Category: Film

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IBR, iSpQ Udon’tSpQ, BC/LC

The height of International Bear Rendezvous was watching Grizzly Man with ÜberBears BC and Philip. The movie is a prophetic film about a man who wants to be a bear but ends up getting eaten by them. We also watched Barbarella and ooohed and aaahed over Jane Fonda’s countless and bizarrely convenient costume changes, and experienced extreme Spaceship envy after viewing her fur-lined transport. 

Is there an online venue for chatting with bears who say more than, “Hi,” “Yeah,” and “Woof?” I get dumped as soon as I start chatting about Georges Batailles, Titian, or Maggie Cheung. I yearn for an intellectually stimulating bear chat community, where, in addition to bellies and hair, we can talk about the exhibitions we just saw, the counter-tenor we just heard, the dish on Shelley Winters, raw-milk cheese… I do indeed get a lot of stimulation from my friends here on Live Journal–you’re all so interesting, and engaged with so many diverse topics! I’m talking about the Instant Message, Quick Message, etc. communities. I started talking with an Italian guy the other night (there are like, a million of them on iSpQ), named after an obscure Orson Welles film character. I thought “cool,” and following the mutual introductions, started blabbing about Welles’ self-destructive genius, the last film that’s been held up in litigation for decades, etc… and then, nothing. Click. Hairy bodies that are attached to interesting minds are far more appealing to me than plain old physical perfection, but I don’t seem to meet any Jewish intellectual truck drivers online.

Where are they? If you have a lead, please let me know.

So Big Chris and I are in transition again, still, but we both feel it best to work things out on our end rather than dragging you all into it, and driving you all crazy in the process, too. Now don’t you worry your little heads off, we’ll be fine. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy this brief break from the The Big Chris/Little Chris Show. And now a word from our sponsor…

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Fashion Bears

from today’s New York Times, and just in time for you to go out and get something appropriate to wear to my opening in New York:

…Mr. Varvatos’s challenge to the status quo for men was meek in comparison with that of John Bartlett, who based his collection on a hairy and hypermasculine segment of the gay population known as “bears,” and within that category of manly gay men, a subset that paradoxically likes fashion. As Mr. Bartlett described the clothes — including a loden cashmere peacoat and see-through merino wool long johns he set to a dance remix of the music from “Brokeback Mountain” — what makes them more appealing than, say, an affordable wool jacket from Pendleton, is that “even the most butch of creatures love luxury.”

Some designers would tell men that the difference between luxury and affordable is a matter of apples and oranges. But not Mr. Bartlett, who sees only bananas.

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A Few Days in the Life

SATURDAY
BC and I took a break from our break and went to Yerba Buena and SFMoMA Saturday. We are like barnacles, indeed. There are some intriguing sculptures on display by Wang Du at YBCA, based on images taken from magazines and newspapers–a sculpture of a person, for instance will have the head cropped off and the forehead exaggerated, like in a newspaper. This kind of rendering in 3-dimensions of 2-dimensional representations of 3-dimensional space was very cleverly done, but didn’t move me quite like the nearby sculptures by Cornelia Parker, of charred fragments from two churches that had burned down: one a white church destroyed by lightning; and one a black church destroyed by arson. The fragments were hung from wire, separated and arranged in a cube-shaped configuration, the charred remnants of these violent actions re-organized into a beautiful and haunting presence in rational space.

SFMoMA has some humdingers on display upstairs, including some fabulous new work. I could stand for hours in front of Vija Celmins’ work. One, a painting of stars, and the other, of waves on the ocean, are so visually spare yet contain such profound serenity and beauty. Wangechi Mutu’s installation and collages were breathtakingly beautiful and unsettling. I was completely inspired and want to make work that is breathtakingly beautiful and unsettling. She is my new hero.

After bonding with the Vulva School at Kiki Smith’s show, and then getting to know Chuck Close’s nose hairs too intimately, we decided to save the Earthquake and Richard Long shows for later.

Later that night I picked up Hong-Xi and drove over to Nick & Jeff for a grand hot pot celebration to usher in the Year of the Dog.  Kiltbear was there, and was as cute as ever. Arf! Arf! Hong-Xi drank too much, the first time I’ve ever seen her drunk in the 20 years that I’ve known her.

SUNDAY
After dim sum with my dumpling Dean, Philip and I went to look at a house in Sea Cliff. Built in 1970 by Bruce Heiser, the house is like an elegant mod kwanset hut, with a wall of glass facing the street, an open floor plan with one level suspended above the center of the grand central space, visual themes of lines and curves that appear throughout the house as a curved wall of brick or a row of yellow glass panels, a tiny raised garden that you cross a sort of moat to get to, and a downstairs den with a wall of glass that is curtained by a waterfall descending from the moat above. It was nice imagining living in our mid-Century dream pad with our Tony Duquette furniture and Laurel lamps, descending the yellow shag carpeted spiral staircase to greet Goldie Hawn and Julie Christie in our matching Pucci scarves and Mennen Dry Looks.

MONDAY
Les and I took in a double header at the Balboa Monday night: a film about Cartier-Bresson; and one of the most interesting films of the year thus far, called William Eggleston: In the Real World. Isabelle Huppert appeared in the Cartier-Bresson film, among other artists and glitteratti, a gorgeous and smart French windbag, leafing through a book of his pictures, making wonderfully overwrought, gushy, and insightful statements about the images. The Eggleston film knocked my socks off. You get to follow around this brilliant artist and see his process, how he looks at everything, drawing our attention to the beauty in every single thing in sight. At the end of the film, the filmmaker tries to engage him in a discussion about dreams and representation, and Egggleston just says no, he doesn’t think like that, no, doesn’t see it quite like that–a man who sees and creates with his eyes and body with no need to distill meaning beyond what’s been seen and represented. In one amazing scene, he’s at the home of a young woman, at night, she’s in jammies and he’s sketching while she blabs on and on with music blaring and him occasionally mumbling something in acknowledgment or disagreement. There’s an understood intimacy between the two that’s never discussed and we’re never quite let in on. We already know he’s married–is this a lover? A daughter? It’s as interesting as his work, and functions in exactly the same way–no context, only intensity and strange beauty cropped from what’s been stumbled across.

TUESDAY
Davide came over last night and we watched Hinokio, a Japanesse film about a boy confined to his room following a car accident. Having lost his mom in the wreck, he blames his dad and refuses to leave the room or continue with his rehab. In a twist of the Pinocchio story, his dad builds a robot that goes to school for him, but that is controlled by the boy from a virtual control center in his room. It’s a very sweet and easy film about a boy who learns to live and love again with the help of Japanese electronics.

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A Star Named “Kunt”

Reese and I just watched Tarkan Versus the Vikings. I had wanted to watch The Deathless Devils, the other feature from the golden age of Turkish cinema that I presented to Reese as one of tonight’s viewing options. (Mainly I wanted to see it because the star’s given name was “Kunt.” Is that common in Turkey?) It really bugs me that The Earrings of Madame d’ isn’t available on DVD, and Tarkan Versus the Vikings is. Imagine a Ray Harryhausen epic without Ray Harryhausen and a 70’s Hong Kong action flick with lots of nudity and a man-eating giant octopus and you’ll get an idea of our evening’s entertainment. I try to make Fridays with Reese intellectually stimulating, or at least culturally expansive.

BC is at home, away from his little Chrissy. We’re spending a few days apart to contemplate the possibility of a future beyond being “boyfriends,” which we’ve been on and off for millenia now. I really hate sleeping alone, and I really hate sleeping without my Big Chrissy, but the time to myself has been good. Being apart has brought into focus how really connected we have become, if not how inadequately insulated my house is.

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IR, Goodbye Shelley, a Few Movies

It’s the simple things in life. Today I finally installed BC’s Christmas present: an infrared receiver/transmitter for my home theater. You see, my dvd player sits on top of my desk, at too sharp an angle from my typical viewing postion to pick up the signal from my remote control. I had set up a concave mirror on the bookshelves opposite the player, which bounced the signal from my remote in the right direction most of the time, but not without a great deal of bodily contortion. Well, no more my friends, I just aim my remote right at the screen and with a gentle press of the button–pause! rewind! mute!

Think of the calories I’ll save!

I saw Transamerica tonight with D. It’s a sweet film, and Felicity Huffman is amazingly convincing as a transsexual, both physically and in manner. D wanted to go to Max’s Opera Cafe afterwards, and in the tradition of most of my larger dinner companions, spilled his over-sized iced tea into my lap. I aim for a Cary Grant kind of sophistication, but end up Stan Laurel most of the time.

Yesterday was Shelley Winters appreciation day, with a double header of Lolita and Night of the Hunter. I think that dear Shelley gets killed off in about half of her movies, and most of the time it’s at just the right moment, where if she hadn’t been killed we’d be wishing that someone would just shut her up, but instead we miss her intensely and are left frustrated by her sudden absence. She’s at her best as Lolita’s mom; a controlling shrew burbling below the surface of an unconvincing urban sophisticate. Night of the Hunter is just a masterpiece, a black and white fairy tale about unambiguous good and bad. Every scene is framed for the screen, tight expressionisitc compositions of shadow and light. There’s one incredible scene where the kids are floating downsteam in a boat at night and it seems like it’s filmed in a studio, with exquisitely lighted frogs, bunnies, and owls taking note of their presence. In another scene we see a fishing lure from underwater drifting through a mass of hair-like seaweed flowing horizontally in the strong current of the river. We follow the lure to see Shelley, who was tied up and drowned by her widow-killing sham of a preacher husband, sitting in the front seat of her submerged car, arms tied at her waist, her hair flowing in the current like the seaweed. I miss her so much.

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D, Chris, Chris, Chris, Brett, and two more Chrisses

D and three of his Chrisses–me, BC, and a super sweet lumberjack-y dude friend of D’s–went to see Brokeback Mountain yesterday. I had already written my LiveJournal entry about the film, in my head, prior to seeing it, but mentally tore it up as I shlepped my weeping Chrissy from the Embaracadero over to the Ferry Building for lunch. Yes, I would love for love between men to be repesented as incidental one day, and for the phrase “but I’m not queer” to be something that filmmakers would find way too regressive to have their characters actually say, but until then, I’m content to be moved to tears by the frustrated longing and epic one-night stand of these two sheep-boys.

Another surprise, and Davide, you’re going to be thrilled to hear me say this, was Spielberg’s Munich, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, which, although still presenting the nuclear family as the core of the universe, was an utterly absorbing and fascinating film. The point of the film is that violence only begets more violence, and in an extreme deviation from Spielberg’s typical point of view, there aren’t just good guys and bad guys. This point is demonstrated elegantly through the transformation of the central character from idealist patriot to shattered exile. At the end of the film, his wife watches him as he makes passionate and detached love to her, his mind focused on the brutal deaths of the hostages and kidnappers, observing his dual and conflicting roles as murdering patriot son and life-giving father.

D wanted ham last week, so for the next month or so I’ll be making hammy things. I baked a ham like my mom and dad make for New Year’s, with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries. It’s like meat candy. My daphne odora “rubra” opened today, and its scent is filling my house with an intoxicating lushness–a contrasting high note to the smell of the ham and split pea soup simmering in the kitchen. The winter is my favorite time of year for sniffing. There’s the smell of wet leaves, Presto logs, and moist bark, daphne in January, sarcacoca… I imagine that the few pollinating insects left in town are lured like little buzzing zombies to these intensely fragrant blooms. The smells of winter are like a musty armpit, upstaging the stimuli of the other senses.

If I were the type who made New Year’s resolutions, and I’m not, so I won’t, but if I did, it’d have something to do with being more like the kind of person who makes New Year’s resolutions.

After meeting two more Chrisses, I bumped into cutie pie Brett Reichman at a party last night, one of my favorite artists, forever pixie-like. He’s finally left Rena, who sold his work but rarely showed it, and will be showing at Paula Anglim in April. Mark your calendars, lads and lassies–Brett’s work is a technical and conceptual tour-de-force, stimulating to both eye and mind.

I really wanted to tie all of these disparate thoughts together, but there’s a bear in the bed.

I’ll be a-gallerying on Thursday with Emily, if anyone would like to tag along…

Quote of the day:

Why can’t we shoot a few counterrevolutionary elements? After all, dictatorship is not like embroidering flowers.
–Yao Wenyaun

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Landscapes

OMG–last night Davide brought over the creepiest English horror film–The Descent. It’s a film about redemption and forgiveness–that is, the utter impossibility of them. A group of chick spelunkers get lost in an Appalachian cave, and then encounter flesh-eating cave-dudes–and each other. All the male energy is out of control and destructive, while the chicks are powerful and smart and capable, but ultimately doomed. There is an overwhelming birth metaphor, with the girls squirming through tight passages, everything red and bloody. Just when you think our hero(ine) is about to be reborn, shimmying up one final vagina and out through a mesh of pubey shrubbery, she wakes, back in the bloody womb of the cave. There is no escape, only surrender to the reality that life is tough and the flesh-eating cave dudes are going to get you sooner or later.

Moving right along… I’ve just uploaded, for you viewing pleasure, and prior to public release, the latest Marjorie Wood Gallery exhibit. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kathryn Van Dyke’s LANDSCAPES, and an essay by Arnold J Kemp, EPSIODES. Take a break from whatever you’re doing and be momentarily swept away by the lush imagery and prosaic stylings of these talented aesthetes…

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A Little Death in the Castro

I watched Death in Venice yesterday. Gustav Aschenbach is a man whose entire life and art have been informed by a complete suppression of passion. Nearing death, his defenses weaken, and he falls under the spell of boy beauty Tadzio. His passion rises in direct proportion to his lifetime of repression, overwhelming him completely, but too late to actually be experienced as anything other than daydreams.

A former lover told me the other day that as I’ve gotten older, he no longer finds me attractive. As he’s always been big and hairy, he’s only grown more attractive to me as he’s ripened and grayed. My ego was not only deflated, but, because our affair had been one of the most passionate experiences of my life, it was devastating to imagine his love as being so superficial and fleeting. It was so much more to me, a headfirst dive into the sensual and erotic, a submersion into flesh and pleasure and being and connecting that was mirrored in the flowering of my artistic production and process.

Our love has become abstracted by time apart and by our different relation to each other. Somehow I thought that the desire wouldn’t subside, though, regardless of its current lack of expression, and that we would continue to hold not only the memory of it, but the thrill of its potential. Well, no such luck. He’s pissed on the last dying ember of our once flaming passion.

So much is on hold right now, pending the return of my work space, the success of my show in New York, my boyfriend getting the right job, etc, etc… and I feel utterly weighed down by these restrictions on my life and creative process. In Gustav’s final moments on the Lido in Venice, I saw myself, black dye dripping from my hair, reliving the missed opportunities, reaching out and trying to caress my furry Tadzio, who turns his back from me as I keel over into the sand.

Kiki, of Kiki & Herb, last night said that 2006 should be the Year of Whimsy. Amen Miss DuRane!

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A Merry Little Christmas

Christmas eve was spent with my siblings at my sister June’s place. She and hubby Kebby-Chan made perogies and borscht, which has become a tradition honoring Kevin’s Ukranian roots, along with tearing through countless packages, bad jokes, and good bottles of wine. Dean & Doug, Dean W, Davide and Philip joined me and Big Chrissy for an all-male homosexual Christmas day repast. Philip brought over an incredible minced meat pie and a salad of crispy organic red and green leafy things to accompany my duck gams and tarte tatin. The top of my tarte didn’t caramelize, as I rushed through Julia’s instructions without reading the final paragraph, plus Bob got the blowtorch in the divorce anyway, but the crust was perfect, the apples were a little overdone and lost some character, though, which the sheer joy of butter made almost immaterial. Next time: pre-caramelize and don’t cook as long.

I started my Week with Busby at the Castro yesterday, for Babes of Broadway and For Me and My Gal. Dean W. joined me, cruising every single person sitting within a 5 seat radius, and abandoned me during the second film. Babes would seem like a parody of the “let’s put on a show!” movie if it weren’t what the parodies are based on. There are so many obstacles on the way to Broadway stardom for these kids, and at every point the solution is to put on a show and get the big producer to come see it.

This afternoon it’s lunch with Nick and then the fabulous Golddigger movies. I’ll see you at the Castro Theater at 3:00!

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Not-to-Miss Film Series Coming to the Castro

The Castro is presenting a little retrospective of films by Busby Berkeley, from December 26-30. Any person seriously interested in art and film, and camp, should be there. I take that back, the films transcend camp in their visual precision and elegance. The plots are usually secondary to the musical productions, which are unparalleled in scale and inventiveness. The opening number of Golddiggers of 1933 features Ginger Rogers, at the height of the depression, singing, “We’re in the money” in pig latin. Footlight Parade addresses the advent of the talkie, with Jimmy Cagney starring as a producer who gets an idea to stage live musical numbers before movies which involve the most extreme suspension of belief with millions of extras and complicated waterfalls and even cars! on stage; Carmen Miranda sings “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat” in The Gang’s All Here which also has Benny Goodman singing “Paduka,” and the most extraordinary musical production ever which starts with children dancing the Polka-dot Polka and the camera zooming in on one of their polka dots, which we enter and suddenly we’re in a kaleidoscopic extravaganza with millions of women running around the stage with giant polka dots. I forget which film this one is in, but another of my favorite numbers, which is also stunningly photographed, is “Lookin’ for my Shanghai Lil,” I think in Footlight Parade, with the camera zooming through a seedy smokey bar and each person picking up a phrase from the tune. I can’t tell you how excited I am to see these amazing films on the big screen! Forget about Effexor, Busby Berkeley is the cure for Depression! Join me next week, 10th row center!