Barry Gavin (video director) and Tim Avery (stage director) | Billy Budd / 1988 [video opera]

darkness, hate, and despair

 

by Douglas Messerli

 

E. M. Foster and Eric Crozier (libretto, based on the fiction by Herman Melville), Benjamin Britten (composer), Tim Avery (stage director), Barry Gavin (video director) Billy Budd / 1988 [video opera]

 

The English National Opera Orchestra and Chorus production of the opera Billy Budd of 1988, is quite different from the BBC Opera broadcast of 1966 with its open sets and above board actions and officer meetings.

    In Tim Avery’s version of this opera, the emphasis is almost entirely on the law, beginning with the Captain Vere of this production, Philip Langridge not in his library contemplating as in the earlier version in which he muses over the patriarchal laws and restrictions. The books in Tim Avery’s production appear in piles at an angular position as if it were a conveyer belt of the past that he must deal with, a symbolic reading that demand and, of course, justify, the death of anyone who challenges the situation; but it seems heavy-handed given the already lethargic and sorrowful condition of Vere. Langridge appears far leaner and more haggard than Peter Pears. In short, we see both in metaphor and in reality that this Vere has not well survived the years since his decision to destroy Billy. Vere’s justification of his acts here seem entirely empty and meaningless.

      In the work, moreover the books become even more oppressive as the opening chorus members themselves are seen with the books piled before them as we enter the world of their on-board oppression.

      On this ship there is no easy access between the lower deck where the sailors live and the above board world of the officers. They must scurry in an out of narrow slats that lead to the below deck- world much like rats. Even entry and exit is severely delimited in this world.

      The sailors, filmed in darkened and muted hues—this video is in color—are treated even more like bowing slaves than in the earlier BBC production. The oppression, as they sing the “O heave away” song becomes almost like something out of Verdi’s works involving bondage. This ship has none of the superficial legality of fairness that even Vere might have imagined, particularly when we realize they are in bondage not only to the iron batons of Claggart and his kind, but to the books themselves. The symbolism already far outweighs any possible realism in this operatic production. In a sense, Claggart becomes simply an evil personification of the system already at work, whether or not Vere is yet completely aware of it or not. It is the system that kills Billy in the end even more than Claggart or even the refusal to action of Captain Vere.

    Thomas Allen as Billy Budd arrives soon after with the other two impressed sailors, Claggart (Richard von Allan), who in this production looks a bit like how we might conceive death, finding the beautiful founding (a bit prettier than Peter Glossop in the earlier production) to be a “find in a thousand, a beauty, a jewel. The pearl of great price.” Von Allan’s Claggart is immediately ready to admit to his utter attraction to this young man, which, as we know, will be the undoing of Billy.

     But for a moment Billy Budd is “king of the birds, …king of the world!” As he gloriously climbs up the narrow stairs to the foretop singing out of his last boat and comrades, “Farewell to the rights o’ man!” which spells immediate danger to the officers of this ship which interpret such words immediately as being seditious.  

      Like the general quality of the production, however, even Allen’s glorious singing seems to be muted, tapped down before he can even enjoy the moment of his new placement among the hawks.

      Unfortunately, given the darkness and basically uninspired continuation of events. The terrible flogging of the boy leaves him unable to walk, while Claggart sings out “Let him crawl.” The cries of the boy, “I’m done for, I’m done for,” characterize this part of the film, sung in such deep darkness that we can hardly witness the actions.

      It is only with the arrival of the French ship and the failed attempt at attacks when this version of the opera seems to come to life, the color finally returns as all the military brass and the sailors are called on board and action might seem to bring their blood rushing into the bodies once again. In a glorious moment with the full cast on stage this opera suddenly seems to catch fire.

 

     The sailors dream of their own invigoration, they temporary freedom from the world of navel law as chaos seems to cling to the error. But alas, the clouds again hide the foreign ship, the calmness of order and law descends upon them, and even their excited cries are no longer heard as they are forced once again to scurry to the bowels of the ship to be called forward only for punishment and hard labor.

    The implications are that their only joy below is the company of their beautiful companion Billy. Even if they do not share his body, although the writing always opens itself up to the possibility, even his company, his beautiful singing, and simply his caring and benign mien gives there comfort and joy as opposed to the torture of Claggart and the others. In this version of Britten’s masterwork, Claggart does just look like death, he is death, the mirror of all of their fates. It is only natural, accordingly, that he should go after the fairest and purest of them all.

     Claggart’s horrific self-confession of his true vengeance against everything Budd stands for already declares the charming boy’s end:

 

                  “O beauty, o handsomeness, goodness

                   You are surely in my power tonight.

                   Nothing can defend you.”

 

     He knows that he will win, even if it means his own death. This is not just the vengeance of an evil man, this is pure hate speaking, the kind of political hate that underlines this world based on laws that have no longer taken into account just of what he sings: beauty, handsomeness, goodness—and as he might add “fairness and justice.” But, of course, those two elements lie ahead in Vere’s hands, and we quickly recognize what a true coward the imagined “Starry Vere” truly is.

     The weakness—as well as perhaps the strength—of Avery’s production is that nothing in Britten’s roiling score is left to the possibilities the music always seems to promise. The hanging of the beautiful Billy from the yardarm seems determined from the first chord of this dark opera.

     In this world there are no hawks, no stars. Billy is only a naïve dreamer. All is far too dark and determined.

 

Los Angeles, July 3, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026)    

Simon Shore | Get Real / 1998

it’s just sex

by Douglas Messerli

 

Patrick Wilde (screenplay, based on his play What’s Wrong with Angry?), Simon Shore (director) Get Real / 1998

 

 The plot of Simon Shore’s 1998 gay teenage comedy, Get Real, hardly does justice to its dramatic force. The story—where the young, highly intelligent, good-looking Steven Carter (Ben Silverstone) falls in love with the high school’s handsome star athlete, John Dixon (Brad Gorton), developing a relationship which ends badly when John cannot come to terms with his own sexuality and Steven comes out to the entire school—simply doesn’t convey the tenderness and wit of script and the poignancy of John Lunn’s musical score.

      Although the film certainly does play with stereotypes, particularly in its presentation of Steven’s fag-hag friend, Linda (Charlotte Brittain) and the mean-spirited sports-playing friends of John, the rest of the characters do not serve as types, even if at times, the unhappy Steven  perceives them as such. His mother and father, for instance, who cannot even imagine that their son might be gay, lovingly worry over him, and seem able to embrace the facts after his public coming out. And Steven’s school friends, with the exception of John’s bullying gang, appear to be open to having a gay classmate, even if the faculty refuses to print Steven’s open letter in the school paper. Steven himself, despite his adolescent anxieties, seems psychologically well-balanced, having evidently embraced his sexuality since the age of 11. As he, himself, expresses it, in declaring his sexual preference at the graduation ceremonies: “what’s the big deal about being gay? It’s just sex.”

      Yet, the numerous times I have watched this small film, tears well up and age old memories of the longing sexuality that lie beneath the feelings of a young gay person of Steven’s age as they surge forward.

     Perhaps it’s the simple beauty of the two male leads and the feeling that they should become a pair, but will never be able to remain together given John’s own fears of his social position—being a British work, class distinctions do very much also play a role in this work—makes one feel the injustice of the situation. Why don’t these boys have the right to openly share their love like the heterosexual characters do?

     For all the homophobia they fear, the boys are clearly not met with the community shunning one might expect in such a rural city. Sexual differences, it is clear, are not simply a matter of the prejudice of others but arise from inner fears of being different and its possible repercussions.

      The story makes that clear very early in the story when a handsome “bloke” that Steven has met at the local park toilet (the park and its toilet are the only place where young boys and men can go to share sex in the small town of Basingstoke) turns out to be married, with a baby. And in what we suspect will be his future tragedy, we also catch a glimpse of what, sadly, may later happen to John. As The New York Times reviewer Steven Holden summarized it: "The movie captures the excruciating paranoia of a situation in which there’s nowhere the lovers can be alone except in each other’s homes on the rare occasions their parents are out."

     But, in the end, it’s Shore’s direction that helps to make this work so engaging, accomplishing many little wonders like the scene in which the boys are dancing with women at a school dance, while staring into each other’s eyes; or, after having spent a night together in bed, John wakes up to find Steven downstairs cooking breakfast as he jocularly jests that his parents have returned and are waiting to meet his lover; or the scene in which John appears in   his backyard swimming pool as the mean-spirited Kevin, one of John’s teammates, comes running by at the very moment that Steven rises out of the pool, revealing that John is seated on his shoulders; or the painful late scene where we hear the cries of Steven as John is purportedly beating him to prove to his friends how much he hates the “puff,” which the camera soon after reveals is all an act, the boys actually about to hug.

   While both boys do share the angst of all the young men and women of their age, the movie somehow manages, in part because of Steven’s public outing of himself, to convey a very positive outcome. John will most certainly go on to Oxford, unhappily hiding his sexuality until he comes to accept it; but Steven, it is clear, will go on to a brilliant life and career, free of self-hate.

     In real life, the actor Silverstone, after other movies and work in television, went on to Cambridge University and now works as a barrister in London.

    Finally, I need mention that along with Hettie Macdonald’s Beautiful Thing of 1996 and David Moreton’s Edge of Seventeen which appeared the same year as Get Real, these films represent the very first true “coming out films” in the new pattern I have described as variation B, where the queer males did not suffer in silence on narrow beds, but openly shared their homosexuality with family and friends, even if it often resulted in pain. These films represented a whole new pattern of sexual coming of age which was still being imitated in 2025 when these volumes to come to a close.

     

Los Angeles, June 10, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2016).

Tommy O’Haver | Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss / 1998

interesting and funny homosexuals

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tommy O’Haver (screenwriter and director) Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss / 1998

 

Roger Ebert’s 1998 review of Tommy O’Haver’s film Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss begins:

 

“We wouldn't be fascinated by a routine Hollywood love story simply because the leading characters were heterosexual; we'd want them to be something else besides, like interesting or funny. The same standard isn't always applied to gay-themed movies, which sometimes seem to be based on the idea that gayness itself is enough to make a character interesting. It isn't, and the best recent movies with gay characters (High Art and The Opposite of Sex) have demonstrated that.

     Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss seems besotted by its sexuality, and wouldn't be able to pass this test: Would the film be interesting if it were about heteros? The story involves Billy (Sean P. Hayes), who announces at the outset, ‘My name is Billy, and I am a homosexual’ ....Billy tells us he grew up in Indiana (montage of old snapshots of tousle-headed lad squinting into camera), and now lives in Los Angeles, where he rooms platonically with a gal-pal named George, for Georgiana (Meredith Scott Lynn).”

 

     Over the years Ebert has often written very sensitively about LGBTQ films, and at some level his criticisms of O’Haver’s film are correct; but I might mention that both the films he names as examples of more complex gay-centered works of that period (1997-98) basically concern a number of figures unsure of their sexual orientation or hiding from the reality of it. And more importantly, if I were to ask him about how many successful films which were made “simply because the characters were heterosexual,” I should imagine he might have had to name so many thousands that he would have quickly abandoned the task. Whereas, I can at least aspire to watch all of the LGBTQ films made in cinema history, and the vast majority of those works are very much about gay, lesbian, and bisexual figures who struggled not to be identified as being anything other than heterosexual. How few of the major figures in LGBTQ films might even today blithely announce in the very first frames, “My name is Billy, and I am a homosexual,” even that sounding every bit like the truth demanded by those who participate in Alcoholics Anonymous, something expressed more out of guilty truth-telling than pleasure and joy.

    I can tell you that in 1998 such a statement still seemed somewhat revolutionary, and yes as a gay man I very much was interested in finding out more about Billy Collier simply because he was homosexual.

     The trouble is that we don’t find out that much more about the charming Billy played by Hayes. Although everyone in Billy’s world seems to know the Polaroid photographer quite well (one joyfully greeting him wherever he seems to go), we learn only that he wants a more serious and long-lasting relationship than the one he is currently in with Fernando (Armando Valdes-Kennedy), apparently a very good lover, but who is also in an open relationship with another, the two of them encouraging Billy even to join them in a threesome. Billy may be sure of his sexuality, but he is still a product of birth state Indiana when it comes to exploring polyamorous relationships. Such things weren’t even talked about much in 1998.

      We also soon discover that Billy has a very special friendship Georgiana (George)—a straight girl in love with the straightest of the straight, Andrew (Christopher Bradley)—who performs the important role for Billy that used to be described as a “fag hag,” a female best friend who loves a gay boy so much she’ll do nearly anything for him. And we soon discover that Billy has another good pal in a slightly older man, Perry (Richard Ganoung), a successful photographer who is even willing to play producer for Billy’s next project in which the broke cameraman hopes to recreate iconic screen kisses, snapped as Polaroid snapshots, using drag queens as the females and a cute new boy he’s just met in a coffee shop, Gabriel (Brad Rowe) as the male in iconic scenes such as Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr smooching in the returning tide in From Here to Eternity.

     And finally, we do realize that Billy has suddenly fallen head over heels in love—yes, even he would use such a worn-out cliché to describe it, and in his dreams performs a dance with him in manner of Fred Astaire—for Gabriel. Indeed, Billy is not truly the major character of this film, since the romantic Polaroid-carrying dreamer spends the rest of the film trying to determine whether or not Gabriel is straight or gay, and if he might be gay or even if he might become gay, whether Gabriel might be sexually interested in him.

      Such concerns may certainly not be of much interest to heterosexual audiences, but I can tell you they are of immense importance to LGBTQ people looking for someone to love or simply be with like themselves in a world in which there simply aren’t as many candidates as there are for heterosexual men and women.

       Gabriel, moreover, we gradually perceive is what LGBTQ people refer to as a “tease.” He keeps talking about his girlfriend back in San Francisco while dropping whole necklaces of pearls that he might like Billy and other boys, at one point even being willing to share a late night bed and a bit of petting until he decides he isn’t. Is the beautiful blonde-haired Brad Pitt stand-in toying with Billy or just having difficulty coming out? These are the questions about which Billy and his movie obsesses.

        It doesn’t help even if all those around him, including his best friends George and Perry insist he stop “projecting,” that he give up imagining that all cute boys might be gay. That, however, simply comes with the territory of a romantic homosexual still playing with a childhood toy camera  bought for him by a doting mother as a substitute for his being uninvited to a childhood friend’s birthday party after openly telling him that better than Playboy he liked magazines which showed naked men!

      His interest in Gabriel strangely helps the cute kid to hook up with another, far more successful photographer of male underwear ads, Rex Webster (the permanently over-the-top performer Paul Bartel), his giggling and fawning friend, and another figure at Webster’s art opening, Holly (Holly Woodlawn) who together take Gabriel into seemingly new territory.

       Ultimately, once Billy has finished his shoot, all paths lead to Catalina where Webster has taken Billy and a bevy of other briefly clad boys to shoot them in their skivvies, obviously hoping to draw one of them, preferably that angelic blonde into his bed.

        I certainly agree that this isn’t the most profound exploration of the gay scene, particularly since O’Haver’s world seems to be about as deep as Billy’s Hollywood memorabilia and a Calvin Klein wiene roast, but then that’s the way things always seem to be in Catalina, itself a gigantic tourist photo spread the locals have whipped up to lure in tourists.

      Georgiana, having broken up with the brain-starved Andrew gets an easy fuck from of a permanently drugged-out paramour, Gundy (Carmine D. Giovinazzo), the brother of her and Billy’s lesbian friend; Gabriel finds what he has known he was “supposed to want” all along, the love of or at least sex with another pretty underwear model; and Billy gets, well terribly heartbroken of course, going so far as to toss away his camera into the waves. But Georgiana realizes, when she can’t rid herself of Gundy, that she really loves Andrew. And Billy, after talking about his broken heart with Perry, finally gets his very own Hollywood kiss—from none other than Perry who explains that he too once had his heart set on a new young boy in town who wanted nothing to do with him, a kid from Indiana named Billy. And Gabriel...well, only time will tell.

     Meanwhile Billy’s new photo show is a big hit, several of his new works being purchased by Rex Webster himself—probably, one can imagine, as mock-ups for his next underwear shoot. And Billy finds himself a fresh new boy in town, Joshua (Robbie Cain) who deeply admires the “master’s” great art.

      I’d say that as a satire of gay love with a picture postcard vision of Hollywood, O’Haver’s movie ain’t that awful. And certainly it’s a good deal better than a dozen or so other heterosexual comedies that year which demonstrated the male’s obsession with an unobtainable woman, the subject also, incidentally—a far more profound 1998 movie, I’ll grant—of Shakespeare in Love, and in which great ado was also made about the sex orientation of the central characters.

      And finally, let me add, I do find Billy not only “interesting” but very “funny.”

 

Los Angeles, May 9, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2022).