Bill Hicks: Outlaw Comic

Published 28 April 2010

Like your first kiss, date, or viewing of The Spy Who Loved Me (remember when you didn’t know about the parachute or the submarine Lotus?), your first experience of Bill Hicks is one of life’s big eye-openers, almost akin to the kind of spiritual, transcendental mushroom experiences he often described in his sets. How was it, then for Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas, directors of an excellent new documentary on the life of the great rebel rabble-rouser, American: The Bill Hicks Story? “I was working in BBC New Comedy,” Thomas says, “starting in 1988, and I didn’t know about him until I got to the Beeb. Everybody was going on about this guy. Then I watched him, but our job then was to find new comedians from across the UK, when there was this legend that people just didn’t know about!” For Harlock, it was a little more conventional: “University I guess, a lot of people passing Bill Hicks tapes around – VHS tapes of course, this was back in the day, about 89/90 – and I think I may have been aware that he was playing in the UK and I didn’t go to the gig: obviously you’re assuming that “well, he’s going to be around”. So that was it, there was just the real sense in the student community in the UK at the time that this was the guy for us.”

A hilarious, moving and visually exciting take on the comedian’s life and work, American had humble beginnings betraying its makers’ televisual roots. As Thomas explains, “It started at Channel 4 as a series called Outlaw Comics, developed with the comedy department but then the head of entertainment vetoed it. So when we took it to the BBC it was great, because where normally you’ve got two pages we had a whole series worked out. We had three 90 minute films: Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce and Andy Kaufman. We started with Bill Hicks because that was the one that mattered”.

There have been documentary profiles of Hicks in the past, so the filmmakers knew they needed a fresh angle. “I’ve done a lot of pitching and I know that you really have to promise something different.” says Thomas. “I knew they’d be getting Bill Hicks at least once a month from somebody.” Having acquired a huge photo archive, the directors decided to adopt an unusual but striking animation technique, drawn from stills old and new (think of Errol Morris in a frivolous mood, and you’re halfway there).

“It had been used in a few places like The Kid Stays In The Picture (a 2002 profile of film producer Robert Evans), but it had been much flatter and simpler, and we realised it could go much further. So we went into this huge photo archive, did some small animation tests, it just all clicked”.

“Also,” Harlock interjects, “there were the specifics of the places that we needed, so for example the thing where he’s escaping from his house, the technique allows you to create and recreate the excitement of fourteen year old boys going out to perform comedy for the first time, so that was one of the bonuses that the technique threw up, it wasn’t just a case of only using the photographs that we had from the archives – we could create and re-create things”.

This reconstructive approach was of course helped by the 120 hours of interview material the duo compiled. “You’re like a detective,” Thomas tells me. “First of all it’s your job to uncover the story, and then get the essence of the story down to 90 minutes of film”. What dictates that? “It has a lot to do with what people tell you, what they remember and what they feel is important, and once you start you have to follow the route that they’re taking you on”.

And what of the interviewees? The film features illuminating thoughts and anecdotes from Hicks’ friends and family. Did they ever display any trepidation about getting involved? Say Harlock, “I think that they realised that when we showed up we’d also managed to get other people involved who maybe hadn’t spoken at the same time, so this was their chance as a family – and his friends said the same – to put the historical record down and make sure that it was captured. So they were reticent but they also threw themselves into the process and they didn’t hold anything back. They didn’t try and sugar coat things, because they knew Bill wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Though conceived as a television project, American is an undeniably cinematic experience, but not just for its dazzling visual technique, as Thomas explains. “Seeing it on the big screen, where you can see his face 3 storeys high and you can see every flicker and the contortions on his face, you really appreciate how skilled he was. And we’ve sat through it hundreds of times and we still laugh every time.” Harlock adds “What’s also important is the group experience: most people before they’ve seen the film have seen Bill at home on the sofa with a couple of friends, so seeing it with 400 people, all getting into it at exactly the same time all around you, is a very warming experience”.

It has been 16 years since Bill Hicks died, so why does his spirit still enrapture new generations? As far as Harlock is concerned, “He seemed to have the last word on quite a few subject matters, which were the big ones: sex, love, drugs and politics and where we’re going as a species, and those subject areas are not going to change or go away. Then there’s the passion and the charisma of the performances, and I think what you sometimes forget is that he was actually a really excellent technician, of how to craft jokes, how to craft routines, he was just a very gifted technical performer”.

Director Olly Blackburn talks Donkey Punch

Published 10 November 2008

Donkey Punch is a low budget British thriller named after a rather extreme sexual practice. The film is one of a recent slate of dark, provocative but hugely accessible British genre movies, and even sparked a Daily Mail outcry. Its director Olly Blackburn has, for the last ten years, been one of the most respected and in-demand directors of music videos and commercials. I asked him about logistics, the pleasures of genre, the cultural climate, and a little bit of sex and violence.

How did the project begin?

A lot of it was a combination of luck and experience, from doing commercials and music videos for ten years. I had other things – a few feature films which didn’t happen – and I’d written films for other filmmakers, one of which will be out in the new year (Vinyan). I just happened to be in the Warp X offices, trying to get some TV work with Robin Gutch (Warp X co-founder), when I thought of the idea. The company’s mission is to make edgy genre films with a twist, so my co-writer David Bloom and I pitched the idea and they loved it.

The film was to be quite edgy, but were you met with any resistance, or would you have been if you were pitching to a different body?

Like you said, it was meant to be quite edgy – very edgy – and Warp X embraced that. They’re well respected, they have integrity, and they want that from the people they work with. The film is edgy and provocative, but we wanted it to have integrity, to be intelligent – as crazy as that may sound to a lot of people who have seen it! We didn’t just want to dive into this onslaught of tits and blood: everyone, from myself to Warp to the actors, wanted something with integrity.

Did the success of Nick Love’s films help, in that they are edgy genre movies which reach a large, working class audience?

I hope so. To be honest, any British genre film helped. I think the likes of The Descent also helped. Nick Love proved that British films made on a budget can have an audience. I remember talking to someone from the Film Council who said it was remarkable that the film went out on 150 screens and the characters all speak with regional accents. Now that’s not everything, the story dictates it, but I think it’s significant. There’s been a huge cultural shift in the last five years or so.

That’s something much larger. If we look at the success of Lily Allen, The Streets and the Arctic Monkeys, there’s a much stronger acceptance of regional identity, something the film taps into.

Yeah, and I think we have a very mixed culture now. I’m from a generation who knew nothing outside their Southern upbringing. Then I went to Oxford, a posh university but it was very mixed. There was a time when it was unusual to have an Asian friend, or a Northern friend, now it’s an everyday thing. I think we now live in a very mixed culture, yet film and the like have taken longer to catch up with this cultural shift.

This is obviously a genre film with a lot more to it then. If we look at the history of genre films in this country – by the likes of Terence Fisher and Michael Reeves – they always had higher aspirations. They were thought of as trashy, yet they were often rooted in literary or mythological traditions. Is Donkey Punch a film in that tradition? What were your inspirations?

At that level, I think so. I love films, I eat, sleep and drink them, and genre definitely had a huge impact. If I was to talk about my favourite filmmakers, I’d probably say Sam Peckinpah and Roman Polanski, things like Straw Dogs and Rosemary’s Baby especially. I hate it when people talk down genre. Guys like Romero, Carpenter, they took genre and did things with it that are really powerful. I mean, Dawn of the Dead is one of the most prophetic and disturbing films you’ll see, and I challenge you to find anyone who can find another film from that era which provides the same level of social commentary.

You’ve talked about making something edgy, with explicit sex and violence, though you never go as far as some films have in the last ten years. I’m referring to films by the likes of Gaspar Noe and Takashi Miike, or films, to give British examples, like Intimacy or 9 Songs. The sex is unsimulated, the violence more extreme. Is this something you considered exploring, or would consider in future, or are you happy to hold back?

I think in the right context, in films like 9 Songs or Larry Clark’s Ken Park, it was necessary. I would have liked to have done the film that way, but I was contracted to deliver an 18 certificate film, and this wouldn’t have been possible. Also, I’d made a promise to the actors that we wouldn’t be making a porn film, that they wouldn’t do anything they didn’t want to. In the script, the sex scene was written very graphically, it wasn’t an easy scene for actors to read.

I’m all for taking an audience by the lapels, and I think a film like Audition is brilliant, Irreversible is a powerful piece of work, and I look up to guys like Michael Winterbottom. But there’s been this pornographication of culture in the last few years, it’s everywhere. You have children growing up whose only knowledge of sex is through porn. The scene was inspired by that – people videoing themselves, the football roasting scandals, we wanted the scene to reflect on that culture as it is. Also, it needs to be powerful, because it is, in Hollywood terms, the inciting incident. I mean, if I put a scene like that in The Duchess, it would seem a bit out of place!

What about the logistics of making the film, you were out on a boat with a short schedule and a limited budget.

We had 24 days.

Right. Why, then did you choose to shoot in South Africa? Was this for budgetary reasons, or was it because you knew and liked the location?

We were greenlit to shoot in February. There’s no sun in the northern hempisphere, and we needed that, so we had to go south. We found that our money went further there: we wanted the film to have a high standard of production values, and there’s a great filmmaking culture in South Africa. They have the technicians, they can work quickly and cheaply.

The production values are indeed high. You’ve mentioned before that low budget films can look better now thanks to grading technology and post-production effects. Is digital the future, or would you like to work on film?

Of course there’s still a place for film, I love film, just because it looks beautiful. I was trained on film, I edited film with a knife! I love working on film, but I had such a good experience of working on HD here. If a low budget film uses this technology, the limits are endless. Much of that comes from working in commercials, you find yourself in the cutting room wondering what this button does, or that one. If you have the right people working on a low budget digital film, you can come up with amazing things. I’d recommend it to younger filmmakers.

What do you think of the current filmmaking climate in the UK? What are the key challenges, and what advice would you have for new filmmakers?

It’s the usual stuff. Getting things made is a long process and can be painful. I tried to get things made for years and couldn’t, and then there’s someone like Paul Andrew Williams, who tried for years and then just thought sod it, and made London To Brighton. So you really need perseverance. By the time I pitched Donkey Punch, I was just about ready to give up. You have to be true to yourself, and really want to make films. You need good reasons for that, it can’t just be to f**k a load of actresses!

So what’s next for you?

I can’t really go into detail, but I have another British genre film, set in the early seventies, which I’m making with Little Bird productions. And David Bloom and I have been exchanging ideas and talking to Warp X, so we’ll see what comes up.

Director Jon S. Baird talks Cass

Published 29 December 2008

Having worked at the BBC and produced the Elijah Wood football hooligan vehicle Green Street, Peterhead born Jon S. Baird has found his calling as a director. Cass, the true story of notorious West Ham casual Cass Pennant, marks him out as a filmmaker to watch.

What sparked your interest in filmmaking?

I think it was theatre first. I come from a strange background. My dad was a builder and my mum was a nurse, and I had an uncle who lived in the south of England, so we used to take holidays down there. When we were there we always used to go the theatre, to see musicals, so from the age of five or six I was really into performance. As I got older – old enough to fully appreciate it – I gravitated towards cinema. I grew up in Peterhead, just outside Aberdeen, the kind of place where you don’t tell anyone you want to be a filmmaker, for fear of what they might do to you! I graduated from Aberdeen Uni, and kept my ambitions to myself, until I moved to London and a job at the BBC. I worked my way up to researcher in the comedy department. They wanted to showcase new talent, so I was able to make a short film, It’s A Casual Life, about a world I was familiar with – football casuals in Aberdeen – with Dougie Brimson, and that’s how I was introduced to the American company behind Green Street. I learned a lot from that experience – of how to do things, and how not to do things – and it was on that film that I met Cass Pennant.

Were you already familiar with his story?

The only thing I knew about Cass was that he was a hooligan; he had this Keyser Söze -like reputation in that world, which was quite intimidating. Anyway, he gave me his autobiography, which I expected to be really one dimensional like most of these books. The first thing I thought was “This’ll be going in the bin”. But the first few chapters just grabbed me. He talks about how he was shot, how he developed post-traumatic stress. I knew there was a story there, one that could be better than those other films about characters like this. There was real scope for social commentary, and I always saw it as social realism. I knew it could be so much more than just a “lad” film.

How did you go about raising the money?

We knew it would be low budget, but the budget always was as it is. We had a problem in that our major financier pulled out just before shooting started. We couldn’t shoot on 35mm, so we were left with the choice of 16mm or HD, but we felt that period films don’t work in HD. Shooting on film also meant we could change the film stock as the story progresses – it gradually begins to look better as time goes by.

You assembled quite a cast. There are many established faces, but Nonso Anozie, who plays Cass, is relatively unknown outside theatre. Had you seen him on stage, or did he go through an audition process?

It was tricky. Cass is a heavily built, six foot six black man, so you’re limited in Britain for choice. There aren’t many actors fitting that description, that physicality. Fortunately, we saw Nonso on stage, and we knew he’d been working in films, the likes of Atonement, Happy-Go-Lucky and RocknRolla. We liked him, and when we approached him, he immediately got the story. He’d read the book and knew what elements were important. As for the rest of the cast, we mainly offered actors we’d seen elsewhere, there wasn’t much auditioning: Nathalie Press we’d seen in My Summer of Love, Linda Bassett from East Is East, who I thought would be ideal for Cass’ mum, and Leo Gregory I’d worked with on Green Street.

If you’re making a hooligan film, there is always the risk of glamorising that world. Was this a concern?

I never saw it as a hooligan film. It’s a biopic that happens to be set in that world. If we wanted to glamorise hooliganism, we’d have had more blood and guts, more fight scenes, and cut them to a thumping soundtrack. Our schedule placed more emphasis on the dramatic scenes, so we could spend more time on the emotions. As I said, it’s social realism. The violence was something we only wanted to give an impression of. A little bit is all the audience needs. This a true story, it’s what Cass went through, so there’s no way of avoiding it.

There have been many British films about this way of life, most recently of course Green Street and The Football Factory, while we can go back to the likes of ID and The Firm. Why do filmmakers, and audiences, keep returning to this subject matter?

It depends on how you look at it. Many men – and women – love football. If you’re interested in football, you’ll support a team and align yourself with a certain tribe, so these stories are easy for people to relate to, you don’t need to be a hooligan to feel that. Most people who watch football aren’t, but they can understand that mentality. Also, it’s very British, very specific to the culture. These films tend to do well in the UK but they don’t always travel so well, at least not to America.

Was that one of the barriers you faced in trying to raise the money, that there may not be anything for the American market?

I think so, but there were all kinds of barriers: the fact that we had a black lead, he wasn’t played by an established actor, or that I wasn’t an established director. I learned a lot about the business, the kinds of chances people are willing to take. We’ve been very lucky though. Pre-orders for the DVD have been fantastic, I think we’re number four on the HMV charts. Only the blockbusters like Tropic Thunder are ahead of us. It’s great, and it shows that if you tell interesting stories, you’ll find an audience. It’s not all about making a load of money on the first weekend.

We’ve mentioned the tradition of films Cass belongs to, and you’ve talked about social realism. Who were your major influences?

When I started the project, I saw it as somewhere between Mike Leigh and Stanley Kubrick. I know that may sound like a strange pairing, but I’ve always had a fascination with Kubrick’s photography, his use of symmetry. If you look at the funeral scene, or the scene we call the Gauntlet of Hate (where Cass is confronted by racist thugs), we were always trying to shoot with wide-angle lenses, in symmetrical frames. The Mike Leigh influence can be seen in things like the bathroom scene. We were never consciously trying to replicate any filmmaker’s style or scenes from other movies, of course. The story should always dictate the style, but you’re obviously influenced by your favourite directors. Hopefully it’s all completely original!

The film deals with issues of prejudice and identity politics. What relevance do these have to you?

Well I grew up in Peterhead, and I always felt like an outsider, so that was the first thing that attracted me to the film. I think we’ve all felt that way at some point, that we’re different from everyone else and not welcome. Also, my grandmother was prominent in Barnardo’s, so much of my youth was spent collecting money for them in the local supermarket. I though it was interesting that this hard man had been adopted through Barnardo’s by a woman not unlike my grandmother. And I think people are always searching for an identity, this will always be the case. It was interesting to spend a year with Cass and learn about who he was and how he defined himself. The thing that always got to him most was that he had a girl’s name in a patriarchal society (his real name is Carol). He is still embarrassed by that, yet he can take any racial slur. They have never bothered him as much as his real name.

What did he make of the film?

Nobody is happier with the film than Cass. The first time we showed it to him, he told me “you really nailed my life. Thanks for that”. I’m chuffed with the response we’ve had from everyone, really. Hooligans won’t like it because it’s not hard enough for them. It’s a film about real people, and real people have been saying good things.

What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers?

Making a film is a difficult journey; it can take up years of your life. I know it’s a cliché, but you just can’t take no for an answer. Alexander Mackendrick’s book On Film-making should be required reading for every young filmmaker. It talks about scripts, how they are not just written but re-written and re-written. You’ve got to be self-critical; you’ve got to show your script to everyone, and not just friends and family. You need objectivity. Show your script to people in the industry; make friends with people in production and distribution. You need to be a real pain in the arse about it. Do a short film that’s commercial and controversial. When I made It’s A Casual Life, I sent it out to sports editors at newspapers, and this was during the run up to what was set to be a pretty hairy match between England and Turkey. You can’t be shy: get your name out there and be the most tenacious person you can be. Scottish people are particularly good at this!

What future projects do you have lined up?

I’m in the early stages of another true story, covering a major political event in the 80s. I can’t say what, but it’s along the lines of Paul Greengrass and what he did with Bloody Sunday.

Would you like to make a feature film in Scotland?

Absolutely. I’m working on an Irvine Welsh adaptation, though I can’t say what that is, and I’ve co-written a film called Discovering Carlos, a dark comedy set in Aberdeen. I love Scottish comedy, things like Chewin’ the Fat and Still Game. We can get away with so much more. There’s something about the Scottish sense of humour that’s darker than anywhere else. I don’t know why!

Jochen Hick on Sex Life In L.A.

Jochen Hick is a documentary filmmaker specialising in LGBT subject matter. He has profiled rural queers (Talk Straight), leather fetishism (Menmaniacs) and the 2007 Moscow Pride Event (East/West – Sex & Politics). I spoke to him about his superb diptych on the gay porn scene, Sex Life In L.A.

Published 27 April 2010

1) What was the genesis of the project?
Fascination with LA, and to get a deeper insight into the gay sex business, by very detailed and intimate observation. If any city on earth would show where the rest of the western gay world would develop, in terms of drugs, gay narcissism, porn and escorting, and its economics, at least back then it was LA.

2) How much footage did you actually shoot, and how did the film(s) evolve in the production and editing process?
I guess we shot almost 100 hours for each part of the sequel. We had many more protagonists than ended [up] in the final versions. All evolved in the editing process.

3) What were your own perceptions of gay porn and the LA sex industry before you started work on Sex Life In LA, and how did it change, if at all?
I did not have any illusions or real prejudice about it. I was mainly interested in its social workings and the personal consequences for the actors.

4) What were your main reasons for returning to the subject in 2003/4? Had you kept in touch with the guys?
I felt that – parallel to gay life in general – there was more professionalism and toughness: maybe less fun and more money-making. I found it worthwhile to show the economics and how they affect the guys working in that field. I found new protagonists and kept to the former ones; I have tried to keep in touch with them all over the years.

5) Neither David nor Tony Ward feature in the second film. Are there any particular reasons for this?
All I could research is that David was not around in LA any more, and Tony Ward – who always was very friendly about the project – maybe got the recommendation not to take part in the second part. He was already married, [was] often in Japan – different lifestyle.

6) I’d like to know about the production process. At one point you claim to have been searched by the police, and I was wondering how you resolved such issues. Did you ever consult vice squads, support groups or legal teams during the making of the films?
I have been in some very special situations, mainly when filming with David. Of course I needed the help of the police for the research about John Garwood’s death. But there were not really very dangerous situations, compared to what I have experienced filming for East/West during the Gay Pride attempts in Moscow.

7) What about creative decisions? You show a lot of sexual imagery, but avoid dwelling on detail and never show penetration or ejaculation. Was this your own decision, or simply a matter of international censorship regulations?
Actually there is ejaculation (Tony in the bathtub) and penetration (Will West after trying to get a hard-on by interacting with the cameraman), but both situations for me are far beyond porn and had a totally different genesis. This was one of the decisions – to never imitate the images and the storylines of porn, although the second film almost entirely deals with it. Interestingly enough, German censorship allowed Tony’s jerk-off in an age 16 DVD version. That’s quite extraordinary. Part 2 in Germany has an age 16 and an adult version.

8) Were there any performers, photographers or filmmakers you approached to be in the project who refused?
No one I have approached really refused, except Madonna and Herb Ritts, who did not really supportively reply to our requests for interviews or materials about Tony Ward.

9) At one point, it is suggested that performers can earn up to $20,000 per movie. What does it take to reach this level?
No one showed me his banking slip or a cheque, so I cannot prove it. It might have happened in some very rare cases.

10) Cole Tucker at one point says “sex work is not a normal life”. What are your thoughts on this?
Of course sex work deals so much with intimacy and constant narcissism on a very technical level, that for some characters it is just too much. However, I would never say that it isn’t a very special experience for a gay man.

11) In the first film, John Garwood says that many men in gay porn are HIV-positive. By the second film, you highlight the use of condoms in the movies, but also profile the popularity of bareback videos. What is the allure of these (dangerous) films?
A lot can be said about bareback and bareback films. The film just documents that quite a few porn actors start in safe and switch over to bareback porn. The fascination at first was the forbidden; nowadays many gay men might think it is the ultimate experience in terms of crossing borders. In the end I would rather demystify it and say: it just means fucking without condoms, which might have you contract a terminal disease.

12) How much responsibility did you feel to your subjects and to the audience? Was it hard to remain objective when faced with things that are contentious (barebacking) or unjust (the exploitation of ‘stars’)?
If someone would have found himself into a dangerous situation [against his will] or without knowing while I was filming, I would have given advice or intervened. For the [remainder], of course, my profession is documentary film-maker, not activist or social worker. Maybe the effect of what can be seen in my films might show an activist, political or social point of view. In a way I do hope so.

13) What did you ultimately hope to achieve with the films? They certainly don’t show porn in a glamorous light, but they also don’t pass judgement.
They show a whole world, but they mainly show where gay male narcissism and all its triggers might lead, and also how extremely exploitive gays can be with/towards gays. Maybe it could also be considered as ‘gay lib’.

14) Have you kept in touch with any of the guys since you finished both films? Also, are you aware of any developments that have been made to improve conditions for performers (for example, Damian claims that models never gain royalties)?
I still have contact with some of the guys. Since my latest film The Good American also deals with performers and porn actors, I kept observing what’s going on. However, you can always work as a cashier at a supermarket instead of porn or hustling: safe money and less dangerous.

15) How were audience reactions at the time of both film’s releases, and have they changed at all since then?
The sequel has become kind of a classic and many people who I meet have heard or seen at least the first part. Part 1 got great reviews even in very conservative outlets and had long theatrical runs, mainly in Europe. The second part even made it onto ABC News. Some – even gay – people were pretty shocked seeing the stories. I was surprised by that, since the same mechanics of this part of gay life it can be clearly observed all around us, not only in LA.

Greek Pete: The Real Hustle

Published 27 August 2009

“If you pick up any gay magazine,” Andrew Haigh points out, “you’ll find hundreds of adverts for escorts renting themselves out.” Haigh is a filmmaker who plied his trade as an assistant editor for directors as diverse as Ridley Scott and Harmony Korine, and as someone based in London, he’s at the hustler heartland of the UK. Along with Los Angeles and Manhattan, London is the most profitable terrain for male escorts, yet for all its profitability, the world of male sex workers remains fairly untapped, generally ignored by academic researchers and treated in popular culture with either revulsion or exotification. That’s one of the reasons first time feature filmmaker Haigh decided to make Greek Pete. Covering a year in the life of escort Peter Pittaros and his quest to win the Escort of the Year award, Haigh’s film is a frank, compassionate and at times poetic work: a freewheeling drama drawn from real experiences and played out by real sex workers. We enter Pete’s business and social circles, hearing their histories, desires and attitudes to their trade and even the existence of God, all the while following Pete’s progress in the awards race and his awkward relationship with fellow escort Kai. Told with such verisimilitude, it’s surprising when Haigh says, “It’s a world I knew nothing about. But I was intrigued by it, and I wanted to explore it on film without resorting to sensationalism or exploitation. It tends to be shown as either glamorous and sexy or violent and tragic.”

Anyone familiar with depictions of male sex work in movies will know what the director is referring to. Many critics, in fact, have referred to Greek Pete as an update of Paul Morrissey’s seminal Flesh, though Haigh is quick to assert that “I hadn’t actually seen that till after making this film, but I could see that it had been an influence: despite me not even having seen it! That’s because of the influence it had on other films set in that world and underground cinema in general, of course.” I suggest other films in this tradition, like Midnight Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho and Mysterious Skin. “Oh yeah, they were definitely big influences. But if you look at a lot of those films, they still have a gloss, an adherence to traditional narrative form and such. I wanted to make something much looser.

“I also think a lot of those films have problems in that they appear to idolise that world but that they also condemn it. There’s a real mixed message, and that was something I wanted to avoid.”

Haigh’s first step in making Greek Pete was to contact sex industry workers. How did he do this? “I just put an advert on Gaydar. I was hoping to get about twenty people, but only two got back! Pete was one of them, and it was through him that I heard about and came into contact with other escorts and sex workers.” Did he have any contact with unions, charities, vice squads or other organisations? “I wanted to keep it as ground level as possible. I wasn’t trying to explore the rights and wrongs or legalities of it, because then I’d have had people questioning me as to why I wasn’t showing enough of the bad side or the good side. I just wanted it to be about the guys: their stories, their lives.”

Pete himself is a magnetic presence. A handsome Greek-Cypriot, he takes great pride in his work, displaying a consummate professionalism befitting of a Michael Mann protagonist, and talks candidly and objectively about his childhood, his working methods, the requests clients make of him and his own limitations, and his ambition to save enough money to retire to the kind of big house and garden he’s never had. Haigh explains, “From our first meeting I could see that that he had something worth capturing on film, that his was a story worth telling. This was also because I didn’t want to resort to the usual story of the rent boy who’s fucked up and hooked on drugs. Once Pete understood that I wasn’t out to exploit or judge him, everything started to come together.”

The film features candid scenes of drug use and sex (from paying clients to porn shoots), but the director’s gaze remains commendably neutral. “It was just a matter of switching the camera on. I just set it up and let it be. I gave the guys a brief description, shot it documentary style, and they went for it. Everyone was so used to performing that it was no huge task for any of them. You have to understand there was no crew, just me with the camera on my shoulder. It was quite an easy process.”

This approach, something we now see frequently, was born out of Haigh’s respect for the men and for sensitivities surrounding the sex industry: “I was always concerned about how I was portraying the guys and I didn’t want to stem any trouble for them. They had some things they wouldn’t talk about, things about their lives they didn’t want shown, so that’s where the whole docu-drama style came from.”

Could this not also prove dangerous, however? “It’s a slanted take on reality. All the stories the guys are telling, all the situations and set-ups you see, are all real. It’s just the presentation is different. It was interesting watching how the guys wanted to present themselves, knowing their stories. I wasn’t worried about this damaging the film or manipulating the audience. Every film does this to some extent, and it gets the audience talking about it, questioning what they’ve seen and trying to find out more.”

The film has already been met with rapturous applause and festival awards, though the public reaction has been mixed. “Sex workers are very happy with it; they say it really represents them. Clients on the other hand haven’t been so kind. The peculiar thing has been from audiences not from that world. Straight audiences seem to respond better to it than gay audiences. But many people have recognised the film for what it is, neither a celebration nor a condemnation. It just shows the lives these guys live.”

What do Pete and the guys think of it? “They’re really pleased. Pete loved it. He’s been given lots of opportunities now so he doesn’t escort anymore. It was strange at the premiere: I was sitting with my mum and my family with an entire row of escorts in front of us. But my mum loved it: I can’t think of a more ringing endorsement than that!”

J. Edgar: an alternative view

Here’s a piece I wrote for acrossthearts.co.uk on why I disagree with the response to Clint Eastwood’s J. EDGAR.

Anyone who saw Michael Mann’s Public Enemies (and few did, which is a shame because it’s superior genre fare, even if it did take this viewer three viewings to appreciate its qualities. Might explain its box office failure come to think about it!) will remember the unnerving scene in which J. Edgar Hoover, ferociously embodied by the under valued Billy Crudup, orders Melvin Purvis to “take off the white gloves” in his pursuit of John Dillinger. It’s a tiny moment, but a simple change of angle and Crudup’s lethal delivery cut to the heart of one of American history’s most feared, occasionally divisive, and most controversial figures. Mann did much with one exchange; Clint Eastwood however, had two and a half hours to explore this extraordinary, infuriating man. Critics and audiences have been unconvinced, the same critics and audiences who have heaped praise upon revisionist, borderline hagiography like The Iron Lady. For my money, J. Edgar’s detractors are wrong.

Rummaging through his garbage for juicy information, writer Dustin Lance Black has crafted a story far less hopeful, accessible, or indeed straightforward, than his Oscar winning Milk (unlike Public Enemies, the film’s impact lessens considerably on repeat viewings). Where that film ran the gamut of heroic biopic cliché (an almost Christian parable of struggle, realisation, revolution, sacrifice and a message immortal), J. Edgar is far closer to Kirby Dick’s excellent documentary Outrage (one of the best films of the last few years, shamefully denied a UK cinema release). Many have dismissed the new film as monotonous, lethargic and of bringing nothing new to bear. I disagree. This is, if nothing else, a brilliant psychological character study, an interrogation and expose worthy of Hoover himself. If one argument against it is that it rushes through American history without truly exploring it, I would argue that it is less interested in addressing Hoover’s involvement in such events (although they are certainly there, and the ones chosen paint him at his most devious, immoral and hateful, such as his attempts to destroy Martin Luther King), than how these shifting plates of time reflected not just on him, but on American manhood.

Yes, the film drags up the usual Freudian analysis so beloved of American cinema (see, he had an Oedipus complex!), but there are subtleties at foot here that any follower of Eastwood’s career (and if you haven’t been following his career, why not?!) should be relishing. The self-reflexive, self-critical themes of Unforgiven and Gran Torino are present once again: Hoover’s disdain for US culture’s lionisation of the gangster as personified by James Cagney is remedied when he successfully makes “every kid in America want to be a G Man”, once again personified by Cagney. This might not seem terribly interesting, but in their choice of footage and their attention to the iconography of the old hoofer (a hero of Eastwood’s youth), they draw attention to America’s ideals of masculinity: the poor, refrigeration seeking audience of The Public Enemy now cheer the violence and hegemony not of criminals but of authority. For the male and female public, and for Hoover and his homophobic mother, this is just fine and Yankee Doodle Dandy (the title, of course, of the film Cagney made to keep the anti-Communist witch hunters, of whom Hoover was one of the most prominent, at bay…).

This is a film as concerned with American definitions of strength and machismo as Unforgiven was with violence and myth-making (that’s in J. Edgar as well, but it’s far more pronounced). It needs to be: Hoover’s fearsome reputation and the admiration of the right would of course take a bruising when allegations of homosexuality and cross-dressing came to bear. These allegations, as is the case with Alexander the Great, Edward II and William of Orange have never been conclusively proven. While they seem more than likely, no one can be absolutely certain, which is of course both challenging and enticing for dramatists. Tony Kushner of course gave us one of the best depictions of a closeted conservative in Angels In America’s Roy Cohn. While Cohn was unambiguously the villain of that piece, however, J. Edgar’s Hoover is the central protagonist, and as Kushner has pointed, for all Cohn’s evil, his death from AIDS related illness sparked a homophobic response not just from the right but from the “left”, which meant the gay community took Cohn to heart in spite of themselves. The same could be said of Hoover, if only we were more certain of his private proclivities. But Black and Eastwood’s achievement is not in arguing why an immensely powerful gay man would choose to stay in the closet (as Kushner does so terrifyingly well), but in slowly peeling back the layers (ironic given the notorious make up jobs: I thought the performances were strong enough to transcend them) of uncertainty and doubt of both characters and viewers, depicting a chaste man with an obvious and mutual devotion to another, a lack of interest in women, and a racinating desire to conform to the contradictory values of the world’s most contradictory nation.

The film doesn’t ask us to love Hoover, nor does it seek to rehabilitate him, as the Daily Telegraph might hope. Black is an openly gay liberal, Eastwood a sometime Republican and traditionalist idol whose politics have softened with age. Yes, it might be difficult to gauge if they agree that Hoover’s paranoid obsession with the communist threat was as damaging as our current demonisation of Islam, but this balancing act gives the film the conflicted force that has powered the best of Oliver Stone’s work. This is a knowingly contradictory, psychologically gripping account of a fierce but fascinating, innovative but intolerable individual undeserving of either hagiography or damnation. It might not take off the white gloves, but it certainly gets them over the knuckles.

First Time For Everything…

unless you’re an existentialist who believes you were never born, in which case almost everything. Anyway, I only bring up the old aphorism because this, the prose what you are reading, is my very first blog post. I’m not entirely sure what “blogging” is. I’ve always thought writing was writing, but then again, I only just updated to the MP3/iTunes revolution a month ago.

So, what can you expect from this thar blog? Well, in addition to my favourite video clips and whatever news items are catching my eye (as long as they don’t grip it too hard: it’s soft, after all… sorry this is getting unpleasant), I’ll also be posting my musings on all things life and cinema, hopefully maintaining a consistently high grasp of the grammar, speeling and punc.tu-atio’n.

You can also look forward to my series of interconnected short stories, “Wasteland Tales”, and maybe more, if I don’t get too lazy.

Haste ye back for further adventures,

M