two out of twenty
by Douglas Messerli
Leslie Stewart (screenwriter), Roger Tonge
(director) Two of Us / 1987, 1988 (re-release with new ending), 2004 USA
That Roger Tonge’s Two
of Us was ever produced seems almost inconceivable to a US viewer. Imagine
if the United States had a governmental channel such as the British
Broadcasting Corporation—for example something like a television production
wing of the National Endowment for the Arts—whose executive producer, disturbed
by President Ronald Reagan’s response to the AIDS crisis, decided to produce a
film about a teenage gay couple who, having contracted AIDS, were about to die
because of the President’s refusal to release funds for AIDS research. Or, if
that seems too much of a frontal attack to Reagan himself, what if someone in
such a governmentally connected program decided to
write a script aimed especially at high school students wherein two 16 year old
Indiana high school swimmers, finding themselves attracted to one another and
being bullied and mocked by their peers, decided to run off together to
California where they live near the beach, sometimes sharing their tent with a
runaway girl, thoroughly enjoying one each other’s company, with the boys
managing to elude the police and living happily together until they came of age.
And just for fun, the director decides to change the time period to the 1950s,
when consensual sex between homosexuals was still against the law. What are the
chances of such a movie being made in 1987 or 1988?*
I
can assure you that such a film would not only been rejected out of hand, but
that no US citizen would possibly have been so fool-hardy to create or propose
such a work to such an institution. Indeed, as we know, no such institution
even existed in the US.
Yet
in Great Britain, playwright and screenwriter Leslie Stewart not only wrote a
work aimed at young adults, but she found a willing director in Roger Tonge,
who since the late 1960s had directed and produced the BBC series Scene, a mix
of documentaries, dramas, and family-oriented works directed toward high school
and college students.
In
their film the high school junior Phil (Lee Whitlock) is going steady with his
girlfriend Sharon (Jenny Jay) who like many a high school sweetheart demands
his total attention. Phil is a popular student on the school swimming team. But
somehow he has remained friends with Matthew (Jason Rush), previously a school
swimmer who dropped out of school for his senior year because of the continual
bullying he received from fellow classmates for his apparently open expression
of being gay.
Even Sharon’s friend Vera (Kathy Burke), despite her belief that Matthew
might be the man of her dreams, perceives that Matthew and Phil’s friendship is
a strong one that often pulls him away from Sharon just at the moment she wants
him to join her in extracurricular activities or to just show off her
“conquest” to her friends. Certainly, anyone who perceives Phil’s gentle
sensitivity realizes almost immediately that the gum-chewing, constantly
chip-consuming Sharon is not the right girl for him.
Early in the film we observe Phil’s and Matthew’s camaraderie and the
movement of the eyes as they shower together after a swim. Phil is almost ready
to dump his girlfriend any time Matthew calls, yet he has no understanding of
why he is drawn to his male friend and no comprehension of how to define that
admiration and deep devotion.
One
day in school, however, when a teacher attempts to bring up the issue of
homosexuality in the classroom, things quickly get out of hand as Phil’s
homophobic classmates begin to throw epithets out one by one to show their
disgust of faggot perverts as the teacher attempts to regain the conversation
by also noting that, first, homosexuality is against the law, and secondly,
statistics suggest that 1 out of every 10 individuals will eventually seek out
a same-sex relationship. Before he can get his students to think carefully,
given their homophobic preconceptions, one particularly nervous kid jumps up
demanding which two out of his 20 fellow classmates are gay. The teacher,
eventually quieting him, begins to read a letter from a gay person expressing
the difficulties he has had in being coming to terms with his sexuality. But
before anyone but a few sympathetic girls can react, the classroom bell rings
determining the end of possible insights about non-normative sex.
Clearly something has hit home for Phil, who stays after for a moment to
talk with the teacher. The instructor, however, is busy, having to babysit his
daughter so he doesn’t have the time for a chat. But it is clear that the
question behind the boy’s tentative attempt to communicate is related to the
same kinds of question that the hero of the American CBS School Break special
of the same year asks in What If I’m Gay? He too seeks out the advice of
a school advisor without much success.
Fearful about what his attraction to
Matthew portends and attentive to the growing suspicions of Sharon, Phil
attempts to steer clear for a while of his boyfriend. But watching him make a
perfect high dive into the pool pulls him back
into his friend’s orbit. After a first kissing session in the shower and a
commitment of “womb to tomb” friendship, he brings Matthew back to see Sharon,
introducing them to each other: “Matthew meet by girlfriend; Sharon meet by
boyfriend,” making it clear that he now perceives them as having equal status
in his newfound bisexual reality.
Of
course, neither likes the sudden equality, and Sharon, in particular, now sends
word around the campus that Phil is queer since he apparently cannot give up
the known homosexual Matt.
Meanwhile, even on his way home Matthew is tortured by a torrent of
projectiles being thrown from the upper stories of the high rise in which he
lives. And when he finally reaches the safety of his apartment his infuriated
father is there to greet him, having just discovered his son’s gay porno
magazines hidden under his bed.
Now
both outsiders for no apparent reason, they have little choice to but imagine a
better world, which for them is anywhere but the place in which they currently
are trying to come to terms with themselves. Together, they pack up their
belongings, a folding tent, and enough money to temporarily survive on, and
head off into what they can only imagine is a wonderful new world of adventure
as they thumb their way to Seaford on the Sussex coast, where many new couples
spend their honeymoons, as Phil describes their destination to an unsuspecting
driver. Presuming that one of them is meeting up with the bride at their
destination, he goes on to a long rant of how he abuses young girls. But when
Phil quite innocently and joyfully corrects him—“no, it’s our honeymoon”—he
immediately pulls the car to a halt, almost heaving in horror, as he shouts:
“It’s against the law.” Matthew shouts back, “So’s rape.”
Their honeymoon paradise, predictably, is out of season, but it doesn’t
bother the two in the least, who just happy to finally be able to have each
other to themselves without the torrent of abuse with which they’ve just been
faced, couldn’t be happier.
In
a warren of closed-down beach cabins, they find one open only to discover
another person already has taken up encampment, Suzie (Zoë Nathenson), a
free-wheeling runaway who, if nothing else, is completely open to sharing the
space with them with no strings attached. She also has the advantage of knowing
her way around the place, keeping clear of those who might cause trouble and
attending to the food stands where she can nab free eats.
She even shares their tent, insistently sleeping in between them for
warmth. But they have now become desirous of just being together and finally,
although they admit their fondness for her, send her away. Soon after she his
captured by the police and bundled off, presumably from whence she came.
The
boys themselves have been caught cuddling together in the tent by policeman,
who instead of arresting them, thankfully, just forces them to decamp. Besides,
to keep the authorities off their own necks, the writer and director have
whipped up an unbelievable sidebar of the plot wherein the boys kiss and cuddle
but aren’t ready to touch their penises. They’re romantics, they claim, not yet
ready for sex.
So
all is not perfect in their conjugal paradise. Phil is still having some
difficulties in leaving his previous identities in the past and, unknown to
Matthew, finally telephones Sharon, who without hesitation is speeding their
way, so he finally admits, to recapture her “fella.” When asked by Matthew,
what he plans to do by bringing her to them, Phil admits he hasn’t the vaguest
idea.
Despite her refusal, he insists that she confront Matthew, witnessing
the remnants of their relationship as well. She does so, but as quickly as she
can, pulls Phil off and with tickets in hand intends to drag him back home.
As
Matthew slowly takes down the tent, folds it up, and begins to pack it away,
obviously determined to continue on his own into the new frontiers which Phil
is not yet ready to embrace, we see the train speeding across the landscape. It
is a sad ending, but almost inevitable given the circumstances of the British
societal attitudes of the day.
Fortunately, that ending was the second one forced upon the studio in
its re-release the following year in 1988. In the original 1987 version, Phil
shows up, joining his now truly life-time friend for a swim in the ocean. It
appears they might be able to hold out at least until they grow of legal age
or, despite Phil’s sea-sickness, make their way across the English Channel
where they will be safe.
In
the same year, in June 1987, Thatcher addressed the Conservative congress in
Blackpool, emboldened by the rise in homophobia created in part by the AIDS/HIV
crisis and commentary in the right wing press, arguing her belief that
"Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are
being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. All of those
children are being cheated of a sound start in life. Yes, cheated."
To
waylay further attacks, BBC, which had originally planned to air this film
during the daytime hours, changed it to nights. And the next year, the Thatcher
government issued Section 28 which called for banning the “promotion” of
homosexuality by local authorities and in Britain’s schools which meant, when
put into practice, that teachers were prohibited from discussing even the
possibility of same-sex relationships with students. Libraries were forbidden
to hold material that contained gay or lesbian themes.
Without knowing the precise schedule of the plans for enacting that
horrifying provision, one can only conjecture whether the BBC movie was an
early response for what the media knew was soon coming or another example of
what Thatcher saw as how children were being cheated of their traditional moral
values.
The LGBT community immediately decried the implementation of such
recidivist provisions, many regularly protesting parliamentary sessions. On May
23, 1988, activists stormed the BBC offices, handcuffing themselves to a TV
camera and disrupting a broadcast of the Six O’Clock News. In Manchester more
than 20,000 people marched against the provision, actor Ian McKellen among
them, publicly coming out as a gay man.
The clause was not revoked until June 2001 when Scotland voted it out.
In 2003 it was repealed in the rest of the United Kingdom. By that time,
surely, the middle-aged Phil and Matthew had already sent up a London flat or
flown off to Paris to start new lives.
*You might recall that, in 1989, during the Reagan administration
museums that had received NEA funding to exhibit art works by Andres Serrano
(who had created a photograph titled “Piss Christ) and Robert Mapplethorpe (a
homosexual who had recently died of AIDS and created photographs of nude gay
males) did, in fact, create a huge row in Congress, resulting in several
members threatening to gut the National Endowment for the Arts Funding and,
despite an eventual temporary compromise, resulting in the Endowment’s refusal
to fund controversial performance artists Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John
Fleck, and Tim Miller (who came to be known as the NEA Four), all of them
having ties to the LGBTQ communities, whose works were described as obscene.
Today all of these artists, the two artist photographers and the
performance-based artists are widely recognized for their numerous
contributions, none of which is now perceived of as being obscene by the
artistic community or most museum and theater-goers. My husband Howard, in
fact, was on the NEA panel that originally chose to fund Serrano and was
formerly the president of the board of the Washington Project for the Arts
which took on the Mapplethorpe show when the Corcoran Gallery of Art cancelled
it because of the controversy. That year I refused to apply for a NEA grant
from my Sun & Moon Press—despite the fact that my press had received NEA
grants for the previous 9 years—writing letters to the Head of the Literature
Program of the NEA and to several senators and congresspeople explaining my
decision to protest their decisions. Even today I cannot quite forgive Dianne
Feinstein, the only one who answered my letter, for her statement that she
supported the NEA decisions concerning the four rejected artists. I later became acquainted with John Fleck and
Tim Miller and published a play by Holly Hughes.
Los Angeles, February 26, 2021
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and
World Cinema Review (February 2021).
