Born On This Day- August 18th... Marcel Carné

          

My 5 semesters of Film Theory & History have come in handy. How else would I have known of Marcel Carné, a prodigy who created dazzling, magical, original films of the French cinema from 1936-1945, including the Dadaist comedy-thriller Drôle de Drame (1937), the fatalistic melodrama Quai des Brumes (1938), the tragedy Le Jour se Lève (1939), Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942), & of course, his masterpiece, the magnificent epic Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)?

Carné's "poetic realism" consists of a meticulously recreated studio environment in which every element of lighting, decor, & design could be utilized to maximum expressivity.

Carné's last feature film, Le Merveilleuse Visite (1974), about a beautiful young man who turns out to be an angel visiting Earth, is an allegory of male beauty used as an indicator of innocence.

A man noted for his generosity & sensitivity, in his private life Carné tended to place personal relationships above political considerations: on the set of  Children Of Paradise, there were artists who would later be tried for collaborating with the Nazis, as well as artists who were members of the Underground resistance & Jews in hiding who were given shelter.

In 1970s, Carné wrote that he wished the openness of the post-Stonewall era had been available to him earlier in his career. Although he regretted that he had not infused his work with a political consciousness, he believed that his partiality to themes of impossible romance derived from his acute awareness of the oppression of homosexuals.

He was an outspoken champion of filmmakers- Pasolini & Fassbinder, who politicized questions of gender and sexual orientation.

Although his career was uneven, Children of Paradise is indisputably one of the classics of French film making, was voted the greatest film in French history by a poll of French film critics in the year 2000.

Carné was 39 years old when he directed Les Enfants du Paradis, his 7th film. Over the next 30 years he made 10 more features, some of which starred his longtime partner Roland Lesaffre. He died in Paris, at age 90 in 1996.

Born On This Day- August 2nd... Director, John Dexter

John Dexter worked & mingled with the greatest talents of his day: Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Rudolf Nureyev, Paul Scofield, Richard Burton, Stephen Sondheim, Maria Callas, Anthony Hopkins, Kenneth Tynan, & Maggie Smith, among others. Often working with a nearly bare stage to draw out the audience's imagination, Dexter worked to bring freshness to his work without getting in the way of the considerable talent that he had assembled. When the producers of M Butterflyapproached him to direct, Dexter countered: “I am known to be difficult, British, homosexual, & expensive, & whilst I can, with modified rapture, admit to the first 3 charges, the last is deeply wounding.''

Dexter, with little formal education, was a leading English director of theater & opera. He won 2 Tony Awards, & was known for the sweep of his directorial imagination with contemporary plays & classics. In the late 1950's & early 1960's Dexter led the Royal Court Theater into trying new & venturesome plays. Under the leadership of Laurence Olivier, he also served for 7 years as an associate director of Britain's National Theater. In later years, as a director of opera & as director of productions for the Metropolitan Opera (from 1974 to 1981), he achieved an international reputation for a new theatre form.

He won his Tony Awards as best director for David Henry Hwang's M Butterfly, & for directing Peter Shaffer's Equus. His final Broadway production was a revival of A Threepenny Opera starring Sting.

Dexter's career led him from small, naturalistic plays to grand epics, & he moved between genres with apparent ease, although sometimes with controversy. The range of his work was demonstrated by the plays he did in association with Mr. Shaffer: the historical spectacle of The Royal Hunt Of The Sun, the farce Black Comedy & the psychological drama Equus.

Shaffer: ''Dexter directs powerfully through suggestion. Into the theatrical spaces he contrives, flows the communal imagination of an audience. He enables it to charge the action of a play with electric life. He is a master of gesture & of economy. Esthetically, his foundation ranges Noh drama to Bertolt Brecht: the plain plank; the clear light; the visual pleasure of the set. He is naturally drawn to plays which demand elaborate physical actions to complete them.''

I was fortunate enough to have spent Christmas Eve-1976 at the apartment of actor Michael Higgins who was appearing with Richard Burton in Equus on Broadway at the time. Mr.Higgins' daughter was a friend of my buddy WCK3. John Dexter was in attendance. His acerbic wit & biting tongue were a bit cruel & I was more than a little intimidated, but I sensed that beneath the satire & irony there was self-doubt & nervous tension. Being Christmas, I told him that I greatly admired his work & gave him a big hug. He died in 1990.

Born On This Day- July 31st... Colin Higgins

Colin Higgins was one of Hollywood's most beloved directors & screenwriters. He is responsible for one of the most influential films of my youth- Harold & Maude.

Born in the South Pacific island of New Caledonia to an Australian mother & American father, Higgins moved with his family to Redwood, CA from Sydney in the 1950s. After attending Stanford University for a year, he dropped out to hitchhike across the country. His travels took him first to the Actors Studio in NYC & then to Europe where he volunteered for the Army as a sports reporter for The Stars & Stripes. He eventually returned to Stanford to receive his degree in English & later attended film school at UCLA. During his final year, he wrote the screenplay for Harold & Maude.

While today it is considered to be one of the greatest of Hollywood films, Harold & Maude was a huge flop when it opened during the Christmas season of 1971 with little fanfare or advertising. The unusual romance between a young man & a much older woman, starring Bud Cort & my muse- Ruth Gordon, struck a chord with audiences & soon became a cult favorite around the world. His stage version ran for just 9 performances on Broadway, but ran in Paris for 7 years.

Following the success of Harold & Maude, Higgins went on to write & direct some of the most successful films of the 1970s &1980s:  Silver Streak, Foul Play, 9 to 5, & The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.

In 1986, Higgins established a foundation in his name. The Colin Higgins Courage Awards recognizes ordinary but remarkable individuals who have endured overwhelming hostility & hate, yet have handled themselves with the utmost grace as they educate & enlighten others about the LGBT experience. Each winner receives $10,000 as part of the prize.

In addition to the Courage Awards, the Foundation also funds film scholarships & has supported over 390 LGBT groups, ranging from the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender outreach & AIDS prevention programs in places like as Fayetteville, Arkansas & Biloxi, Mississippi.

In 1986, he also completed a mini-series based on Shirley MacLaine's book Out on a Limb, which turned out to be his last film project. Higgins died of AIDS in 1988.

Born On This Day- June 22nd... James Whale

I have done several posts about my admiration for Bill Condon’s film- Gods & Monsters,&Sir Ian McKellen’s masterful performance as director James Wale. Thinking of James Wale this morning on his birthday, I landed on the moment when McKellen's James Whale murmurs about the hunky Brendan Frasier’s "architectural skull." Who else could appreciate a skull more than the man who designed the impressive & imposing head of the Frankenstein monster?

"It's the horror movies you'll be remembered for", the geeky fan/ interviewer tells the aging Whale in the film, & despite his gentlemanly manners, you can see irritation in McKellen's eyes. But, the geek is correct of course. Whale's other movies, even his successful version of the musical- Show Boat are mostly forgotten in the 21st century, but people still watch Frankenstein & The Bride of Frankenstein. The look of the monster: square head, seams, scars & neck bolts is a visual icon of the 20th century.

James Whale was a painter before he was a stage & film director, his eye for design is part of what makes his films so memorable. Besides the look of the monster, played by Boris Karloff, he also created the hairstyle & elegantly stitched scars of the Bride played by Elsa Lanchester. Whale had seen the great German silent horror movies that were never widely released in the USA, & from them he took the starkly dramatic lighting & impressionistic sets. Along with his art director Charles Hall, Whale created the style of “Universal Studios Gothic”: huge shadowed interiors with enormous doors, imposing staircases & long shadows.

Gods & Monsters asks us to consider that a major influence on Whale's work was his time in the trenches in WW1. The film uses flashbacks of a foxhole lover to provide Whale with awful memories of the young lover’s death. But the war really did the same for the actual Whale. He was in the thick of some intense battles, before ending up in a POW camp, where he began his stage career by producing amateur theatricals.

There is a beauty, perversity, & wit in Whale's Frankenstein films. His dark, horrid, witty work paved the way for directors like Brian De Palma, David Lynch, George A. Romero & Tim Burton.

Whale was an un-closeted gay man in Hollywood during the1930s. While Gods & Monsters is fiction, his real last lover was a gas station operator who for a while had to share Whale with a male nurse. I have read that the Frankenstein films were a way for Whale to give a coded guide to his sexuality & his feelings of being a misunderstood outsider, a lonely monster. Gods & Monsters evokes this with an understanding & elegance. But, Whale's longtime partner, David Lewis stated: "Jimmy was first & foremost an artist, his films represent the work of an artist, not a gay artist, but an artist." Whale may have identified with the monster not because of his sexuality, but because of his background as a member of a lower class in England.

Whale directed the 1928 play Journey's End on London’s West End & then on Broadway . He moved to Hollywood to direct the film version & stayed there for the rest of his life, most of that time with his longtime companion, David Lewis, the producer of films such as Dark Victory& Raintree County. They were a couple for 22+ years.

He will always be remembered mostly for his work in the horror film genre: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) & Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but Whale directed many films in other genres, including what is considered the definitive film version of the musical Show Boat (1936). He became increasingly disenchanted with his association with horror & never returned to the genre.

Having experienced WW1 first hand, Whale seemed an inspired choice to direct The Road Back, a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front in 1937, but the film was a critical & commercial failure.

A string of failures followed & by 1941 his film directing career was over. Whale continued to direct for the stage & also rediscovered his love for painting. He had invested wisely & he lived a comfortable life until suffering several strokes in 1956 left him in pain. Whale committed suicide in May 1957 by drowning himself in his backyard swimming pool. His former lover- Lewis would later reveal the details of Whale's suicide note.

There is a terrific chapter about Gods & Monsters in Christopher Bram's (the author of the novel) memoir- Mapping The Territory. I recommend this very entertaining & emotional book to anyone that is interested in the process of writing.

Born On This Day- May 31st... Rainer Werner Fassbinder

"It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful ...it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself."

I am not really a fan of Teutonic art, music, theatre & film. I don’t need to sit through a piece by Brecht or listen to Wagner, but the Germans do invade the Poland of my senses on occasion: Kurt Weil, Kraftwerk, Marlene Dietrich, Heidi Klum, a certain German prison porn film.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a German filmmaker who enjoyed international fame, a flamboyant lifestyle filled with fervent fierceness, filthy sex, & flamboyant generosity. He was obsessed by the movies, making 35 feature films in just 13 years. He was openly homosexual, married twice, once with his boyfriend as best man, & supported a 30-grams-a-day cocaine habit by demanding his salaries in cash.

Fassbinder’s goal was win the Oscar for Best Director & "to be ugly" on the cover of Time magazine. He almost got his wish. In1982, after finishing work on the controversial film- Querelle, Fassbinder died from a combination of cocaine, barbiturates, alcohol & an agenda consisting of overworking & over-consuming.

Fassbinder surrounded himself with talented & overwrought  artists & performers, manipulated & loved them. They loved & hated him. He was vilified by the political Left & Right. Film critics & film goers abhorred & adored his work. He was a cultural icon who was discarded as a washout.

At the apex of his career, Fassbinder was a household name in Europe. His work was shown regularly on German TV. He won top awards at major film festivals. The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978) broke box office records in Germany & an enormous international hit.

The first Fassbinder film I encountered was Fox & His Friends in 1975. It is a cruel, churlish cruel film in which gay characters were placed at the center, but one in which homosexuality is simply taken for granted. An illiterate, down on his luck circus worker- Franz, played by Fassbinder, wins a fortune in a lottery & then loses it all when his rich boyfriend has him invest in his family’s failing business. Poor once more, Franz is deserted by the boyfriend & ODs on sleeping pills in a subway station.

Oddly, I loved Fox & His Friends & I was captivated by flamboyant Fassbinder, always in his worn leather jacket & fedora, shocking the status quo, the bad boy of cinema. I liked bad boys back in the 1970s.

But I wasn’t to see another of his films until 1982’s Querelle, with Brad Davis based on Jean Genet's brutal & erotic stories. The imagery from Querelle haunts me to this day. I had the film’s poster, torn from Interview magazine, on my fridge until it yellowed, turned brittle & fell apart, just as I would eventually.

Researching Fassbinder, he seemed to have been paranoid, vicious to his lovers; a shy young boy in a grownup, grotesque, giant body, a thoughtless user of his fellow artists’ talents & emotions, & a sort of genius who overindulged in drugs, alcohol, food & sex. Fassbinder was unable & unwilling to escape the things that were consuming him, the things he loved the most. Who of us has not?

"Homosexuals have been very self-pitying, & also most of them are dominated by a sense of shame, which the Jews haven’t had. The Jews have never been ashamed of being Jews, whereas homosexuals have been stupid enough to be ashamed of their homosexuality."

Born On This Day- May 2nd... Stephen Daldry

Silver Fox- Stephen Daldry has directed only 4 films, but he received an Academy Award nomination for each of them: Billy Elliot. The Hours, & The Reader. The Hours won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for Nicole Kidman. Recently, he directed a stage musical adaptation of Billy Elliot which earned him a Tony Award (his 2nd) for Best Director of a Musical. His film version of The Reader, & again, won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for Kate Winslet.. I think he is a stunning talent. Billy Elliot was a brilliant first film & I never grown tired of seeing it. Last year Daldry directed the Oscar nominated Extremely Long & Incredible Manipulative with an Oscar nomination for Max Von Sydow, in a role with no dialogue.

Daldry identifies as a gay man because people prefer it ("they don't like confusion"), He is married to performance artist Lucy Sexton with whom he has a daughter, Annabel Clare, born in 2003. He was previously in a relationship with set designer Ian MacNeil for 13 years. With such a modern arrangment, maybe there would be room for Stephen to have a boyfriend named Stephen. He is just my type. Perhaps he could direct me to my Oscar in an all senior version of Noel Cowards' Design For Living opposite Helen Mirren & Patrick Stewart.

"What's so funny is when people say, 'Oh, does that mean you're not gay anymore?' And you go, 'Oh, give me a break. What do you mean?' We wanted to have kids! We thought we'd get married and have kids. We're allowed to do everything. I refuse to be boxed in to the idea that 'Oh, no, I can't have kids 'cause I'm gay.' I can have kids if I'm gay. And I can also get married and have a fantastic life...To all questions [having to do] with my marriage, the answer to everything is yes. Do I have sex with my wife? Yes. Is it a real marriage? Yes. Am I gay? Yes."

Born On This Day- March 10th... Filmmaker Mitchell Lichenstein

He was one of the first openly gay actors in Hollywood & I always thought highly of his work. Now he is an interesting & inventive filmmaker. Mitchell Lichtenstein is known for his performances in Robert Altman's Streamers (1983) & Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993). He won a Venice Film Festival Award for the first film & an Independent Spirit nomination for the latter. His motion picture directorial debut was-Teeth (2007), which he also wrote & produced, At the Sundance Film Festival he picked up a Grand Jury Prize for Teeth. Mitchell: "Teeth is about a young woman who discovers that she is anatomically unique & what happens when her boyfriend gets violent with her & is 'punished' for it." His drama- Happy Tears (2009) is about mismatched sisters played by Parker Posey & Demi Moore, who argue about what to do with their dad, played by Rip Torn, who is slipping into dementia, & Ellen Barkin as his girlfriend. He is the son of the the great American painter Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein turns 46 today.

Tune & Minnelli Share A Birthday

2 talented directors share a birthday. I can't help reflect on what a difference it must have made in one man's life to have been in the closet & the other to have been able to be openly & unmistakenly GAY.

The life of Vincente Minnelli, the director of classic MGM musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi & An American in Paris, was as peculiar as the dream ballets that became his trademark. Born Lester Anthony Minnelli in 1903, he grew up the only child in a family of traveling performers in the Midwest. His mother, Mina Mary LaLouche LeBeau, played the ingénue in stock melodramas, while his father, Vincent, conducted the Minnelli Brothers Tent Theater orchestra.


In young adulthood, shy, stammering Lester Minnelli, who had had a penchant for trying on his mother’s clothes, read a biography of the flamboyant painter James McNeill Whistler & decided to reinvent himself as a worldly aesthete, working as a window dresser in Chicago before making his name as a designer of lavish theatrical sets in New York. It was there that he became “Vincente.”

Once he moved to Hollywood as a director in MGM’s stable, Minnelli quickly built a reputation as a fearsome perfectionist, despite his passive, retiring personality. A closeted gay man, Minnelli had been known to sport “light makeup” & yet, he married 4 times , most famously, to Judy Garland & he fathered 2 daughters, including the perpetually re-self-inventing Liza Minnelli.

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There is 6’6’’ & Texan, with the improbable name-Tommy Tune who is an actor/dancer/singer/choreographer/director, & the winner of 9 Tony Awards, the only person in theatrical history to win in 4 different categories & to win the same Tony Award 2 years in a row.

Tune danced onto the Broadway scene in the chorus of Baker Street in 1965 & hasn't stopped since. I saw him in Michael Bennetts’s Seesaw in 1973, for which he received raves & his first Tony (Best Featured Actor in a Musical). He directed his first show, the off-Broadway production of The Club in 1976. he directed & choreographed The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, A Day in the Hollywood/ A Night in the Ukraine (his 2nd Tony- Best Choreography), Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9, Nine (his 3rd Tony-Best Direction of a Musical), My One & Only (his 4th & 5th Tony-Best Choreography, Best Actor in a Musical). Stepping Out, Grand Hotel (Best Choreography, Best Direction of a Musical), & Will Roger's Follies (Best Choreography, Best Musical).


Tune has an art gallery in Tribeca . In his 1997 memoir Footnotes, he writes about what drives him as a performer, choreographer & director, offers stories about being openly gay in the world of theatre, his partners David Wolfe & Michael Stuart, about his days with Twiggy in My One & Only & meeting & working with his many idols.

I find him likable & remarkably talented... & tall. He turns 73 today.