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False gods

Do we really need another documentary that turns gay celebs into heroic figures?

by Robert David Sullivan

I want to see a movie on how K-Y Jelly is made. Do minimum-wage women in Utah test the stuff on dildos and inflatable sheep? Do they tell their mothers where they work? Do they smuggle out samples for their bachelor nephews?

Alas, the mysteries of K-Y aren't likely to be revealed soon, and I don't expect to discover where Penis Pasta comes from either. These topics involve work, which is a nonexistent phenomenon in queer film, theater, and journalism. Well, physical labor is okay if it's before a camera. So we can see the play Making Porn, and the movie Shooting Porn, and we can read porn-star biographies like Wonder Bread and Ecstasy, about Joey Stefano. But no one interviews the ticket-takers at the Art Cinema in Boston, or the guy who stacks the shelves at the video store (does he follow some strategy to encourage impulse buying?). Queer artists, it seems, are only interested in telling us about other artists who have nothing interesting to say.

Recently, I've slogged through a fawning documentary about the late filmmaker Marlon Riggs, a boring TV movie about Olympic athlete (and now actor) Greg Louganis, and a skin-deep book about the illustrator Tom of Finland. I had plenty of company this spring learning more than I cared to about sitcom star Ellen DeGeneres. Her out-of-the-closet show was funny, but the PrimeTime Live appearance afterward almost killed the mood. It was like enjoying a tasty meal at a restaurant, then having to sit there while the chef babbles about what she went through to get the ingredients.

In a recent issue of Out magazine, film critic B. Ruby Rich describes a "genre of film and TV biography set to beatify our heroes, a kind of queer hagiography written with video cameras." And she asks of the recent crop of gay and lesbian documentaries, "Why were they all of famous people?"

Flip through any gay-themed video catalogue -- or the program guide to any queer film festival -- and you can find homages to writers such as Audre Lorde, Paul Monette, Alice Walker, and Langston Hughes; artists such as David Hockney and Keith Haring; and other bicoastal celebrities, including tennis star Martina Navratilova and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi. No one, it seems, is paying attention to those people Ellen DeGeneres has called the "real heroes": ordinary people -- say, schoolteachers -- who are out on the job. But at least this narrow focus is good for the environment: all of these filmmakers can use the same guest list for their screening parties.

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I saw Karen Everett's I Shall Not Be Removed: The Life of Marlon Riggs at Boston's lesbian-and-gay film festival this year. It's a technically proficient documentary, but the attempt to turn its subject into a heroic figure is strained. We learn, for instance, that Riggs was teased by black classmates in grammar school for being so smart. Riggs's attendance at Harvard University is mentioned hurriedly, as if this were an embarrassment instead of a significant advantage to his career. His long-time relationship with a white man (a common laborer, yet) is treated elliptically; we get the sense that this is an issue of some controversy among Riggs's admirers, and that the filmmaker downplayed the matter in order to avoid offending any of them. Everett instead concentrates on Riggs's supposed innovations as a documentarian(he put himself in his own movies) and the fact that he continued to work after contracting AIDS (not so unusual among people who don't toil in the construction industry).

All we really learn about Riggs is that some colleagues were fond enough of him to make this film. (The director, not surprisingly, was a student of Riggs's in film school.) That warm, fuzzy feeling was reinforced at a Boston screening. During an open discussion afterward, someone in the audience suggested that the filmmakers were laying it on a bit thick. Another audience member indignantly responded that Riggs was indeed a fine person -- implying that any attack on the film would be an attack on its subject -- and that he knew Marlon personally, as if that entitled him to the last word.

This cult of personality is not limited to queer filmmaking, of course. Case in point: the Oscars. This year, the award for best documentary went to Leon Gast's When We Were Kings, about the prizefighters and frequent Hollywood party guests Mohammed Ali and George Foreman. When the prize was announced, the TV cameras immediately swung to Ali, who bowed to the audience and got a standing ovation. It would take someone pure of heart not to conclude that the filmmaker snared his Oscar on the day he chose his subject. Similarly, it's hard not to connect Geoffrey Rush's Best Actor award for Shine with the fact that the man he portrayed, the lovably off-his-rocker pianist David Helfgott, was enough of a sport to bang out a solo at the ceremony.

Adoration breeds adoration in our society, and the phenomenon seems strongest in the gay-and-lesbian community, which is still young enough to hunger for role models. Unfortunately, the gay movement became a reality just as the public was concluding, with much justification, that all business and political leaders are amoral and do the right thing by accident, if at all. So we hold elaborate ceremonies to present "visibility" awards to actors, which is akin to praising someone with Tourette's syndrome for his refreshingly candid manner of speaking.

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One of the more enjoyable queer documentaries of recent years was Paris Poirier's Last Call at Maud's (1993), about the closing days of a lesbian bar in San Francisco after 23 years of business. The film worked in part because the bar staff and patrons didn't see themselves as heroic or tragic figures. They were proud of what they had created (and stoic about its demise), and they eagerly shared the details of what made Maud's work -- leaving no time for airy tangents about pop culture or celebrity gossip.

We need more queer films like Last Call at Maud's. Well, maybe we don't need them like we need civil-rights laws, but they would make life more pleasant, just as friendly bars do. I'd love to see a gay equivalent (whether a documentary or a drama) of Big Night (1996), Stanley Tucci's great film about two brothers running an Italian restaurant in New Jersey during the 1950s. We have thousands of gay and lesbian entrepreneurs in this country running cafés, auto-body shops, and every conceivable kind of neighborhood business. I'm sure that a lot of them are eloquent about their work.

One of the best documentary filmmakers in America is Errol Morris, best known for The Thin Blue Line (1988). His first success was the oddly compelling Gates of Heaven (1978), in which he set up a static camera and recorded interviews with the operators of pet cemeteries. Then there's Michael Moore, who made Roger and Me (1989) into a fascinating study of hard times in Flint, Michigan. (One highlight was the woman who sold rabbits, as her handmade sign pointed out, for "pets or meat." She chatted about her life for the camera while casually killing and skinning one of her charges.) The characters in these movies are neither heroes nor objects of ridicule, but just people trying to get through life in their own way. Gay communities like Provincetown and Northampton are crying out for such treatment.

Here are some gays and lesbians I would like to know more about:

The Gay and Lesbian Statisticians' Caucus. It's listed in the Gayellow Pages, with a contact at the US Census Bureau. What do they do when they get together? Do they believe that there are homophobic or gay-friendly ways to figure out square roots?

The Adonis Moving & Storage Company and Amazon Movers, both based in New York and listed in the Gayellow Pages. Do they get strange requests from clients?

"Nude housecleaning" and "Nude haircuts!" Both are promised through the classifieds in urban gay publications, and both sound more compelling than any porno plot.

If the name of One in Ten is correct, there are 25 million gay and lesbian stories in this naked country. And it's time for queer filmmakers and writers to look past their speed-dials for subjects. They may be surprised by the popular response.

Robert David Sullivan is a freelance writer and editor living in New York City. He can be reached at Robt555@aol.com.

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