-Hole, “Gutless”

As promised in my last post, I recently went and saw Religulous, Bill Maher’s new anti-religion screed, currently in general release. (Especially, one hopes, in the Bible Belt.) There were a lot of people in line when I arrived at the theater, and it was full to capacity by the time the film started.

I loved the film. When Maher launched into his final tirade, ending with the blunt challenge to “grow up or die,” I spontaneously applauded the screen, and again when the credits rolled, along with a portion of the audience. (But not a large enough portion. That struck me as the very “timidity” that Maher refers to at the end, when he urges non-believers and skeptics to “end their silence and come out of the closet.” What I mean is that I sensed that the majority of the audience wanted to give the film an ovation but held back for some reason. It’s like in the back of our minds we still live in fear that God will strike us dead with a thunderbolt if we blaspheme His name.)

The film has many funny moments - like when Maher smokes a joint on-camera with a man who runs a “cannabis ministry,” and causes the minister to panic by telling him, “Your hair’s on fire!” - without losing sight of the serious message underneath, which is that we need to leave religion behind completely if we’re to continue our evolution as a species. Maher is highly sympathetic to homosexuals, as usual, and stands up for the gays against anti-gay activist John Westcott and a Jesus impersonator who claims that homosexuals are “incomplete” people. In one of the funniest moments, Maher rejoins Westcott’s assertion that gays are “insecure” with the memorable quip, “It takes a lot of security to leave the house in ass-less chaps.”

I found it interesting that Maher, as well as Richard Dawkins in his 2006 bestseller The God Delusion which I am currently reading (and loving), draws parallels between atheism and the gay rights movement, just as the gay rights movement has in the past piggybacked on the civil rights movement of blacks. I personally have no problem with this, which probably isn’t surprising given that I am pretty much an atheist myself in addition to being a gigantic homo.

I’ve spent most of my life being casually contemptuous, and at times actively hostile, toward organized religion, Christianity as much as (if not more than) any other. My single mother raised us religion-free, and I remember her telling me how she was forced to go to church as a child and hated it. But I recently apologized to a friend of mine - who happens to be a Christian Scientist - for my lack of tolerance and respect for his beliefs. (And hey…it’s not like he’s a Scientologist, for Christ’s sake!) It’s true, I suppose, that I must tolerate other people as they “tolerate” me. Then again, it’s hard for me to be tolerant of something that I genuinely see as an impediment to the future evolution of the human race; something that is exploited by so many people (the quacks interviewed in Religulous are only a tiny fraction) for their own illicit ends; something that has caused so much misery, strife and death to so many people throughout recorded history. As Allison Hallett put it in her review of Maher’s film in a recent issue of The Portland Mercury, “For atheists accustomed to the one-way street of religious acceptance (on which I will respect your right to believe what you want to believe, and you will attempt to limit my access to birth control), there is something refreshing about Religulous.”

However, Hallett, along with a lot of the press local and otherwise, also take Maher to task for what they perceive to be his arrogance and egomania. Aaron Mesh in Willamette Weak (sorry, typ-o there) went so far as to say that “The catechism running through the movie is the question of who is more annoying: God or Bill Maher?” I can’t say that Maher affected me this way. I really didn’t mind him much, probably because I am in sympathy with his viewpoint, and appreciate the fact that he’s out there saying the things I would like to say to these philistine, modern-day cave-dwellers, and saying it with so much humor and bluntness. I suspect most of the people who write for the local alternative press are more or less in sympathy with Maher’s viewpoint as well, which is why I find their reaction a little hypocritical and disappointing. I see it as a typical example of the apathy and lack of passion so often found among hipsters, especially hipster journalists. (I’ve coined the term “zompster” - zombie + hipster - for this sort of person.) I like people who have passionate reactions. I like to walk out of a movie theater pumped up, loud and full of fire. My Just Out editor Jim Radosta was unequivocal in his positive reaction to Religulous. While acknowledging that “Mocking fundamentalist wackos is like shooting wolves from a helicopter,” he gave the film an A+. (Read an excellent interview Radosta conducted with Maher here.)

Above I referred to myself as “pretty much an atheist,” which I should probably clarify. The thing I’ve struggled with is a certain sense of spirituality that I’ve had as long as I can remember, which has in the past prevented me from identifying unequivocally as an atheist. (In the interview linked above, Maher says he prefers the term “rationalist” to “atheist” because of the latter term’s negative connotations, and admits “I’m not sure there’s not some God or some force.”) This is where Richard Dawkins comes to the rescue. In The God Delusion he differentiates between theists (who believe in a supernatural God who is interested in human affairs), deists (who also believe in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose only concern is the laws that govern the universe, and who is detached from human affairs), and pantheists (who “don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature.”) Einstein belongs to the latter category and I suppose I do, too. That’s why it was so great to read the following assertion in Dawkins’ book: “A quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists and rationalists. It has no connection with supernatural belief.”

Good to know!

A couple nights ago I attended a book reading at In Other Words, an estuary of estrogen, literature and liberation on North Killingsworth Street (which by the way, has gotten a little scarier since I left for the summer). My friend Kathleen Bryson, who I interviewed for a piece in Just Out last year, was one of the three women reading, as her second novel Girl On a Stick has at last been published. The others were Ariel Gore, who read from her piece in an anthology called Fucking Daphne (I don’t know who Daphne is, but I gather she’s very fuckable), and Nairne Holtz, who read part of her novel The Skin Beneath, about the mysterious death of a woman’s sister. All three were good and each had a different style.

I’d have to say Ariel Gore (pictured above, with her toddler) was the funniest, with lines that drew several outbursts of laughter from the audience. (Example: “You’ve got to like a girl who goes out at 2 a.m. for cigarettes. Even Mark Twain could wait until dawn for a cigarette.” Or: “I’m so glad I got an abortion. Birth is so…1970.” This while Gore’s own bright-eyed, exuberant two-year-old son toddled about near the stage throughout the reading.) Now, it was a superb serendipity that Ariel happened to be reading, because my only contact with her before had been through email, and some months ago she accepted a nonfiction piece I wrote, “Lament For the Disappearing Girl,” for a forthcoming anthology, Portland Queer, of which she is the editor. This will be my first genuine publication as an author (not counting journalism or the zines and self-publishing I’ve done already) and will place me alongside established hotshots like Marc Acito and Tom Spanbauer, so you can’t blame me for being excited! I got a chance to ask Ariel when the book would be coming out and she estimated May or June of next year. By which time I will probably be in Maui or San Francisco, so maybe I’ll have to make a special trip up to Portland to celebrate publication.

“Lament For the Disappearing Girl” is probably the most heartfelt, sincere and somber piece of writing I’ve ever done. It deals with a girl I went to junior high and high school with who died in an apartment fire in Beaverton in 1996, whose name was Krystal Capps. She basically introduced me to the identity I’ve had ever since I knew her, and I never got to really speak with her before she died. By the time I was finally ready and brave enough, she was gone. I wasn’t able to attend her funeral or read a eulogy, so it means a lot to me that this piece is finally going to see the light of day, even 12 years after the fact.

That’s all I’ll say about that for now.

After the reading I joined Kathleen and a number of others for a post-reading glass of bubbly at the house she shares with her longtime partner. Kathleen (sorry this picture is so bad, my camera phone really doesn’t do well unless the lighting is really strong) gave me a copy of her first novel Mush, which I have yet to read, describing it as “grim and dreamlike,” and also loaned me her well-handled copy of a collection of short stories by Angela Carter, whom she describes as one of her favorite authors. I’ve only read the introduction by Salman Rushdie so far, but just based on that and Kathleen’s recommendation, I think I may be embarking on a new literary love affair.

This morning I spent some time in the Portland chat room on Gay.com. Everyone uses pseudonyms on there, but I use my real name - I have nothing to hide. What, am I afraid people are going to find out I’m gay and like meeting other gay guys? I’m not a fucking politician, dig up all the “dirt” on me you want. Of course, considering the fact that I have such a rock star name (which I paid good money for), people probably think it is a pseudonym. Anyway, what I was going to say is that I was pleasantly surprised to find an intelligent, political discussion taking place in the chat room. The last few times I’ve visited Gay.com chat it’s been nothing but the crudest blatant sex talk, as if gay people can’t talk or think about anything except hooking up for a quick fling with an anonymous and marginally attractive stranger. Today people were discussing the Palin/Biden debate, among other things. I tried to catch it at the Baghdad Theater the other night, where it was screening for free, but by the time I arrived at 5:45 p.m. the theater was already full. Disappointing, but then again, it’s great living in a city where so many people are politically aware and interested enough to go watch the vice-presidential debate in a public theater. From what I hear, those expecting lots of entertainment value from Sarah Palin (”Bush in a Skirt”) were disappointed, as she was prepared and obviously reading from notes, and avoided the more hilarious pitfalls of her much-ridiculed interview with Katie Couric. I hear that Joe Biden stated that he did not support gay marriage, which earned him some heat from the gay community.

Now, here’s what I have to say about that. (I know you’re probably sick to death of the “gay marriage” issue by this point, so I’ll try to keep this to one paragraph.) Let the breeders and fundies have the word “marriage.” They created that institution, after all. I’m not going to argue semantics. If I can have a partnership with most of the same rights and privileges as marriage but wrapped in the label “civil union,” that’s fine! Let “marriage” be the word for heterosexual unions whose purpose is breeding and raising children. We need to compromise a little, too. That’s the price we pay for the vast amount of ground we’ve gained over the last few decades.

Of course, in that case, lots of straight people will have to get “civil unions” rather than “marriages,” too.

And that also leaves out the question of gay couples who raise children. Let’s just call those “complicated civil unions.”

I mentioned religious fundamentalists above. More about them to come with my next post. I’m going to catch a matinee screening of Bill Mahr’s new documentary Religulous tomorrow! Looking forward to that. I picked up The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins from the library today. In my seemingly perpetual conflict between spirituality and atheism, the atheism is definitely on top right now.

Or is it possible atheism and what I consider “spirituality” are not mutually exclusive?

Ahhhh, yes, it’s all coming back to me - the movie last night. I caught a screening of underground filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s new opus, Otto; or, Up with Dead People at Cinema 21 as part of the Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. I can only describe it as an anarcho-punk gay zombie porn love story, although I’m sure a few more adjectives could be thrown into that mix. I enjoyed the film immensely. It is most interesting to survey the mutations and evolutions of the zombie genre - this is coming from a lifelong horror and cult film aficionado - over the years and the ways that it has been co-opted by intelligent outsiders ever since Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead first offended audiences (and stimulated a few forward-thinking critics) way back in 1967 (the year of the Summer of Love!)

LaBruce stated during the Q&A after the screening that his intention was to make a zombie who was a likable protagonist rather than a dumb extra or mindless, villainous other, and he’s certainly done so here. Otto, as played by 18-year-old Jey Crisfar in his first major film role, is a sensitive, attractive young man who just happens to be…dead. (I think he’s kinda cute, actually, even in full zombie get-up, but then I went through a good goth phase myself not so long ago.) Otto was a vegetarian and had a boyfriend while alive; turns out those sorts of proclivities follow you into the netherworld, as he continues to be attracted to men and to shy away from human flesh as one of the undead. But is he really undead, or just a young man with serious mental problems? The film seems to intentionally hold this ambiguity out to the audience in the scene in which Otto meets up with his former boyfriend, who tells him he had to dump him after he was committed to a mental institution for complications due to acute schizophrenia.

Also excellent is Katharina Klewinghaus as Medea Yarn (an anagram of “Maya Deren,” an experimental filmmaker of bygone days with whom LaBruce is quite taken), a hilariously campy Marxist-feminist filmmaker struggling to complete her political zombie porn film despite lack of funding. Klewinghaus gets a good laugh with almost every scene she’s in, as she strides about directing her crew of mostly scantily clad young men through a megaphone, or struts through a cemetery like a morbid peacock admiring tombstones (”I love birthdays,” she purrs; “Each one brings you closer to death!”), or chastises her lover, a black-and-white apparition from the silent film era who has no lines and is always accompanied by antediluvian soundtrack music. (The cinematic divide doesn’t prevent the two ladies from passionately making out a couple times.) According to LaBruce, Medea Yarn represents a number of women who have influenced him throughout his life, starting with an older sister, while Klewinghaus is a filmmaker in real life who has just completed a documentary on women in horror films.

The photo above, crappy though it is, was taken during the Q&A session after the screening. The majority of the audience left, but enough remained to give LaBruce plenty of questions to answer, including Gus Van Sant, who you can’t see, but who was seated on the far left end of the very front row along with his retinue of attractive young men. LaBruce said he was breaking out of the “safety zone” by screening the film in sci-fi, fantasy and horror conventions rather than just queer festivals - he’d just shown it at a fantasy festival in South Korea - which really cemented my respect for him. I can only imagine the kind of reception it might get at a “straight” horror festival. It doesn’t pull its punches in terms of homosexual imagery, although it shies away (just barely) from a full-on money shot (as Splendora pointed out in the Q&A afterwards). Still, it’s not something you’d take your parents to see, unless your parents are Patsy and Edina from Absolutely Fabulous.

I really liked this film. I suppose it’s impossible in our modern, post-everything era to make a zombie film that doesn’t deconstruct itself as a zombie film, but this one did so in a subversive, intelligent, entertaining way. I recently finished reading a book called Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Benshoff which I recommend to all queer horror film fans. I find it fascinating that throughout the history of horror cinema - going back to the original Nosferatu and the Universal classics of the ’30s - the monster in horror has often been coded or figured as a queer, and it’s encouraging to see that trend change with new films like Otto co-opting and subverting the figure of the monster queer by making him/her the sympathetic protagonist rather than the dread-inspiring antagonist. I’d love to lock John McCain and Sarah Palin up in a room and make them watch it. (With one of those devices that holds your eyes open, like in A Clockwork Orange.)

On a follow-up note to my first blog: I looked in the paper yesterday and saw that Brideshead Revisited is already out of the theaters. It must not have done so well. Do you moviegoers not know quality when you see it? It saddens me, but I’ll hope a healthy second life for it in the second-run theaters and on DVD.

Until next time,

Tony LeTigre out

Now, then. I want to write a little about Brideshead Revisited, which I saw - and was very moved by - yesterday, but first a shout-out for Bruce LaBruce, who will be in Portland, Oregon (my beloved hometown) on the 26th. I just read a piece about it in our local queer paper Just Out (which I have written for extensively in the past) and am super psyched about the screening of LaBruce’s movie Otto; or Up with the Dead, which sounds like a delightfully unconventional take on the zombie film. Its protagonist, Otto, is “a nonconformist with an eating disorder who doesn’t like to eat human flesh and is sensitive and intelligent. He also happens to be gay.” LaBruce says his intention with the film was “to lure in straight horror geeks on the promise of a zombie movie and then torture them with a tender gay love story.”

Doesn’t that sound nice?

Now, about Brideshead Revisited, the new film version of the Evelyn Waugh novel directed by Julian Jarrold. For whatever reason, the entire theater was full of old people, as if the nursing home had let out right into the theater. That was disconcerting, but neither that nor my pagan indifference to matters of Catholicism and apostasy prevented me from loving this beautiful, sad, dignified film. It’s set in a magnificent ancestral home in WWII era England and deals with an aristocratic family, which is why it lures in the Merchant Ivory crowd I’m sure (the people who adored the 11-part PBS mini series from 1981), but I don’t really care about setting - a story can be set in a grungy squat in D.C. or in a rich peoples’ mansion in Chelsea - as long as it tells a story that compels me, I’ll sing its praises. And this one got to me big time. The acting is superb all the way around: Emma Thompson as the unyielding Catholic matriarch of the family; Michael Gambon as her estranged, excommunicated husband who surrenders to absolution on his deathbed; Matthew Goode as the pivotal character who insinuates his way into this august clan even as his intentions remain curiously opaque. But most of all I want - no, I NEED - to talk about Ben Whishaw, who plays Sebastian Flyte, the doomed, alcoholic pink sheep of the family.

I became a fan of Whishaw’s after seeing Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, but after Brideshead, I am in love with him. The warmth, dignity and charisma with which he imbues this damaged but beautiful character - a character I can relate to more than any I’ve seen in film in a long time - just makes me want to write him a personal letter thanking him for the quality of this performance. It is possible to regret that we have yet another representation of a doomed homosexual - a figure that always seems to suffer a tragic ending - and to look forward to times in the near future when that may not be the case. But Whishaw’s Sebastian, although ultimately damaged beyond repair by his mother’s blind determination to control his destiny, escapes at the end to find some measure of happiness, living with a wounded soldier in Morocco. It may be too little, too late, but the final shot of Sebastian - eyes closed in what appears to be resolute contentment, with tawny sunlight bathing him in warmth, even as his doom seems near at hand - is among the most poignant I’ve seen in a long time. It is a beautiful performance by a beautiful man.

So, do yourself a favor and see this movie while it’s still on the big screen. Until we meet again…

Love,

the Tiger