Mick Jackson | L. A. Story / 1991

mining for love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Steve Martin (screenplay), Mick Jackson (director) L. A. Story / 1991

 

Mick Jackson’s L. A. Story is primarily a vehicle for Steve Martin and Victoria Tennant, and its humor, like Martin’s own stand-up comedian quips and his other writings, taking easy pot-shots at contemporary culture—in this case, Los Angeles-based—often falls flat. In his story of a “wacky” TV weatherman whose girlfriend (Marilu Henner) is in search of a voyage up the social ladder, Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) takes a voyage as Odysseys’ son to rechart the waters of a much longer voyage without his father’s advice.

      Clearly bored by his relationship and the attendant luncheons and dinners at which he is forced to be present, Harris is quickly taken with the strangely gouache Londoner who appears late at a Los Angeles luncheon party, Sara McDowel, who has traveled to the US, apparently, to reconcile with her slightly snobbish and—as it later becomes apparent—gay ex-husband, Roland Mackey (Richard E. Grant).

 

     Sara’s opening comments reveal nearly everything about her, including what appears to be her gauche behavior:

 

                      Roland: Sara just got off a plane from London.

                      Trudi: Oh, you must be exhausted.

                      Sara: Yes, I’m shattered, but it’s nothing that some sleep and

                                a good fuck wouldn’t cure, as my sister used to say. Ha

                                ha ha. [Everyone stares]

                      Roland: You’ll have to forgive Sara.

                      Sara: Oh, it was just…a figure of speech. I’ve been on a plane

                               for twelve hours with a crying baby.

 

     Drink orders, soon after, demonstrate the flat jokes of Martin’s Los Angeles satire:

 

                      Tom: I'll have a decaf coffee.

                      Trudi: I'll have a decaf espresso.

                      Morris Frost: I'll have a double decaf cappuccino.

                      Ted: Give me decaffeinated coffee ice cream.

                      Harris: I'll have a half double decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon.

                      Trudi:  I'll have a twist of lemon.

                      Tom: I'll have a twist of lemon.

                      Morris: I'll have a twist of lemon.

                      Cynthia: I'll have a twist of lemon.

     The story that follows, filled with a talking freeway sign, a hilariously empty-minded, Venice-inspired L. A. stereotype, SanDeE* (rambunctiously celebrated by Sarah Jessica Parker) whom Telemacher meets at a clothing store, and numerous cameo roles by other comedians and other actors (Chevy Chase, Woody Harrelson, Paula Abdul, Martin Lawrence, Rick Moranis, Terry Jones, John Lithgow and Scott Bakula among them) matter only as distractions to his growing infatuation with the tuba-playing journalist Sara.

     Just as in most of L.A. films featuring rebels, Sara is a true eccentric in a world of innate outsiders who define themselves most notably by trying to “fit in,” parroting the inanity of a culture that has few true insiders. A bit like Woody Allen, Martin scatters his Angelino snipes in all directions, including Telemacher’s attempt to get a reservation for the outrageously pricey restaurant, L’Idiot, where he is told he must wait days for a 5:30 dinner, and, after being questioned by a Maître’d, a banker, and others, is allowed only a few choices from the menu.

 

                      Harris: [calling the restaurant] Hello, L'Idiot? Yes, I'd like to

                                  make reservations for two for Friday. Saturday? Sunday?

                                  Ah good. Eight-thirty. Five-thirty or ten-thirty? Um,

                                  five-thirty. Visa...I'm a weatherman... yes, I'm on TV!

                                  Renting... I just sold a condo... yes, in this "soft market"...

                                  well, I don't see how that's any of your... the low fifties.

 

When Roland later suggests the same restaurant, he is able to obtain a reservation for the same night.     

     

     At moments, Martin actually reaches into the heart of the culture, suggesting the complexity and difficulty of mining a world that is so resplendently deserted.

 

            Harris: There's someone out there for everyone—even if you need

                        a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.

 

     Compared with those around them, the wacky weatherman and journalist are models of sanity, as they ridiculously attempt to hook up with the wrong people, the interfering and bag-pipe-loving freeway sign offering advice and moral insight. And why not? Hasn’t it been created to tell the masses what to do—to slow down, to take alternate routes?

     If Los Angeles is a paradise for outsiders—with little of permanence at its core ("Harris: Some of these buildings are over 20 years old.")—then it is natural that Harris and Sara were meant for one another, true Angelenos unable to fit into anyone’s definitions of whom they should love and how life should be lived.

    This is truly gentle satire from a satirist that we all know is quite capable of crashing through the set if need be. And I recall the later parts of this film as being shot in the light of glowing sunsets instead of the bright crystalline sun that oppresses the city almost every day of the year.

    The gay reference here is almost ephemeral and used to comic effect only to help establish Sara’s former husband is a closeted gay man—just the opposite of the mean-spirited and despicable AIDS reference to the villain of Eddie Murphy’s comic vehicle Beverly Hills Cop—which leaves Roland’s ex-wife open to Harris’ advances.

     While her ex pictures a handsome male for himself, Sara envisions Harris. And so do the two slightly confused individuals of this film fall into each other’s arms by film’s end.    

 

Los Angeles, June 8, 2012

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2012).

 

Christopher Münch | The Hours and Times / 1991, USA 1992

giving allowances

by Douglas Messerli

 

Christopher Münch (screenwriter and director) The Hours and Times / 1991, USA 1992

 

Christopher Münch’s 1991 black-and-white film about a weekend vacation to Barcelona with John Lennon and The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein is, like the other two “Beatles’ without Beatles’”

I have reviewed, a fantasy. Yet this one has a special poignancy, because it truly might have happened even in a slightly different form.

      Epstein (David Angus), a sophisticated, culturally acclimated gay man traveled with the gum-chewing Liverpoolean Lennon (Ian Hart) to Spain in 1963 for a few days, presumably to allow Lennon to get some rest and, just maybe, become a bit more worldly, since together, and least in this telling, they did visit several Gaudi sites, museums, and films.

      In The Hours and Times, the director toys with the possibility that the street-smart singer might have been somewhat curious, despite his own heterosexual marriage to Cynthia, about gay life. It wouldn’t be the first time that heterosexual men have toyed with and even explored the LGBTQ world. And Münch presents Lennon as a highly intelligent, if a bit course an uneducated man, who’s a tart wit, at times, and is most certainly curious about the world around him, even if he expresses utterly no interest in seeing Barcelona; for him it could have been any city in any country.

   The fact that he trailed along after the ascot-wearing Epstein into strange territory is highly intriguing, and Münch subtly steers his queer-friendly film around the possibilities, while making no claim to suggest that anything sexual between the two ever occurred.

     In fact, that is precisely what transforms this such an insightful work. The director saw it as a kind of exercise in thought, never expecting that such a movie would get any distribution or even receive permission to be shown. Rather amazingly, it won the Special Jury Recognition award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.

   During the flight to Barcelona Lennon flirts with a more-than-attentive stewardess, Marianne (Stephanie Pack) inviting her—despite Epstein’s discouragement—to visit him in his hotel when she returns to Barcelona two days later. After all, Lennon proclaims to his knowing management, you have to give me “allowances,” to which Epstein grumbles that is always what he always does.

     Yet when the two travelers actually do reach their hotel destination, Lennon brings up the subject of gay sex—Epstein’s sexuality being an open secret—suggesting that he sometimes thinks about trying gay sex but imagines it would be too painful.

     To diffuse the tension, Epstein suggests they play cards, and Lennon returns to his own room alone, receiving a call from his wife, whom he appears to treat quite badly despite her insistence that she misses him. Lennon seems to miss only his son, Julian, and hangs up mid-sentence.

    The next day Lennon actually suggests that Epstein take him to a gay bar. The bar, more a “gentleman’s club” than what we might today describe in the US as a gay bar, is almost empty at the hour, except for Quinones (Robin McDonald), a gay man who is married, a fact which Lennon finds intriguing. Quinones, clearly interested in Lennon, takes them back to his hotel room, but they soon leave, Epstein furious with Lennon’s flirtation, describing the man as a fascist and an anti-Semite, subtly apparent in the stranger’s questions and demeanor.

     Frustrated, Epstein goes to bed, but not before casually asking the hotel boy Miguel if he might perform oral sex. But when the boy queries him, Epstein proclaims he was just joking. Like Lennon, he receives a call from a domineering woman: his mother.

     During a tour through the city, Epstein encourages his protégé to speak about his relationship with Cynthia, but it is clear that Lennon is uncomfortable discussing such things.

     Returning to their rooms, Lennon is determined to take a bath while playing his harmonica. The manager enters the room, sitting on the edge of the tub before the musician asks him to scrub his back. As Epstein does so, Lennon unexpectedly begins to kiss him, and Epstein, totally encouraged by event, undresses and joins the Beatle performer in the tub. The kiss continues for a few moments before Lennon stands up and bolts.

     Lennon is what we call in the gay world a “come on,” a flirtatious being who will not/cannot carry through—the most frustrating of all people. Yet Lennon takes this even further, receiving a phone call from the returned Marianne, whom Lennon immediately invites up to his room, leaving Epstein to suffer alone again in bed.

     Yet even Marianne, amazingly intelligent and spunky, does not necessarily offer herself up to an easy “rape,” making that possibility political: “Our country rapes another country.” She also describes the musician as tormenting his manager.

     Yet she has brought a present for Lennon, a Little Richard record, a singer who Epstein had asked to lead for a Beatles’ concert the year before these events. Given Little Richard’s effeminate exaggerations, his choice of wearing make-up and other feminine clothing, and his fascination with voyeurism, it is another subtle reminder to Lennon that his macho behavior may not get him very far in this world. His evening with Marianne ends with a quiet dance to that record.

      The following day the singer and his manager turn the discussion to Epstein’s own life, who explains he was sent by his mother to Barcelona as a young man after he’d been robbed and blackmailed by a man he’d encountered in sex. And here the film seems to shift slightly as Epstein almost appears to ask for a date—even if it’s far into the future, 10 years from now, “no matter what you are doing.” Lennon agrees to think about it. It’s a little bit like the top of the Empire Building date in An Affair to Remember, and this fictitious Epstein even seems to hint of it when he later takes Lennon to his favorite roof-top place, revealing that he has loved their time together.

      In the very next scene, we see Lennon sleeping next to him in bed. Münch is not so much suggesting that the two have sexually “come together” so to speak, but that they have come to a kind of arrangement, a comprehension of their differences and desires. It is strange that when, as they have planned, on their final day they attend a bull fight, it is Epstein who is worried about whether or not Lennon might be too squeamish to watch, suggesting perhaps that the gentle soul here is Lennon not Epstein, who is a hearty man experienced in the pleasures and terrors of the universe.

      The above might simply sound like a recounting of the plot. But this film is about its details, in the negotiations such different people, who still admired and love one another, make with one another in order to get on. And it is almost a study in the torments of the sexual frames we put around ourselves and each other. In this case, both were seeking a kind of fluidity, even if they might never find it.

     In the context of the other two of the Beatles’ fantasias on which I focus—Across the Universe, and Yesterday—The Hours and Times is perhaps the most honest, and the nearest to The Beatles’ real world, however unknowable and insane that might have been.

 

Los Angeles, July 12, 2019

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2019).

Derek Jarman | Edward II / 1991

outrage

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ken Butler, Derek Jarman, and Stephen McBride (screenplay, based on the play by Christopher Marlowe), Derek Jarman (director) Edward II / 1991

 

Somewhat like his 1976 Sebastiane, Derek Jarman’s Edward II is a film about gay men who were martyred for their love. In both films the language used is from other times, the first presented in Latin, the second using the language of Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. And both of the movies juxtapose scenes of the period with postmodern intrusions, particularly in Edward, in which characters sometimes appear in Elizabethan garb, but just as often appear in modern suits and dresses. Furthermore, overlaying the Marlowe work are scenes of contemporary gay protestors and a singer (Annie Lennox) performing Cole Porter’s "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye." Yet, even with these clashes of purposeful anachronisms, there is something lean and spare about Jarman’s direction, allowing us to focus on the language itself.

     The film begins with the death of Edward’s father, and Edward (Steven Waddington) calling home his lover, Piers Gaveston (Andrew Tiernan) who has been banned from England by the Bishop of Winchester (Dudley Sutton) for his relationship with the then-Prince. Now, after being given several royal titles and full use of the exchequer, Gaveston tortures the Bishop with a mock sex orgy and targets various barons and other royals who long disdained him with imitative monkey-like gestures. He is a rather unlikeable fellow, whom only Edward loves because of his unequivocal love of the King.

     One of Gaveston’s most mocked targets is Isabella (Tilda Swinton), the wife Edward married in France, who hurries back to the castle and hopefully to her husband’s bed the moment he is crowned. Edward rejects her, while replacing her position in bed with his male lover.

     In revenge, Isabella joins up with the chief of the army’s forces, Mortimer (Nigel Terry) in the hope to agitate among the royals and citizens for the ouster of Gaveston and her return to the Edward’s favor.

     If, at first, their attempts to disrupt the homosexual relationship seem to fail, they ultimately get the barons, the bitter Bishop, and others to sign a document demanding Gaveston’s banishment once again. In order to retain his power, Edward is forced to sign, saying goodbye to his lover in the beautiful Porter ballad with a final dance, one of the most lovely and peaceful scenes in the film. Porter might have been proud.

     Isabella, who now hopes to regain her proper role, is rejected even more thoroughly by Edward, and in the hope of maintaining any power, allows Gaveston to return. But when this still has no effect, a bit like Sebastian’s Serveus, she plots Edward’s and Gaveston’s deaths.

     Returning to England, Gaveston and his friend Spencer (who apparently also shares the King’s and Gaveston’s love) the two outsiders are captured and tortured by the sadomasochistic Mortimer. When Edward’s brother Kent attempts to warn him of what is happening, he too is killed by Isabella. Edward is locked up, and we see a man arriving to kill him, presumably with an insertion of a hot iron poker into his ass, apparently so no one might perceive any outward bodily harm.

     We soon discover this has actually been Edward’s nightmare, and when his executioner actually does arrive, he simply kisses the King.

      If Isabella and Mortimer might now hope to enjoy their power-grab, it is short-lived. In the last scene of the film we see them both in metal cages, above which Isabella’s, child, Edward III, dances with his Walkman, dressed in his mother’s earrings, heels, and hat. The basically ignored child, who had perhaps seen too much of the palace intrigues, becomes, in this version, a “girl boy,” the moniker which Mortimer had attributed to Spencer. Although, in reality Edward III was more of a warrior and loyalist than a sexual rebel, he did rise to power at an early age to take the rule away from Mortimer and his minions.

      In Jarman’s version, accordingly, the gays win their freedom. It is interesting that the document the barons and Bishop sign for Gaveston’s banishment is dated 1991, the same date as this movie, described by many critics as an important document of queer film, only a year after gays had established Outrage, clips of which can be seen as supporters of Edward in this film. In that respect the film celebrates its own audacity and expression of gay rights, turning Edward’s reign to an expression of their own values.

      If Edward II is not as sumptuous and beautiful as Sebastiane and Caravaggio, it stands as the most straight-forward and Brechtian statements of Jarman’s beliefs. The Isle of Man rejected its sodomy laws only a year later. Three years after this film, the director sadly died of AIDS.

 

Los Angeles, July 8, 2018

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2018).

Osama Chami and Enrique Gimeno | Según Mateo (According to Mateo) / 2017

swallowing abuse

by Douglas Messerli

 

Osama Chami and Enrique Gimeno (screenwriters and directors) Según Mateo (According to Mateo) / 2017 [20 minutes]

 

Spanish writers and directors Osama Chami Enrique Gimeno, in least in their films, are fascinated with the dark corners of sex. Their later 2021 film, Young Diego, concerns implied and willful cannibalism. And the central character of this earlier work, According to Mateo, is clearly into pain and S&M.

     Mateo (Enrique Gimeno) and his lover Marc (Michaël Assié) return home from a club with a young man they have picked up, Luke (Joe Busk).

     At their apartment, Luke immediately spots a broken mirror on the floor, the pieces of which Mateo picks up, now hanging the frame by using a large butcher knife, it’s blade pointed towards him, as a hammer for the nail.

     The well-dressed Marc checks their drug trove, discovering that they are out, and calls his drug dealer Jon (Manuel Castillo Huber) for an immediate new delivery.

     But meanwhile, it appears, Mateo has been cut, both in his forehead, and more severely in his hand, which is bleeding. We can’t perceive whether the cuts had to do with the broken mirror and the knife, but Marc insists upon wrapping his hand in gauze while Luke holds it, the act leading to a kiss, and before it has even begun a threesome as Marc removes Luke’s and Mateo’s shirt, and then his own, the three moving off into the bed.

     Yet as soon as the three begin to have sex, Marc screams out that Mateo has bitten him, Mateo immediately jumping up and moving out of the room. A minute later we can already hear the sounds of lovemaking between Marc and Luke, as Mateo dresses and leaves the house.

      Downstairs, he discovers the drug dealer, ready to deliver, Mateo arguing that there’s no longer anyone upstairs and that he will pay for it. But Jon is skeptical and wants to deliver it himself, Mateo insisting that he take him anywhere, Jon finally relenting and taking him to his own home on his motor bike.

      There, Mateo discovers Jon’s collected of pinned and framed insects, that the man is a kind of self-taught entomologist, all of which might remind any regular movie-goer a bit of Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho, a man interested in animal taxidermy.

     Some of the pieces are purchased, Jon explains, but most of them were created my him. Jon poisons insects using ether on those who don’t fly and potassium cyanide on the flying ones, since they are so delicate. But you have to handle the latter carefully he observes. It you are around too long you can faint. Mateo is curious what will happen if you just smell it, Jon suggesting you just get sick.

      This leads Mateo to open up the bottle and take a sniff, moving over the sit on the couch. Jon, clearly worried about his guest’s state of mind, tells him to leave. But when Mateo makes to effort to move, commands him to stand. He moves over to him and drops his pants as Mateo, almost greedily, gives him a blow job.

      Finished, he commands Mateo to swallow it and leave.

     Once again, however, Mateo remains, even as Jon turns his back to him in returning to his killing, positioning, and framing of insects. When Jon turns back into the room, Mateo lays on the floor seemingly in preparation for the S&M like threats, scissors in hand, that Jon makes as he runs the flat blade of the small scissors down his chest. Finally, Mateo stops him when his hand and metal slips over his right gut, Mateo insisting it is the correct spot.

      Jon takes up the small scissors and stabs its point deeply into Mateo, the handsome young man now bleeding in several spots somewhat like a wounded Christ. When Jon is finished, helps Mateo  to put on his shirt and again turns away, clearly disgusted with the violence Mateo has invoked.

      Mateo stumbles out and walks back home, crawling into bed with Marc, now alone. Mateo calls out “Marc…”, the other answering “What?” The film goes dark with Mateo answering, “Nothing.”

     Theirs is clearly a relationship of nothings, centered it appears in an utter lack of communication. In the film’s introductory statement, Chami observes that Mateo “can’t feel anything if it’s not through pain,” but we are shown that, never told. Mateo and Jon, in their dance of death say very little and don’t bother to explain why their have taken up the roles of torturer and victim. It is clearly their natural roles in life.

      It is also rather apparent that Mateo’s desire for feeling has much to do with his lover Marc, who seems disinterested in his own companion, clearly on the lookout for new sexual thrills that young boys like Luke provide.

      Many an observer has been disgusted by the violent actions depicted in this work, but they are far less violent than most Hollywood action films and this film is certainly not near as graphic as many a commercial horror film. There is a kind of elegance, contrarily, in Chami and Gimeno’s images, a fin de siècle approach to eroticism and a moral justification for Mateo’s bloodletting as evidence of Marc’s obvious disdain of his bedmate. Writing in Gay Celluloid, Dave Hall summarizes the film as being “a work that makes for uncomfortable and at times painful viewing, as the narrative focuses on issues that culminate in the hurt one man feels; both emotionally and physically.”

 

Los Angeles, August 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).