<< Out There
22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • August 25-31, 2016
CHANTICLEER Bright lights, big lilies AN ORCHESTRA OF VOICES PRESENTS
DATES & TICKETS: WWW.CHANTICLEER.ORG | 415-392-4400
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by Roberto Friedman
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ovelist Tama Janowitz was the “it girl” of 1980s American popular fiction. Along with Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney she was tabloid fodder, a “brat-pack lit” sensation, running with Andy Warhol and his crowd, seen at trendy art openings. By now she’s published 10 books, but the only one of them Out There ever read was the one that made her name, Slaves of New York. That novel of decadent urban life was made into a film by no less a blue-chip art-film team than Merchant/Ivory. Soon afterward she began her slow descent into the twilight of semi-obscurity. This month she’s published Scream – A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction (Dey St.), in which we learn what she got up to after leaving the big-city bright lights of NYC for the slower life of an upstate New York hamlet. It’s an odd memoir, to be sure. For one thing, the overriding authorial tone is misanthropy. “Try as I might, for me, other human beings are a blend of pit vipers, chimpanzees, and ants, a virtually indistinguishable mass of killer shit-pickers, sniffing their fingers and raping.” Tama, tell us how you really feel. Members of Janowitz’s inner circles, family and friends, aren’t spared her gelid eye. “I don’t know why Tolstoy said ‘All happy families are alike.’ First of all, he couldn’t have spent much time with any family or he would have found out that there is no such thing as a happy family. I have met happy families, and after a
few minutes one of them takes you off to one side to explain the real truth.” But to her credit, Janowitz doesn’t let herself off the hook, either. “I was used to other people’s anger. There are some people on this planet who irritate others. It wasn’t intentional, but I was one of them.” The net result is that reading this hilarious but unsettling memoir, you feel you’re getting only one side of the story. We can only begin to imagine the effect Tama is having on the people she’s describing. To be fair, she seems a real piece of work.
Water music
Mad Enchantment – Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King (Bloomsbury) is a new book dedicated to the great French artist who, in his 70s, embarked upon an ambitious and artistically radical mission: to render the world of colorful water lilies suspended in his pond in Giverny. Monet was already a greatly revered figure in France, mostly associated with his paintings of rural landscapes and seascapes (“Rodin, seeing the ocean along the Brittany coast for the first time, exclaimed, ‘Oh, how beautiful – it’s a Monet!”). But the
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water lily paintings were something entirely new, not just for their color, scale and sensuality, but because they verged on total abstraction. King observes: “Landscape painting had been turned on its head. There was no firm mooring for the viewer, only a vertiginous gaze into what [critic Louis] Gillet called ‘a mirror without a frame’ – a mirror that offered an inverted view of the world and the half-hidden depths beneath. The only solid forms left were the blurry clusters of water lilies with their bright pinpricks of color. No one had ever painted this way before.” This book is an insightful look at the long gestation of these seminal works of modern art. Among other impediments to their realization was the advent of WWI. Giverny, with its idyllic gardens and watery tableaux, was not that far from the carnage and destruction of that conflagration’s Western front. Reports of Monet’s failing health were greatly exaggerated. One critic wrote that the artist suffered from fatigue and neurasthenia. “Neurasthenia was a malady more usually associated with women, Jews, male weaklings, homosexuals, and the morally debauched.” Sounds like our kind of party, where can we sign up? There are pages of color plates, important in an art book, and an appendix indicating where you can see a water lily painting in museums around the world, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have one in their collection, a Nympheas from 1914-17. Reading Mad Enchantment made us want to see these canvases in their flowery flesh.t
Australian romance by Brian Bromberger
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he sweeping saga encompassing decades has largely fallen by the wayside in mainstream films, relegated to television miniseries. But there’s something thrilling about taking a two- or three-hour journey in a historical adventure so you can relive the recent past through the characters’ experiences. Neil Armfield’s Holding the Man from Australia is such a film, a breakout hit at this year’s Frameline now out on DVD from Strand Releasing. The movie follows the true 15-year love story of two high school boys from the mid-1970s to the early 90s. It’s based on Tim Conigrave’s bestselling memoir published in 1995. He finished it on his deathbed in St. Vincent’s Hospital in 1994, dying of AIDS 10 days later. It was adapted by Tommy Murphy (also the screenwriter) for a stage play in Sydney in 2006, with productions in London’s West End and San Francisco. Tim (Ryan Corr) and John Caleo’s (Craig Stott) romance began at age 16 at a Jesuit Catholic High School, Xavier College, in Melbourne. Tim is rehearsing for his role as Romeo in the play Romeo and Juliet and can’t seem to elicit any real emotion over Juliet’s corpse, with his teacher remarking, “You’ve lost your fiance, not your bus pass.” Then he sees John, the captain of the AFL soccer/football team, practicing, and is immediately smitten, imagining him on the slab rather than the girl, and acting passionately. Later John wakes up in a hospital after suffering a concussion from a collision on the soccer
field. Tim, whom he doesn’t really know, pays him a friendly visit, with outgoing, flamboyant Tim attracted to quiet, down-to-earth John. John’s parents are initially grateful to Tim for drawing John out of his shell, but then John’s father (a convincing Anthony LaPaglia) finds Tim’s love letter to John. He forbids John from seeing Tim, threatening him with legal action. Tim’s father (Guy Pearce) is a bit more understanding, but not excited about having a gay son. Meanwhile at school, their classmates vary in their reactions to the relationship. Though that same letter discovered in school gets them into trouble, a Jesuit brother-schoolmaster is accepting. Tim and John are adamant about staying together and defy their parents, kissing through a screen window when kept apart. Tim later asks John to marry him, when such a
possibility was only a fantasy. They go to college. Tim studies drama at the National Institute of Drama, encountering a teacher (Geoffrey Rush) who remarks, “There is not a lot of work for effeminate monkeys.” John studies to be a chiropractor. They will be involved in the early gay rights movement. Tim suggests a trial separation so they can have sex with other guys and experiment with multiple partners. Eventually they get back together in Sydney, only to discover they are both HIV+, with the adventuresome Tim wondering if he infected John. How Tim and John cope through this illness, with Tim finishing his memoir on the Italian island Lipari, will cap the conclusion of this heartbreaking movie. Holding the Man is a grand romance, covering a period that gay men over 45 know from their own memories. It’s well-recalled through the music of the period, featuring Bronski Beat, Blondie, and Bryan Ferry. The sexual scenes are raw and honest, especially for Australia. While both moving and passionate, the picture does have flaws. Tim and John’s relationship seems to encounter little opposition outside their families, which seems unrealistic considering the conservative Australian culture of the 1970s and 80s. While Tim is vividly drawn as a character (it’s his autobiography), John seems underdeveloped. Both actors are superb in their performances, gelling together beautifully, but in their 20s they are clearly too old to play teenagers. Finally, probably betraying its theatrical origins, See page 23 >>