J. J. Sedelmaier | The Ambiguously Gay Duo: Queen of Terror / 1996 [TV animation}

 into the dark

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robert Smigel, Michelle Saks Smigel, and Stephen Colbert (screenplay), J. J. Sedelmaier (director) The Ambiguously Gay Duo: Queen of Terror / 1996 [TV animation]

 

Episode 2 of The Ambiguously Gay Duo, subtitled “Queen of Terror” concerns an abbreviated visit to the evil Queen Serena’s planetoid Garassas where she hopes to seduce to the male duo through her feminine wiles. The episode was broadcast on November 2, 1996.

    Bighead warns Serena that he perceives the duo as being gay, and so too do some of her snaggle-toothed assistants agree, but she is certain of her seductive charms, and is more than a little disturbed by Bighead’s obsessions with their gay sexuality.

     The two, in their penis-shaped Duocar, once more interrupt their workout sessions to speed off to protect Metroville and the universe in general, the Commissioner declaring that Ace and Gary “are on it,” the skeptical policeman sniggering “When they’re not on each other.”

     Gary wonders, in all innocence, where they are going, with Ace responding, “To a dark hole, fellow friend,” and off they go to another adventure.

     Queen Serena is still busy discussing Bighead’s obsession about the duo’s gayness; he insists he’s not obsessed, but cannot resist mentioning that they were on the high school diving team!

     Arriving at two globular rocks, the penis-shaped car enters into Serena’s world. 

    Beating off their enemies, Ace once more awards Gary a nice pat on the butt, declaring the planet is safe once more. Even Serena realizes she’s not about to “get anywhere with them,” demanding that Bighead give it a try.

    He quickly surrounds them with an endless series of “batmen,” as Gary mounts Ace and they fly through space, Ace sending out powerful rays through his eyes. As usual, the duo wonders what everyone is looking at, to which all the villains unanimously declare, “Nothing!” as the duo flies on. Will they survive? Of course, you have to tune in to the next adventure to discover if they have survived.

 

 

Los Angeles, June 16, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024)

Ralph Steiner | Pie in the Sky / 1935

starving for god

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ralph Steiner and company (scenario), Ralph Steiner (director) Pie in the Sky / 1935

 

Photographer, cinematographer, and film director Ralph Steiner is known best for his 1929 experimental film H20, listed among the films of The National Film Registry, his 1930 short Mechanical Principles, and his later photographs of clouds—in short of his abstract depictions of nature and industry—than he is for his very human, narrative works such as his role of co-cinematographer with several others for Pare Lorentz' The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and the short film of 1935, Pie in the Sky. Arguably, however, that last-named film may over time come to seen as one of his very best works.

     The piece, for which credit is also given to the Public Theater collective and the newly-formed collaborative group Nykino, co-stars the later director Elia Kazan (whose credit reads Elia “Gadget” Kazan) and Ellman Koolish playing a couple of Depression garbage-dump hobos.

 

    Near starvation, they attend with numerous others of their kind a sermon at the local Christian Mission in which a preacher delivers an endless sermon about sin and salvation as the poor homeless attendees yawn, fall to sleep, show their disdain, and tear the petals from a flower to “He loves me/He loves me not,” apparently provoked by the seemingly random attentions of God himself.

   Finally, in protest some of the congregation began to tap their plates, having waited far too long for their promised piece of pie, evidently the reward to attending the sermon. After properly scolding his parishioners, the preacher reveals the pie itself and, counting off his congregation, cuts it into small slices. All evidently get their tiny piece the two waiting last in line, Kazan and Koolish, who in pained frustration are assured by the preacher, pointing at one of the placards posted throughout the mission: “He will provide.”

 

    Fed up with promises, the two retreat to their home in the dump. There the two starved men search through the debris, one coming up with a small dress dummy he names Mae West (a figure which even at the time was recognized by many as an actor who performed her own gender as if she were in drag) playfully making love to it, an act not at all appreciated by the other. The first tosses his new love into the lap of his friend and walks off in a huff.

      But the other, still dismayed by the intrusive bust of the famous beauty, tosses her away and goes looking for his friend.

      We immediately recognize them in this act as a couple in the manner of Flaubert’s great fiction of an odd male couple, Bouvard and Pécuchet, and even more as the couple Samuel Beckett created in their tradition, Mercier and Camier who live together, travel together, sleep together, and even occasionally employ one another in their sexual acts since there is no one else around and, despite their everyday arguments, they love one another. They are all predecessors to Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon or even the cinematic duo Laurel and Hardy, who as I have shown throughout this volume have several homosexual-like encounters. The focus in all of these pairings is not sex itself, although Beckett often hints at it in the narrative (particularly in Mercier et Camier), but in their impossible but truly necessary dependence upon one another.

      In this case, Kazan finds Koolish in a derelict auto and joins him, Koolish soon after reaching into the other’s coat pocket for a cigarette stub as if it were mutual territory, Kazan pulling the small case of stubs out of another pocket, offering up one to his friend and lighting up the other before he bends over to light the other’s stub with his own already lit cig; if their lingering face off cannot be described as a deep kiss, then what was the point of Humphrey Bogart lighting up his and Ingmar Bergman’s cigarettes in his mouth at the same moment before handing her the other?

 

   And it is soon after this that the two go for an imaginary car ride and chase that becomes the central action of Steiner’s short work and demonstrates the true joy—it depicts after all, a true “joyride”—these to find in one another’s company in a world of few other pleasures. The very length of this scene, and the absolutely joyous smiles with which they engage each other makes it clear that, like children this ride is something of absolute delight. As if they can’t get enough, they follow it up—when one of them finds the front end of another vehicle and ropes it up to create a kind of box car contraption—with a drag race between the two of them.

      Suddenly interrupting their play they go on a further search of the dump site, one of them discovering a doorway marked “Welfare Department,” behind which Kazan jumps, turning his vest the other way to suggest a priest at the confessional, demanding to know of his friend’s sins, who pleads his only sin was going hungry.

       Welcoming his friend into the confessional and by association, heaven, he preaches over his new found convert, even at one point symbolically baptizing him.

       For a few minutes he disappears to discover several old tubes and tires which he places round his neck and with an old piece of cloth which drapes around him becomes alternately a sort of angel and a high priest.

      Returning to his other, he delivers mocks a sermon, while Koolish keeps pointing to an old tin simply asking for the promised food, some beans he wonders whether Mary, a doll posted on a piece of wire, might grant him. The priest scolds, constantly pointing to the sky. And before the two can even continue their skit they become, both of them, saints—with hubcaps and wire as their halos—as they sing the absurd choruses of “Pie in the Sky” (aka “The Preacher and the Slave”), Joe Hill’s satiric song of 1910 that’s sung to the music of Joseph P. Webster’s “The Sweet By-and-By.”

 

You will eat, bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

Work and pray, live on hay

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (that’s a lie)

 

And the starvation army they play

And they sing and they clap and they pray

Till they get all your coin on the drum

Then they tell you when you’re on the bum

 

You will eat, bye and bye

When you’ve learned how to cook and to fry

Chop some wood, twill do you good

And you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye (that’s no lie

 

    Finally, perhaps exhausted or as the lyrics suggest, nearly “dead,” we see the now holy duo lying next to one another. But on Kazin’s crotch we suddenly spot a full pie tin. The pie might have been located on the ground between them, or on one or another of their chests, or at their feet. But Steiner has placed it precisely on the crotch and when both inevitably spot the illusory object and go for it, it is Kazin’s crotch which the starving Koolish goes after—starving perhaps for both food and sex—the couple cursing to the heavens for their state of being.

       Clearly, Steiner and his collaborators have relied, like Beckett, on the homoerotic in which to contextualize their social satire. And is equally clear that these two “angels” will have to wait for a long time for a visit from “Godot,” the Beckett play which did not premiere until 1953.

 

Los Angeles, March 24, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).

Jerell Rosales | These Things Take Time / 2018

the first lesson of gay love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jerell Rosales (screenwriter and director) These Things Take Time / 2018 [19 minutes]

 

Zander’s (Zackary Arthur) father (Timothy Ryan Cole) delivers his son up for his third-grade school year, but explains that he won’t be able to pick him up given the requirements of his job. They have a loving relationship, but clearly it’s not enough. Zander is missing out in a love he can’t quite explain to himself.

     A girl immediately sits down beside to declare that he is now her boyfriend, a confusing and possibly troubling development in Zander’s already somewhat confused life.

     In class, Zander is clearly a good student, his hand high in the air to help spell out the words in which he finds perhaps far more significance than the other students. “A-d-o-r-i-n-g,” spelled out by Kayla (Meilee Condron), sitting next to him.

     The next word is “Handsome”—which certainly characterizes Zander’s teacher, Mr. Wiley (Jason Heymann)—but is given over to another student to spell out. Meanwhile a girl in the back of the room, the duplicitous Reagan Park, claims harassment from the boy next to her.

      Finally, Zander is asked to spell “butterflies,” but is suddenly so nervous that he needs it put into a sentence, which Mr. Wiley gladly does, in the process making it perhaps even worse: “When I see someone I love, they give me butterflies in my stomach,” not the first sentence, I presume, most of us would have created to help contextualize this word.

     In the midst of his spelling, Connor (Markana Say) and Reagan (Samantha Krull) again interrupt, and Zander is forced to switch seats with Connor, putting him now into the control of the young girl who earlier declared him her new boyfriend and putting him in the far back corner of the room where his isolation from his beloved teacher is assured. It doesn’t help that Mr. Wiley thanks him for being a “team player,” and adds “my man” almost as an endearment whenever he addresses Zander.

      What Zander now learns is that those who are seemingly engaging in bad behavior get far more attention that he does as the teacher’s pet “my man,” as Connor is held back after class for further discussion of his behavior.

      The bossy Reagan now demands that Zander walk her home. In the game of “step on a crack, you’ll break their backs,” we now learn that Reagan has two dads, a subtle statement in this film that might have been unimaginable a few years earlier. The cracks she’s stepping on are all about Connor, upon whom she’s quite obviously more focused than her current “boyfriend” Zander.

 

     Once more, Zander’s father takes him to school, reporting that he cannot pick him up, suggesting even further that he doesn’t truly have time for his son. He has to work, and, a bit like Mr. Wiley, presumes on his son’s ability to understand, upon his complaisance in the way things are. The totally appealing young boy seems to make male adults presume that he will naturally understand why they need to focus more on other people and events, he presumably being the wiser and more intelligent “other.” We also now perceive that the father is a step-father, replacing the original man who disappeared from his mother’s life. Zander displays his acceptance and resentment in saying, “Goodbye Keith,” giving the man a name other than the appellation of “father” or “dad.”

      If this scene brings tears to my eyes, it is because I totally comprehend the supposedly “wiser other” that some children are selected to perform, based on their own intelligence and basically good behavior (but oh, the anger sometimes for being forced to perform that role that lies within!).

     Observing Mr. Wiley typing up the shoe of one of his peers, Zander unties his own shoelace, but when the teacher comes over to tie it up, out of nowhere Reagan appears to fix it up, not a pleasant resolution for what we now realize is a boy in love with his third-grade teacher.

      Trapped in the Siberia of the classroom, Zander insists that Reagan talk to him. She has no intention, however, of getting him in trouble, which clearly is his intention.

      As Zander makes further trouble, Reagan is made to switch seats with another boy, much to Zander’s relief. The poor heavily be-spectacled boy admits he now has difficult in even seeing the teacher.  And if Zander thought that perhaps Mr. Wiley would be providing him an after-school scolding, it is Reagan who is made to stay behind, while “my man” is sent on his (un)happy way. Waiting outside the closed room, desperate to know what’s going on inside, Zander meets up with Mr. Wiley’s girlfriend Scarlett (Annmarie Nitti), the devil incarnate in this young boy’s imagination, yet another threat to his love of the teacher.

     Once the door opens and Reagan spills out, Scarlett, after kissing her boyfriend teacher, turns to Zander to ask “Is that your girlfriend? She is so cute!” She might as well have put a knife to his neck given her heteronormative appreciations. What can a third-grader who doesn’t even quite realize what’s being spoken, let alone being able to perceive the significance of what is being expressed, to do? His face expresses it all: exasperation, confusion, resistance.

     Coincidentally, it’s Zander’s father’s birthday, and on their walk home, Reagan observes that her “boyfriend” is walking on so many cracks that he might “kill them,” without imagining that she and Scarlett along with his step-father may be those upon whom the now evil boy is focused.

     Zander’s mother Cheryl (Ashley Ledbetter) gives his boyfriend the watch, actually his grandfather’s pocket watch, she’s had remade over for him as a wrist watch. But as he puts it on, it breaks, she apologizing, but he suggesting it’s an easy fix.

     This time during their written spelling bee, Zander goes out of his way to make trouble with his new table mate Jeremy. Zander admits to cheating and is put into the corner of the room (for “a serious level II violation”). This time at the end of class it is finally Zander who is kept behind. Demanding to know “what’s going on,” Mr. Wiley finds his prize student finally speechless. He assures him that it’s only the two of us here and “I’ve always got your back,” which sound to this child like code words that might permit him to speak out about his love. Reaching deep into his pocket, he pulls out his stepfather’s watch, proclaiming to Mr. Wiley, “I love you.” There is a new look of desire, hope, and possibility in the boy’s innocent face—

as opposed to an impossible expression of the tired, slightly fearful, necessary denial in his teacher’s demeanor.

    The tragedy, and for the young boy it is precisely that, is that there can be no resolve.

   Tears are shed, parents are called, the child retreats to his bedroom in shame for even acting on his deep emotional response.

   In this instance, Keith is a good father, handing over the beloved family watch to the boy, and promising him when the time shifts ever so slowly, all will be better. He makes clear that he loves Zander. At school the next day, Reagan announces that Connor is again her boyfriend. And Keith shows up to take his son home.

    So the movie seems to suggest that all is now well. But the film’s title makes it clearer: it takes time for the young boy to realize that his infatuation for his teacher is probably his very first investigation into a world of male love which most certainly won’t be easy—at least until years later when he can determine which male might be waiting to beat him out of his affection or readily embrace him, a truly difficult difference that takes young gay boys years to comprehend. In the LBGTQ world love isn’t just an open expression; it exists only when you gradually begin to comprehend that the emotional response we call love has to be delicately and carefully tested and selected—something which Reagan, despite her two fathers, will never even have to consider as she moves on from man to man.

     Rosales’ sensitive and intelligent short work helps us to remember how difficult it is for all gay children to comprehend that their love will always be something different and apart from that of their normative heterosexual peers.

       Finally, I would add, this film reveals a truly remarkable development from his earlier 2016 title, Please Hold.

 

Los Angeles, June 16, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).

Gary Halvorson and Laurent Pelly | La fille du Régiment / 2019 [The Metropolitan Opera HD-Live Production]

marie gets her man and her gun

by Douglas Messerli

 

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (composer), J. F. A. Bayard and J. H. Venoy de Saint-Georges (libretto), Laurent Pelly (director), Gary Halvorson (film director) La fille du Régiment / 2019 [The Metropolitan Opera HD-Live Production]

 

Even the often traditionalist Metropolitan Opera—although far less conservative over the past many years under the guidance of Peter Gelb—recognizes when it has an innovative comic hit, as they do in this year’s production of La fille du Régiment, directed by the wonderous “child-like” Laurent Pelly (who also did the costumes) and conducted by the performer-behind-the-baton Enrique Mazzola. The Met itself celebrated the near endless ovations at opera’s end with a convention-like confetti-spray of paper placards each saying “bravo” and “brava.” And flowers I haven’t seen since the Maria Callas days.

       And then there was the absolutely glorious singing of the two leads, South Africa’s Pretty Yende (as Marie) and Javier Camarena (as Tonio), who beautifully belts out 9 high C’s in his famous aria “Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" The Met has again loosened up its previous ban on encores, even encouraging the standing-up applause, while Camarena, tears flowing from his eyes in appreciation, goes through those high C’s all over again, making it almost impossible for audience to have clear eyes. Asked in an intermission discussion how he is able to achieve that, the rather modest Camarena simply explained that when you’re rehearsing such a role you sing those high C’s far more often, until your voice becomes raw.

     Perhaps the great Peruvian-born singer Juan Diego Flórez (who Howard saw in another production of this opera) is just as talented, but there is something about the slightly chubby Camarena’s excited possibility of marrying this obviously black woman that says so much about great theater’s ability to transform our visions. These two characters prove the term, “the willing suspension of disbelief,” as both rather handsome individuals turn themselves through their singing into the beauteous creatures represented in the libretto of J. F. A. Bayard and J. H. Venoy de Saint-Georges.

     Yende might have been equally applauded for her “Il faut parir, mes bons compagnons d’armes” and, in Act II, her lovely lament of having to leave all she has loved behind.

      As if the joys of these two lovers were not enough, we have before us the always beloved Stephanie Blythe as the slightly selfish and oafish Marquise of Berkenfield (more of a speaking role than a singing one, which, given Blythe’s soaring voice, is a bit disappointing), Maurizio Muraro (as Sulpice)—who it was announced was suffering from a cold the day we saw the H.D. live-video transmission, but who seemed still to carry his role to near-perfection—and  then, as if allowing us a spicy topping, presenting actress Kathleen Turner in the entirely-speaking role of the proud Duchess of Krakenthorp, declaring her frustrations alternately in rather American accented French and English.

 

    The very athletically-conceived first act, and the mockingly artificiality of Pelly’s vision of Act II with the servant’s molding themselves to the walls and furniture they are cleaning, made for great fun. And then, in Act 1 there was Yende’s sudden surprise, when, upon perceiving her confused love for Tonio, she mutters unintelligible words—in this case spoken entirely in the language of the Zulus, including the languages noted clicks. This production seemed to contain nearly everything one needed to become a kind of classic vision of the Donizetti opera.

      Yes, some of this is simply silly and, particularly in Act II, a bit over-the-top. But it’s fun always. This is the kind of opera to which anyone might bring their children or grandchildren—although on the rainy day we saw it, the movie-theater audience was made-up, once more, of grey-white-purple haired women and their husbands, many of whom came armed with their walkers. We, alas, are not far from those descriptions. Although I know the Met cameras must seek them out in their before curtain coverage, there seems to be many younger people attending the New York opera house itself. Opera desperately needs those young people!

      And then there is this strange tale about a young abandoned child adopted, evidently without any abuse, by an entire military unit of lusty young men. She grows up virtually as an indentured servant, endlessly washing and cleaning their underwear and cooking their meals. Marie might as easily be described as a kind of slave, a Cinderella who is never invited to the ball. 

      Yet being the “daughter” of an entire military unit, she is also allowed a great deal of freedom, unforced to play the proper young woman, even encouraged to be an independent-thinking tom-boy, who openly grumbles and rebels about anything she doesn’t like. If she cheerily accepts her endless washing, ironing, and potato-peeling duties, she perceives herself also as a kind of Joan of Arc, a military woman working alongside of these men to help France, singing “Salut à la France” to rile up their patriotic fervor that might see them on to war with the terrified peasants of Tyrolean Italy. 

    She is a wild thing, ready at any moment to carry a gun—a kind of Annie Oakley of the day shocked suddenly into love by the equally radical Tonio, a milder Wild Bill Hitchcock who, as a Tyrolean, dares not only to enter enemy territory in search of his love, but to join up with them, later becoming a kind of French hero.

      Once the local Tyrolean Marquise, really a kind of wealthy bourgeoise, perceives Marie as being the long-lost daughter of her sister and dresses her up in a new gown while attempting to teach the girl proper French and Italian melodies and manners, Yende really does remind one a bit of Doris Day’s Oakley, all dressed up to entice her “Wild Bill” Tony. You might almost expect them to break into a chorus of “I Can Do Anything Better Than You.” One might even describe the 9 high C’s of Tonio in Act I as a kind of “I can outdo you” in reaction to Marie’s infectious singing.

      In fact, Marie’s Tonio rides in to save her, this time in a absurdly anachronistic machine-gun tank to rescue her from the dead society (which almost reminded of the audience I describe above) into which she is being forced to marry.

      We know this gutsy young girl will never be able to survive as the wife of the conveniently absent son (like Tonio, a tenor playing at the Metropolitan) of the Duchess of Krakenthorp; yet when the Marquise suddenly admits to Sulpice that she, in fact, is the mother of Marie, the girl, unwilling, agrees to sign the marriage certificate.

    Suddenly, the memory of her youthful sexual follies almost rejuvenates the Marquise, as she declares that Marie should marry the man her daughter loves instead of marrying into the dead world of her own memories of her beloved Robert.

      It is somewhat amazingly, accordingly, that a 17th century Opéra comique might speak so strongly about feminist aspirations, military incompetence, and patriarchal and matriarchal demands that speak to our own time. In a far more comic manner, this strong woman reminds us of more tragic women of opera such as Brünhilde, Carmen, Salome, Electra, Princess Turandot, and so very many others who attempted, often successfully but more often forced into death, to rebel against patriarchal domination. Marie gets her man and her gun; she can now keep her wild identity while swooning into the arms of her soldier lover.

 

Los Angeles, March 5, 2019

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (March 2019).