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| March 5, 2014
FILM
Rediscovering Youth Culture’s Birth Matt Wolf documentary examines defining styles of early 20th century teenage life would be a Jitterbug, because there was a political dimension to them — celebrating African-American culture and integrating social spaces. And they had incredible style and verve. In the 1930s, I’d be involved in politics and I’d be fighting for a different kind of future because that’s what I did as a teen in the 1990s.
BY GARY M. KRAMER
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OSCILLOSCOPE LABORATORIES
penly gay filmmaker Matt Wolf’s illuminating documentary “Teenage” is a fantastic mix of found footage, still photographs, and re-enactments of individual stories. The narration — representing the words of British and American boys and American and German girls — are supplied, respectively, by out gay actor Ben Whishaw, Jessie Usher, Jena Malone, and Julia Hummer.
TEENAGE Directed by Matt Wolf Oscilloscope Laboratories Opens Mar. 14 Landmark Sunshine Cinema 143 E. Houston St. btwn. First & Second Aves. landmarktheatres.com
Wolf, who wrote and directed the film, adapted gay author Jon Savage’s book “Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture” to show how teenage culture emerged during the first half of the 20th century. One common theme through those years for youth 16 to 24 was freedom. They found it in cars, clubs, clothes, music, and even work, which empowered them. “Teenage” opens in 1904, when children as young as 12 years old would work in factory jobs up to 72 hours a week. Labor laws, the film explains, soon changed that, and adolescents were suddenly free to roam the streets. They formed gangs and created a problem for the authorities. Youth groups like the Boy Scouts were launched to control kids and in time
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CRUISING, from p.17
as a 20-year-old on VHS and had viewed it at least three times before Franco contacted him about making “Interior. Leather Bar.” His reaction to the film was mixed, not unlike the ambiguous feelings many gay men had about it when it was made. “It felt problematic to me,” he explained. “I understood why it was protested and why it was a lightning rod. But it remained an intriguing film to me as a young gay man because it exposed me to a subculture I didn’t know.” In working on the project with Franco, Mathews dug down deeper in his thinking about the film. “One of the things that I have unpacked since doing this project and having to re-watch it was the bar
Flappers with guns from Matt Wolf’s documentary “Teenage.”
ready them for war. When World War I came in 1914, it decimated the young adult population of Europe and was also felt in America. After the armistice, teens reinvented themselves as Bright Young People and attended Freak Parties, where males and females would dress androgynously. Later, they began using drugs and became politicized, working for social change. “Teenage” also chronicles the rise of Hitler Youth in Germany, as well as youth subcultures elsewhere, including the Swing Kids, Zoot Suiters, and In-Betweeners. Gay City News spoke via phone with 31-year-old Wolf about “Teenage.”
political teenager. I grew up in the Bay Area, and I got involved with other young people to protect gay and transgender teens in high schools. That was my whole world — the politics I was involved in. GMK: Music is very important in “Teenage.” What did you listen to as a teen? MW: A big part of my identity was music. I chose albums because of their artwork. I got into the Smiths and the Cure. I lightly identified with punk, even though I didn’t look punk on the outside.
GARY M. KRAMER: What were you like as a teenager? MATT WOLF: Well, I was a very
GMK: What group of teenagers do you identify with or would you want to belong to if you had been a teen between 1904 and 1945? MW: It depends on the decade. I think I
scenes — they were real venues, with real patrons,” he said. “It was docufiction. Friedkin instructed the [gay men] to do what they did — drink, smoke, do drugs, fuck. If you look at the bar scenes in ‘Cruising,’ they were important representations of the bar scene in New York City pre-AIDS. The fact that the film is so homophobic eclipses the fact that the B-roll bar scenes and montages create a really inter esting and r eally important document of that time.” W h i l e “ I n t e r i o r. L e a t h e r B a r. ” re-creates that bar scene feeling, with naked actors being spanked with a paddle by a hot guy in chaps, the focus of the film is the journey Lauren’s character must travel in making the film-within-a-film. Mathews explained, “When you strip
down ‘Cruising’ to its bare elements, it’s a straight man going into a gay culture and it changes him. We created a parallel arc in our film, by having our actor going on to a set.” From this perspective, “Interior. Leather Bar.” is less about what might have been in those missing 40 minutes of “Cruising” and more a docufiction about creating that sequence. Mathews’ aim was to forge a space that shifts between reality and fiction. One terrific moment has two actors conversing candidly and then one is suddenly fed a line. But the sex is a storytelling tool, too, as Mathews and Franco discuss in the film’s opening scene. Late in the film, Lauren observes an erotic coupling between real life partners that has an effect on him.
GMK: Can you talk about the Bright Young People? M W: I was sear ching for a gay youth movement. The gender play and queer material in the 1920s provides a striking resemblance to the Warhol Factory era. I felt queer teen experience was explored in this part of the film. It was hard to find gender outlaws in the early 20th century amongst youth. I wanted to highlight that. GMK: How did you discover Jon Savage’s book? MW: In college, I read “England’s Dreaming,” his definitive history of punk, which analyzed culture in a broader way. But it wasn’t academic — it depicted a time and a place. When I heard about “Teenage,” I was intrigued. I also love hidden histories and stories we think we know about but are told from a more obscure angle. We assume youth culture originated in the 1950s, with rockers and beatniks, and there was this whole pre-history. GMK: What was your approach in adapting the book for the documentary? MW: At first, I thought it would be narrated by Jon as an essay-style film. But that didn’t work. Jon was older, British, and spoke with the
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TEENAGE, continued on p.30
One of Mathews’ goals in the film is for the audience to identify with Lauren’s character, who is confronting something that makes him feel uncomfortable. While gay men might find his character a bit irritating, according to Mathews, straight men who have seen the film find themselves checking their own homophobia in ways that Lauren does. “Interior. Leather Bar.” cannot be considered a mainstream film. Mathews made clear his intent was “to make a queer film that was challenging and provocative in the ways it was constructed — what we bring up and what we show. To me, that’s queer, and I don’t use that word lightly. It became clear to me that that was the project we were spearheading. And I embraced that.”