Derek Jarman's Blue

Okay. The film's actually 76 minutes of nothing but a blue screen. It's a deep, dark, rich shade of blue — but it's the only visual image you're going to see. The movie, the "action," takes place on the soundtrack. That's where Jarman, the dying wunderkind of modern English cinema, unleashes an audacious barrage of narrative and music detailing his losing battle against the AIDS virus. It's a freewheeling mix of controlled anger, mocking humor, surreal visions and genuine melancholy, as Jarman confronts his impending death. Blue not only works, it works brilliantly. So don't be scared by either its experimental structure or subject matter. Blue is a piece of visual music that soars.

Forbidden Love

"The whole world was full of stupid myths about women."

That comment is made by one of the interviewees in the documentary Forbidden Love. Stupid, pulp-mentality myth about lesbians — and women in general — is what the film successfully exposes in its recreation of cheap novels and sexual realities from the 1950s.

Produced for the National Film Board of Canada, Forbidden Love is a fascinating study of the pop culture and poignant realities of that eta. It begins with the lurid gay novels that filled paperback racks during die waning years of the Eisenhower age. Interspersed between the close-ups of melodramatic book covers are interviews with women who survived the mentally -— and sometimes physically — violent repression of the period. And guess what? Those women are still queer, and quite happy about, thank you very much.

The 1950s was a seriously screwy decade. The fact that these women, or any lesbians, survived it intact is a great tribute to their sheer fortitude.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

"People are always surprised ' to learn," says actor Terrence Stamp, "that I never wore diapers as a child."

Odd variations in toilet training were not the subject of the press confer­ence held last July in Los Angeles, but Stamp has spent most of the past decade sorting through the psychoanalytic rever­berations in his life. Such details were connected to both his career and his de­cision to play an aging transsexual in the Australian comedy The Adventures of Prisclla, Queen of the Desert.

"I was one of those eldest sons who always had to be perfect," Stamp contin­ues. His drive for perfection has always been evident in his acting, even though Stamp has spent a long stretch of his ca­reer coasting through easy-money parts as the fancy English villain in expensive American films. Though he gained criti­cal respect in the early '60s in such movies as Billy Budd and The Collector, Stamp has mostly made his living with such parts as the evil General Zed in Su­perman II and the world's meanest Mr. Potato-Head in Alien Nation.

Such typecasting was, admits Stamp, part of the reason why he was interested in playing Bernadette, a very prim gen­der-bender who joins two young drag queens on a campy excursion through the sand-blasted Outback.

"I've often boasted that if I'm fright­ened by a role, then I'll take it. That's how I grow. But when this role came up, the fear threshold became so rarefied. There were times when I was absolutely petrified and had to counter years and years of conditioning."

Stamp, a 54-year-old straight man, has a handsome and youthful appeal that even his snowy white, widow-peaked hairline cannot alter. But as a woman, Stamp's sharp facial features form a crow's nest of repressions. The shrewish quality of his performance was accentu­ated by the discomfort of his costumes: a parade of house dresses, sequined tights, pantyhose that tucked in his genitalia and water-filled condoms that propped up his bra. "I looked like the worst kind of draggy old tomcat. I finally started yelling, 'Come on! Make me look even more stupid!.'"

Added to this was the rigor of a 39-day shooting schedule, most of which took place on a seemingly endless sweep of road that cuts across the sweltering wasteland. The filming, like the movie, was an absurd journey through arid ter­rain best known for its enormous flies. The sight of three actors in drag, tooling around in a pink-colored bus named Priscilla, must have been a dubious spec­tacle for the miners in the region.

"Not really. The locals were actually pretty laid back," insists Stephen Elliot, the director of Priscilla. "What they're into is much weirder. Really weird. It's mean out there in towns like Coober Pedy. You get on someone's wrong side and they blow you up."

Priscilla is Elliot's second feature and its success on the film festival circuit has given him a rep as the hot, new talent from Down Under. At 30, he looks ex­cessively boyish, with a gap-toothed smile and an Aussie accent that practical­ly screams for a translator.

"I didn't want to make a gay film," ar­gues Elliot when pressed about the audi­ence he intended for Priscilla. "As far as I'm concerned, the film is not a gay movie. I wanted to make a musical, and drag was a great vehicle for it." Ironically, that contradiction has been both help and hindrance for Priscilla. The overt gayness of both its story and humor doesn't always click with a straight audi­ence, and some homosexual groups have been upset with the movie's refusal to tackle political issues. Priscilla has a com­promised quality: as it avoids the thornier parts of its own concerns, settling instead for a gaudy display of feather boas.

"I honestly wanted to do a film where you start by laughing at these charac­ters," explains Elliot. "They are freaks, and people come into the cinema to see the freak show feeling unthreatened. Then, very slowly, it changes, 'til you're laughing with them. You end up having complete sympathy with them.

"That's my way of making films."

Christine Vachon: Mogul on a Shoestring

"There's a part of me that would love to make an epic," admitted Christine Vachon. She was tak­ing phone calls during a break in the New York editing room where her newest pro­duction, Postcards From America, was under­going its final cut.

"There's something to be said about making a film that appeals to lots of peo­ple," she continued. "But there's also some­thing to be said about making a movie that really moves a few people. Actually, I would like to be able to do both."

Christine Vachon is the Manhattan-based producer of such extremely con­troversial (and high­ly acclaimed) movies as Todd Haynes' Poison and Tom Kalin's Swoon. She has been hailed as one of the leading figures behind the so-called "New Queer Cinema" and as one of the major players in the new American independent film movement. Vachon was even profiled last month in The New Yorker, and Hollywood studio executives are closely monitoring the impending release, this summer, of her lesbian romance movie Go Fish. At the age of 32, Vachon is the latest, hottest trendsetter in sight.

All of which boils down to, on one level, the fact that "I don't have much of a per­sonal life," she moaned, explaining that she just spent most of the week working on budget figures. "And I'm not sure how much good I would be in Hollywood."

But she's one of the best independent pro­ducers around. Her films are risky, audacious and — like them or not — hard to forget. They're unconventional, daring and often disturbing, — but they're also visual feasts.

"When I take a film on," said Vachon, "I not only have to be able to sell it, but I also have to be able to live with it."

Producing movies isn't simply a line of work for Vachon. It's her life. She works primarily with friends and close associates and views each movie as a collaboration of equals. She's an admirer of the films of Jean Renoir and uses a "democratic" production system similar to the co-op movie-making methods used by the old French master.

"Each time, I try to form a collaboration that will last forever," she laughs. These work relationships may not last forever, but so far they've held together well.

On April 8 and 9, Vachon presents a two-part artist-in-residency program at the Wexner Center for the Arts. The Friday evening presentation is an advanced screen­ing of Postcards From America — a wild, nightmarish journey through a mythical America that's loosely based on the life of the artist David Wojnarowicz. On Saturday afternoon, Vachon offers a workshop on the ins and outs of independent film producing.

"I would like to demystify the process for other people," said Vachon about the workshop.

That means she intends to get down to the brass tacks (and taxes) of how you do it. Take a notebook when you go. Vachon knows what she's talking about.

Go Fish

If you can imagine a cross between She’s Gotta Have It, Annie Hall and The Women, then you’ll have a bit of an idea why Go Fish is viewed in Hollywood as the first lesbian romantic comedy with the strong potential to win a mainstream audience.

The fact that Go Fish is extremely funny and very accurate in its observations about sex and love is a big plus in its favor. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, straight or gay – the jokes are on target either way.

That’s one of the reasons why Go Fish is the must-see independent film of the year. Its all-female ensemble cast and girl-meets-girl storyline is a rare treat in the male-dominated American cinema. But its shrewd and knowing look at the confusion zone that lies between raw sex and genuine romantic yearning finds a universal rapport that’s both fresh and time-honored.

The freewheeling plot is centered around Max (Guinevere Turner) and Ely (V. S. Brodie), a mix-matched couple that seems to be anything except made for each other. Max is a would-be writer in her early 20s who hasn’t dated for more than a year and is waiting for Ms. Right to come along. Ely is middle-aged and reclusive, and has an out-of-state girlfriend who rarely telephones. On the surface, the only thing connecting Max and Ely is a string of mutual friends who’ve decided that the two lonely hearts should get together.

While Max and Ely hesitantly view each other’s merits, their pals form a Greek chorus that voices the movie’s brash survey on the thorny contradictions between love and sexual politics. Kia (T. Wendy McMillan), one of Max’s university professors, is a theorist divided between her own gently jaded feelings about love’s longevity (and lack thereof) and her ever-increasing involvement with a new flame. On the other side of the choir is Daria (Anastasia Sharp), who argues that everything is about sex and who’s determined to have as much of it as she can.

Filmed in Chicago on a low-budget, Go Fish has the grainy black-and-white look of a documentary. But it also has a well-tuned script by Guinevere Turner and director Rose Troche, as well as a sense of youthful charm that enlivens nearly every scene. Go Fish is an exercise in go-for-broke film making, and it comes up a winner on most of its bets.

One of the best things about Go Fish is its warm sense of the heart’s desire. It has feelings without being mawkish and satiric flippancy without being icy. It knows the score, but still wants to chase after that elusive thing called love. And that’s a truth that goes for everyone.

Gay Cinema Comes Out of the Closet

There’s always been a gay cinema – but, like much of gay and lesbian culture, it’s been largely unknown and virtually invisible.

But within the last decade, gay cinema has gone from being an underground presence to holding a lead position on the art house and film festival circuit. This weekend, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which sparked the gay rights movement, three of the most acclaimed – and, in some cases, the most controversial – gay documentaries of the past year will be presented in an inadvertent marathon of the New “Queer” Cinema.

Living Proof: HIV and the Pursuit of Happiness, Sex Is… and Fast Trip, Long Drop are radically divergent works, but they share a common defiance of a decrepit taboo on gay and lesbian culture that still simmers behind the right-wing cultural wars of the ‘90s.

A few pockets of society still decry the very existence of gays and lesbians, let alone the expression of their various lifestyles. Not surprisingly, this position has been historically supported in many aspects of our society, including the movie industry. Section Two, line four of the Motion Picture Production Code (adopted in March, 1930) simply states: “Sex perversion or any inference of it is forbidden.” Though the word “perversion” was changed in 1961 to “aberration,” the extensive and exclusionary meaning of these few words banned the subject of homosexuality from the American screen for nearly 40 years. Or at least it tried. The Production Code policy was a form of tyranny that was occasionally overcome by filmmakers’ cleverness and the industry’s stupidity.

During the 1930s, such foreign films as Maedchen in Uniform and Vampyr were able to slip lesbian subplots under the low radars of the censors through a combination of vague suggestiveness and difficult symbolism. In Hollywood, Marlene Dietrich got to wear men’s clothes and kiss the ladies in Morocco, as long as it was a ploy to attract Gary Cooper’s attention. But it took the B movie Dracula’s Daughter to extensively breach the code, as the title femme fatale expressed a surprisingly strong interest in bohemian lifestyles and other women.

But the gay subterfuge of old Hollywood was never more than a slightly subversive crack within the stonewall of straight mainstream pictures. It wasn’t until the American experimental movement of the 1950s that some major fissures surfaced in the national sexual zeitgeist. The overt homosexual subject matter that dominated the movies of such avante-garde filmmakers as Kenneth Anger, James Broughton and Jack Smith forced the issue to the forefront through a combination of shock (Scorpio Rising and Flaming Creatures) and lyrical artistry (The Golden Position).

Despite their limited audiences, these experimental movies gradually influenced Hollywood. “The mainstream always co-opts what is fashionable in the avante-garde,” observes Melodie Calvert, Assistant Curator of Media at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Scorpio Rising, in part, became the inspiration for the drive-in hit The Wild Angels, which in turn helped to promulgate the leather-and-chain biker look.

The emergence of the gay rights movement in the ‘70s created a political agenda as well as a sudden sense of public visibility that helped to pave the way for such ground-breaking documentaries as The Word is Out and Gay U.S.A.. The idea that being gay was a social statement struck like a lightning bolt in dim parts of the film industry. Such independent-themed features such as Lianna and Deserts Hearts were mild at best, but they succeeded in making their subject viable at the box office.

“But in the early ‘80s, there still weren’t that many gay features around,” explains Calvert. “It was with the AIDS movement that the gay community became very active and, in the process, they made the independent circuit more open to gay film making.”

Ironically, the grim threat of the modern plague also served as the catalyst for a flurry of tightly focused and increasingly audacious films and videos. The new queer cinema is a mix of forces that, literally, are composed of the most elementary factors – life and death. That a positive message can be found in the struggle is the theme of Living Proof: HIV and the Pursuit of Happiness. The movie profiles the long-term AIDS survivors who were the subject of a recent photo book, Living Proof, and who discovered that testing positive doesn’t mean that one’s attitude must be negative.

Sex Is… goes for the nitty gritty through graphic footage and surprisingly candid interviews. It covers a range of gay male experiences from monogamous bliss to bath house orgies, and takes a risk of getting stuck on director Mark Huestis’ fascination with S&M technology. But Sex Is… also takes a valiant stand in defense of life over death as it offers a vivid chronicle of gay life before and after the virus.

The most interesting and complex of the three is the video Fast Trip, Long Drop by Gregg Bordowitz. Its wild mix of experimental visuals, angry satire and psycho-drama role playing gives Bordowitz ample room to vent against everything from his HIV status to the medical community, TV talk shows and his family. Bordowitz is determined to do a number on your head, but he has a point and he makes it well.

M. Butterfly

There really was a French diplomat stationed in Beijing who didn't realize that his Chinese lover was actually a man. Technically, M. Butterfly is that tale. Actually, it's David Cronenberg's newest foray into the madness-charged realm of naked flesh and raw emotions. M. Butterfly lacks the overt gore and craziness of Cronenberg's previous films, but it's still a relentless drive to destruction.

Jeremy Irons plays the diplomat who's more attracted to the idea of femininity than he is to women. John Lone plays the cross-dressing Chinese opera singer who fulfills Iron's female ideal. Mao Zedong is the chair of the Chinese Communist Party, which is staging the Cultural Revolution around them.

Cronenberg is one of the most daring and interesting filmmakers currently working, but M. Butterfly is too tame for the master of such modern classics as Naked Lunch, Videodrome, and Dead Ringers. Even Cronenberg's statements about sexual and cultural conditioning are offered in a placid manner, as if he were warming up for a gig on Masterpiece Theatre.

Claire of the Moon

Writer’s block is a terrible thing. Especially if you insist on filming it. It’s even worse if the filmmaker’s concept of writing is a bag of clichés she picked up, presumably, in college lit classes. Unfortunately, said concept is the foundation for the lesbian romance film Claire of the Moon.

Trisha Todd plays Claire Jabrowski, a young, straight and sexually promiscuous writer who achieved success with her book, Life Can Ruin Your Hair. Claire’s hair is fine, but she’s having trouble working on her next book. So off she goes to a writers’ retreat on the Oregon coast that specializes in feminist politics and gorgeous shorelines.

Unfortunately, the situation isn’t as idyllic as the setting. Claire runs into problems right away with her roommate. Of course, the fact that she has a roommate is the primary problem: people go to writers’ retreat to retreat – not to socialize.

The roomie is Dr. Noel Benedict (Karen Trumbo), a psychiatrist/author who told The Naked Truth. The doctor (who is clothed for most of the movie) has an approach to psychology that consists of broad generalizations. She is attractive, gay and a driven professional. (She also keeps referring to Oprah Winfrey as if they just had lunch.)

The two women take an instant dislike to each other. In the logic of cinema, of course, this means that they will become lovers. It takes the entire film, however, for the characters to catch on to what the audience knew 15 minutes into the movie.

Meanwhile, back at the retreat, none of the women spend much time writing. Instead, they gather frequently to harangue each other about sexual politics. In an interesting twist, it isn’t men who are villains of their arguments – it’s straight women. Maggie, who runs the retreat, is especially hard on them. She has the personality of Norman Mailer and bullies the other women with her stridently radical line. She’s also one of the few engaging characters in the film.

The remaining characters are one-dimensional stereotypes: there is the man-obsessed Southern belle who writes romance novels filled with throbbing male parts, a valley girl New Ager and a nearly brainless housewife.

It’s fortunate that the film’s writer-director is Nicole Conn. A male director would be shot (deservedly) for such characterizations of women, gay or straight.

The closest Claire of the Moon comes to irony is in its peculiar predominance of straight sex scenes. Despite its simplistic version of lesbian-feminist politics, the film treats men as sex objects. Go figure.

Philadelphia

If you read nothing but the Village Voice, you'd think that Jonathan Demme was the only important filmmaker alive. That isn't, however, a universally shared opinion. Granted, the Academy game him virtually every award it could think of for Silence of the Lambs, but that doesn't mean he deserved them. Demme's tendencies toward social awareness are often more inter­esting than his cinematic execution.

But with his new film, Philadelphia, Demme pulls it off. In many ways, it's his finest film to date — and that has nothing to do with the hot-button story topic. Philadelphia is hardly the first movie to deal with the issues of homosexuality or AIDS. A gay lawyer may Be the most unique twist it brings to the screen, but, even there, L.A. Law beat Demme to the punch.

Tom Hanks plays an aggressive young attorney with a prestigious Philadelphia firm. He enjoys his new status. So much so, that he can barely keep from smirking when he upstages co-star Denzel Washington, a scrappy ambulance-chaser, in a zoning fight.

Hanks' career fast-track is blocked by several obstacles, however. He's a closeted gay who's working for a rigidly homophoic firm. He has AIDS. A lesion appears on his face the same day he's promoted. It isn't long before he's fired on a trumped-up charge of incompetence.

Hanks wants to sue, but no one's willing to touch the case. Not even Washington, who otherwise appears to be willing to do anything for a buck. In fact, Washington doesn't even want to be in the same room with Hanks — he despises gays and is frightened witless by AIDS. In a somewhat unlikely plot twist, these are the very factors than convince him that he's the ideal mouthpiece for Hanks' case.

Passing moments of implausibility are recurring minor flaws in Philadelphia. Another weakness is the film's extremely simplistic structure: there are good guys and bad guys, and no shades of gray in between. At one extreme, Washington quickly over­comes his deeply rooted prejudices as he fights the good fight. At the other extreme, the old men in Hanks' firm are totally immersed in unthinking bigotry (and don't mind saying so on the witness stand).

Luckily, Hanks and Washington are both able to act beyond the two-dimensional roles provided for them by the movie's script. It's with their performances that Philadelphia really kicks to life, as their legal odd couple zig zags a path through anger, pain and idealism. Washington is especially good as a sly shyster whose courtroom tac­tics combine street smarts with subtle but deadly jabs.

For once, Jonathan Demme lives up to his reputation. Philadelphia really is that good.

Coming Out Under Fire

At the start of World War II, the United States Army moved in two opposing directions at once: new directives were passed that toughened the army's stand on homosexuality, classifying it as a form of mental illness made punishable by imprisonment. At the same time, however, the army needed every recruit it could muster, so the initial enforcement of the ban was nominal. Inductees were simply asked if they liked boys. Even when the answer was "Yes," as one speaker explains in the film Coming Out Under Fire, the draft board often just looked the other way.

This ironic history is the subject matter of this new doc­umentary, the award-winning film based on the book by Allan Berube. The movie presents the personal experiences of veterans of the so-called Good War, as they relate the unsettling contradictions of serving in a system that wouldn't admit that gays existed.

A gay former member of the military police describes how he used to vamp it up while on duty. A lesbian member of the Women's Army Corps explains how she fudged the test to enter the WACs by insisting that she didn't have sex with men because she was saving herself for marriage. Another vet notes that he faced the dual difficulties of being black and gay.

Despite all of the hassles they encoun­tered, however, virtually every speaker in Coming Out Under Fire felt at home in the army — it was the army that felt uncomfortable with them. As World War II drew to a close, the relaxed handling of the ban evolved into a purge mentality — no longer needed, the gay and lesbian officers and enlisted people suddenly became visible long enough to be identified and discharged.

Coming Out Under Fire is a well-made and enjoyable look at a peculiar mentality which decreed that a person's dedication, talent and skills were less important than their sexual habits.