Jenifer Malmqvist | Födelsedag (Birthday) / 2009

justifiable hurts

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jenifer Malmqvist (screenwriter and director) Födelsedag (Birthday) / 2009 [18 minutes]

 

It is Katarina’s (Lotten Roos) birthday, and her lesbian lover, Sara (Åsa Karlin) encourages her to sleep in, while she runs off to make sure of the birthday cake, carry the new canoe she crafted just for her birthday to their house, and make sure the company who she has have invited, particularly Fredrik (August Lindmark), arrive on time. And there’s her own daughter Johanna (Liva Leijnse Elkjær) to look after.

     Fredrik is particularly important since he to be the surrogate father of the new child Katarina is attempting to conceive, and Sara also arrives with a large package of new syringes for the transfer of sperm.

    Everything appears to be perfect. But by the time she arrives back at the house with Johanna and Fredrik in tow, she is in for a few surprises herself.

    First of all, Katarina reveals that on one of their evenings of attempting to inseminate her, after Fredrik being unable to successfully masturbate, she and he had old-fashioned sex on the couch, and now she is pregnant, having just had it confirmed by the doctor the other day.

     Sara is astounded, stunned.

     Several responders to this film, surely younger viewers, couldn’t believe how petty Sara is about the situation, how unfounded her anger seems to be (she tosses the birthday cake, face up into their bed). But I can fully empathize with her. Not only has Katarina not told her the news, has kept secret important information that involves both of them, but has gone outside of their own lesbian relationship to have carnal sex with a male. Moreover, when Sara asks what they should tell Johanna—who as a young intelligent girl, has invested a great deal of energy in the possibility of her new sibling—Katarina argues that they shouldn’t tell her.

     Perhaps if they had discussed the matter ahead of time, or Katarina had explained immediately afterwords, but now, so long after the fact, having even kept her pregnancy a secret, Sara feels betrayed, and even worse, as the festivities begin and a local band comes to serenade her lover, she spots Katarina in the window kissing Fredrik.

     Is it any wonder that Sara pulls out a bottle of wine, drives down to the seashore with the boat on top and begins to heavily imbibe. When her daughter arrives to check up on her, Sara tells her the truth about the situation, this time without consulting with her companion. Johanna simply seems please that her other mother is now pregnant.

      When the party group trails down to the sea for the special unveiling of the boat, Sara, somewhat drunkenly, pours out a glass to toast the new vessel. But Katarina mocks the fact that her lover has built her a canoe. Canoes are for rivers and lakes. You need a kayak in the ocean she insists. And instead of throwing a bit of wine or breaking the bottle of champagne against its hull, she enters the canoe, pulls down her pants, and pisses into it.

     Everyone is a bit shocked at this point, and the two lovers seem destined for some difficult times ahead. Sara’s answer is to crawl into the canoe and set herself afloat. Johanna calls after her mother that she has forgotten to wear her life vest, and soon after Sara discovers the girl attempting to swim out with the vest to great her, while having a great difficulty in keeping herself from drowning. Sara pulls out the paddle and rushes to her rescue, dragging her into the canoe.

     Together the two return home wet, Sara perhaps finally ready to confront Katharina for her behavior. But Katharina seems oblivious, hanging sheets out on the clothes line and wondering why they both are so disheveled.

     Sara is nearly speechless, and as she looks over to see the windchime her daughter has created

of empty inseminating tubes, she can only laugh and cry as the two hug and make up. After all, Katharina is now pregnant and they shall soon have another baby to care for together, Fredrik or no Fredrik. Theirs is clearly a permanent relationship of love despite their petty—and sometimes not so petty—hurts.

      As I mentioned in the earlier discussion in this volume of Jenifer Malmqvist’s At the End of the Street (2007), the director studied film in Lodz. While the former film was in Polish, however, this one is in Swedish and is co-sponsored by organizations both in Poland and the Netherlands. It was filmed in England.

 

Los Angeles, January 15, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

 

Kristian Mercado | Miami Nights / 2020

the time is not now

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kristian Mercado (director), Hannibal Buress (performer) Miami Nights / 2020 [taped performance]

 

Stand-up comedian, comic writer, and actor Hannibal Buress’ 2019 performance before a live audience, Miami Nights, is now being broadcast free on YouTube, in part because of the Covid-19 epidemic. It’s a gift that everyone should take the opportunity to see before it disappears.

     The very variety of Buress’ previous works on The Eric Andre Show, his briefer appearances on the talk shows of Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and others, as well as his own comedy shows and albums (Hannibal Buress Live from Chicago and Animal Furnace)  and a brief stint at writing for Saturday Night Live, has brought him a great deal of attention, but as he jokes, not enough to gain him universal celebrity. When people seem to recognize him, he generally responds, “I get that all the time,” and merrily walks his way down the streets without the adulation which he feels might hinder his life.

      Soon after, he quips that twice a year he is asked to host a game show, answering in a god-like voice with a projection-screen fire raging behind him: THE PROPHECY WILL BE FULLFILLED, BUT THE TIME IS NOT NOW. Indeed, Buress’ new work is about doing things at “the right time” in a world in which he and others can simply survive.

       He admits to the audience that he has stopped drinking (“I want to choose the way I die,” he insists.) Preferably he would like to die from a rare disease that bears his own name “like Lou Gehrig Disease,” he jokes.

       His asthma, and the lack of his friends’ appreciation for the seriousness of the problem is the subject of another short series of amusements.

       As for the time to die, just like hosting another game show, a year in which thousands are dying from the pandemic and George Floyd and others have been killed by police is not the right time to go, he warily suggests, leading into the two major skits of the evening.

       The first involves his arrival in Nashville, where the moment he enters a taxicab, the driver tells him that he can’t play his instrument in the cab. Having said nothing about playing an instrument or even carrying a case in which he might be hiding one, the comedian is a bit confused.

      Without further ado, the driver reports that he had a passenger who played Kanye West the other day and kept singing his song “Nigger man, Nigger man, Nigger man.”

     Buress was quite astounded; “yes, Kanye sometimes uses the first syllable “Nig” throughout his work, but has lots of words in between and doesn’t lay into the final r the way you did just now”; “I was thinking maybe I missed something on his first album College Dropout?” 

        He looks it up on his cell-phone. No such title appears, he reports to the cabbie. As the conversation continues, Buress begins to wonder is this a new form of racism. Do a group of cabdrivers meet monthly to ponder how they might enter into bigoted conversation without seeming to be explicitly stating their racist sentiments?

       Soon after he begins an even longer retelling of his now famous arrest in Miami for disorderly conduct and drunken behavior. The comedian admits that he, having no food and water to accompany them, had far too many drinks: “How many drinks did I have? I don’t know. How many albums does Snoop Dogg have? (His audience laughs.) You don’t know either, you only know it’s more than 10 and less than 30.”

       Realizing, however, that he was in bad shape, Buress left the bar and in front of a large mansion which was evidently hosting a Basel Miami art party asks a cop if he will call him an Uber, since the comedian has lost his cellphone, offering the pay him an extra $20.

       The policeman, presuming he was one of the party guests, orders him off the street, the logic of which makes utterly no sense to our drunken friend. To “get it together” he retreats to another bar with the cop behind him, now insisting that Buress has to leave the bar because of his condition.

        Clearly that leaves the performer in a difficult position in which he is seemingly trapped in a no-man’s land where he is not permitted inside nor outside, a kind of catch-22 situation from which there can be no escape.

     Given the recent events surrounding Floyd’s meaningless death and the several others killed similarly by police that have been brought to light through the “Black Lives Matter” protests, however, Buress’ situation is even more troubling. As Alexandra Schwartz writes in The New Yorker:

 

…Mortality is also on his mind. ….”I want

 my own way of dying.” he says. It’s a joke

about ego, but the unspoken subtext—about

the precise way in which a Black man in America

does not want to die—hangs in the air, to be

picked up in the story that the act has been

building toward….

 

His solution is to return to where he discovers the cop once more, speaking directly into the man’s body camera: “Hey, what’s up, it’s me, Hannibal Buress. This cop’s stupid as fuck.”

      Buress, himself, admits it was probably not the best thing to say—despite it being absolutely legal—to a clearly riled-up man in blue. And the drunken performer recalls using even choicer language to describe and agitate the man who arrested him when they later reach the police station where the coper takes him, all of which might have been prevented if the cop might have simply taken the action of calling an Uber. Yet, putting his name directly into the body cam was probably the best way to put the incident on the record, possibly also preventing the now nervous law enforcer from taking a more private action.

       Buress’ case (with the help of a lawyer named Bieber) was thrown out along with a fine and the requirement to attend a day’s session about the evils of inebriation, during which, despite his best attempts, Buress was recognized by fellow attendees.  

      The cop, it turns out, was one of those who police chiefs mistakenly, in an act of ablution of their kind, describe as “a bad apple.” One of the many headlines from Miami newspapers describes the potential violence that the comedian might have faced that night:

 

Miami Cop Who Arrested Hannibal Buress

Caught Choking Man After Fireball Binge

 

      For those of you who might not know what a Fireball Binge is, I’ll provide a definition: Fireball is a cinnamon flavored whisky manufactured by the Sazerac Company of New Orleans. The company itself describes the 33% alcohol liquid: “If you haven't tried it yet, just imagine what it feels like to stand face-to-face with a fire-breathing dragon who just ate a whisky barrel full of spicy cinnamon. Live it, love it, shoot it – what happens next is up to you.”

     My Webster’s New World Dictionary identifies the word “binge” as “a drunken celebration or spree.”

 

Los Angeles, August 9, 2020

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (August 2020).Hannibal Buress (performer), Kristian Mercado 

Robby Kendall | (Un)Free Will / 2024

down with angels, bring back the putti

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robby Kendall (screenwriter and director) (Un)Free Will / 2024 [24 minutes]

 

Having grown up to be a good non-believing son, I put little faith in angels and in particular guardian angels, although they pop up in popular films at regular intervals. Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) (and its remake Heaven Can Wait of 1978), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Bishop’s Wife (1947), and Carousel (1956) are just a few of the films that feature those “heavenly” creatures.

      It’s hard to hate an angel when it’s Cary Grant, but I even found him to be a meddlesome creature, as lovely as his chaste romance with Loretta Young was. But in the recent short film by Robby Kendall, I felt the two meddling gay guardians absolutely detestable. In their previous lives, we’re supposed to believe, they were a quarrelling couple and now they’ve been assigned two young gay men, apparently as different as they were in their own life times.

      Hunter (Gavyn Michaels) is a handsome, immaculate, hardworking businessman, as waspy as they come, his prissy guardian TJ Wright III (Derek DeVault) as nasty and mean as any old prom queen, while Alex (Ross Hutter) is an unshaven slob of a human being, looked after by his fully frustrated angel Joey Mcgee (Brent Roberts).

      How the two central figures have come together is never quite explained, but in this film Hunter arrives to deliver up his dog for Alex to look after while he is away on a two-week business trip.

       Somehow, we’re supposed to believe, like a gay version of Felix and Oscar in The Odd Couple, these two polar opposites enjoy one another despite their radical differences. In fact, at moments it appears almost as if they might become a couple, except that Hunter’s guardian, like some wealthy maiden aunt is determined to see that his boy never mixes with the lowlife, pizza eating, and video playing wreck for whom Hunter seems to hanker after.

      As they begin an intense pre-flight conversation, the intrusive guardian TJ sets Hunter’s cellphone a-ring in order to interrupt their conversation, and although Hunter promises to call Alex, TJ does his best to make sure that the signal never properly functions.

      Meanwhile, Alex’s guardian sets him on a three-day course in order to teach him better habits of house-cleaning, scheduling, and personal hygiene that might make him the perfect match for Hunter. In fact, it seems to work and the slob almost appears presentable upon Hunter’s return.

      In his absence, moreover, Hunter has done a lot of thinking, and realizes that he would like to get to know Alex better, asking him out on a date.

      But somewhere in the back of his empty mind, Alex evidently has also held some private thoughts, and realizes that although he has worked hard to be the kind of guy who Hunter might like, he’s not really being true to himself. What self that is, it’s hard to imagine, but we have it played out when, after turning down Hunter’s gracious invitation, he turns back to his video game. Does he even have a job?

      Hunter is given the time before he’s shuttled out the door to say that he envies Alex. Alex, he argues has a choice in who and what he wants to be and do, while his behavior is all predetermined by his wealthy father, his whole life having been an attempt to please the nasty old man. Just as controlling, TJ hurries him off the set, while Alex settles down for an absolutely stupid night of pushing the video controls until his fingers freeze up.

      The credits suggest to stay tuned for further episodes, but frankly who could ever care about Alex? Or for the hard-driven Hunter for that matter? Let alone bear with any further adventures of their angelic controls? A gay Felix and Oscar makes perfect sense, although I never liked either of the central characters of that play, film, and TV series enough to really care about them either. But angels fussing around the edges of Hunter’s and Alex’ lives? Forget it! Bring back the dirty-little putti and throw them some grapes.

 

Los Angeles, January 14, 2025 / Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

Tim Sullivan | I Was a Teenage Werebear / 2011

when love bites you on the ass

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tim Sullivan (screenwriter and director), Patrick Copeland (music) I Was a Teenage Werebear / 2011 [30 minutes]

 

Poor cute boy Ricky O’Reily (Sean Paul Lockhart) is being chased by Peggy Lou (Gabrielle West) and can’t quite escape her attentions. This spoof begins with a rocking SUV in which Ricky in his

red tighties is being almost literally attacked by the octopi-like grabbing Peggy Lou, in only her bra and panties, trying to get fully under covers and into the sexual paradise.

      They’re interrupted by his father and little brother, the father delighted with his son’s seeming sexual activities, particularly since he’s been previously so reluctant. Ricky assures the leering parent, however, that “nothing happened.” And as far as Peggy Lou’s concerned, that’s just the problem. Every time they’re together, she observes her boyfriend looking at the other boys playing on the beach, and sings a ballad to help cure him: “Don’t Look Away.” But Ricky sings in response:

 

“Baby give me some time

  So I can make up my mind

  Just know that it isn’t you

  These feelings make me so blue.

 

  I’m trying real hard to find

  The one that makes me feel right

  Til then I guess that it’s you

  That’s just the best I can do.

 

  So I’ll look away, baby

  Guess, I’ll look away.”

      Clearly he’s got mixed feelings.

     And just at the moment his eyes are looking quite away from his supposed girlfriend as Talon and his twin duo show up. Talon takes Ricky’s hand and pulls him away at the very moment that Butch (Adam Robitel) speeds into the scene, running down Peggy Lou, her brains, what she had of them, splattered half way across her face. Butch is not at all sympathetic to either Peggy Lou or Ricky, who accuses the latter of playing with the boy’s balls instead playing ball with the boys. Butch threatens to see Ricky in class.

      Ricky turns to see if he can help Peggy Lou as Talon and his friends, Dan (Chris Staviski) and Den (John McCormick) walk off.

      So begins the quite hilarious Tim Sullivan drive-in movie horror tale spoof, I Was a Teenage Wearbear, one of the short cinema delights of LGBTQ films in the second decade of the 21st century.

      A kind of gypsy nurse, Nurse Maleva (Lin Shaye) suddenly appears to care for Peggy Lou, the gypsy assuring him she’ll be okay, but Ricky’s look away has suddenly focused on something else as he sees Talon and imagines himself and his new love suddenly romping on the beach, the gypsy cursing and shooing away the very object of Ricky’s desires. She recognizes him as a beast!

      At the local teen cheerleading rally and beach wrestling competition, meanwhile, Ricky pins Butch, and Talon appears to take on Ricky, in the process biting him the butt, which, of course, turns him soon thereafter into a fellow werebear.

      This tale certainly has it right, the werewolves of many a horror film were most definitely code for the outsider gays of the stories as I have made clear in the late 1940s and 1950s volumes. Here it’s made quite apparent that a werebear is a gay boy, Ricky now having fallen completely under the sway of leatherboy Talon.

      And already, as Ricky sings, he’s got a feeling that he’s going explode, wondering just much longer does he have hold on to his load. “OOOOh what do I do? I really gotta purge this urge.” “The time is comin’,” he continues, “when I gotta choose. There’s no more hidin,’ no more playin’ by the boss man’s rules.” Now only in his jockstrap, Ricky dances out his recognition that he’s got to “purge the urge.”

      Coach Tuffman (Tim Sullivan) has overheard Ricky’s plea, and takes him into his office for a discussion. Ricky explains that he’s been told to be true to himself, and he tries to be, but sometimes he gets these urges, some of them seemingly “the wrong kind” of urges. Tuffman confesses that he too gets these urges as he watches the boys showering, and suddenly the coach is between Ricky’s thighs ready to do something for him, he promises, that his wife will never do. It’s at that moment, however, when Ricky realizes his new found strength, squashing coach’s head between his legs, blood spurting everywhere, eyeballs popping. Ricky is now a murderer.

      Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending upon how you see it—Talon and his boys show up to help him clean up Coach Tuffman, Ricky realizing suddenly that his new-found powers have to do with Talon’s bite in the ass.

    But just when they’re finished, the Coach, Butch and his gang appear and seeing the two boys together he is out to prove a lesson to the pansy boys. Butch pulls down his pants presumably to fuck Talon.

    We know immediately where this will end. Talon turns into a true werebear and he and his duo turn the room into a blood bath.

      But this time Ricky doesn’t join in, and he doesn’t turn into a werebear. “I’m not like any of you,” he insists. Poor Ricky, between a rock and a hard place surely. In only his jock, Ricky runs to Nurse Maleya to beg for her help, telling her that Talon and the twins are not “just different,” she interrupts him “they’re werebears.” She explains: “Where I come from there is an old saying. Even a boy who thinks he’s straight, but shaves his balls by night, may become a werebear in the hormone’s rage and the latent urge takes flight.”

      Where can Ricky turn? Peggy Lou is now a drooling idiot (just as perhaps she has long been inside). When Ricky gets a hard-on for a picture of a muscle-man that Maleya produces, he knows that he is truly now a werebear, even though Peggy Lou is convinced he’s just a homo.

       Ricky hurries back to his van, where he finds Talon waiting, ready for sex. But Ricky refuses, saying Talon has done this to him, Talon insisting it is beast in himself, and sings “Love Bit Me on the ass” with the twins as backups, finally our cutey Ricky joining in:

 

                  Love, love bit me on the ass,

                  Bit me deep down too.

                  Love bit on the ass,

                  But I’m in no way like you.

 

                  I may be quite different,

                  But I am not a beast.

                  I just want to cuddle

                  And you just want a piece.

 

    Nonetheless, the lovely Ricky also turns into a flabby, hairy-faced monster just like Talon. Talon tells him to meet him down at the luau where they plan a bloodbath for all the slights they’ve received. But even now Ricky refuses to join in, arguing that’s now the way you gain acceptance. Talon knocks him out.

     At the luau the lead singer performs “Sexy Waves.” But the next up in Talon and his gang, who sing “Do the Werebear,” the entire remainder of the class dancing agreeably along.

     Ricky shows up just in time, masturbates until he too turns into a werebear again and challenges Talon, but fails. Maleva knows just what to do. With the metal bat Ricky has brought she jabs it up the asses of the twins which immediately turns them back into dead human beings. She hands the baton to Ricky he jambs it up Talon’s but three times, falling him, Talon admitting there should have been more like him, as Rich holds him in a position that can only remind one of James Dean’s Jim Stark held Sal Mineo’s Plato at the end of Rebel without a Cause.

    Ricky sings a song just for Talon, a pean to gay life that Talon and his duo weren’t able to realize: “There’s Room for All.”

 

     “I dig bananas, and you dig pears.”

       Just because we’re different, there should no squares.

 

      Grab girl or grab your buddy, whichever way you play.

      Come on let’s face it, everybody’s gay.”

 

    In the end, accordingly—at least California—love is open to everybody. But what about the venom left in Ricky’s system by Talon’s bite? Next time he gets aroused by a passing lad, will he safely remain in his cute red tighties or jock strap or go wild in a leather strap.

 

Los Angeles, January 13, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).