John Greyson | Pissoir (aka Urinal) / 1988

mission impossible

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Greyson (screenwriter and director) Pissoir (aka Urinal) / 1988

 

Canadian director John Greyson’s first feature film Pissoir nicely represents the tropes and genres of the majority of his longer films, but he hasn’t quite determined how to interpolate his essayist and documentarian approach with the fictions he introduces, and there are some rough spots throughout Pissoir that one doesn’t find in the works from Zero Patience (1993) going forward. If his later works are often accused of being too intellectual and complex, in Pissoir perhaps Greyson has somewhat underestimated his audience, although as early as 1988 there was clearly not the depth of knowledge about gay literary and art history that there is today, and one can hardly blame him for forging new territory a bit clumsily.

 

     The story is an enchanting one, a fantasy of nearly everyone interested in the artistic past. Who might you most like to sit down to dinner with? In this case Greyson conjures up a group of gay people with whom it might be interesting to spend an entire week.

      Summoned from the dead, somewhat like the figures in Agatha Christie’s famous mystery novel, And Then There Were None (originally titled Ten Little Niggers after the children’s rhyme and minstrel song) writers, artists, and filmmakers begin to show up to “the church,” the home at 110 Glenrose Avenue of Canadian lesbian sculptors Florence Wyle (1881-1968) and Frances Loring (1887-1968). When Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) arrives unexpectedly at their abode, he finds that others, receiving the same letter that he has, have proceeded him, including Harlem Renaissance poet and political activist Langston Hughes (1901-1967), Japanese fiction writer Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), and artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) who is already painting a portrait of Oscar Wilde’s notorious fictional character Dorian Gray.

      Florence offers to put them all up if they are not allergic to cats, although some have already checked the train schedules finding there is no further transportation until a day later. A tape recorder is suddenly delivered up which provides them with the reason that they have been called together. The voice asks them together to help solve the problem of the police raids on gay men in the public bathrooms of Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario province, actions which have caused many gay men to be arrested, fined, and sometimes after public humiliation, destroying their careers and family lives, in few cases leading to suicide.

       The message, presented in the manner of the popular TV series of the day, Mission Impossible (1966-1973, and revived for two seasons by the American Broadcast Company in 1988, the year of Greyson’s film) begins with the standard: "Your mission, should you choose to accept it is…” and ends with the famous line, “"This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck.” The tape does indeed explode.

       Virtually forced into service for a week, and intrigued by the strange project, the famed artists begin on a series of personal arguments and reports on everything from the history and evolution of public toilet facilities, the use of public spaces for urination and defecation as used for male sexual gatherings, a study of the immediate problem in Ontario, and various personal recountings of the necessity for and joy of using toilet facilities for sexual pleasure, including a brief listing of the favorite “tea rooms” of Toronto. One even recites the proper procedures for bathroom sex, all which seem to cause great disgust among the women. In other segments, individuals involved with tearoom sex are interviewed, some dressed in outrageous disguises, while one brave individual arrested for indecent behavior, is determined to speak out about his case. Parliament representative Svend Robinson details the changes in Canadian and Ontario laws over the years, outlining the remaining problems.

 

      Indeed, the issue of public bathrooms used for gay sex and police harassment is an important issue in the gay world, and one that obviously troubled Greyson enough that he put it front and center in this cinematic mulligan stew of character studies, political issues, and comic interludes.

       It points, moreover, to films before and after it that concerned themselves in different ways with the same issues, from Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks (1947), James Bigood’s Pink Narcissus (1971), Rosa von Prauheim's It Is not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse (1971), Francis Savile’s Equation to an Unknown (1980), Paul Morrisey’s Forty Deuce (1982), Stephen Frears’ Prick Up Your Ears (1987) to later works such as Eytan Fox’ Time Off (1990), Constantine Giannaris’ Caught Looking (1991), Ferzan Özpetek’s Haman (1997), Patrice Chéreau’s Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998), Simon Shore’s Get Real (1998), Kōschi Imaizumi’s Angel in the Toilet (1999), João Pedro Rodrígues’ O Fantasma (2000), Lawrence Ferber’s Birthday Time (2000), Welby Ings’ Boy (2005), Pedro Almadóvar’s Bad Education (2004), Adam Baran’s Love and Deaf (2004), Stephen Haupt’s The Circle (2014), Antonío Hens’ Doors Cut Down (2017), and Sebastien Muñoz’ The Prince (2019). See my essay on each of these films and my group essay on others “Gay Bathroom Sex” in the 2000-2009 volume of My Queer Cinema.

      Even closer to Greyson’s concerns are Monte Patterson’s short film Caught (2011) and, most notably, William E. Jones’ recontextualized compilation of police tapes of bathroom sexual encounters in the small Ohio city of Mansfield, Tearoom (2006).

      In other words, Greyson’s work came almost midway between the numerous films that in some form or another deal with this subject, films which continue even into the present.

      While the significant gay figures gathered together each present their reports, Dorian gets a job within the police force itself, inserting himself, so to speak, at the center of the controversy. But at the same time, the police, represented by Sergeant Jones (Karl Beveridge) and Inspector Smith (Clive Robertson) are disturbed by the strange of “hippies and bohemians” at “the church” and begin to investigate the artists themselves, trying to uncover what they are plotting—the very role Greyson assigns to the police force in his later film Un©cut (1997). Particularly when they discover that one of their own, Dorian, resides at the same address they grow even more suspicious, arranging for cameras to secretly spy on the residents, just as they have used such devices to arrest the men in public bathrooms.

      Ironically, whoever has brought these various celebrities together couldn’t have chosen a more ineffective group. As the police, using their early computer-provided biographies long before Wikipedia, begin to reveal, all of the men and women are homosexuals very uncomfortable with the fact, most of them for political and social reasons still in the closet. Mishima (David Gonzales) was notoriously interested in homosexuality which he discussed at great length in his fictions, while covering up his personal life, which in any event was made secondary due to his own right-wing political activities and his death by traditional seppuku, self-immolation by sword.

     Although Langston Hughes (George Spelvin) wrote many gay poems and like several other Harlem Renaissance figures* was rumored to be gay, he himself. because of his political commitments and the Renaissance leaders who insisted that their focus remain on black identity, worked to keep the fact secret, his heirs refusing to grant rights to reprint his works within a gay context until just recently.

      Sergei Eisenstein (here played by Paul Bettis) was a favorite of Joseph Stalin, but fell out of favor several times for his rumored gay sexuality, particularly after his return from Mexico (where he had encountered Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera) after he was arrested for carrying gay pornography. Eisenstein continually denied his homosexuality, and yet displayed it openly in his films through the interactions and simply the physical beauty of his sailors and male citizen rebels. (See by comments of his works in My Queer Cinema: 1930-1939.)

       Because of her relationship with Diego Rivera, Freida Kahlo’s (Olivia Rojas) own extensive lesbianism has often remained muted and not as fully discussed as her heterosexual affairs. But here she seems not at all shy about suggesting a threesome between her and the two owners of the house.

       The Canadian sculptors Loring (Pauline Carey) and Wyle (Keltie Creed), although living together as partners for many years, kept their relationship semi-private. Even today in the Wikipedia entries there is absolutely no discussion of their sexuality or whether it effected their work, despite the fact that each other is listed as their “partner.”

        And finally, although anyone who reads The Portrait of Dorian Gray will perhaps assume his gay sexuality, Dorian’s (Lance Eng) terrible behavior consists mostly of sins of the flesh with women; although his beauty is the constant subject of all of the males, he himself never speaks of a male sexual relationship, so presumably homosexuality is not among the sins he discovers openly revealed in the hidden painting, although clearly his deep friendship with Lord Henry suggests they may be sexual friends in the manner of Wilde himself and his boys.

       It is interesting that in the brief biographies the police keep investigating, nearly all of them end with the comment, “presumed homosexual.” Accordingly, the police can never quite figure out what these various “hippies” might be up to. All they can perceive is that their young officer is terribly upset about something he keeps in the attic under a cover—as we know the painting that is beginning to change before his very eyes.

 

      Meanwhile, all these obviously randy closeted gay men and women do is try to convince one another to have sex or, in Eisenstein’s case, at least share in mutual masturbation in the shower.

       Mostly, it appears they succeed, at one point Frieda even interceding in the close relationship between Loring and Wyle. Mishima gets into bed with Hughes, and Eisenstein tries out both men.

       Consequently, they do nearly nothing about the problem they’ve been tasked to solve. And the real beauty of the work, Dorian goes untouched and mostly unnoticed until, stabbing the painting, he dies. It turns out that the was in the fact the one who called them all together, and despite their being unable to literally accomplish anything concrete—they are after all dead—their very presence has brought further attention to the issue, having, accordingly, served their purpose. They disperse like the wind, but the perfumes of their existence help homosexual women and men everywhere to survive and speak out where they were unable to.

    

*Among the gay and bisexual artists of the Harlem Renaissance besides Hughes, were Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Richard Bruce Nugent, Wallace Thurman, George Hanna, Lucille Bogan, Mae Cowdery, Jimmie Daniels, Gladys Bentley, Bessie Smith, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Alberta Hunter, and of course Carl Van Vechten, a white man who brought much of wealthy white folk to Harlem and wrote about and photographed the celebrants and their lives.

 

Los Angeles, December 13, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review December 2022).