Seriously, totally seriously. Okay, I have my reasons, but, look at this. This man had spent his time to make sure gay marriage doesn’t happen. It was against his faith and belief system.
Then his kid comes out.
Yeah, now he’s all supported.
So, basically, him and his party have just never really thought about how their voting beats the shit of the other guy. They have no idea of the impact of their actions or inactions.
Ballsy. I kinda feel bad for the guy. I’m happy to have ally, to be sure, but, really, he never really did give a thought to his actions.
May I just point out (oh crap, I’m posting politics again…), I live in the Deep South. These are very strange people. They’re furious about Obamacare. Furious. They scream about how it takes away their rights (huh?). They’re ability to choose.
Then they go to church to save their souls and discuss charity.
Huh?
Then they love to, LOVE to point out how many people are living off welfare and their free freegin’ money.
I mutter under my breath. When I was in college, IN COLLEGE (circa late 80s), I learned from my sociology class, that it’s mostly white people who are on welfare.
Makes sense, when you think about the make up of the population. It is evident, from this article, not much has changed, outside of my environment. I brought this up one day to my Southern cohorts. They were mad and said I was watching too much CNN. For them, the enemy has always been whatever they aren’t.
Doesn’t work that way.
Sorry, venting. But let’s stop blaming groups and deal with the problems people. So? People are getting health care. Now stop it. Can we now work on reducing starving children and deadbeat dads?
(Please note, I did not list these in any order!!!!)
Now here’s a premise. We’re all big to point out real life people when it comes to heroes. And I have a bevy, like Harvey Milk and PT Barnum.
But that’s another column.
Only other geeks would ever see a fictional character so worthy enough as to influence the real world in which we live. But that’s silly. It happens to everyone. Ever watch CSI? No one seems to remember that such deductive science in the name of crime solving were really the province of Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Dupin from Arthur Conan Doyle and Poe, respectively.How many young folk are currently putting up with bullying crap at their grammar schools due to the patience they read about by a young Harry Potter?
I suppose I could go into religion and point out several fictional characters there and show their influence, but that might piss off a few.
So? I know of some who may not be heroes to me, but have, in their own way, influenced my life in many a profound way.
Sherlock Holmes—Okay, so, yes, I’m a lousy writer, but I admit it. I like to write. I’ll always do it. I think of those chronic doodlers and their notebooks during accounting class. They have some of the best works ever—but it’ll never get past the Ticonderoga lead pencil stage. But they are artists like I am an author. It’s what we do.
When I was sixteen, my buddy Joe (strangely, I just liked him as a friend) and I saw Young Sherlock Holmes for my birthday. And then? My aunt gave a huge leatherbound text of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works of Mr. Holmes.
I could not put it down. I still watch crime shows with the same verve. That’s a profound impact of one character. But there’s the rub—it really affected me as an author. The most basic lesson ever in a writer’s mantra.
It all starts with a character. A full fleshed out character, to the point that the villain is only as good as the protagonist. And when you have a consulting detective like Mr. Holmes, you know the baddies were not only bad, they were smart too. To this day, Sherlock means much to me. It also started me on my love for all Brit Lit all the way through my senior year of high school, when I took AP Brit Lit and the world changed. I was ready for college.
Mickey Mouse—To say this rodent has effected my life is to say, “yeah, that lady? The one I call Ma?She’s the one who gave birth to me.”
It’s like a chicken-egg situation. They’re inherently linked.
That Mickey! Always playing with money!
But I’ll admit, it’s not necessarily the Mouse (capitalized, of course) that did it. But what the Mouse represents. And it’s maybe Disney (the man, not the corporatation) or the those little vignettes he starred in, but there’s something about the philosophy this guy symbolizes that draws me in.When I was younger, he was a symbol of a happier time when the world was horrid; when I was older, the Mouse offered escape and escapism on such a scale as to only be limited by my physical stamina and my creative mind. Even now, as I live up the road from his famed Magic Kingdom, a bad day is soon reversed with a spin through a Space Mountain or a séance with the dead in the Haunted Mansion.
Mickey shows us what one-little-spark of imagination can become. A man drew a cartoon; it became his empire. He never saw his limits, just knew what he wanted. Mickey rules the worlds of Disney with an iron fist, but also with an unending smile that still is visible from space. Dying patients in hospitals smile when he comes in, and, without a world, waves and hugs.I met my husband with a mutual link to the Mouse.That’s saying something.
Marilyn Monroe-“When the legend outshines the reality, publish the legend!”
Norma Jean Talmadge never existed. That shy orphan girl grew up every bit a Hollywood girl like Beth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn.But when the cameras shut down, Beth went back to drinking; Audrey went back to helping children.
Norma Jean went back to being Marilyn.
She became a symbol of what every woman in the forties and fifties wished she could be. She became what every man wanted. And, here’s the tic, the character part. She was acting both on and off screen. She would have people come over her house to get her ready just to go to the store. She became her own brand, her own product.
And the message was received. She was awesome at it, a testimony to her ability both as an actress and a person. I mean, who has to work so hard to just be liked by, well, everyone?She was awesome and looked great too.
She influenced me in other way. For one? She was a cautionary tale. She died in the end, miserable, through a suicide. Being fake twenty four seven and trying to please every single person on the planet took its toll. No matter how talented she was, she just couldn’t keep up.
How many people in the closet have to hold on a façade for others, to keep the amorphous “others” happy? It’s time consuming. It’s debilitating.
Yeah, that person will look great and perfect, but, on the inside, they aren’t living, they’re thinking if they’re using the right words for that particular moment of the day. Through this fictional Monroe (I know there was and is a beautiful woman in there who didn’t deserve what she got), I learned, at some point, we have to take stock of what we have and truly be ourselves-regardless of the audience.
If only those pecs were in three-D!
Northstar—I’m one of those geeks that just never really got into the geekdom of life. They all hang around comic book stores and talked about movies, but I found their conversations lacking and rarely sat and hung out with them outside of the occasional movie.They collected comic books. I just merely read them.
Spring of 92.The world changed. I’d been reading Alpha Flight for many moons, a secret obsession, along with other comic book titles that I hid, like some kind of pile of pornography, from the rest of the men in the jock dorm I lived in.
I guess many had been talking about that particular issue—where Northstar, a flying speedstar, was forced out of the closet, upon finding an abandoned infant dying of AIDS fight with Major Mapleleaf.
For the first time, a few weeks before I truly, truly came out to myself, I had seen in print the sentence, “I AM GAY.”And the edition flew off the shelves. The revelation was not wasted on me. It changed my world. Even superheroes were gay.
Whoa.
I wasn't alone any more.
Holden Caulfield/Atticus Finch—You knew these boys would be on here, polar opposites but totally important to me both as a writer and as a person.Holden, a cautionary tale about wayward youth in The Catcher in the Rye, taught me volumes about life on the other side of the tracks and how we choose to go there.Atticus from To Kill A Mockingbird? How doing the right thing and what you believe are completely different concepts. Atticus may or may not believe in what he is doing with the court case, but the right thing is the choice he makes before that point.
How many churches don’t accept people by way of doctrine, yet the congregations know its wrong and do right by their fellow gay Americans? Even here in the Deep South, the churches stop short of burning crosses on our front lawn-but those same people still ask how my husOtter is doing and are truly concerned with our welfare.
Just like good ole Atticus. Both are great books. I suffered reading through them but had to revisit them in college. I was so mad at myself for dismissing them in high school. Swift prose, deft pacing and full storylines.
And two fictional characters that can teach us volumes about what it means to be human. What to avoid and what to do!
MacBeth—I know what you’re thinking. It’s Shakespeare. We all know how the Bardybear loves his Bard. And you’re thinking,”ah, see, it’s the play. The character signifies the argument between Fate and Destiny and how we must choose between the two.”
"Weary is the head that wears the crown."
Well, no.
This character signifies something even deeper.
That Shakespeare’s characters are freegin’ awesome. His stories TO THIS DAY have influenced our concept of story to such a level, that when I read them to my students, they respond with, “oh, I know that story, isn’t that the one like….” Fill in the blank.
MacBeth, too, is awesome. Basically a horror story in play format. We have sex, drugs and violence for three hours.
What’s not to like?
When I find myself hung up on a tale, I always say, “How would Shakespeare handle this story?”
Most likely with some of the best characters he could muster.
Bless those wonderfully hunky biceps. THis little shred of humanity could go a long way when you’re out of a job and need help. We’ll buy your magazine spreads. We’re here for you.
Thank the Fates for freedom of speech, ya know what I’m
sayin?
It’s time for a kindler, friendly blog post of sorts. See?
Like here’s my buddy, RahRah over at Rahrahpancakeeater, probably one of the
best writers I’ve ever met. Seriously. He’s not one of those jarred up
cuisine-lusters who only writes about sparkly vampires; he’s not one of those
poets who hurls mustard at documentaries while screaming about Death to Petrie
Dishes! He’s an honest-to-Fate poet who does something well and does it over
and over again. And then, I noticed, well, his blog fell. Like crusted over
fell. I suppose he fell in love or that one of myriad of cats took him hostage,
but it became the time to chat with him again about blogging and, therefore,
writing SOMETHING again.
To boot, I’ll join him, if you don’t mind.
However, I’m going to ask that if you visit this post, you
visit his as well, over at RahRahPancakeeater.blogspot.com.Give him a shout out and let’s see if we can
get him to write. Heck knows, he’s helped me make a tale or two. In fact, it
was with him that I created my “Best Books” and “Best Movies” listing from long
ago (and didn’t let him include the Bible as part of his listing, sorry, he
needed to work, just a little, and using the Bible is filler, IMHO!).
He made a list.
I made a rant.
So, if you could, should you catch him listing his favorite
movies, just give him a nudge. No. Not with a sharp stick, but digitally. Ask
him the simplest of questions.
“Why did you choose that movie?”
Otherwise, he’ll just go on listing. No explanations.
He is a poet, after all. And you know those poets!
Nothing like we authors, I tell you.
Alright, he and I elected to do a few lists of movies, if
that’s okay. We bonded over the flicks, so long ago. Me, as a former movie
critic for various newspapers; him, as a movie theater manager.
So, in place of whining over politics and the generalized
stupidity at the world at large, here we go.
LIST THE BEST INDEPENDENT MOVIES
Okay, I gave myself some rules for this list. This is far,
far, far from a comprehensive listing. In fact, this list sucks very large elk
penis. The reason for this? I’m going to list movies that were good to ME. Fuck
the heady shit. I’m all about those movies that hit the right spot, like a
decent spicy burrito after a hard night of drinking or glass of wine of an
undiscovered homicide. Something that just ‘worked’ for me. You know what I
mean? Everyone’s like On the Waterfront is the best movie ever and,
well, that may all be good, but I’m going to what caught my eye at the time of
viewing.
Now, understand, we’re talking independent film here. Stuff
that might have been distributed by the big studios, but that’s not who made
it. I was lucky to be at that tender age to appreciate this stuff when it
started to become popular.Fresh from
college in the early nineties, I was idealistic and eager to displease the
status quo (as writers are prone to do). So any place where I could drink
coffee and wine with my flicks was okay. I liked to find those movies that
didn’t follow the Hollywood blockbuster formula. Movies where the story shifted
to the front and, very rarely was carried by star power. Movies that played at film
festivals like Sundance and made people do something else than cheer.
I will admit, some of these movies are rarities. Please
note, we’re/I’m saving documentaries and foreign films for a later
listing.And, also, many of these
movies, the line between ‘indie’ and “mainstream” is massively thin. That’s
okay. A professional movie is just that. Independent movies, since the early
nineties, has also maneuvered itself to awarding acceptance. Movies like The
Hurt Locker, American Beauty and Sideways, believe it or not, are independent
movies.
But then again, so was the Star Wars prequels.
You can claw your eyes out over your coffee later. Enjoy.
And be hip. Might help if you smoke a cigarette when you watch these movies,
you know, so you feel more independent and artiste-like!
I probably should
mention why you see so many titles with something ‘gay’ about them. Think about
it. I rarely, if ever could find gay characters in a remotely positive light
outside of independent movies. It became my refuge, so, hence, my slant on
these titles.
10. Pink Flamingos--art is art. You have to be creative to get it. Art is something
created (at least, to me) to give an emotional response to some kind of
audience; it’s the communication between an artist and viewer of some
kind.I’m starting here because, if
there was ever a film to show how indie and indie movie can be, it would be
this piece of crap. Literally, a piece of crap.
And I love it. Jon Waters, a closeted young man, angry at
the world growing up in Baltimore went ahead and made the movie to piss off
everyone he knows. His communication?
Fuck you.
Every business decision made by a big budget studio was
getting the big finger at its front face. This was not a movie made for the
masses. This was a movie, not unlike porn, made for sheer exhilarance. It
starts with the main lead, a drag queen, eating dog shit and then licking her
lips.
There’s an image that just sent shivers down your back while
your stomach clenched. I bet your face just ratcheded up too. You got it, Mr.
Waters has communicated with you. A movie that doesn’t make you cheer or cry.
It makes you wince.
And not wince in pain. That’s easy. Show you a picture of a
surgery. Or someone getting cut up into little pieces. He’s going for the gut.
But through the gross-out section. He wants you to be sick, but unexpectedly.
His goal? To be as subverse as possible. And he succeeded.
What’s cool? He’s actually an awesome guy! His conversations during interviews
illustrate a highly intelligent man who gets it, but doesn’t celebrate it at
all. He reminds me of light-hearted Hunter S. Thompson.Mr. Waters would be pissed I paid him such a
complement. He’d be pissed I even included it here. But I’m using this wondrous
drivel to show you the indie spirit.
In fact, his movies matured from her (this is the guy who
gave us “Hairspray,” in fact) to show you the importance of thinking as freely
as possible.
That, in the end, is the true behind art. Even disgusting art.
9.Teenage
Mutant Ninga Turtles-- Stop
laughing. It is an indie picture, believe it or not. Jim Henson made it to see
if could do it. He read the comic books, went to Hong Kong to hire martial
artists so good, they could do all the karate moves with large helmets and
blind.He cobbled together a kiddie
martial arts flick that actually comes off as slightly horrific.
It fits no genre, to the point that you could see the Disney
company, who eventually distributed it, finding a way to market it. The comedy
is there, but the violence cuts out the younger viewers.But the movie was begging to be made. The
popular comic book was too fun to ignore. But how? Jim and his crew (yes, I can
call him Jim, frankly) basically made a Jackie Chan movie. Not only that, they
didn’t use special effects. It’s all done live.
This gave this little movie an immediacy that I’ve loved of
every Hong Kong chopsocky picture. There’s no avoiding the flips, jumps and
footwork. You are experiencing the movie on a totally different level than you
would if you saw this movie coming out of Hollywood. It’s beautiful.I saw it thrice in the theaters!!
8.Memento--art
imitates life? Believe it or not, I totally already wrote this review and can’t
find it anywhere! Where is my memory? Oh wait…memory is a fickle bitch goddess.
A mystery tale from the man who would bring us the Batman
Begins trilogy, this is a story that can only exist in the movies. Editingso that the entire narrative opens
backwards—and I mean figuratively, not like, rewinding and talking Swedish—with
a man who knows his wife is murdered and is trying to find out who did the
deed. He remembers that only because he has it tattoo’d on his person. But he
had sustained a blow to the head and his short term memory is totally nuked.
Like him, we experience the movie in bits and snippets and
have to figure out what is going on as much as he does. There’s not special
effects, there’s violence, but not profusely so. But the sense of darkness is
palatable and, in the deft hands of Guy Pearce (probably one of the better
character actors ever…), you feel for the man, no matter how stupid you realize
he is to the situation around him. You’re glued.
And it makes sense why the BigWig studios would avoid this
one like the plague. Too heady. Doesn’t have mainstream appeal.
But it got the writer/director noticed. And he went on to
change superhero movies forever, by making them legit. Consider this a quick
artist’s sketch, where the genius of the student shines through.
7.Clerks—Ahhh,
my man, Kevin Smith. Is there ever a more indie spirit? This is the guy who
basically yanked his last title he made due to the fact that the advertising
campaign cost more than the actual production of the movie. He got it. That’s
not the purpose of a movie. The purpose of the movie is to tell a story.
And he did, right here, with this little movie. He couldn’t
even afford color-but it made the 3-D characters even more colorful. This movie
is like a Woody Allen picture, where the comedy is so sublime and true that you
feel like you’re listening in on actual conversations. You’re almost afraid to
laugh, because you might interrupt! From this point on? It only got better and
better. He reminded me that all stories start with one thing. Writing. His
actors? Terrible. But with a decent authorship behind them…they could work
together for the tale.
6.Sex, lies
and videotape—I heard recently that this fantastic director is
retiring. He’s like a little energizer bunny, making titles left and right (Ocean’s 11,
Traffic)
but you never hear from him. He is not the story, the movie was. I saw this my
freshman year. I was scared, all those years ago, that I’d die without my art
movie and foreign title intake. I was living outside of Fargo, North Dakota,
and I knew that movies might as scarce as most of the life on that tundra.
This movie actually opened in a mainstream theater! I took my
bombshell of a date (she was a cheerleader, go figure) and, here’s the tic,
that airhead of a woman suddenly got all intelligent on me! She not only loved
the movie, she went to Sher’s for coffee afterwards and we talked for hours
about the implications of the film. A delicious drama about a man who
videotapes women for his own sexual needs-and when he videotapes his old friend’s
wife, the mess that occurs.My date
dusted off her stereotype, showed her true colors and restored my faith that,
no matter where I went in the world, I could, somehow, find the Artists’ Way in
film.
5.Blair Witch Project—My dad and I had very
little in common. My mother did her best, but getting me to connect with my
ultra masculine step father provided difficulties.He just couldn’t seem to get over my artist’s
side and my need to write everything down. When I did anything with sports, he’d
not go.
Then coffee happened. We both discovered our love for
coffee. But movies? That was a few farther years down the road.
And this was the movie. He had heard about it through his
employees, a group of glorious young car geeks (yes, I was crushin’-hard on those dudes, I
might add) who actually liked the same things I did. And they were muy macho.
Suddenly, his stepson wasn’t a doofus as much anymore. He wanted to see this movie. I wanted to see this movie! We bonded!
The premise of the film was awesome—and didn’t require any
writing whatsoever (quelle domage!). I know, me, liking a movie that didn’t have
writing in it at all!
But the filmmakers took advantage of popular culture to the
point where they made a movie so scary that it would change the face of late
night films forever. Reality television was taking over every channel possible
on cable. So? Why not make a horror movie mockumentary?
It worked. Three kids making a documentary for a college
class go into the forest and die, one by one. All filmed voyeuristically.
What was better? They used the interwebs to bring the tale
alive in a marketing campaign that I’ve not seen used since.They created a fake college and posted about
the filmmakers demise; they invented an origin story to get an audience that
would like such a movie.
And it worked.
4.Gods and Monsters---sure, I could take
the easy route and just say we get to see Brandon Fraser as an exmarine mowing
lawns. That, in and of itself, should be enough.
But it isn’t. Now, I give you this might be more along the
lines of a mainstream title-given the fact that one of the best English
speaking actors alive right now is in the world—Sir Ian McKellen. In this
movie, he plays another out person, a rare fact in the 30s as it seems right
now, James Whale, the maker of the movie Frankenstein.
If we are to believe the auteur theory, whereas, the art
reflects the point of the man making it, then “Jimmy” Whale’s picture of a tortured
monster alienated from the society he wishes to join clicks for us. Here we see
a brilliant director alone in a huge house, wishing for just a bit of
companionship and longing for a love he had so long ago. But in the hands of a
masterful performer, instead of coming up as a dirty old man, Ian’s version of
Whale is totally sympathic.You
understand his loneliness in his waning years-and pain he doesn’t deserve just
because he’s gay.
And not a happy movie at all. Something mainstream Hollywood
would have a hard time selling.
3.Fargo---No
one would believe me until this movie. When I moved to outside of Fargo to
begin undergraduate, I kept calling home and insisting, “these people, here…they’re
just different.”
They used words like ‘maleficence’ and ‘snippy.’They had a sense of humor so deep in their
core, you weren’t sure if they were making irony or it was happening
organically. This movie became a documentary. It captured a world that I had
experienced and yet my Colorado family didn’t believe.
And, not only was that irony deep—not many people realize
this is a comedy! A comedy about a kidnapping and murder!
That explains why it lives on as an indie. No major studio
could even understand this movie about crime gone really, really badly.
2.Night of the
Living Dead—made on a shoestring budget, a group of college kids in
rural Pennsylvania got together and said, “dude! Let’s make a horror movie!”
But then went a step further. They took gothic horror to a
new level. Now? Simple black and white (saved on special effects) and zombies
(don’t need THAT much make up) and create a tale in ONE STINKING HOUSE. George
A Romero started the Walking Dead, basically.
The film is a small microcosm of the world, with
representations of different icons.A
woman. An African American. A family. A Caucasian.
And who will survive?
Of course, on the outside, it’s terrifically scary, with all
the dialogue happening with continued moans outside the boarded up windows.
Power is cut off. The crowd of zombies grows outside. Oh…what…to…do.
And without the studio there to tell you to make the ending
happy or to leave room for a sequel to earn more cash off of it, well, the
story could go, literally, anywhere. Good stuff.
1. Brokeback Mountain---this movie changed me in several ways. I
wanted to mention the title because I finally learned, after all my years of
watching and reading and writing about movies, what it meant to really ‘get’ a
movie. For years, I watched women sobbing at movies. I’ve cried at movies, don’t
get me wrong.The Champ had me dissolved for
hours.
But up until that point, I looked at movies like a doctor
sees the human body. Detached. They see the pores on the skin, not the beauty
it holds up; I saw the boom mike and the camera not twenty feet away and knew
these were actors on a stage.
With this movie, I lost it. Being a gay man, I connected on
a level that I never had before. I understood every single one of the emotions those two men were feeling on the screen.
There was no hiding from it.
I was so happy this movie was made, for it went mainstream
and changed audiences forever. A romance between two men that was so universal,
nongays could click with it. In fact, the night I saw it, four young men came
in with their boots on and cowboy hats. I shit-you-not, the rodeo was in town
when it opened that night in Colorado Springs. And this was the movie those men
elected to spend their Saturday night watching.
And they were straight.
And teary eyed. The movie crossed several genres of drama, romance, gay
literature and westerns. And was made with such compassion and style that it
moved like a good book.
I GOT the movie. And proof that the independent spirit of
movies MUST be maintained. Movies, like all art must continue to push
boundaries to the point we cannot watch any more. We must discuss them like
they are dying out, so that more can be made. We must never be afraid of the
story, just the ramification of them. It was quite an experience for me as a cineast.
And it changed my life. It changed how I saw movies from that point on, truly.
Peace,
Roo
PS:I keep wanting to
write a gay version of “Lolita” but have a feeling I’d be burned at the
stake…but the movies are both considered indies…
Ya. You know that school in Indiana? The one that wants a “Haters’ Pr…” I mean, a “Straight Prom?” This is the teacher who is sponsoring it. This in a state that poised to legalize marriage equality.
Remember when I said I have a huge blog post coming? Well, It’s half written. We received bad news last night, and, frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to compose. I’ll have it posted here in the meanwhile.
So, in THAT meanwhile, here’s me laughing my ass off at sheer stupidity.
I know, I know. It’s been a wee bit since I posted. HusOtter is out in the world, I’m home alone, and you’d think I’d be posting left and right.
Well, here’s the thing—I’m actually writing a larger post to put on here for this upcoming Tuesday. It’s taking a bit of time and, strangely, it’s not a whine-fest, like so many of these.
As for this article? I heard about it on Dan Savage whilst walking the dog the other night and decided to investigate. It makes sense. Some straight dude is making love to his girlfriend and she does something to his nether-regions.
And he likes it. And then he runs to the therapists to see if he’s gay or not. That’s only a single example. People who are gay, accept it and move on, tend to have that out of the way in their daily life. Push aside the fact that this comes from a queer piece of media, as if biased. I’m referring to the study; not the avenue of publication.
But gay people, when out to friends and family, can develop more on the lines of how they feel. They may be paranoid they appear too “girly” or over emphasize the masculinity on their part—but here’s the tic—they don’t have to worry if they don’t want to.
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