Born On This Day- July 31st... Colin Higgins

Colin Higgins was one of Hollywood's most beloved directors & screenwriters. He is responsible for one of the most influential films of my youth- Harold & Maude.

Born in the South Pacific island of New Caledonia to an Australian mother & American father, Higgins moved with his family to Redwood, CA from Sydney in the 1950s. After attending Stanford University for a year, he dropped out to hitchhike across the country. His travels took him first to the Actors Studio in NYC & then to Europe where he volunteered for the Army as a sports reporter for The Stars & Stripes. He eventually returned to Stanford to receive his degree in English & later attended film school at UCLA. During his final year, he wrote the screenplay for Harold & Maude.

While today it is considered to be one of the greatest of Hollywood films, Harold & Maude was a huge flop when it opened during the Christmas season of 1971 with little fanfare or advertising. The unusual romance between a young man & a much older woman, starring Bud Cort & my muse- Ruth Gordon, struck a chord with audiences & soon became a cult favorite around the world. His stage version ran for just 9 performances on Broadway, but ran in Paris for 7 years.

Following the success of Harold & Maude, Higgins went on to write & direct some of the most successful films of the 1970s &1980s:  Silver Streak, Foul Play, 9 to 5, & The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.

In 1986, Higgins established a foundation in his name. The Colin Higgins Courage Awards recognizes ordinary but remarkable individuals who have endured overwhelming hostility & hate, yet have handled themselves with the utmost grace as they educate & enlighten others about the LGBT experience. Each winner receives $10,000 as part of the prize.

In addition to the Courage Awards, the Foundation also funds film scholarships & has supported over 390 LGBT groups, ranging from the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender outreach & AIDS prevention programs in places like as Fayetteville, Arkansas & Biloxi, Mississippi.

In 1986, he also completed a mini-series based on Shirley MacLaine's book Out on a Limb, which turned out to be his last film project. Higgins died of AIDS in 1988.

Born On This Day- July 31st... Gay Rights Pioneer, Barbara Gittings

During an era when very few gay people dared come out in private, much less in public, Barbara Gittings was a vocal & visible figure in the fledgling fight for gay rights.

In the late 1950s, she founded the NYC chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national organization for lesbians, even though she lived in Philadelphia. In the 1960s, she took part in early gay rights demonstrations at the White House & Liberty Square in Philadelphia. In the early 1970s, she helped lobby the American Psychiatric Association to change its stance on homosexuality; in 1973, the APA invalidated the definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

Gittings also strove to make information about gay men & lesbians more widely available in libraries. Though not a librarian by training, she was for many years the head of the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force; she coordinated & edited the association’s comprehensive bibliography of literature by & about gay people.

Gittings felt keenly aware of the need for such a bibliography as a young woman, when she scoured local libraries, seeking, but seldom seeing, something that would help her understand her own life.

Gittings was born on July 31, 1932, in Vienna, where her father was a member of the United States diplomatic corps, returning to the United States when Barbara was young. When she was a teenager, her father caught her reading The Well of Loneliness, the 1928 novel of lesbian love by the English writer Radclyffe Hall. He told her, via a letter, to burn the book. Gittings’ father mailed the letter, when he could not bring himself to speak to her.

Gittings studied theatre at Northwestern, but she was increasingly distracted by the need to learn as much as she could about homosexuality. She haunted the libraries of Chicago, unearthing little that was relevant & nothing that was encouraging.

Gittings: "I had to find bits & pieces under headings like ‘sexual perversion’, ‘invert, or ‘sexual aberration’ in books on abnormal psychology. I kept thinking, ‘It’s me they’re writing about, but it doesn’t feel like me at all.’"

She left Northwestern after her freshman year, & for decades she supported her activism with clerical jobs. In 1958, commuting from her home in Philadelphia, Gittings started the NYC chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, which was founded in San Francisco in 1955; she later edited the organization’s national newsletter- The Ladder. In 1965, she took part in one of the first gay rights pickets of the White House, in an effort to end discrimination against gay people in federal employment.

Gittings received many awards, among them honorary membership in the American Library Association. The Free Library of Philadelphia named its gay & lesbian collection for her, & the NYC Public Library acquired the papers of Gittings & her longtime partner- Kay Tobin Lahusen, which chronicle more than half a century in the gay rights movement.

She appeared in the documentaries Out of the Past, Gay Pioneers, Before Stonewall & After Stonewall.

Lahusen: “Before Barbara died, we went jointly into an assisted-living facility. Our last bit of activism was to come out in the newsletter of our assisted-living facility.” Gittings died of cancer in her home on February 2007 at 74 years old.

Details Of Post Apocalyptic Bohemia

Click on a photograph & it will get bigger

The Front Room is used more in the winter, with its working fireplace. In the summer the room all but abandoned, with the focus going to the floor-to-ceiling window in the backroom overlooking the Boys' Fort & rear garden.

The fireplace is partially silver-leafed but intentionally left unfinished. Our mantel is where sacred things go to live. Mirror on mirror on mirror is a favorite look. The reflection in the mirror is of our art pottery collection across the room.

Post Apocalyptic Bohemia is filled with religious iconography: Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu & pagan. I like to have my bases covered… just in case. The crucifix was found in a junk shop in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood, on sale & marked- “as is”, because Jesus’s chalk-plaster legs are broken, leaving just the wire forms. I found this to be touching: "Leave me broken…”

There is a treasured 19th century ivory crucifix from Portuguese Colonial India on the mantle's left side, bought as a gift to each other on our 20th anniversary at a small gallery in SoHo that specialized in 18th & 19th century Indian pieces. You might also spot, on the right hand side of the mantle, several small framed ex-votos from 18th Century Venice, purchased at an antique shop in the Dorsoduro, perfect souvenirs from a magical trip, because they fit neatly in to our wallets, being small & flat.

My favorite thing about the Front Room is the indulgence of formality in such a small space.

Photos by Jaclyn Campanaro

Born On This Day- July 27th... Carol Leifer

After graduating from Binghampton University with a degree in Theatre, Carol Leifer started in stand-up after accompanying her then boyfriend Paul Reiser to his gig at Catch A Raising Star. She enjoyed a successful career doing stand-up & appeared on Late Night with David Letterman more more that 25 times. She moved to writing & has won Emmys for her work on The Larry Sanders Show, SNL, Rules of Engagement (also executive producer), & most famously- Seinfeld (she has been dubbed- the real Elaine). She once opened for Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas.

In September 2007, Leifer won an auction for the handwritten notes used by Michael Vick during his apology for his role in dogfighting.

On her 40th birthday, Leifer had a revelation: "I suddenly had this really mad desire to have an affair with a woman, I was divorced. I was childless. I figured there's got to be one more way to really tick off my mom. I told Lori that I kind of had this crush on her, & she was, like: 'No way. I'm not going to be a science experiment for some straight girl!'"

"I used my patented line that I've used easily for the last 20 years—'Well, what would it hurt if we just made out?' Heard the song lyric- 'I kissed a girl & I liked it'? Well, I kissed a girl & my head spun around."

“When I first started talking about being gay onstage I felt it wasn't working. The audience was like, You seem straight & now you're talking about being gay, what? I just kind of gave it up. But now I think I wasn't completely owning it, because it works completely now. I talk about having been married, and then I met this woman & my life spun around & we've been together for almost 14 years. & the audience always still applauds when I say how long we've been together, which is pretty amazing for a comedy club. I own it so much now. It wasn't the audience. It was me.”

Leifer currently is a staff writer on Modern Family & is nominated for an Emmy this year. She lives in Santa Monica with her longtime partner- real estate developer Lori Wolf, Chihuahuas- Cagney & Mini Mo & their son. Love her.

Words To Live By

"Il n’y a qu’un bonheur dans la vie, c’est d’aimer et d’être aimé."

George Sand

This Is What I Was Listening To 50 Years Ago Today, July 25th

You tell me that you're leaving

I can't believe it's true

Darling, there's no living

Without you

Don't take your love

Away from me

Don't you leave my heart

In misery

Cause if you go

Then I'll be blue

Cause breaking up is hard to do

They say that breaking up is hard to do

Now I know, I know that it’s true

Don’t say that this is the end

Instead of breaking up,

I wish that we were making up again

Remember when

You held me tight

& you kissed me

All through the night

Think of all

That we been through

Breaking up is hard to do

They say that breaking up

Is hard to do

Now I know, I know

That it's true

Don't say that this is the end

Instead of breaking up

I wish that we were making up again

I beg of you

Don't say good-bye

Can't we give our love

Another try

Come on, baby

Let’s start a new

Breakin' up is hard to do

Breaking up's so very hard to do

So hard to do

Sedaka

1962

Details Of Post Apocalyptic Bohemia

The small bathroom, we only have the one, which is why I have been known to pee in the garden. Everything in the bathroom is salvaged or re-purposed. The door & the sink were both found at The Rebuilding Center in the Mississippi neighborhood of the North Quadrant of Portland. The maroon floor tile is original to the house, circa 1941.

The Husband's design philosophy includes the principle that you cram the most data in to the smallest space. Nearly every inch is covered with art & collections. Please note my Justin Beiber battery powered toothbrush. It sings- Boyfriend.


Photos by Jaclyn Campanaro

Born On This Day- July 25th... American Artist Thomas Eakins

self portrait by the artist 1902

I am quite enamored of late the 19th & 20th century American painters & Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins epitomizes everything I love about the American Realist Movement. Eakins was unsuccessful as an artist in his lifetime, but he is thought to be one of the most influential & important figures in American painting. His work is significant for its homoeroticism, & he is noted for his teaching methods, & for his insistence on teaching men & women together, which was ground breaking & controversial at the time.


Eakins was raised & educated in Philadelphia. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, & he spent several years studying in Paris & Spain. He returned to the Pennsylvania Academy to teach in 1876, & became the director in 1882. His teaching methods were controversial at the time, especially his interest in instructing his students in all aspects of the human figure, including the nude. There were tensions between him & the Academy's board of directors throughout his teaching career, he was ultimately fired in 1886 for removing the loincloth of a male model in a class where female students were present.

Deeply influenced by his dismissal, his later painting concentrated on portraiture, usually of friends & family. This work was realistic but with approach that went beyond just pure representation. He was influenced by early photographers & did many photographs as studies, including many nudes. I find this photographic work to exceptional also.

I have a large "coffee table" book of his work that has given me much pleasure. Along with John Singer Sargent & James Whistler his work has been very influential in defining my taste in painting & my passion for art.

photographic study for The Wrestlers

the painting

Born On This Day- July 24th... Gus Van Sant

"Fate sucks. I swear. "

Matt Dillon as Bob in Drugstore Cowboy

If I had been somewhat clairvoyant while on the set of Drugstore Cowboy, I would have realized that one day I would someday be living in Portland Oregon, in fact, just 1 mile from where we were filming. I most likely would have dismissed the entire notion as too much candy from crafts services. I loved living in Seattle & I had the best agent in town. I had been fortunate enough to have worked in TV (Murder She Wrote, Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, A Day in the Life) & a whole lot of commercials & voice-overs, but the Gus Van Sant project was my first feature film. I was thrilled to be working with the talented director of Mala Noche, a film I really admired about & that had received an enthusiastic reception at The Seattle Film Festival in 1985.

I was working in a feature film! My scenes were with Matt Dillon! I have now done 12 films, but this one will always be so special. The very soft spoken Gus Van Sant creates an extremely creative atmosphere for working. Many of the actors that have done films with Van Sant have remarked on how great he is to work with & how conducive to creativity the conditions are on the set of his films. He was not big on rehearsing, but he would ask for something completely different with each take. Matt Dillon (who I have worked with twice) was such a nice gentleman. He would stay & read his lines back to me for our reverse shots. Dillon was such a “regular” guy. He would eat lunch, sitting at a big long table, with the rest of the cast, crew & grips & he spent very little time in his trailer. The rest of the cast were fun & friendly: Kelly Lynch, James LeGross & Heather Graham. I did not get to meet William S. Burroughs…my only regret from this experience.

I was invited to the premier of Drugstore Cowboy, but did not attend because I was performing in a play at the time. The film went on to rave reviews & it won Independent Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay for Mr. Van Sant & Daniel Yost, Best Cinematography, Best Actor for Matt Dillon, & Best Supporting Actor for Max Perlich. It won Best Screenplay awards from the LA Film Critics Association, the National Society of Film Critics & the NY Film Critics Circle, & Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. At the film’s Seattle premier, the Husband turned to me half way through the viewing & stated- “Oh. My. God. You are in a really GOOD movie!”

Gus Van Sant’s films have ranged from Oscar winning studio fare: Good Will Hunting & Finding Forrester, to very experimental: Gerry & Last Days, Indies: Elephant & Paranoid Park, noble, brave & baffling experiments: the shot by shot re-make of Psycho & Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. He has done 4 films that I love & to which I award an A on The Steve Report Card: Drugstore Cowboy (of course), My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, & Milk.

In 2002, shortly after relocating to Portland after 20 years in Seattle, I was standing with some new Portland friends & some dear former neighbors from Seattle on a street in the Peal District. My friend Susan: “Oh my God… look! That is Gus Van Sant!”. The Husband: “Yeah, he lives in this neighborhood… Stephen knows him”.

Our little group mumbled some: “yeah, sures & uh-huhs”. When Mr. Van Sant walked past us, he looked up, & said in his singular soft manner: “Hello… there… Stephen. I haven’t seen you in a while... strange… your head looks bigger…” & then he went on his way. My friends looked baffled & everyone wanted to know what he meant. I had no idea (what could he have meant?), but I told them that it was an industry term, that good actors had heads that were proportionately too large for their bodies. It was my Gus Van Sant moment.

“I LOVE YOU, BUT YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT”

Almost teetering on the verge of tweeness, I am still always won over by Wes Anderson’s films, indeed, his movies are among my favorites of the last 15 years. No American filmmaker, not even Woody Allen, has a more recognizable aesthetic, & Moonrise Kingdom may be the most, well, Andersonian movie yet. His style recalls storybook illustrations, puppet shows, school-project dioramas, & community theatre productions.

Moonrise Kingdom is the best film I have seen in a very long time. It is a film of transporting beauty & visual brilliance, perfectly cast, a paean to precocious puppy love, a parable set in a parallel world, somewhere on the New England coast during the summer of 1965, & concerned with the all-consuming passion between a pair of oddball, seriously serious 12-year-olds.

Moonrise Kingdom is a restorative film: unabashedly uplifting, breathing fresh air into our dusty old hearts & reminding me what it is like to love with the absolute conviction & utter abandon of the young.

After experiencing this film, I want to remember what it was like to play fast & loose with my heart, even when it seemed foolish, because there was so much of what I desired buried underneath words like ‘dangerous’ & ‘absurd’.

Moonrise Kingdom left me thinking about what brought The Husband & I together instead of how we are going to pay our bills. I want to feel like I’ve found my place in the world & that it’s exactly where I am, & every line on every map that does not outline this place will be erased. I want to save myself before I need saving. I want to flip through faded old photographs plucked from moments earlier in my life & feel the sun on my face & the salt from the sea air settle on my skin. I want to find my own Post Apocalyptic Bohemia to be a Moonrise Kingdom, a place where they will never find us, because maybe, just maybe, there’s still some lightning in me in my old age. 

Stephen Steps Out

My new friend Pamela was able to get me out of my boxer shorts.

I received a message from Pamela on Saturday morning, inviting me to be her guest for the Portland Modern Home Tour, with the offer to ferry me around town & stop for lunch. I had less than an hour until lift off.

My immediate inner-dialogue: “Oh… you don’t want to have to leave the house. You can just stay in my boxer shorts, water the garden, listen to music, smoke,  blog, & touch yourself in that special way. You won’t have to engage with another human being. You would be able to avoid moving out in to the world. You can move into a second day without showering or shaving. You will simply message Pamela & explain that: “I would have loved to have gone on the tour, I love modern architecture, but I didn’t check my messages in time. So very sorry!”’

Just then, the Good Steve tapped me on the shoulder & whispered: “You are such a curmudgeon & quite the hermit! If you say yes, you will have a chance to get to know Pamela better; you will have the opportunity to see inside other people’s homes & get  a look at strangers’  stuff. You can do this. It will be moving forward for you, Steve! You would actually be doing something with a stunning, smart, sly woman.”

I felt better about myself for deciding to accept the chance to have an outing. My inner-voice stated: “Good job, Steve! You don’t even have to do anything but slip into the pile of clothing on the floor beside the bed. You won’t even have to shower or shave, making it a record 3 days with no attempt to present yourself as anything other than the ne'er-do-well that you are…”

Because Pamela is so lovely, but sharp, I actually did wash, groom, iron a fresh shirt, clean jeans, & slip on my grey flannel Jack Purcell’s for our date.

My new friend & I shared easy conversation, full of empathy & inquiry. We made our way to 5 very different modern homes around Portland & I managed to not go through any of the host’s bedside tables or medicine cabinets. I can’t remember the last time I practiced such an extended period of restrained good behavior.

Pamela & I stopped for a perfect summer lunch. On the way to the last house on our list, she gave me a tour of a section of the city that I had never explored along the shoreline of the mighty Columbia River. Our last stop was a floating home. As we left, we noted that the next houseboat, a tiny, funk little spot, was for sale for a very reasonable price. We ended our day with dream of each of us finding a way to have a little getaway on the river, proof that going out into world always forces me to want to spend money & desire property or more stuff.

My new weekend retreat?

Today, after the dogs’ walk, I slipped into just my boxer shorts & spent the day alone in the house & back garden. One adventure every few days is quite enough for this misanthrope & skeptic.

Born On This Day- July 23rd... Gavin Lambert

I met Gavin Lambert at a coke fueled, debauched, all-male party at the home of producer Robert Fryer in the Hollywood Hills. The year was 1973 & it was the only period that I was briefly considered an ingénue. I actually didn’t mind being objectified & passed around. I liked being the object of desire, & being a bit of a slut, I was feeling very democratic & exceptionally open minded. I was hungry for experiences, & was not above putting out my crack for my crack at show biz.

I had smoked a joint that must have been enhanced with something extra, because I don’t remember how I ended up in bed with the handsome older man. In the early morning hours we started in for round 2, & when the little strands of conversation revealed that this man had written the novel & screenplay for one of my favorite movies from childhood- Inside Daisy Clover, featuring my favorite actor- Ruth Gordon, I went absolutely nutty, stuttering & muttering: “Oh my god, oh my god, that is my favorite movie, I love that movie! Oh yeah, that feels so good. Tell me about working with Ruth Gordon! Do that again, but slower, harder & lower! Oh, I can't believe you created that movie. I love that movie! Will you autograph my ass?” I think I ruined the hot mood with my sudden outburst of fandom.

For 50+ years, the “go to” guy for bitchy, witty & perceptive gossip about Hollywood was screenwriter, novelist & biographer Gavin Lambert, who has died. For much of the 1950s & 1960s, he lived in Hollywood, the inspiration & setting for most of his novels, including The Goodbye People (1971), The Slide Area (1960) & of course, Inside Daisy Clover (1963).

Armistead Maupin: "Decades before it was fashionable, Gavin Lambert expertly wove characters of every sexual stripe into his lustrous tapestries of southern California life. His elegant, stripped down prose caught the last gasp of old Hollywood in a way that has yet to be rivaled."

Lambert wrote the biography- Mainly About Lindsay Anderson (2000), about his friend & roommate at Oxford, director Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life, O' Luck Man, If ). Lambert & Anderson founded the short lived but influential film journal- Sequence (1949-51), while at Oxford. Unlike Anderson, who was tortured throughout his life by guilt about his homosexuality (he fell for happily married, heterosexual young men), Lambert was gaily gay. He had a series of fulfilling relationships.

Lambert had an affair with director Nicholas Ray, whose films- Bigger Than Life (1956) & Bitter Victory (1957) Lambert wrote the screenplays. His longest relationship, however, was with Mart Crowley, who wrote the influential gay play- The Boys In The Band (which I acted in- Boston, autumn 1972). The couple had a home together in L.A.

Lambert wrote & directed Another Sky in 1955, & the film was shot in Morocco. The rather modest film tells the story of a young English woman who discovers her sensuality in North Africa, a reflection Lambert's own sexual liberation in Tangier. He lived in Morocco from 1974 to 1989 on the suggestion of writer Paul Bowles, whom he met in L.A. at the home of Christopher Isherwood & Don Bachardy.

Inside Daisy Clover (1966) was made into a film from Lambert’s novel with a screenplay by the author. Directed by Robert Mulligan, it tells the tale of how the fame & fortune of a young star, played by Natalie Wood, leads to misery & a nervous breakdown. Lambert first met Wood when he went to Hollywood as an assistant to Ray on Rebel Without A Cause. In 2004, Lambert wrote a revealing biography of the star- Natalie Wood: A Life, admitting they had shared at least one lover. According to Lambert, a 17 year old Natalie Wood lost her virginity to Lambert’s boyfriend Nick Ray. Lambert's biography includes Wood's relationships with Elvis Presley, Robert Wagner, Warren Beatty, Paul Mazursky, & Leslie Caron. In his book, Lambert claimed that Wood frequently dated gay & bisexual men, including Nick Adams, Raymond Burr, James Dean, Tab Hunter, & Scott Marlowe. Lambert also said that Wood helped support his lover- playwright Mart Crowley making it possible for him to writeThe Boys in the Band (1968).

Lambert's best screenplays were adaptations with gay overtones: Sons & Lovers (1960), based on the novel by D.H. Lawrence, was Oscar nominated, The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone (1961), from Tennessee Williams' novel, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (1977), & Liberace, Behind The Music (1988).

He wrote biographies: On Cukor (1972), Norma Shearer: A Life (1990), & Nazimova: A Biography (1997) which was the first full scale account of the private life & acting career of lesbian actress Alla Nazimova. He also wrote GWTW: The Making of Gone With the Wind (1973). I own them all. Lambert was able to interview & gain personal remembrances of those involved with the classic 1939 film, including dismissed director George Cukor & star Vivien Leigh .

I have reason to believe that before his death in 2005, Lambert was working on a book- The Greatest Sex in Hollywood: The 1970s, where I was to be mentioned in the chapter- Live Fast & Die Young, but I was probably there as a footnote. Mr. Lambert was every inch the gentleman to me. Today is his birthday. He would have been 88 years old.

Born On This Day- July 22nd... Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright

I am a big fan of Rufus Wainwright. Wainwright makes music that sounds ornate.  He is not a writer of spare folk music. At his best he is breathtaking: his rich baritone can soar more powerfully than the slurred lyrics, & his piano is filled with tremolo & rococo quavers without sacrificing the songs.

Wainwright seems to never be far from pretension, & after 8 albums, he is now at a point in his career where he can count on his adoring audience to accept his affectation as another part of his aesthetic, a wellspring for his talent & his extravagance. He creates magnificent, baroque, spiraling songs.The duality of Wainwright’s musical muscle & his confessional manner seems, to me, to embody disgust & rejected emotions that fight it out as if they were wrong notes.

Wainwright is equal parts Gershwin, Sondheim & Pet Shop Boys. His album- All Days Are Nights was written & recorded while Wainwright’s mother, musician- Kate McGarrigle, was dying of cancer. Released just months after death, it is a somber & mournful, with a big pinch of humor. With Rufus Waunwright it is drama that I desire & it is drama I get(but not melodrama) & I am somehow enchanted:

“My mother’s in the hospital

My sister’s at the opera

I’m in love, but let’s not talk about it”

Earlier this year, Wainwright became a father with Lorca Cohen, daughter of legendary Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, giving birth to a baby- Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen.

Although I have yet to receive my invitation, but Wainwright & theatre producer Jörn Weisbrodt announced they will wed in Montauk on August 23.

Wainwright: “I proposed over an Indian meal. I was very nonchalant, like, ‘Maybe we should get married. Will you marry me?"'

                           

“I've been with Jörn for about 5 years, and I’m not finding anything better, & I’ve certainly travelled the world and had opportunities to fall out of line, & it doesn’t ever seem to happen,  you know, I just keep wanting to go back to him.”

His new album- Out of the Game is set in a warm, 1970s, slightly Laurel Canyon-meets- David Bowie’s Young Americans sound.

Wainwright, working with Post Apocalyptic Bohemian favorite producer & winner of the Grammy winner for Producer Of The Year- Mark Ronson, both note the influence of the great recordings of the 1970s on Out Of The Game. They reference Elton John, Harry Nilsson, & Steely Dan, & the genre-blending & sense of songwriting ambition that characterized the best music of that era.

His narcissism is as much a part of his charm as his incredible voice, his piano, & his lyrical skill. I love Rufus Wainwright because he is beautiful, a bit doomed, & already, at 38 years old, a gay Icon.

Born On This Day- June 22nd... James Whale

I have done several posts about my admiration for Bill Condon’s film- Gods & Monsters, &Sir Ian McKellen’s masterful performance as director James Wale. Thinking of James Wale this morning on his birthday, I landed on the moment when McKellen's James Whale murmurs about the hunky Brendan Frasier’s "architectural skull." Who else could appreciate a skull more than the man who designed the impressive & imposing head of the Frankenstein monster?

"It's the horror movies you'll be remembered for", the geeky fan/ interviewer tells the aging Whale in the film, & despite his gentlemanly manners, you can see irritation in McKellen's eyes. But, the geek is correct of course. Whale's other movies, even his successful version of the musical- Show Boat are mostly forgotten in the 21st century, but people still watch Frankenstein & The Bride of Frankenstein. The look of the monster: square head, seams, scars & neck bolts is a visual icon of the 20th century.

James Whale was a painter before he was a stage & film director, his eye for design is part of what makes his films so memorable. Besides the look of the monster, played by Boris Karloff, he also created the hairstyle & elegantly stitched scars of the Bride played by Elsa Lanchester. Whale had seen the great German silent horror movies that were never widely released in the USA, & from them he took the starkly dramatic lighting & impressionistic sets. Along with his art director Charles Hall, Whale created the style of “Universal Studios Gothic”: huge shadowed interiors with enormous doors, imposing staircases & long shadows.

Gods & Monsters asks us to consider that a major influence on Whale's work was his time in the trenches in WW1. The film uses flashbacks of a foxhole lover to provide Whale with awful memories of the young lover’s death. But the war really did the same for the actual Whale. He was in the thick of some intense battles, before ending up in a POW camp, where he began his stage career by producing amateur theatricals.

There is a beauty, perversity, & wit in Whale's Frankenstein films. His dark, horrid, witty work paved the way for directors like Brian De Palma, David Lynch, George A. Romero & Tim Burton.

Whale was an un-closeted gay man in Hollywood during the1930s. While Gods & Monsters is fiction, his real last lover was a gas station operator who for a while had to share Whale with a male nurse. I have read that the Frankenstein films were a way for Whale to give a coded guide to his sexuality & his feelings of being a misunderstood outsider, a lonely monster. Gods & Monsters evokes this with an understanding & elegance. But, Whale's longtime partner, David Lewis stated: "Jimmy was first & foremost an artist, his films represent the work of an artist, not a gay artist, but an artist." Whale may have identified with the monster not because of his sexuality, but because of his background as a member of a lower class in England.

Whale directed the 1928 play Journey's End on London’s West End & then on Broadway . He moved to Hollywood to direct the film version & stayed there for the rest of his life, most of that time with his longtime companion, David Lewis, the producer of films such as Dark Victory & Raintree County. They were a couple for 22+ years.

He will always be remembered mostly for his work in the horror film genre: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) & Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but Whale directed many films in other genres, including what is considered the definitive film version of the musical Show Boat (1936). He became increasingly disenchanted with his association with horror & never returned to the genre.

Having experienced WW1 first hand, Whale seemed an inspired choice to direct The Road Back, a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front in 1937, but the film was a critical & commercial failure.

A string of failures followed & by 1941 his film directing career was over. Whale continued to direct for the stage & also rediscovered his love for painting. He had invested wisely & he lived a comfortable life until suffering several strokes in 1956 left him in pain. Whale committed suicide in May 1957 by drowning himself in his backyard swimming pool. His former lover- Lewis would later reveal the details of Whale's suicide note.

There is a terrific chapter about Gods & Monsters in Christopher Bram's (the author of the novel) memoir- Mapping The Territory. I recommend this very entertaining & emotional book to anyone that is interested in the process of writing.

Born On This Day- July 21st... Hart Crane

Hart Crane was born & raised in Ohio. His father was the inventor of Life Savers candy & he had a mother who was an overbearing, flashy hypochondriac. The parents fought bitterly & eventually divorce, providing the young poet a very unhappy childhood.

Crane finally had enough & dropped out of high school to move to NYC in 1916. For 7 years, he split his time between Cleveland & NYC, working at his father's factory, a copy editor, & writing poems that were published in small literary magazines. He often needed to borrow money from his father to survive.

As his work was published, some praised his work, but most critics scoffed at it. Crane has often been criticized as incomprehensible; he was certainly that for me when I attempted to get through his work in a class in American poetry.

Tormented by his attraction to other men, Crane did have a rapturous love affair with a Danish sailor- Emil Opffer who was the inspiration for the epic, erotic poem-Voyages. The poem was the center piece of his first book- White Buildings, in 1926, Crane was indubitably gay, which lead to a lifetime of problems both social & personal. His failed love life was partly due to his obsession with men from the Navy. Ernest Hemingway (they share a birthday) noted: "Poor Hart Crane, always trying to pick up the wrong sailor." Booze contributed to his downfall, under the influence, he would become flirty, frequently in the wrong situations, at the wrong times.

Later in life, Crane made an attempt to play it straight to please the people in his life. Though he tried, he was miserable. Drinking & rough trade bearable, yet made his life worse & worse.

In the early 1930s Hart attempted to marry a girl, Peggy Crowley, the recently divorced wife if his good friend, writer & critic- Malcolm Crowley, but everyone knew it was a sham.

On April 26, 1932, while on board a cruise ship in the Caribbean, Crane was badly beaten after an altercation with a member of the crew that he had made a pass at. The following morning, a female friend found him sitting in his room, remote & ashen. She told him to dress for lunch & left. Shortly before noon on the 27 April, Hart Crane was seen on the deck, looking down at the water. Crane said: "Goodbye, everybody!" & jumped overboard to his death. His body was never recovered.

The most devoted of all the writers & artists who venerated Crane, Tennessee Williams, left instructions that his body be buried at sea in the Gulf of Mexico at the spot that Crane drowned. William’s family buried him in St. Louis.

His life is a truly troubled tale of a talented man trying to find where he belongs. His poetry confounds me & his life leaves me circumspect.

We make our meek adjustments,

Contented with such random consolations

As the wind deposits

In slithered & too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find

A famished kitten on the step & know

Recesses for it from the fury of the street,

Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, & to the final smirk

Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb

That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,

Facing the dull squint with what innocence

& what surprise!

& yet these fine collapses are not lies

More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;

Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.

We can evade you, & all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen

The moon in lonely alleys make

A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,

& through all sound of gaiety & quest

Have heard a kitten in the wilderness

My occasional lover- James Franco is fascinated by Crane's legendarily difficult, brilliant poetry, as well as his personal demons. We were talking about Crane just the other morning while sipping champagne in bed. Franco wrote directed, produced & starred in The Broken Tower as his Master Thesis in Film at NYU. I caught it on the Sundance Channel. The film is a bit of a mess. It's filmed in black & white, its plot can be hard to follow & its pacing is much slow, & there are many seemingly aimless silent scenes that follow the back of Franco's head while he stalks around various streetscapes.

Franco: "Crane was very comfortable with his sexuality, to the point that it intimidated, even scared, a lot of his friends in the poetry world. I wanted the film to have something of that same in-your-face quality."

Born On This Day- July 20th... Douche Larry Craig

My nomination For Under The Stall Hall Of Shame

Who: Larry Craig, Republican, & tap dancer, who maintained a staunchly conservative record in Congress. In June 2007, he was arrested in a men's restroom at a Minnesota airport for lewd conduct. Craig's infamous "wide stance" defense didn't save his political career, or save him from the butt of many, many jokes. He served as chairman of Mitt Romney's 2208 presidential campaign.

What: Soliciting sex from an undercover cop in an airport bathroom

The Shame: Craig voted 2 times against adding the words “sexual orientation” to the federal hate crimes law. Craig also voted to give states the right to refuse to recognize gay marriage, a right they already had, but the Senator wanted to really, really prove he didn’t like gay people.

Words Of Wisdom: “I am not gay, I don’t do these kinds of things.”

Today is his birthday. He turns 67 years old, which is 113 in motherfucking teabagging douche nozzle years.

Alexander Was Great

Are you into Greek?

Outside of Jesus Christ, Alexander III of Macedonia is probably the most important figure in Western History. He brought Greek philosophy & thought to the rest of the world in the 4th century B.C. Alexander took his army into Central Asia & then into India. Alexander the Great conquered 90% of the known world & forged an empire stretching from Greece to India by the time of his death at age 32.

The greatest emotional relationship of Alexander's life was with his BFF, general, & bodyguard- Hephaestion, the son of a Macedonian noble & a major hottie. Hephaestion's early death devastated Alexander, sending him into an extended period of grieving, which eventually contributed to Alexander's failing health, & nutty behavior during his final months.

Alexander was a real drama queen, with an impulsive nature, which contributed to some of his questionable decisions during his life. That old queen- Plutarch thought that this part of his personality was the cause of his weakness for cocktails. He was known to frequent happy hours throughout the known world. Alexander was stubborn & did not respond well to being ordered around, a situation that I undertand all too well.. Along with his fiery temperament, there was a calmer side to Alexander; perceptive, logical, & calculating. He had a great thirst for knowledge, a love for philosophy, a big fan of Greek Musical Comedies & he was an avid reader.

Alexander was said to be extremely handsome. Many portraits of him were made in his lifetime. It was recorded that he had a very pleasant body odor & breath, which for the times must have been remarkable… if you know what I mean. He was a major gym bunny who loved strenuous exercise & would often hit the gym. He could jump off & then back on a chariot moving at full speed. His BF- Hephaestion was taller & even more handsome; you know that kind of power couple. The Persian Queen bowed to him instead of Alexander when she was presented to them. Alexander said to the mortified queen "Never mind, Mother, Hephaestion is also Alexander.”

Unfortunately, Hephaestion & Alexander were never able to enjoy their house in The Pines on Fire Island & because they were so busy conquering the world, they were rarely able to use their townhouse in the West Village.

Like Portland, Oregon & other urban hipster centers in the 21st century, sexual attraction between men was considered normal in Classical Greece as well as in Alexander's time. Men of culture & education like Alexander loved beauty… & there was beauty to be ransacked all over the world. Alexander turns 2368 years old today.