future is bright for all gay people, and is changing as it did so in the past for the black community and for women too. It’s important to me to say that good times are ahead and that we are approaching an era of better understanding, of better sympathy for each other, and a world where the small detail of who you go to bed with will not matter anymore. I believe we are approaching the end of the night for gay people.
QG: Are any of the actual stories in the movie autobiographical?
ST: They all are! (laughs). When I was a kid I was very curious and was the kind of teenager who would look across the classroom wondering what my schoolmates would look like naked. I was dying to know if they masturbated at all, and if they did what position did they take. I knew such thoughts were forbidden as I was raised as a Catholic and I was therefore totally convinced this was a sin, and I would have given anything in the world just to be ‘straight’. At this point in my life when I look back to those days I realize that I was so stupid as now I wouldn’t give up being gay for anything. But I still remember my childhood fear of being discovered was an unimaginable horror.
Growing up in a Mexican suburb the fear of being ‘outed’ occupied my mind a great deal of my youth. I know there are still places in the world where young people are killing themselves because they feel it is impossible to be who they really are. It’s too tough for them to deal with their own reality. I am an optimist but also a realist too. One review of Four Moons critiqued that its stories were neither current nor relevant because they judged it was about gay life back in the 1990s, but they were wrong as it is still like this in very many places today. I hear stories even today of people who are still being kicked out of their homes by their parents for just being gay. Even on our Facebook page there are lots of unpleasant homophobic comments from parents and rants from right-wing religious zealots from around the globe. However the purpose of this film is to contribute not necessarily to the ongoing struggle for acceptance but more towards understanding who we are as people.
QG: Do you think of your stories as purely being about your own Mexican community or did you perceive them to reflect gay men everywhere?
ST: When you are making a film, or a piece of art, you have to try to be as honest as you can in order to be able to really connect with your audience. You bare your soul and open your heart in order to let everything out and when you act like an honest human being then others can relate to you, and that goes beyond our different races and cultures. All gay men are raised in straight societies ... at least in our youth ... and discovering our sexuality is the same universally.
QG: Have you had different reactions at international screenings of your movie?
ST: I had no concept about how other audiences outside of Mexico would react. When we first showed the movie in the US at the opening night of the Gay Film Festival in Fort Lauderdale I was totally shocked. I had thought the audience would like it, but the reactions were overwhelming. The people next to me were crying their eyes out exactly like Mexican audiences, and I realised that maybe I had achieved my goal of being both local and universal. Being honest with my story really paid off.
On a more personal level when I showed the movie to my father, it was like an illustrated confession. (laughs) I thought now my dad knows what I was really thinking about at school, and now he knows how I have sex.
QG: What was the most challenging aspect in making the movie? Working with the young actors, as one of them was just twelve and the other was thirteen years old, and I had to talk to them about masturbation, circumcised penises, and innocent foreplay. I had to work a lot with them and earn their trust and it was important for me to treat them with respect as young adults. We shot their scenes with two cameras and with both sets of parents and a lawyer on the set which didn’t faze the young actors who were superb to work with, and the result was really so beautiful and innocent and something I am so very proud of.
A lot of the backers who were so eager to work with me after the success of my first two films withdrew their offers in a panic when they first saw the script. Having two teenage boys touch each and then having an old man pay a hooker for sex was just too much for them. They said it was way too gay, and that they couldn’t be seen by their own families endorsing something that implied they approved of gay lifestyles, which I found very hurtful.
QG: What happens next?
ST: I’m off to New York for the opening at The Quad Cinema this week and then the film is getting a general release in Mexico next February and I’m not sure what to expect. Probably I am going to make a few new friends, but I will also lose a few old ones too, I really don’t know. It’s a film that I am proud of and which I needed to make, and am willing to face whatever comes.
This summer queergurugot to sit down to talk with Mark Christopher the writer and director of one of the most successful LGBT movies of the year 54 The Directors Cut.Mark talked to us about how he went from being a farmboy in Ohio driving a tractor singing showtunes (!) to become what critic B.Ruby Rich described as one of the most important voices of new queer cinema, and then getting the unprecedented opportunity of making this Directors Cut.
Its the 66th Birthday of one of our very favorite gay filmmakers. From 'What Have I Done To Deserve this?' to 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown', 'Bad Education' and 'All About My Mother' etc. we have unreservedly loved ALL his movies. Here's a clip of your last one that sums up how we feel about you and your work Pedro Almodovar. Happy Birthday.
Is there such a thing as a "gay voice"? Why do some people "sound gay" but not others? Why are gay voices a mainstay of pop culture—but also a trigger for anti-gay harassment? You have probably asked yourself some of these questions in the past but American journalist David Thorpe finding himself single again in his mid-forties went one step further when he thought that his ‘gay voice’ was maybe the root of all his problems. He set out seeking some answers and along the way made this rather tender and touching incisive film about his journey which is also wonderfully hilarious and something that all gay men can relate too. On a recent trip to London for the European Premiere of the movie at BFI Flare Festival, we sat down with him and talked (in our very gay voices) about what he discovered.
QG: I thought your movie was a funny exercise in answering an eternal question that all gay men of a certain age ask at some time. but it seems like you had a more serious motive tackling this after you became single again.
DT: It doesn't matter what age you are in life when you get dumped you tend to do an inventory of your life and maybe of yourself as you wonder why! You either assume that there is something wrong with you, or that you have done some dreadful deed. For me this time around it triggered off a lot of insecurities which of course first get established when we are young and sisses and get made fun off, which for many of us was because of our voices. I’ve always been self conscious of sounding gay and as I say in the film I found myself suddenly really ashamed of my voice. I couldn't believe that at my age, and after all the work I had done too be out, and fight for gay rights, that I had still had this shame about my voice and I wasn't sure if I could get rid of it. I wasn't sure that I should. I wasn't sure I could change, I want sure if I should. So it set me on this journey to make this film.
QG: You seem to take the ‘quest’ a lot more seriously than your friends, did that discourage you?
DT: My friends are lovely and part of the journey for me was finding out how much they, and my family, loved me as I am. I think I needed to connect more deeply with them in some way because I was feeling vulnerable and so that's why I went to them, but despite their good advice I didn't think they were quite right. I could see why they were trying to make me feel better about myself, but you cannot snap your fingers and it just happens. You have to act and you have to do something. I felt very strongly that this was a journey that I needed to go on before I could be happy with who I was. Whoever that turned out to be.
QG: One of your best friends described this topic as being like ‘the elephant in the room’ with gay men. Is it because we all share your fear, or is it more that we just know about how we sound but simply just don't care?
DT: I think it is an elephant because we are all aware of the role that effeminacy plays in gay culture and culture at large, and the voice is one of those markers of gender. We have anxiety about the way we look at each other. Some men are super evolved and really comfortable with who they are, but as a community at large I think it’s pretty easy to spot a fair amount of discomfort with both effeminacy and misogyny. I love gay people and I've always fought for gay rights and who we are, but I think there are conversations left to be had about how we have established our lives and accepted who we are.
QG: Do you think this is a generational thing because we 40 + gay men didn't have the role models that younger generations do now?
DT: When I started this I thought maybe it was men like myself who grew up in the early eighties or even earlier who were subjected to a kind of stigma and mockery that people coming out today don’t have to deal with. However I have had young people in their teens write to me now all the time and say thank you for making this stuff matter as this is a subject that has really bothered me, or used to bother me and I'm over it. So even though things are better in a lot of ways, we still have a long way to go and even in the more liberally places these concepts of gender and masculinity are still very much in play.
QG: The kid in the film who had been picked on at school struck me that he had a more relaxed attitude about it than we would have had. Is that a fair assumption?
DT: I would say yes and no. Hopefully what you see in that scene is that he does seem to have this incredible strength but then his mother tells us 'well you know what he shows you is strength, but I see the pain.'
QG: But our generation didn't show the strength ....
DT: I think that one of the things I learned from making the film that men of our generation can do is actually learn how fearless young people are and if they are so at ease about it, then maybe I should be too. It’s significant to note that George Takei said he came out of the closet simply because he saw young people fighting for gay marriage. There is a lot for us to learn from younger gay guys and vice versa.
QG: You interviewed a whole list of celebrities such as George Takei, Dan Savage, Margaret Cho, David Sedaris & Tim Gunn etc. How did you manage to snap them up?
DT: I just asked them, but I also asked a lot of people who said no too. I cold-called these people as I also think that is how we should act as being in the gay community. I felt like I’m gay and they’re gay. They’re potentially interested in this topic, so why wouldn't I be reaching out to them. There is to some degree a bond between gay people, and all of them were interested and wanted to participate. It seems like I got all these amazing people but in fact there were a lots of people who said no.
QG: ‘No’ because they were busy or ‘No’ because they actually had hangs ups about the topic?
DT: I wish I could tell you why some people rejected my request. Your guess is as good as mine. My sense is that for some it was just something they were interested in but I think for others it felt maybe too close. There are some people for whom this topic is just too touchy.
QG: David Sedaris was particularly open about his personal take on the whole topic.
DT: Yes he was. I think one of the great things about the film is that you get to see him being really vulnerable. I thought he was a smarter more famous version of me and to the extent that he expressed a lot of the things that I feel but he's David Sedaris (and a great deal wittier). It's important that I give my spin on things but when people see him talk about his self consciousness it means more because he is seen as a really beloved authority on life. He's the butch one even with that voice, and that alone is a good example of how gay men are. You can always stick a little knife in there about someone being effeminate. QG: How will British audiences react to your film because as a generalization we are not such great soul searchers like Americans?
DT: I’m curious to find that out too, but I think all gay audiences will be open to it because they have all had to come out, speak out, and in the process engage in some self-examination at some time. QG: I can't think of anyone in the UK who went to speech therapy as a kid like you did just to lose their gay overtones. DT: I can guarantee that they are out there. Every speech therapist and linguist I spoke to knew of people who had come to them to deal with this issue. Initially I just wanted to not sound gay because I couldn't hide my gayness but by the end of it I did not feel that need anymore. First I dispelled all these myths and stigma that gay people have but also I got a connection to that physical part of me where I previously tried to push away. QG: Do think it a fair comment of your cousins and close friends that when you first came out of the closet that your 'gay voice' appeared? DT: I certainly think it is fair in the sense that I was very much suppressing the fact of who I was because most people seem to agree that there was the sudden campiness or flamboyance in a kind of aristocratic manner. It's a fairly common story. In the TV program 'Girls'the lead character Hannah encounters her ex boyfriend who has now come out and she accuses him of adopting a fruity voice. A lot of gay men have told me that when they first came out they really exaggerate their gayness, as it is something of a relief/release that they are finally embracing it.
I didn't grow up knowing any gay people or even when I first came out in South Carolina so I had to try on all these different identities and the film recounts those all of them. I basically had to invent a gay personality after I came out so I tried on a kind of aristocratic personality and then I tried on a campy gay voice. When I got to middle age and I found myself alone, I thought 'wait a minute, what kind of gay man am I, what kind of gay do I want to be, and why is it not working?’ I think it’s the frustration of not knowing who you are and searching for that authentic self. QG: Were you upset when your best friends said at the end of the movie that they didn't spot any difference at all in your voice after all your attempts to train it? DT: I was a bit upset at the time. However as I really believe in honesty and authenticity, so I never shied away from those conversations with friends and family with what is happening with my voice and I hope that is something that makes me a relatable character. I felt I was still trying at that point as I was still doing these exercises and they were not working for me. Both linguists told me that only you will really hear a difference. I mean it’s very subjective: some people heard a difference whilst others didn't. QG: Are you now completely comfortable with your new voice? DT: Its not really a new voice, so I call it my new old real voice!. I will never be 100% confidant but I am getting very comfortable with it. What is really different for me now is that I can encourage and coach myself. Ultimately what the film is about is me not being afraid to speak out loud and not worrying about how gay I actually sound. QG: Does the film have a happy end? Are you still single? DT: I am single at the moment (laughing) but am not unhappy about it. I'm jetting the globe doing Screenings right now so maybe I won't be single for much longer. (laugh) QG: What do you want and hope people to take away from the movie? DT: I would really love it if the movie prompted them to ask questions about themselves and dig into the parts of themselves that they are afraid of. The point of the film is these are the questions that you as a gay man have to ask: and the only path to really understanding yourself is asking yourself the right questions. I would also love for people who are self-conscious about their voices or being effeminate or being different in some way to maybe have a little more confidence about their differences. QG: What’s next for the movie? DT: It’s going to be on the Festival Circuit for a while longer and then later this year, hopefully late summer, there will be a theatrical release in the US before it becomes available on some global streaming platform. Its exciting as I always wanted to get this topic into mainstream culture and so I am really thrilled that it will lay in typical movie theaters. It opened DOC NYC, which is the biggest documentary festival in the US which was a real honor for me as a first time filmmaker, and I was thrilled that they put a gay film at the top of their program. QG: What’s next for you? DT: I have some new projects lined up .... too new to talk about yet .... but meanwhile I will be traveling with this film for some time . QG: If there was film about your life who would play you? DT: I would. I already have.
