Lance Loud from the rarified, proto-reality television gem “An American Family.” This is hardcore observational filmmaking with the upper middle class Loud family in Santa Barbara during 1971. Its hallmark PBS broadcast attracted 10 million viewers and considerable controversy when Patricia Loud asked her husband Bill for a divorce on camera. In a magical moment preceding the divorce, Lance’s alluring mother visits her fey teenage son at his new Chelsea Hotel digs in New York City. Lance introduces mom to next-door neighbor Holly Woodlawn and takes her to LaMaMa to see Candy Darling performing on a swing. After TV fame, Lance went on to form the seminal band The Mumps and remained a media personality—he was present at the Warhol museum when his teenage letters to Andy were officially entered into the archive. At age 50, Loud died from HIV and Hepatitis C complications, acknowledging his struggle with 20 years of crystal meth addiction in the follow-up television special, “A Death In An American Family.”
"I'm too sad to tell you," 1970. It's difficult to avoid obsession with the artist Bas Jan Ader. He died in 1974 trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a 13 foot sailboat, "In Search of the Miraculous."
For nearly 40 years, Castle Golf has been the premiere designer and builder of profitable miniature golf courses. Considerations are given to style of play, hole characteristics, and theming if required. There are many workable themes. Examples of timeless themes are tropical/jungle, pirate/nautical, and western/mining.
A message film, lowbrow comedy, and Redd Foxx vehicle all rolled into
one, 1976's Norman... Is That You? stars Foxx as a crotchety fellow who
has trouble coping with the sexual revolution. After his wife leaves him
for his brother, Foxx heads out to California to stay with
Afro-sheen-enthusiast son Michael Warren. Opening with several minutes
shot on film, Norman boldly switches to video as soon as Foxx arrives at
Warren's apartment, unintentionally emphasizing its uncanny resemblance
to the set of a tacky mid-'70s sitcom.
At first, Foxx remains blissfully unaware of his son's alternative lifestyle, ignoring the presence of Warren's extravagantly swishy roommate/lover (Dennis Dugan). When Dugan spills the beans to Foxx concerning his son's sexual orientation, Foxx deals with the news as best he can: by talking loudly to himself about his dilemma while wandering around Los Angeles.
But Foxx's attitude toward homosexuality begins to change after he travels with Dugan to a performance by raunchy puppeteer Wayland Flowers and his collection of drag-queen-like dummies. Concluding, as many have, that any sexual orientation capable of producing an artist as sublime as Flowers can't be that bad, Foxx comes to accept both his son and the permissiveness of the '70s. - Nathan Rabin
236 artists contributed a handwritten statement about AIDS for charity. The transcendent pop band OMD (Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark) wrote:
In 1961, the American Medical Association hired the "young" actor Ronald Reagan to speak out against socialized medicine on a record. Coined Operation Coffeecup, AMA mobilized women to have coffee and conversation with friends and neighbors about "a crucial issue facing America."
On that day after Christmas in 1979 thirteen-year-old Robert Ben Madison declared his second-floor bedroom to be an independent, sovereign country. Ben named his creation "The Kingdom of Talossa," from the Finnish word talossa, which means "inside the house." Madison placed a "Romanian train conductor's hat" (in reality, an antique Milwaukee fire department dress hat acquired for $3.00) on his head, and gave his first Speech to the Nation. At that moment, the founder was transformed into His Royal Majesty, King Robert I of the Kingdom of Talossa.
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From 1992-1993 Ryan Phillippe played Billy Douglas, the first openly gay teenager on daytime television. Billy Douglas moved to Llanview the summer before his senior year in high school. He subsequently struggled to come out to himself and his homophobic parents, in the midst of a town bitterly divided over a rumour that the local minister might be gay. Jonathan, the lover of the minister's late brother, came to town to ask for Billy's help to make an AIDS quilt panel. Billy cathartically participated.
The Mystery Spot is a gravitational anomaly located in the redwood forests just outside of Santa Cruz, California. It is a circular area of effect around 150 feet or 46 meters in diameter. Within the Mystery Spot you will be stunned as your perceptions of the laws of physics and gravity are questioned. I had my 11th birthday party here.
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In Out of This World Maureen Flanniga (Evie) was the child of an alien, who spoke to her father through a glass tile portal. As a result, she was blessed with the power to freeze the world by placing her two index fingers together.
Néstor Almendros moved to Cuba at the age of 18 to join his
exiled anti-Franco father. He started making short films for the Castro
regime, but when two were banned by the government, he moved to Paris,
became Truffaut's cinematographer, and revolutionized the art form. In 1979 he won an Academy Award for Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven. Néstor returned
to Cuba later in his life to co-direct a documentary about the persecution of gays. He died of AIDS shortly after in 1992.
I am part of an eating club called Queens Food Caravan. We go to queens and eat excessive amounts of food for under $20. QFC official photoblog
Primal scream at Michael Heizer's earthwork Double Negative, Nevada desert
watch video
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In 1973 Richard Nixon's secretary Rosemary Woods said she accidentally erased 18 1/2 minutes of crucial evidence that incriminated her boss. She posed for a photograph, demonstrating how she could accidentally erase tapes by stretching one foot forward while reaching back to get the phone.
We're pretty sure Daddy broke his clavicle bone today. He was in a horse
race at John's brother's ranch. Daddy and other men over 50 were running
across a gravel yard with broom sticks stuck between their legs (stuffed
horse heads were on the sticks), clapping together coconut shells and
dressed in satin hats and vests (Dad's was pink). He tripped and fell
near the finish line. He was in a lot of pain. We gave him a vicodin
(after 4 aleve), he fell asleep sitting up at the dinner table, and ended
up with his head on John's brother's shoulder. He then turned pasty
white, and sweaty.
Love,
Mom
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My father, a jewish hippy from New Jersey, mocks a gun-toting East Berlin soldier in 1970. My boyfriend, a sprightly midwestern wasp, strikes a pose on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in 2006.
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Eastern European expert videographer available for hire. Specializes in Bar Mitzvahs and avant-garde documentaries.
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The 1988 documentary “American Dream at Groton” focused on the blue-blooded Massachusetts prep school Groton. In a masterwork of the identity politics milieu, the film chronicled the struggles of eighteen-year-old Jo Vega, born in Spanish Harlem and transplanted in New England.
In one of the best scenes ever in documentary filmmaking, Vega presented her high school art class with examples of her personal sculptures:
If you look back here, there’s a dagger and that dagger is supposed to show what kind of defense mechanism a Puerto Rican woman has to have when her husband cannot find a job and he is frustrated and resorts to drinking and eventually madness.
An aggressive wasp proceeds to berate an emotional Vega in front of the art class:
In America we always talk about it being a melting pot… Everyone comes from someplace else. Everyone has trouble finding a job. Everyone has to defend themselves against madness and alcoholism. I don’t really know what people really think about all this, but most people go about expressing their resentments at Groton over the lunch table and not let it build up to a level where in a sense they explode in a demonstration of art that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
Vega stares speechless at the wasp, silently second-guessing the false promises of '80s multiculturalism.
When Evgenii Kharitonov (1941-1981) died of a heart attack in June of 1981, the pages of his just-completed manuscript blew away down Pushkin St. He had called his volume Pod domashnim arestom—Under House Arrest. Kharitonov's writer friends broke into his apartment, which had been sealed by the KGB, to salvage what they could find. These materials were later seized from their homes. Unlike many dissidents and underground writers, who often worked as night watchmen or elevator operators, Kharitonov taught acting and pantomime at the state film institute and he directed at the Theater for the Deaf, among other works, his own play, "Enchanted Island." Kharitonov choreographed the rock group "Last Chance" and studied speech defects at Moscow State University. Meanwhile he wrote unpublishable gay prose, poetry, and drama.
Lizzy Mercier Descloux was born in 1956 in Paris. Nineteen years later, she left for New York, bought a Fender Jazzmaster guitar, and started playing shows in Soho galleries and Lower East Side clubs. It was the beginning of a long love affair with New York. Lizzy and her roommate Patti Smith recorded an offbeat duet based on Rimbaud's “Matinée d'ivresse / Morning high.” Jean Michel Basquiat and her became kindred spirits. Lizzy died in 2004 shortly after being diagnosed with cancer.
Sparse lyrics, heavy french accent, broken down guitar riffs, autodidact tension
with an attitude of insouciance, lightness of the day, derision,
soultrainmachine.
-Ze Records
Jermaine Stewart appeared on American Bandstand and Soul Train as a talented teenager. But Stewart is best remembered for his one-hit wonder “We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off.” One of the most successful abstinence ballads of all time, the song reached the Billboard Top 5. But Stewart’s self-purifying message about homosexuality and AIDS eluded born again virgins and radio listeners in the mid-‘80s. Stewart died of complications related to AIDS in 1997.
We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off (1986)
Not a word, from your lips
You just took for granted that I want to skinny dip.
A quick hit, that's your game.
But I'm not a piece of meat, still you like my brain.
Night is young, so are we.
Let's get to know each other better, slow & easily.
Take my hand, let's hit the floor.
Shake our bodies to the music.
Maybe then you'll score.
Chorus: So come on baby, won't you show some class
Why you want to move so fast.
We don't have to take our clothes off
To have a good time
Oh no
We could dance & party all night
And drink some cherry wine
Uh huh
We don't have to take our clothes off
To have a good time
Oh no
We could dance & party all night (all night)
And drink some cherry wine
Uh huh
Na na na na na na na............
Just slow down if you want me
A man wants to be approached cool & romantically
I've got needs
Just like you
If the conversation's good
Vibrations through & through
July 1977. Angry white men held a "Disco Demolition" rally in Chicago's Comiskey Park. Originally the plan was to blow up disco records between doubleheaders, but the crowd started tearing the stadium apart. Cock rockers didn't like this new electronic music, nor the social movement it inspired amongst blacks and gays.
By 1980 disco was a dirty word. Rockers pridefully paraded "disco sucks" banners, and the rock establishment quixotically mythologized an imminent culture war. Rolling Stone wrote, "You can say that the first six months of 1979 belonged to disco... and that the last six months belonged to the brave young rockers."
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Here Carl and Jamie are squatting on an empty foggy beach near the Russian River. My new cottage apartment in Brooklyn.
JD Doyle is a self-confessed fanatic collector of gay music and likely has the largest private collection in the world. His website Queer Music Heritage is an obsessive, nuanced catalog of subcultural information and ephemera. And he's an awesome web designer! This is one of the most inspired archives on the Internet.
Food: Dim Sum in Mega Dim Sum Palace
Entertainment: Gay Hypnotist, Hypnotizes Twelve Close Friends
Misc. Parrots and Birds as Decor
Allison Smith and I recenlty wrote a piece called "Re-enacting Stonewall, Jackson that is." The essay is about The Muster, a civil war reenactment-inspired event that Allison organized with the Public Art Fund on Governor's Island. This was for the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Thanks also to David Ball at Queer Kit for republishing the essay.
The most beautiful movie in a most beautiful book...
The blood of sensibility is blue
I consecrate myself
To find its most perfect expression
My sight failed a little more in the night
H.B. offers me his blood
It will kill everything he says
The drip of DHPG
Trills like a canary
This is me engaging in a primal scream with my friend Oreet Ashery, who performs as her Hasidic Jewish male alterego Marcus Fisher. A few years ago, she did a performance in my friends' bedroom. You had to sign up to spend five minutes in bed with Marcus and to do whatever you want. Marcus took a picture.
Carl found this poodle workout video on the Internet, which reminds me of AA Bronson and the art trio General Idea.
Markio Takahashi's Fitness Video for being appraised as an "EX-FAT GIRL."
When I was making a film about Andrew Cunanan, the gay serial killer who shot Gianni Versace, one particular fan website was an invaluable resource. The site “Andrew Cunanan: The Obsession” meticulously documented the media coverage and various theories about the 1997 killing spree. I unsuccessfully attempted to contact the website’s creator many times, and for a while I wanted to make my film about him. Strangely, his site’s section “About Me,” provided a broken link, offering few clues about the fan’s background or inspirations. Upon further investigation, through an Internet archiving website, I found the original “About Me” page, which explained the author’s motivations.
I have created an archival reproduction of “Andrew Cunanan: The Obsession.” The only difference is that I have added the original “About Me” webpage. The author “anglochinapino” wrote in July 24th 1997, “my core belief, as an artist, is to take any bit of inspiration or obsession, and run with it—exploit it—creatively. The story of Andrew Cunanan inspired me to publish this web site.”
"Magic Box Slideshow," 2005
80 Looping 35mm slidess, audio cd
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I first came across the artist David Wojnarowicz as an angry gay teenager in San Jose, California. It was 1997, I was fifteen and I did an Internet search for "gay" and "art." The first thing I clicked on was about David. This early fan website had crude digital reproductions of the late artists’ work and some of his texts. Needless to say, this first glimpse of David Wojnarowicz deeply affected me.
Four years later I was making a film about David. I was shuffling through his archives at NYU’s Fales Library, which holds David's entire collection of things—his diaries, receipts, tape collection, photographs, slides, original artworks, toys, porn and more. This is a very overwhelming way to acquaint yourself, materially speaking, with someone who is gone and also someone who is very public.
But certainly the most mysterious object of all was what David called “The Magic Box.” This wood crate was stored under David’s bed until he died. The box contains a collection of symbolically loaded objects—toy bugs, skulls, target pins, flowers, rocks, soil, currency, and religious trading cards. Many of these figures appear again and again through David’s artwork. So in many senses the Magic Box seems like a mini museum or an archive of David’s feelings, filled with the personal artifacts, which infused his political rage.
Towards the bottom of the magic box, many of the objects are wrapped, numbered, and labeled. Apparently David was starting to organize all of his materials before his early death in 1992. It seems that the Magic Box was being archived by David Wojnarowicz, perhaps in hopes that this private case would be found and rediscovered in the future.
Soon archivists at Fales Library will disassemble the box—placing each individual toy or figure into separate archival cases, which will correspond to a coherent library finding aid. Eventually images of the magic box's contents will be accessible on the Internet, and available for discovery, much like how I first found out about David’s work years ago. So these slides are the last documentation of the magic box before it refigures as something that is officially preserved.
David Boyer and I are doing a project about an active-adult retirement community in Boca Raton, Florida. We were in Florida doing some research.
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