‘Strange Couples’ (Director: Matsumoto Takuya)
2008 / Japan / 52 mins
Screened: Sunday July 20, 11:25 – Spiral Hall
The scene in the lobby after the screening of ‘Strange Couples’ looked a bit like a photo-shoot for a rock band, as Matsumoto-san and his bare-chested warriors of weird posed down with guitars and punky grins. Half-intellectual, half rock’n’roll punk, with thick black-rimmed glasses and hair standing up to the sky, he looked not unlike the off-spring of some queer liaison between Elvis Costello and Woody Allen -- and if you don’t find that sexy, you aren’t using enough imagination! He was f***ing adorable (but is, apparently, not gay)!
I had a chance to talk to Matsumoto-san, who spoke pretty decent English, and with the help of one of our stalwart volunteer, Nishimura-san (who counts translation to and from Japanese into English among his many services to the festival), conducted the following short interview.
Guy: I really enjoyed the film. It’s nice to see some Japanese stuff in contrast to all the American and European films screening at the festival. So where did the story for ‘Strange Couples’ come from?
Matsumoto-san: Thank you. I came to the festival two years ago to see a friend’s film, and I really liked the atmosphere and the audience. So I thought, ‘Hey, I should make a film for this festival.’ I thought it would be an ideal venue for my films.
Guy: This isn’t your first film, is it?
Matsumoto-san: No, I’ve made maybe 20 or 30 films now, both short and long.
Guy: Where does the money come from to make your films?
Matsumoto-san: I basically pay for it myself. It’s very low budget. The actors don’t get paid, other than for their transportation costs.
Guy: Do all of your films have gay themes?
Matsumoto-san: No, some do, some don’t. Most of them are a bit dark -- human dramas.
Guy: How long are your longer films?
Matsumoto-san: The longest are about 100 minutes.
Guy: Wow, that’s feature length. So where are your films usually shown?
Matsumoto-san: Well, my short films have shown at festivals like this one. But in Japan they don’t tend to want to show longer films at festivals, so we have to organize independent screenings at community centers, schools, and special events.
Guy: Really? It’s hard to imagine why. You mean they prefer to show programs of short films?
Matsumoto-san: Yes, there is an audience for shorts at festivals. And for bigger budget features. But not for the kind of features I make. I’ve made about 10 feature-length films, but I can’t get them screened at festivals. My films have never played at commercial cinemas, but they’ve screened at the Tama Film Center, near Hachioji, in West Tokyo.
Guy: Well, I’d like to get out and see some more of your work.
Matsumoto-san: That’s great. But it will be difficult for you, because we aren’t able to present them with English subtitles. That’s one of the great things about showing at a festival like this, is they have the resources to show the film with subtitles.
[Please visit http://matsumoto-movie.hp.infoseek.co.jp/ for information on upcoming screenings.]
Matsumoto-san presented me with handbills for some of his other films, all of which look like pretty major productions. One of the more intriguing was ‘Otokotachi no Baka’ (‘The Men’s Stupid Song’, loosely translated -- he uses the kanji for horse ‘ba’ and for song ‘ka’, but ‘baka’ also means idiotic, silly or crazy). It’s a series of 3 ‘documentaries’ (in the same sense that something like ‘Jackass’ is a documentary!) of him and his friends/partners-in-crime going across the country having various misadventures. The name of the film is a play on ‘Otokotachi no Banka’ [‘The Men’s Elegy’], the Japanese title of the John Woo film ‘Better Luck Tomorrow’.
A man of somewhat manic energy, he was off on another adventure before long, and I was eager to chat with his star, Takahashi Kanimaru.
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INTERVIEW: Takahashi Kanimaru
Dressed in a smart grey suit and sticking to the no-shirt policy, Takahashi-san is a fine-looking man with one of those hypnotically symmetrical faces onto which you could project any mood, any emotion. Indeed, the film depends on just this quality, with its many close-ups of Takahashi-san’s blankly affecting visage. He’s also a bit of a flirt, with a mischievous sense of humour. With very little prodding from Rachel D’Amour, he showed his nipples off to the audience during the Q&A, ensuring everyone’s amusement and pleasure! With Nishimura-san’s translation assistance, I managed to capture this interview.
Guy: So how did you get involved in this project?
Takahashi-san: Well, firstly, Takahashi Kanimaru is my stage name. It was given to me by Takahashi Tete, who does a lot of theatre work and also worked on ‘Strange Couples’. I am a stage actor, and Matsumoto-san saw one of my shows and decided he wanted me for this project.
Guy: Have you appeared in any films before?
Takahashi-san: Yes, I have appeared in several films by Obayashi-san, a well-known Japanese director [a recent film of his would be translated into English as ‘Time-leaping Girl’]. I also had a small role in ‘Lost in Translation.’
Guy: Really? Where can we see you in this film?
Takahashi-san: You know the scene where Bill Murray is filming a commercial for Suntory Whiskey?
Guy: Of course…
Takahashi-san: Well, there’s a documentary film crew following his character around, and I am the director of that film crew.
Guy: How did you enjoy working on this film?
Takahashi-san: Ah, it was really nice. Sophia Coppola spoke with me while the other actors were changing their costumes.
Guy: Did she speak any Japanese? What was she like?
Takahashi-san: No, she doesn’t speak Japanese. But she was very kind. She responded really well to me.
Guy: So can I ask you, are you gay?
Takahashi-san: No! Actually, I am married.
Guy: Any children?
Takahashi-san: Not yet!
Guy: So how was it acting in this gay love story? You guys are really all over each other throughout the movie. It’s very fun and sexy.
Takahashi-san: I had worked with the actor who plays Jackson [a nickname based on the sound the character makes when he sneezes!], my boyfriend in the film, so that made it easier. It’s not hard to show that intimacy on screen. But I would do things to help us get into the mood, like holding hands before shooting.
Guy: Getting older seems to be an issue in the film. The character you play is turning 21 and seems to be anxious about his age. Were you able to relate to that anxiety?
Takahashi-san: Well, I am 31 -- 10 years older than the character I was playing. So it took some time for me to get back into the headspace of someone that age. But I didn’t really focus on my own past, like, trying to remember what it was to be 21, but on the relationship between him and Jackson, and what it feels like to be in love for the first time when you are young.
Because he’s so cute, and because he gave such a persuasive performance as a “full-time homo” we’ll forgive him his being straight! Actually, he was a total gentleman and was the last of the three actors to put his shirt back on after the screening, which shows just how sensitive he is to the needs and desires of those attending the festival! We wish him well!
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INTERVIEW: Ito Asuka
Ito Asuka is a gorgeous and gracious embodiment of the Japanese adjective ‘genki’, which we really ought to coin into English usage, since it captures a unique mix of liveliness, good health, youthfulness and up-beat spirits without any implication of being manic or hyperactive!
Guy: How did you get your role in ‘Strange Couples’?
Asuka-chan: I was in Matsumoto-san’s last film, a documentary [‘Otokotachi no Baka’].
Guy: But you’re not a guy! [‘Otoko’ means male person.]
Asuka-chan: I know. But I’m a guy in spirit!
Guy: So how did you get involved in that film?
Asuka-chan: I was playing in a rock band -- I play keyboards -- and the drummer had worked with the director on one of his previous films. I was invited to do the film only one week before they started filming.
Guy: Are you trained as an actor, or are you primarily a musician?
Asuka-chan: Actually, acting is my main passion. Music is a side project.
Guy: As a foreigner, the image we have of Japan from the outside is of a very homogeneous society where there is a lot of pressure for people to conform and be the same. Your character is really weird -- she confesses that she is [romantically] in love with her brother! But the idea behind this film is that ‘it isn’t weird to be weird’. What do you think of that idea?
Asuka-chan: As for my role, I can accept that a sister might idealize her brother and allow that to become something like romantic love. As for being different, the title is ‘Strange Couples’, so I knew it would be a bit weird, that it would be about strange things. So I just acted in keeping with that.
I have lots of gay and lesbian friends, and I didn’t think there was any discrimination against them. I didn’t see that they had any particular difficulty being who they are. But then one day we got into a cab together in Kanagawa, and the cab driver said he couldn’t take lesbians in his cab. That really shocked me.
Guy: In the movie, your character reacts very badly when she finds out her brother is gay. Did you ever have this kind of experience? How did you feel when you met your first gay person, or made your first gay friend?
Asuka-chan: Yeah, of course I was surprised. I didn’t know what to think. But a few minutes later, I just thought, ‘Well, I have a new kind of friend.’ At first, it was like counselling a friend about their love affairs.
Guy: Why was that?
Asuka-chan: Because this person was telling me about the problems with their relationship, but I didn’t know that it was with a person of the same sex.
Guy: Ah, that’s funny! You can do that in Japanese, because you don’t usually make clear whether you are speaking about a man or woman [gendered pronouns are rarely used in Japanese, and nouns are not gendered]. In English, you couldn’t talk about someone in such a gender-neutral way for very long. It would be very awkward, and it would arouse suspicion.
[Nishimura-san mentioned the use of ‘partner’ in English when people are talking about a same-sex boyfriend or girlfriend, but that word has now been ‘queered’ by queer people using it this way, such that when straight people say ‘partner’, it sounds like they mean a same-sex lover!]
Asuka-chan: Yeah, so I only found out later. But we were already friends, so it wasn’t really a problem, just a surprise.
Guy: How do you see your career as an actress developing?
Asuka-chan: Well, I belong to a small acting agency, so they give me assignments -- usually for commercials or internal corporate videos and that sort of thing. So I will keep doing that work. But I also want to keep doing indies like ‘Strange Couples’.
Guy: Are you making a living from your acting at present, or do you have to do something else as well?
Asuka-chan: Yeah, I have a part-time job. Many of us do. In the end, though, I would like to be an oba-chan actress [a ‘granny’ actress who achieves a ripe old age and is still working]!
We certainly hope she achieves her goal. She’ll make one mighty cute granny (oba-chan)!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
‘Strange Couples’ & ‘Moon Shadow’
‘Strange Couples’ (Director: Matsumoto Takuya)
2008 / Japan / 52 mins
‘Moon Shadow’ (Director; Yoshino Ryouhei)
2007 / Japan / 40 mins
Screened: Sunday July 20, 11:25 – Spiral Hall
Because this is an English-language blog (and because my Japanese is not very good!), we so far haven’t been able to bring you much coverage of the Japanese and other Asian films that screened at this year’s festival. We went a little way toward correcting that with our two long posts on Taiwan’s ‘Drifting Flowers’, and will go further with this post, as well as upcoming posts on the ‘Asian Shorts’ and ‘Japanese Rainbow Reel’ programs.
The directors and stars of these two unique independent films were all able to attend the screening, which meant we had about 10 people on stage after the screening for the Q&A session. It was hosted by local drag personality Rachel D’Amour, who was dressed in a vibrant green and red embroidered silk cape over a two-piece number that made her look like a cross between a hostess in a high-end Chinese restaurant and a Las Vegas show-girl. The four men among the ‘Strange Couples’ crew (director Matsumoto Takuya, lead actor Takahashi Kanimaru, and two of his male co-stars) all came on stage in suit jackets over bare chests (because showing a little skin, of course, always goes over well at a queer event!), and the director added a touch of formality by wearing a tie! But what they were talking about, I haven’t the foggiest clue!
‘Strange Couples’ & ‘Moon Shadow’ are two longer Japanese short films that screened together on Sunday morning, representing two very different independent film aesthetics.
Shot on video, ‘Strange Couples’ is a zany but very touching comedy about what it means to be ‘normal’. It poses this question by surrounding a loving gay-male couple (loving to the point of near-constant molestation) with a cast of heterosexual nuts! One believes she is an alien and expects to be repatriated to her home planet at any moment, much to the consternation of her boyfriend. Another is in mourning for a dead boyfriend, but speaks to him as if he were still alive, and seems to believe he can live again if a suitable host body is found! When the sister of one of the gay partners barges in, freaked out that her brother is a homo, the whole group decides to hit the road in flight from the prejudices of the ‘normal’ world (and the sister, who is maybe more lonely than bigoted, comes along for the ride). Their misadventures take them to a mountain cabin where they encounter yet another group of freaks-- this time gangsters! The action-packed ending (imagine ‘The Matrix’ made with no budget whatsoever) is as hilarious as it is improbable in this joyfully silly film with a serious message at its heart -- ‘There’s nothing weird about being weird’, and nothing abnormal about being in love.
What I admired most about it was that it begins from a totally different premise than most gay stories, which are (typically) about either coming out, or finding or losing love. The one thing we don’t doubt in this story is the love that its two leading male characters share for one another -- indeed, they can’t keep their hands (mouths, tongues) off of each other! If that’s a problem, it’s somebody else’s, not theirs, and this rock-solid love is the focal point of certainty around which their little universe of crazy friends and crazier mishaps rotates. Playfully sexy, touchingly weird, and utterly immune to cynicism, the ‘Strange Couples’ screening was the most fun I had (inside the theatre, at least) at this year’s festival.
‘Moon Shadow’ is a more serious but still funny and moving film about an odd pair of accidental roommates and their various romantic disappointments and frustrations. Hirose-san is a school-teacher of ambiguous age (in the film she looks like she might be pushing 50, but in reality the actress is perhaps not 30!). One morning she wakes up to find a gay man, who has just broken up with his boyfriend and been kicked out of their apartment, sleeping in her bed. It’s unclear whether they were friends (or neighbours) before, but he is not leaving! He cooks and cleans for her, and before long they have settled into a cozy domestic relationship. Perhaps it is something about her new roommate that allows Hirose-san to admit to herself that she is infatuated with one of her young male students. Eventually, we learn that her roommate too became aware of himself and his sexuality through the attentions of a particularly fond teacher, with whom he is briefly reunited toward the end of the film. Filled with lines cruelly cutting (“She’s like one of those nerds having a fake romance in a hostess café”), frank (“I chose someone to love who wouldn’t love me back. It’s safer that way”), redeeming and ultimately liberating (“You made me realize who I am”), it is a quiet, meditative piece about the secrets we keep, the disappointments we endure, and the strange places we find strength.
It is also, intentionally or not, an homage to an older kind of independent cinema, one made clear by the strong contrast of its style and texture when screened alongside ‘Strange Couples’. Shot on film, ‘Moon Shadow’ has the buttery yellow-gold look of 1970s cinema, and is -- perhaps intentionally -- devoid of props or other signifiers (no cell phones, no personal computers) that would root it firmly in the present. We’ve become so used to digital photography, and now digital projection, that to actually see something shot on film is a nostalgic reminder of cinema’s material history, rapidly dematerializing in the digital age.
For more on ‘Strange Couples’, see my interview with the director Matsumoto Takuya, lead actor Takahashi Kanimaru and actress Ito Asuka.
2008 / Japan / 52 mins
‘Moon Shadow’ (Director; Yoshino Ryouhei)
2007 / Japan / 40 mins
Screened: Sunday July 20, 11:25 – Spiral Hall
Because this is an English-language blog (and because my Japanese is not very good!), we so far haven’t been able to bring you much coverage of the Japanese and other Asian films that screened at this year’s festival. We went a little way toward correcting that with our two long posts on Taiwan’s ‘Drifting Flowers’, and will go further with this post, as well as upcoming posts on the ‘Asian Shorts’ and ‘Japanese Rainbow Reel’ programs.
The directors and stars of these two unique independent films were all able to attend the screening, which meant we had about 10 people on stage after the screening for the Q&A session. It was hosted by local drag personality Rachel D’Amour, who was dressed in a vibrant green and red embroidered silk cape over a two-piece number that made her look like a cross between a hostess in a high-end Chinese restaurant and a Las Vegas show-girl. The four men among the ‘Strange Couples’ crew (director Matsumoto Takuya, lead actor Takahashi Kanimaru, and two of his male co-stars) all came on stage in suit jackets over bare chests (because showing a little skin, of course, always goes over well at a queer event!), and the director added a touch of formality by wearing a tie! But what they were talking about, I haven’t the foggiest clue!
‘Strange Couples’ & ‘Moon Shadow’ are two longer Japanese short films that screened together on Sunday morning, representing two very different independent film aesthetics.
Shot on video, ‘Strange Couples’ is a zany but very touching comedy about what it means to be ‘normal’. It poses this question by surrounding a loving gay-male couple (loving to the point of near-constant molestation) with a cast of heterosexual nuts! One believes she is an alien and expects to be repatriated to her home planet at any moment, much to the consternation of her boyfriend. Another is in mourning for a dead boyfriend, but speaks to him as if he were still alive, and seems to believe he can live again if a suitable host body is found! When the sister of one of the gay partners barges in, freaked out that her brother is a homo, the whole group decides to hit the road in flight from the prejudices of the ‘normal’ world (and the sister, who is maybe more lonely than bigoted, comes along for the ride). Their misadventures take them to a mountain cabin where they encounter yet another group of freaks-- this time gangsters! The action-packed ending (imagine ‘The Matrix’ made with no budget whatsoever) is as hilarious as it is improbable in this joyfully silly film with a serious message at its heart -- ‘There’s nothing weird about being weird’, and nothing abnormal about being in love.
What I admired most about it was that it begins from a totally different premise than most gay stories, which are (typically) about either coming out, or finding or losing love. The one thing we don’t doubt in this story is the love that its two leading male characters share for one another -- indeed, they can’t keep their hands (mouths, tongues) off of each other! If that’s a problem, it’s somebody else’s, not theirs, and this rock-solid love is the focal point of certainty around which their little universe of crazy friends and crazier mishaps rotates. Playfully sexy, touchingly weird, and utterly immune to cynicism, the ‘Strange Couples’ screening was the most fun I had (inside the theatre, at least) at this year’s festival.
‘Moon Shadow’ is a more serious but still funny and moving film about an odd pair of accidental roommates and their various romantic disappointments and frustrations. Hirose-san is a school-teacher of ambiguous age (in the film she looks like she might be pushing 50, but in reality the actress is perhaps not 30!). One morning she wakes up to find a gay man, who has just broken up with his boyfriend and been kicked out of their apartment, sleeping in her bed. It’s unclear whether they were friends (or neighbours) before, but he is not leaving! He cooks and cleans for her, and before long they have settled into a cozy domestic relationship. Perhaps it is something about her new roommate that allows Hirose-san to admit to herself that she is infatuated with one of her young male students. Eventually, we learn that her roommate too became aware of himself and his sexuality through the attentions of a particularly fond teacher, with whom he is briefly reunited toward the end of the film. Filled with lines cruelly cutting (“She’s like one of those nerds having a fake romance in a hostess café”), frank (“I chose someone to love who wouldn’t love me back. It’s safer that way”), redeeming and ultimately liberating (“You made me realize who I am”), it is a quiet, meditative piece about the secrets we keep, the disappointments we endure, and the strange places we find strength.
It is also, intentionally or not, an homage to an older kind of independent cinema, one made clear by the strong contrast of its style and texture when screened alongside ‘Strange Couples’. Shot on film, ‘Moon Shadow’ has the buttery yellow-gold look of 1970s cinema, and is -- perhaps intentionally -- devoid of props or other signifiers (no cell phones, no personal computers) that would root it firmly in the present. We’ve become so used to digital photography, and now digital projection, that to actually see something shot on film is a nostalgic reminder of cinema’s material history, rapidly dematerializing in the digital age.
For more on ‘Strange Couples’, see my interview with the director Matsumoto Takuya, lead actor Takahashi Kanimaru and actress Ito Asuka.
LGBT Youth Exchange Project
In the midst of the constant activity of the festival at Omote-Sando’s Spiral Hall was a table bedecked in rainbow flags, brochures and information, and staffed by bright-eyed young people working hard to make a difference for queer youth. As you’ll recall, at the request of director Thomas Gustafson, and with the help of an anonymous donor, a group of 16 queer youth were invited to attend our opening night screening of Gustafson’s ‘Were the World Mine’ free of charge. So where did these youth come from? And what sort of queer youth organizations or programs exist in Japan?
I finally had a chance to find out on Saturday, when I spoke with Inoue Yuko-san of the Center for Gender Studies at Tokyo’s International Christian University (http://subsite.icu.ac.jp/cgs/). They are working together with people from an initiative called Peer Friends on the LGBT Youth Exchange Project. This is the first year of the project, and it will bring a group of queer youth from Bristol, England to Japan this summer, for a ground-breaking exchange program. It will culminate in a public event on August 24th, when people like you and I can go to the Yoyogi Olympic Centre and find out what these inspiring young people have been doing during the exchange. (For more information, please visit: http://www.delta-g.org/youth/ Or send an email to: young_lgbt@yahoo.co.jp)
Yuko-san is a truly unique soul. Her father is a Presbyterian pastor at a church here in Japan, and although she is not gay, she is committed to fighting homophobia both in the Christian community and in Japan generally. She speaks excellent English; she even has a bit of a Southern twang. So I couldn’t help but wonder why. She explained that spent one year on exchange in Arkansas, and that her parents are bilingual, so she grew up using both Japanese and English.
Guy: So tell me how the project works? Who is running it? How long will it go on?
Yuko-san: Our project will run for two weeks this coming August. Taiga Ishikawa of Peer Friends has contacts in Toshimaku, where the group will have a kind of retreat. They will also spend 3 days travelling to Kyoto and Nara. And then they will report back on their activities at the big event in Yoyogi on the 24th.
Guy: Has anything like this been done before in Japan?
Yuko-san: No, this is the first exchange of its kind. Previously, Japanese LGBT youth had no opportunity to get together with foreign youth to discuss issues of homophobia and coming out. The U.K. is a frontrunner in this area.
Guy: So who is paying to bring these kids to Japan?
Yuko-san: The city council of Bristol. They have an office called Youth and Play Services, and they spend 20 million yen annually [about 200,000 US dollars] on programs that address LGBT issues. It involves teachers and senior government officials, so it is a very well-established program.
Guy: Really? That is quite surprising. Bristol is maybe not such a big city, is it?
Yuko-san: Actually, it is the 6th largest in the U.K. But, still, these programs are quite unique.
Guy: So how many people will be coming?
Yuko-san: Seven students and three staff. The students are all between 16 and 21 years of age. They will attend five different workshops, on issues such as overcoming homophobia, accepting yourself, and coming out to your parents, as well as learning about queer history, etc.
I volunteered the fact that there is a great organization in Toronto called S.O.Y. -- Supporting Our Youth -- that creates programming for queer youth and helps foster healthy interactions between younger and older queer people. They might be a good partner for future Youth Exchange Projects in Japan, and will be of interest to anyone doing work around youth and sexuality. (For more information on S.O.Y. please visit: http://www.soytoronto.org/)
Yuko-san had the good manners and the curiosity to ask what had brought me to Japan, and I explained that I had always wanted to live abroad, and that several friends of mine (gay men and women) had come to Japan to teach English and had good experiences here. That led to some comparison of our experiences living abroad. In response to my question about racism, she said that the community she lived in Arkansas was definitely very segregated. At her school, "the black kids sat on one side and the white kids on the other," she said, "with the Asian kids making a kind of border down the middle!" I offered that a lot of foreigners complain about being treated like outsiders in Japan and never being truly accepted, but to that for me -- as a gay person -- I have never expected the world to just embrace me with open arms. As long as you don’t run into open hostility, you count yourself lucky. In that sense, being gay is a good preparation for being the kind of minority you are when you choose to come and live in a foreign country. However, it has to be said, that being a white foreigner in Japan makes you a kind of privileged minority, quite different I am sure from the experience of other Asians or Africans in Japan, or the experience of Asians in North America.
Guy: Why do you think the level of homophobic violence in Japan is so relatively low?
Yuko-san: I think it has to do with the lack of Christianity.
Guy: This from a pastor's daughter!
Yuko-san: Yeah, really! But while it’s true that homophobic violence is quite rare in Japan, we have had cases of gay people being attacked and even murdered because they are gay. About 9 years ago, there was something called the Shin-Kiba incident, in which a man was attacked and killed by a group of teenagers. They later told the police that they didn’t think he mattered as a human being because he was gay.
Guy: I think it’s the case that because queer visibility is low in Japan, violence is also low. But it may be the case that as queer visibility increases, so too -- unfortunately -- will certain kinds of attacks on gay people. At least that seems to have been the pattern in North America.
Yuko-san: What about lesbian visibility in Canada? In Japan, it is even lower than the visibility of the gay male community. You know, gay men give money and organize events and spend money at those events, but lesbians are quite invisible, even within the gay community.
Guy: I think in Canada there is probably a similar disparity -- gay men’s events and programs attract more attention and money. But in terms of visibility, I would say lesbians are definitely not invisible, either in the general society or the gay community. They are quite well organized and vocal, like gay men.
So going back to the gender and sexuality program at ICS [International Christian University], it seems quite unique. Are there many other programs like this in Japan?
Yuko-san: No, it’s the only one of its kind here. There is no capacity to do research, but you can graduate with a concentration in Gender or Sexuality, or a combination of the two. Right now, it is an undergraduate program, but in the future of course we hope to be able to offer graduate degrees as well.
Guy: How were the young Brits that will participate in this exchange selected?
Yuko-san: The city of Bristol organizes something called ‘Freedom Youth’ -- a weekly group that meets to allow queer youth to socialize and also learn about things they don’t teach in schools, about queer history, etc. Many of these kids are interested in Japanese culture, though maybe they only have a stereotyped image of what that is -- you know, cartoons and that sort of thing. So the Bristol city officers decided they would fund several of them to come to Japan. Seven students said they were interested in going, so they started preparing. They’ve been studying Japanese and learning more in depth about Japanese culture for about seven months know. We’re really excited for them to arrive!
Guy: So the exchange is not about these kids coming over and ‘teaching’ their Japanese peers about being out or something?
Yuko-san: No, no, of course not. At this point in history, it would be pretty ridiculous to bring them over here for that purpose. No, this will be a true exchange of equals. The British kids have a lot of supports, so in that way it has become very safe for them to be gay. Whereas in Japan, the Japanese kids really have to fend for themselves. So both groups have a lot to learn from each other.
Guy: The event on the 24th sounds really great. I am looking forward to attending.
Yuko-san: Yeah, we would like to attract as many teachers and people who work with youth as possible.
Yuko-san spoke of the desire of her and her colleagues to see more teachers come out at school, to help make it easier and safer for students to come out. I was not happy to have to report that even in Canada, which has a reputation as a kind of paradise for queer people (or at least for queer rights), most gay teachers are not out at school, at least not to their students. It is a sad contradiction that although teacher’s college is typically a hot-bed of leftish idealism, where everyone becomes sensitized to issues of race, class, gender and sexuality, at the same time the message when you enter the workforce as a teacher is, ‘Keep your head down. Don’t rock the boat. Wait until you are in a secure position, and then maybe you can begin to try to come out at work.’ I’ve even heard of cases of student teachers being encouraged in teacher’s college to incorporate queer issues into their lessons, who have then gone ahead and done so during their teaching practicums, got into trouble with their host schools, and then were denied graduation as a teacher (from the university that encouraged them to do this in the first place) because they failed to complete their practicum successfully!
One of the reason for this hesitance of teachers to come out is that there is a widely held fear, in the predominantly Christian West, that gay people are a threat to children, and as recently as 15 years ago, a gay teacher in Toronto was murdered by students from his school. That led to the creation of Toronto’s Triangle Program (http://schools.tdsb.on.ca/triangle/), a special alternative school for queer youth. It is a single-classroom program that can accommodate about 18 students at a time housed in the basement of a church that is well-integrated into Toronto’s gay community (indeed, the pastor, Reverend Brent Hawkes, is himself gay and conducted some of Canada’s first gay weddings).
As Yuko-san and her colleagues know, however, nothing will change if we are forever keeping our heads down for fear of provoking hostile reactions. Events like the Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (and countless other queer film festivals around the world), programs like the Youth Exchange Project here, GLSEN (http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/home/index.html) and the Gay-Straight Alliances it has fostered in U.S. and Canadian schools, and the Triangle Program and S.O.Y. in Toronto show that gay people in general -- and isolated queer youth in particular -- have a tremendous hunger for images of queer life that they can identify with, and opportunities to meet, socialize and learn from each other outside of the usual adult venues of gay life. We look forward to hearing a lot more about the great work people like Yuko-san are doing to create those opportunities here in Japan. Otsukarasama desu! (Thanks for your hard work!)
For more information on the LGBT Youth Exchange Project, please visit: http://www.delta-g.org/youth/ Or send an email to: young_lgbt@yahoo.co.jp
I finally had a chance to find out on Saturday, when I spoke with Inoue Yuko-san of the Center for Gender Studies at Tokyo’s International Christian University (http://subsite.icu.ac.jp/cgs/). They are working together with people from an initiative called Peer Friends on the LGBT Youth Exchange Project. This is the first year of the project, and it will bring a group of queer youth from Bristol, England to Japan this summer, for a ground-breaking exchange program. It will culminate in a public event on August 24th, when people like you and I can go to the Yoyogi Olympic Centre and find out what these inspiring young people have been doing during the exchange. (For more information, please visit: http://www.delta-g.org/youth/ Or send an email to: young_lgbt@yahoo.co.jp)
Yuko-san is a truly unique soul. Her father is a Presbyterian pastor at a church here in Japan, and although she is not gay, she is committed to fighting homophobia both in the Christian community and in Japan generally. She speaks excellent English; she even has a bit of a Southern twang. So I couldn’t help but wonder why. She explained that spent one year on exchange in Arkansas, and that her parents are bilingual, so she grew up using both Japanese and English.
Guy: So tell me how the project works? Who is running it? How long will it go on?
Yuko-san: Our project will run for two weeks this coming August. Taiga Ishikawa of Peer Friends has contacts in Toshimaku, where the group will have a kind of retreat. They will also spend 3 days travelling to Kyoto and Nara. And then they will report back on their activities at the big event in Yoyogi on the 24th.
Guy: Has anything like this been done before in Japan?
Yuko-san: No, this is the first exchange of its kind. Previously, Japanese LGBT youth had no opportunity to get together with foreign youth to discuss issues of homophobia and coming out. The U.K. is a frontrunner in this area.
Guy: So who is paying to bring these kids to Japan?
Yuko-san: The city council of Bristol. They have an office called Youth and Play Services, and they spend 20 million yen annually [about 200,000 US dollars] on programs that address LGBT issues. It involves teachers and senior government officials, so it is a very well-established program.
Guy: Really? That is quite surprising. Bristol is maybe not such a big city, is it?
Yuko-san: Actually, it is the 6th largest in the U.K. But, still, these programs are quite unique.
Guy: So how many people will be coming?
Yuko-san: Seven students and three staff. The students are all between 16 and 21 years of age. They will attend five different workshops, on issues such as overcoming homophobia, accepting yourself, and coming out to your parents, as well as learning about queer history, etc.
I volunteered the fact that there is a great organization in Toronto called S.O.Y. -- Supporting Our Youth -- that creates programming for queer youth and helps foster healthy interactions between younger and older queer people. They might be a good partner for future Youth Exchange Projects in Japan, and will be of interest to anyone doing work around youth and sexuality. (For more information on S.O.Y. please visit: http://www.soytoronto.org/)
Yuko-san had the good manners and the curiosity to ask what had brought me to Japan, and I explained that I had always wanted to live abroad, and that several friends of mine (gay men and women) had come to Japan to teach English and had good experiences here. That led to some comparison of our experiences living abroad. In response to my question about racism, she said that the community she lived in Arkansas was definitely very segregated. At her school, "the black kids sat on one side and the white kids on the other," she said, "with the Asian kids making a kind of border down the middle!" I offered that a lot of foreigners complain about being treated like outsiders in Japan and never being truly accepted, but to that for me -- as a gay person -- I have never expected the world to just embrace me with open arms. As long as you don’t run into open hostility, you count yourself lucky. In that sense, being gay is a good preparation for being the kind of minority you are when you choose to come and live in a foreign country. However, it has to be said, that being a white foreigner in Japan makes you a kind of privileged minority, quite different I am sure from the experience of other Asians or Africans in Japan, or the experience of Asians in North America.
Guy: Why do you think the level of homophobic violence in Japan is so relatively low?
Yuko-san: I think it has to do with the lack of Christianity.
Guy: This from a pastor's daughter!
Yuko-san: Yeah, really! But while it’s true that homophobic violence is quite rare in Japan, we have had cases of gay people being attacked and even murdered because they are gay. About 9 years ago, there was something called the Shin-Kiba incident, in which a man was attacked and killed by a group of teenagers. They later told the police that they didn’t think he mattered as a human being because he was gay.
Guy: I think it’s the case that because queer visibility is low in Japan, violence is also low. But it may be the case that as queer visibility increases, so too -- unfortunately -- will certain kinds of attacks on gay people. At least that seems to have been the pattern in North America.
Yuko-san: What about lesbian visibility in Canada? In Japan, it is even lower than the visibility of the gay male community. You know, gay men give money and organize events and spend money at those events, but lesbians are quite invisible, even within the gay community.
Guy: I think in Canada there is probably a similar disparity -- gay men’s events and programs attract more attention and money. But in terms of visibility, I would say lesbians are definitely not invisible, either in the general society or the gay community. They are quite well organized and vocal, like gay men.
So going back to the gender and sexuality program at ICS [International Christian University], it seems quite unique. Are there many other programs like this in Japan?
Yuko-san: No, it’s the only one of its kind here. There is no capacity to do research, but you can graduate with a concentration in Gender or Sexuality, or a combination of the two. Right now, it is an undergraduate program, but in the future of course we hope to be able to offer graduate degrees as well.
Guy: How were the young Brits that will participate in this exchange selected?
Yuko-san: The city of Bristol organizes something called ‘Freedom Youth’ -- a weekly group that meets to allow queer youth to socialize and also learn about things they don’t teach in schools, about queer history, etc. Many of these kids are interested in Japanese culture, though maybe they only have a stereotyped image of what that is -- you know, cartoons and that sort of thing. So the Bristol city officers decided they would fund several of them to come to Japan. Seven students said they were interested in going, so they started preparing. They’ve been studying Japanese and learning more in depth about Japanese culture for about seven months know. We’re really excited for them to arrive!
Guy: So the exchange is not about these kids coming over and ‘teaching’ their Japanese peers about being out or something?
Yuko-san: No, no, of course not. At this point in history, it would be pretty ridiculous to bring them over here for that purpose. No, this will be a true exchange of equals. The British kids have a lot of supports, so in that way it has become very safe for them to be gay. Whereas in Japan, the Japanese kids really have to fend for themselves. So both groups have a lot to learn from each other.
Guy: The event on the 24th sounds really great. I am looking forward to attending.
Yuko-san: Yeah, we would like to attract as many teachers and people who work with youth as possible.
Yuko-san spoke of the desire of her and her colleagues to see more teachers come out at school, to help make it easier and safer for students to come out. I was not happy to have to report that even in Canada, which has a reputation as a kind of paradise for queer people (or at least for queer rights), most gay teachers are not out at school, at least not to their students. It is a sad contradiction that although teacher’s college is typically a hot-bed of leftish idealism, where everyone becomes sensitized to issues of race, class, gender and sexuality, at the same time the message when you enter the workforce as a teacher is, ‘Keep your head down. Don’t rock the boat. Wait until you are in a secure position, and then maybe you can begin to try to come out at work.’ I’ve even heard of cases of student teachers being encouraged in teacher’s college to incorporate queer issues into their lessons, who have then gone ahead and done so during their teaching practicums, got into trouble with their host schools, and then were denied graduation as a teacher (from the university that encouraged them to do this in the first place) because they failed to complete their practicum successfully!
One of the reason for this hesitance of teachers to come out is that there is a widely held fear, in the predominantly Christian West, that gay people are a threat to children, and as recently as 15 years ago, a gay teacher in Toronto was murdered by students from his school. That led to the creation of Toronto’s Triangle Program (http://schools.tdsb.on.ca/triangle/), a special alternative school for queer youth. It is a single-classroom program that can accommodate about 18 students at a time housed in the basement of a church that is well-integrated into Toronto’s gay community (indeed, the pastor, Reverend Brent Hawkes, is himself gay and conducted some of Canada’s first gay weddings).
As Yuko-san and her colleagues know, however, nothing will change if we are forever keeping our heads down for fear of provoking hostile reactions. Events like the Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (and countless other queer film festivals around the world), programs like the Youth Exchange Project here, GLSEN (http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/home/index.html) and the Gay-Straight Alliances it has fostered in U.S. and Canadian schools, and the Triangle Program and S.O.Y. in Toronto show that gay people in general -- and isolated queer youth in particular -- have a tremendous hunger for images of queer life that they can identify with, and opportunities to meet, socialize and learn from each other outside of the usual adult venues of gay life. We look forward to hearing a lot more about the great work people like Yuko-san are doing to create those opportunities here in Japan. Otsukarasama desu! (Thanks for your hard work!)
For more information on the LGBT Youth Exchange Project, please visit: http://www.delta-g.org/youth/ Or send an email to: young_lgbt@yahoo.co.jp
INTERVIEW: Chao Yi-lan and Serena Fang of ‘Drifting Flowers’
‘Drifting Flowers’ (Director: Zero Chou)
2008 / Taiwan / 97 mins
Screened: Sunday July 13, 13:55 – Wald 9; Saturday July 19, 16:00 – Spiral Hall
Films wouldn’t get made without writers and directors, of course. But since the beginning of cinema, it is the stars we see on-screen that have always received the lion’s share of attention. As stars-in-waiting, newcomers Chao Yi-lan and Serena Fang were easily the most glamorous and attention-getting guests we had at the festival up to that point, and the audience response proved it. They spent a long time taking pictures and signing autographs with fans in the lobby after the screening. Serena looked extremely feminine, with flawless make-up, a flowing, semi-transparent silk top over blue jeans, and lots of delicate jewellery hanging from her neck, wrists and ears. Chao Yi-lan looked smashing in a black (men’s style) dress shirt and black jeans. Indeed, they both presented themselves very much as they appear in the film : Serena as vulnerable, girlish, and movie-star beautiful; Chao Yi-lan as a slightly swaggering but equally beautiful tomboy, with an adorable mop of black hair cascading over an unadorned face that even the most attractive among us would kill for. Everyone found the pair utterly charming - and they were.
When the frenzy around them had settled down, I had a chance to chat with them, with the help of my volunteer translator, Cynthia, who was also an active participant in the conversation. As it happened, however, both Elaine and Serena spoke excellent English. They only slipped back into Taiwanese to express more difficult ideas or to give longer responses. Totally relaxed and unpretentious though they were, I was concerned not to offend them by butchering or being too casual with their names. So I began by asking them how I should address them, which is when Chao Li-yin explained that she goes by ‘Elaine’ when dealing with English-speakers like me.
Guy: How did you come to use the English name ‘Elaine’?
Elaine: My father chose it for me because it sounds like my Chinese name, Yi-lan.
Guy: Have the two of you had a chance to explore Tokyo?
Serena: Oh, yeah. I love shopping, so we have already done Omote-Sando and Harajuku. On Wednesday, I got up at 5 :00 in the morning to go to the fish market at Tsukiji. The sushi was amazing.
Guy: Have you had a chance to travel to some other international festivals with this film?
Serena: Yes, we went to Berlin with it.
Guy: How was Berlin?
Serena: I really liked it. It was not so humid, so I liked the weather - and the food.
Elaine: No, the beer!
Serena: The food, the drinks - everything was incredible. At our hotel, they served champagne with breakfast. It was almost too much.
Guy: What kind of food was it? German food doesn’t have the best reputation - too heavy, or…
Elaine: You mean like sausages…
Guy: Yeah, and sauerkraut. But I imagine in a city like Berlin the food is very international?
Elaine: Yeah, it is.
Guy: So, Elaine, you were a university student when you got the role in ‘Drifting Flowers’. Are you still in school?
Elaine: Yes, I am in my second year, majoring in theatre, not film.
Cynthia: What do see as the main difference between theatre and film ?
Elaine: When you perform in theatre, you have to enlarge your voice, exaggerate your gestures. But in movies, it’s the opposite. You have to tone everything down.
Guy: Yeah, if you do stage acting in a film it tends to looks really stagy, really fake.
Elaine: Right. The director was constantly telling me, ‘You’re not in a theatre. Tone it down!’
Guy: This is the first feature film for both of you. How do you see your careers developing from here?
Elaine: I have no idea. I just want to explore different performing arts and develop my skills as a performer.
Guy: What are the opportunities for a Taiwanese film actor? I was reading an interview with Zero Chou where she said that they market for Taiwanese films is quite limited, particularly for ones with gay content, because they can’t be shown in mainland China.
Serena: Well, it’s true that until recently there hasn’t been a lot of investment in Taiwan in theatre and cinema. But now there are more opportunities. And Taiwanese films are reaching a wider audience around the world.
Cynthia: It seems to me that in the past, Taiwanese films tended to be very serious. But now there is a lighter tone, and more mainstream, entertaining films.
Serena: Yeah. And there wasn’t so much gay and lesbian cinema. But now it is changing. The industry and the audiences are really opening up to these stories.
Guy: You both speak very good English. You could make movies in America or Europe…
Elaine: I’m not limiting myself to anything. So we’ll see!
Guy: So are you a celebrity at school now that you have done this film?
Elaine: No, all my friends are also appearing in films, so it’s not unique.
Cynthia: Actually, the film hasn’t been released theatrically in Taiwan yet, has it?
Serena: No. It opens August 15.
Guy: What about your families? How do they feel about you appearing in this sort of a film?
Serena: Actually, my father doesn’t know what the film is about.
Guy: [Shocked] Really?
Elaine: But he has to find out sooner or later!
Serena: Yeah, I am sure he will. I just told him I had to go to a film festival in Japan, but I didn’t say it was a gay and lesbian film festival! But my mother knows about it and is supportive.
Elaine: My family is really supportive of my work. My dad reads the papers, so he knows what is going on.
Serena: My dad reads the paper too, but he still hasn’t figured it out!
Guy: Were you both cast in the film through a similar process?
Serena: Yes, it was an open audition - the same for both of us.
Elaine: I met Serena at the second audition - my second, her first. We tested some scenes together, and I guess the director just liked the way we worked together.
Guy: Did you have to do anything special to prepare to show this relationship in the film?
Elaine: Well, we just rehearsed the scenes together before shooting, like you would in theatre.
Cynthia: How much of yourselves did you put into your roles?
Elaine: Of course, there is a lot of yourself in any role that you play. You take whatever life experiences you’ve had that you can apply to it, and you put that into the role. You want there to be a truthfulness to what you are doing, so that helps. For me, all I need to do to make a character real is to believe that a person like this really does exist in the world. When you have faith that someone like this exists, it comes easily. It’s easy to portray love or whatever else if you can believe in the reality of the character.
Serena: To prepare for the role, I just really focused on the relationships between Jing [her character] and Diego [Elaine’s character] and May [Jing’s younger sister], and tried to make them as real as possible. I am really glad that the director gave me a lot of freedom to create the character as I imagined her. She didn’t tell me how perform the role. She respected my own creativity and instincts as a performer.
Guy: There is a moment in the film when the foster mother suggests that Jing give May up to her, and Jing and Diego are both there, and the line is something like : ‘Your lifestyle is not appropriate to raising a child.’ But it’s a little ambiguous. What does she mean by lifestyle? Does she mean that they are a lesbian couple? Or that they are musicians who play in nightclubs, and thus are out late all the time? Or that she is blind?
Elaine: I don’t think it is emphasized that it is gay relationship. I think it’s actually downplayed. The focus is more on the sisters and their relationship, [which is deteriorating at that time].
We thought we had detained these two beaming young actors long enough, and released them to their fans again with warm wishes for their future success. My translator suggested that we are really catching the two of them before the storm breaks, that is, before the film’s inevitable success in Taiwan makes them into celebrities with screaming fans following them wherever they go. If the charisma they exuded at the TIL&GFF - and the corresponding audience response - is any indication, I think she’s right. For my part, I hope they are able to taste the fruits of success without suffering too much of the downside of fame. And I hope they can come back to us in a year or two years’ time with another beautiful, sexy, moving film to share with the Tokyo audience - which I’m sure cannot wait!
2008 / Taiwan / 97 mins
Screened: Sunday July 13, 13:55 – Wald 9; Saturday July 19, 16:00 – Spiral Hall
Films wouldn’t get made without writers and directors, of course. But since the beginning of cinema, it is the stars we see on-screen that have always received the lion’s share of attention. As stars-in-waiting, newcomers Chao Yi-lan and Serena Fang were easily the most glamorous and attention-getting guests we had at the festival up to that point, and the audience response proved it. They spent a long time taking pictures and signing autographs with fans in the lobby after the screening. Serena looked extremely feminine, with flawless make-up, a flowing, semi-transparent silk top over blue jeans, and lots of delicate jewellery hanging from her neck, wrists and ears. Chao Yi-lan looked smashing in a black (men’s style) dress shirt and black jeans. Indeed, they both presented themselves very much as they appear in the film : Serena as vulnerable, girlish, and movie-star beautiful; Chao Yi-lan as a slightly swaggering but equally beautiful tomboy, with an adorable mop of black hair cascading over an unadorned face that even the most attractive among us would kill for. Everyone found the pair utterly charming - and they were.
When the frenzy around them had settled down, I had a chance to chat with them, with the help of my volunteer translator, Cynthia, who was also an active participant in the conversation. As it happened, however, both Elaine and Serena spoke excellent English. They only slipped back into Taiwanese to express more difficult ideas or to give longer responses. Totally relaxed and unpretentious though they were, I was concerned not to offend them by butchering or being too casual with their names. So I began by asking them how I should address them, which is when Chao Li-yin explained that she goes by ‘Elaine’ when dealing with English-speakers like me.
Guy: How did you come to use the English name ‘Elaine’?
Elaine: My father chose it for me because it sounds like my Chinese name, Yi-lan.
Guy: Have the two of you had a chance to explore Tokyo?
Serena: Oh, yeah. I love shopping, so we have already done Omote-Sando and Harajuku. On Wednesday, I got up at 5 :00 in the morning to go to the fish market at Tsukiji. The sushi was amazing.
Guy: Have you had a chance to travel to some other international festivals with this film?
Serena: Yes, we went to Berlin with it.
Guy: How was Berlin?
Serena: I really liked it. It was not so humid, so I liked the weather - and the food.
Elaine: No, the beer!
Serena: The food, the drinks - everything was incredible. At our hotel, they served champagne with breakfast. It was almost too much.
Guy: What kind of food was it? German food doesn’t have the best reputation - too heavy, or…
Elaine: You mean like sausages…
Guy: Yeah, and sauerkraut. But I imagine in a city like Berlin the food is very international?
Elaine: Yeah, it is.
Guy: So, Elaine, you were a university student when you got the role in ‘Drifting Flowers’. Are you still in school?
Elaine: Yes, I am in my second year, majoring in theatre, not film.
Cynthia: What do see as the main difference between theatre and film ?
Elaine: When you perform in theatre, you have to enlarge your voice, exaggerate your gestures. But in movies, it’s the opposite. You have to tone everything down.
Guy: Yeah, if you do stage acting in a film it tends to looks really stagy, really fake.
Elaine: Right. The director was constantly telling me, ‘You’re not in a theatre. Tone it down!’
Guy: This is the first feature film for both of you. How do you see your careers developing from here?
Elaine: I have no idea. I just want to explore different performing arts and develop my skills as a performer.
Guy: What are the opportunities for a Taiwanese film actor? I was reading an interview with Zero Chou where she said that they market for Taiwanese films is quite limited, particularly for ones with gay content, because they can’t be shown in mainland China.
Serena: Well, it’s true that until recently there hasn’t been a lot of investment in Taiwan in theatre and cinema. But now there are more opportunities. And Taiwanese films are reaching a wider audience around the world.
Cynthia: It seems to me that in the past, Taiwanese films tended to be very serious. But now there is a lighter tone, and more mainstream, entertaining films.
Serena: Yeah. And there wasn’t so much gay and lesbian cinema. But now it is changing. The industry and the audiences are really opening up to these stories.
Guy: You both speak very good English. You could make movies in America or Europe…
Elaine: I’m not limiting myself to anything. So we’ll see!
Guy: So are you a celebrity at school now that you have done this film?
Elaine: No, all my friends are also appearing in films, so it’s not unique.
Cynthia: Actually, the film hasn’t been released theatrically in Taiwan yet, has it?
Serena: No. It opens August 15.
Guy: What about your families? How do they feel about you appearing in this sort of a film?
Serena: Actually, my father doesn’t know what the film is about.
Guy: [Shocked] Really?
Elaine: But he has to find out sooner or later!
Serena: Yeah, I am sure he will. I just told him I had to go to a film festival in Japan, but I didn’t say it was a gay and lesbian film festival! But my mother knows about it and is supportive.
Elaine: My family is really supportive of my work. My dad reads the papers, so he knows what is going on.
Serena: My dad reads the paper too, but he still hasn’t figured it out!
Guy: Were you both cast in the film through a similar process?
Serena: Yes, it was an open audition - the same for both of us.
Elaine: I met Serena at the second audition - my second, her first. We tested some scenes together, and I guess the director just liked the way we worked together.
Guy: Did you have to do anything special to prepare to show this relationship in the film?
Elaine: Well, we just rehearsed the scenes together before shooting, like you would in theatre.
Cynthia: How much of yourselves did you put into your roles?
Elaine: Of course, there is a lot of yourself in any role that you play. You take whatever life experiences you’ve had that you can apply to it, and you put that into the role. You want there to be a truthfulness to what you are doing, so that helps. For me, all I need to do to make a character real is to believe that a person like this really does exist in the world. When you have faith that someone like this exists, it comes easily. It’s easy to portray love or whatever else if you can believe in the reality of the character.
Serena: To prepare for the role, I just really focused on the relationships between Jing [her character] and Diego [Elaine’s character] and May [Jing’s younger sister], and tried to make them as real as possible. I am really glad that the director gave me a lot of freedom to create the character as I imagined her. She didn’t tell me how perform the role. She respected my own creativity and instincts as a performer.
Guy: There is a moment in the film when the foster mother suggests that Jing give May up to her, and Jing and Diego are both there, and the line is something like : ‘Your lifestyle is not appropriate to raising a child.’ But it’s a little ambiguous. What does she mean by lifestyle? Does she mean that they are a lesbian couple? Or that they are musicians who play in nightclubs, and thus are out late all the time? Or that she is blind?
Elaine: I don’t think it is emphasized that it is gay relationship. I think it’s actually downplayed. The focus is more on the sisters and their relationship, [which is deteriorating at that time].
We thought we had detained these two beaming young actors long enough, and released them to their fans again with warm wishes for their future success. My translator suggested that we are really catching the two of them before the storm breaks, that is, before the film’s inevitable success in Taiwan makes them into celebrities with screaming fans following them wherever they go. If the charisma they exuded at the TIL&GFF - and the corresponding audience response - is any indication, I think she’s right. For my part, I hope they are able to taste the fruits of success without suffering too much of the downside of fame. And I hope they can come back to us in a year or two years’ time with another beautiful, sexy, moving film to share with the Tokyo audience - which I’m sure cannot wait!
Four Taiwanese Flowers in Full Bloom
‘Drifting Flowers’ (Director: Zero Chou)
2008 / Taiwan / 97 mins
Screened: Sunday July 13, 13:55 – Wald 9; Saturday July 19, 16:00 – Spiral Hall
You could easily be forgiven for thinking that ‘Drifting Flowers’ was either our opening or closing film, because it certainly generated as much excitement as either of those events. Why was this sold-out Saturday afternoon screening such a draw ? The reason, of course, is that we had four of the creative minds and spirits behind this project present for our second screening on Saturday July 19 - the director, Zero Chou, producer Hoho Liu, and stars Chao Yi-lan and Serena Fang. The four of them together made for an irresistible attraction for an audience perennially starved for images - strong images, delicate images, sexy images, moving images - of the lives of queer women. ‘Drifting Flowers’ has it all in spades, as well as one of the most memorable performances is recent, and not-so-recent, queer cinema.
‘Drifting Flowers’ is the third instalment in a planned 6-part series of queer-themed films from the team of ‘Zero + Hoho’ (that’s how they credit themselves in the film) - each film representing a different colour of the rainbow, which has become an international symbol of queer culture and pride. (‘Drifting Flowers’ represents Red and the theme of Life; ‘Splendid Float’ was the yellow instalment, and ‘Spider Lilies’ the green.) More grounded in gritty reality than it’s fantastic predecessor (‘Spider Lilies’), ‘Drifting Flowers’ tells the interlinked stories of Diego, Jing, and Lily, three women struggling to find themselves and their place in the world against the alternately lush natural beauty, and haunting and seedily glamorous urban environments, of Taiwan.
Jing is blind and is raising her younger sister, May, as best she can, while working as a singer in a nightclub, where despite the eerie beauty of her voice, and Diego’s atmospheric accompaniment on the accordion, the customers are paying attention only to their beers and their own petty quarrels. For a time, the three of them enjoy a kind of idyllic life, supporting one another like a family should, but May’s jealously of her sister’s growing intimacy with Diego will help to drive them apart, only to be reunited years later.
Diego’s story, of course, starts long before the film’s opening scene, while she is working for the family shadow puppet theatre, and getting into conflict for failing to conform to her assigned gender role. Lily is the daughter of a competing, and more forward-looking, purveyor of cheap, local entertainment, who puts her on stage in a glittering costume that leaves little to the imagination, and gets Diego’s going. She joins Lily onstage, discovers her talent for performing, and drives a wedge between her and her elder brother, due to inherit the family business that Diego is undermining by - almost literally - hopping into bed with the competition. With an accordion under her arm, she sets out for the world we later find her inhabiting with Jing and May.
Lily resurfaces years later, as an elderly woman battling Alzheimer’s. Having married a gay man for show, she is now a widow, her lesbian partner having died. Her husband, Yen, is also alone, and fighting HIV. He comes to her for help, but ends up helping her instead, as they become the devoted couple that they had only ever been pretending to be.
It is a gorgeous-looking film, its many diverse parts woven skilfully together by shared thematic, tonal, and stylistic threads. Accordion music gives the entire film a French ambiance, and serves to continually pull our imaginations back to Diego. The visual metaphor of trains and railway tunnels, perhaps as conduits of memory, also links the three sections, as does the film’s final - impossible - scene in which Diego (as a teenager runaway), Yen & Lily (as elderly, virtually homeless wanderers), and May (also as a teenager, years after being separated from Jing and Diego) ride the same train car, passing through each other’s lives like ghosts.
The film is also tied interstitially to Chou’s larger body of work by a post-modern moment when Yen, wandering the streets of what I assume is Taipei, walks past a hypnotically symmetrical row of posters for a strangely queer looking film - Chou’s own ‘Tiger Lilies’, of course.
It’s another impressive achievement, and bound to be both a critical and commercial success for this woman of rare talents and unique credentials (she began as a journalist before moving first to documentary and then fictive filmmaking). And it is bound to make stars of its two leads. Chao Yi-lan, in particular, gives one of those fascinating, utterly natural performances that come along perhaps once every ten or fifteen years, and announce the arrival of an ingénue who seems to have been born to live her life in front of the movie camera.
As you can imagine, the audience couldn’t wait to get a look at this fantastic group of talented, vibrant women. And the Q&A session did not disappoint. It began with a lengthy round of applause, and a good many camera flashes, before our host, Ari-san, asked our guests to introduce themselves.
Zero: Hello. I’m Zero Chou, the director. We’re really happy to be here to experience the film with all of you and to connect with the local gay community.
Serena: [Speaking in Japanese, to everyone’s surprise and delight] Hello, I’m Serena. I play the role of Jing. I love sushi. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu. [An untranslatable expression in Japanese that expresses the hope that things will continue to go well between whoever is saying it and whoever it is being said to.]
Chao Yi-lan/Elaine: [She explained to me later that her English name is ‘Elaine’, since it sounds like Yi-lan, so we’ll call her Elaine for our English readers here! She also introduced herself in Japanese, which thrilled everyone.] I’m Chao Yi-lan. I play Diego in the film. How was the movie - good? [The audience roared its approval.] Arigato! [Slipping back into Taiwanese…] Hi, everybody. I’m really happy to see so many people here today. Thank you for coming.
Hoho: [Speaking in English, also to everyone’s surprise!] Hello, I’m Hoho Liu, the producer of the film. Sorry, I can’t speak Japanese, so I will speak in English. Thanks for coming to enjoy our film today. I’m very sorry, but I have to take photos [of the Q&A session], so I won’t be joining the discussion.
Ari-san: [To Zero] Your previous film, ‘Spider Lilies’, won the Teddy award at the Berlinale [Berlin International Film Festival], and was a commercial success in Taiwan. How did that change your situation as a filmmaker?
Zero: Before I answer that question, I just want to thank the organizers of the festival again for inviting us to be here. I am very grateful.
Because ‘Spider Lilies’ was so successful, I was able to make this film much more easily, and it’s a film I really like, so I am very happy about that.
Ari-san: Was there something new you wanted to do with this film, a different approach you wanted to take?
Zero: Yes. ‘Spider Lilies’ was more of a fantasy. It has a dream-like quality. For this film, I felt a responsibility to Taiwan, and to the gay community in particular, to make something that was closer to the everyday reality of that community.
Ari-san: You are here today with your partner Hoho Liu. You are an openly lesbian couple and have been together for 8 years…
Zero: Yes. Although we often travel to festivals and events together, this is the first time we have been asked to appear on-stage together as a couple. I hope you like her! [laughter; the audience obviously liked her!]
Ari-san: I’d like to ask Serena, how did you prepare to play the role of a blind singer who falls in love with another woman?
Serena: In terms of portraying a blind character, it was a somewhat difficult role to play. I researched being blind by watching blind people and documentaries about their lives. But in terms of falling in love with a woman, love is natural - we all experience it - so that part was not difficult. [Serena later told Ari-san that Zero also asked her to watch ‘The L Word’ to help prepare for the role!]
Ari-san: Serena, in March of this year you were photographed for a fashion magazine in a very sexy pose with Xu An’an, an actress who has appeared in the famous Taiwanese lesbian film ‘Candy’. You were both sort of half-naked, and embracing each other. What was it like posing for this photo?
Serena: [Perhaps a little embarrassed, as the audience reacted with laughter and obvious excitement at the discussion of this photo!] Yeah, so they wanted us to pose together in the nude. We had characters for this picture - we were supposed to be dancers. All I can say is we had to do some stretching and yoga to get into that pose ! (laughter)
Ari-san: This question is for Chao Yi-lan [Elaine]. This is your first role in a feature film. I understand you are studying acting at the National Taiwan University of Arts. How did you get the role?
Elaine: I really don’t know. You’ll have to ask the director why she cast me ! (laughter) It was an open audition, so I came in and the director told me about the role and the story, and I was really happy about that [the story and character]. I was so happy to be cast. I’m really grateful to have been given this role.
It really is a star-making performance, and as we’ll see in our interview with them later, neither Elaine nor Serena seem to realize just yet how their lives are going to change when the film is released theatrically in Taiwan in August, and they become instant celebrities, as they surely will.
The audience was invited to ask questions, the first of which was : The performances and the casting in the film are really great. I have two questions. How did you [Zero], as director, go about finding actors to play the openly gay roles of Diego and Yen? And, for Yi-lan, did you already know how to play the accordion, or did you have to learn how for the film?
Zero: The casting for Yen was difficult, because most male actors don’t want to do roles in drag. However, I found Sam Wang, an actor who was already out, and was more than happy to play this role. Actually, he also appeared in my first dramatic film, ‘Splendid Float’.
Elaine: Yes, I did have to learn to play the accordion for the film. I didn’t know how to play before. I also had to learn to perform with traditional Chinese shadow puppets. I learned a lot from the great teacher they found for me.
2nd audience member : I noticed that in the last section of the film, which actually is the first section chronologically, Diego appears to be taller than in the first section. (laughter)
Elaine: Yeah, maybe I grew between the two stories ! (laughter)
Zero: She isn’t actually any taller in the last section. [Films are usually shot over a period of 10 - 12 weeks - not long enough even for a growing teenager to show any height difference on screen!] But I did ask her to slouch in the last section, because she is playing a teenager who is a bit unsure of herself, so I wanted her to appear smaller. In the first section, she is in the role of protector, of Jing and May, so I wanted her to stand up and look like she could protect them.
At the close of the Q&A session we were reminded that a selection of 8 Taiwanese feature films will be screening over several weeks this summer (August 23 to September 26) at Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills, and that ‘Spider Lilies’ - Zero Chou’s previous film - will be among them. For more information, please visit: http://www.cinemart.co.jp/taiwan2008/
For more on this film and its stars, see my interview with Chao Yi-lan and Serena Fang.
2008 / Taiwan / 97 mins
Screened: Sunday July 13, 13:55 – Wald 9; Saturday July 19, 16:00 – Spiral Hall
You could easily be forgiven for thinking that ‘Drifting Flowers’ was either our opening or closing film, because it certainly generated as much excitement as either of those events. Why was this sold-out Saturday afternoon screening such a draw ? The reason, of course, is that we had four of the creative minds and spirits behind this project present for our second screening on Saturday July 19 - the director, Zero Chou, producer Hoho Liu, and stars Chao Yi-lan and Serena Fang. The four of them together made for an irresistible attraction for an audience perennially starved for images - strong images, delicate images, sexy images, moving images - of the lives of queer women. ‘Drifting Flowers’ has it all in spades, as well as one of the most memorable performances is recent, and not-so-recent, queer cinema.
‘Drifting Flowers’ is the third instalment in a planned 6-part series of queer-themed films from the team of ‘Zero + Hoho’ (that’s how they credit themselves in the film) - each film representing a different colour of the rainbow, which has become an international symbol of queer culture and pride. (‘Drifting Flowers’ represents Red and the theme of Life; ‘Splendid Float’ was the yellow instalment, and ‘Spider Lilies’ the green.) More grounded in gritty reality than it’s fantastic predecessor (‘Spider Lilies’), ‘Drifting Flowers’ tells the interlinked stories of Diego, Jing, and Lily, three women struggling to find themselves and their place in the world against the alternately lush natural beauty, and haunting and seedily glamorous urban environments, of Taiwan.
Jing is blind and is raising her younger sister, May, as best she can, while working as a singer in a nightclub, where despite the eerie beauty of her voice, and Diego’s atmospheric accompaniment on the accordion, the customers are paying attention only to their beers and their own petty quarrels. For a time, the three of them enjoy a kind of idyllic life, supporting one another like a family should, but May’s jealously of her sister’s growing intimacy with Diego will help to drive them apart, only to be reunited years later.
Diego’s story, of course, starts long before the film’s opening scene, while she is working for the family shadow puppet theatre, and getting into conflict for failing to conform to her assigned gender role. Lily is the daughter of a competing, and more forward-looking, purveyor of cheap, local entertainment, who puts her on stage in a glittering costume that leaves little to the imagination, and gets Diego’s going. She joins Lily onstage, discovers her talent for performing, and drives a wedge between her and her elder brother, due to inherit the family business that Diego is undermining by - almost literally - hopping into bed with the competition. With an accordion under her arm, she sets out for the world we later find her inhabiting with Jing and May.
Lily resurfaces years later, as an elderly woman battling Alzheimer’s. Having married a gay man for show, she is now a widow, her lesbian partner having died. Her husband, Yen, is also alone, and fighting HIV. He comes to her for help, but ends up helping her instead, as they become the devoted couple that they had only ever been pretending to be.
It is a gorgeous-looking film, its many diverse parts woven skilfully together by shared thematic, tonal, and stylistic threads. Accordion music gives the entire film a French ambiance, and serves to continually pull our imaginations back to Diego. The visual metaphor of trains and railway tunnels, perhaps as conduits of memory, also links the three sections, as does the film’s final - impossible - scene in which Diego (as a teenager runaway), Yen & Lily (as elderly, virtually homeless wanderers), and May (also as a teenager, years after being separated from Jing and Diego) ride the same train car, passing through each other’s lives like ghosts.
The film is also tied interstitially to Chou’s larger body of work by a post-modern moment when Yen, wandering the streets of what I assume is Taipei, walks past a hypnotically symmetrical row of posters for a strangely queer looking film - Chou’s own ‘Tiger Lilies’, of course.
It’s another impressive achievement, and bound to be both a critical and commercial success for this woman of rare talents and unique credentials (she began as a journalist before moving first to documentary and then fictive filmmaking). And it is bound to make stars of its two leads. Chao Yi-lan, in particular, gives one of those fascinating, utterly natural performances that come along perhaps once every ten or fifteen years, and announce the arrival of an ingénue who seems to have been born to live her life in front of the movie camera.
As you can imagine, the audience couldn’t wait to get a look at this fantastic group of talented, vibrant women. And the Q&A session did not disappoint. It began with a lengthy round of applause, and a good many camera flashes, before our host, Ari-san, asked our guests to introduce themselves.
Zero: Hello. I’m Zero Chou, the director. We’re really happy to be here to experience the film with all of you and to connect with the local gay community.
Serena: [Speaking in Japanese, to everyone’s surprise and delight] Hello, I’m Serena. I play the role of Jing. I love sushi. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu. [An untranslatable expression in Japanese that expresses the hope that things will continue to go well between whoever is saying it and whoever it is being said to.]
Chao Yi-lan/Elaine: [She explained to me later that her English name is ‘Elaine’, since it sounds like Yi-lan, so we’ll call her Elaine for our English readers here! She also introduced herself in Japanese, which thrilled everyone.] I’m Chao Yi-lan. I play Diego in the film. How was the movie - good? [The audience roared its approval.] Arigato! [Slipping back into Taiwanese…] Hi, everybody. I’m really happy to see so many people here today. Thank you for coming.
Hoho: [Speaking in English, also to everyone’s surprise!] Hello, I’m Hoho Liu, the producer of the film. Sorry, I can’t speak Japanese, so I will speak in English. Thanks for coming to enjoy our film today. I’m very sorry, but I have to take photos [of the Q&A session], so I won’t be joining the discussion.
Ari-san: [To Zero] Your previous film, ‘Spider Lilies’, won the Teddy award at the Berlinale [Berlin International Film Festival], and was a commercial success in Taiwan. How did that change your situation as a filmmaker?
Zero: Before I answer that question, I just want to thank the organizers of the festival again for inviting us to be here. I am very grateful.
Because ‘Spider Lilies’ was so successful, I was able to make this film much more easily, and it’s a film I really like, so I am very happy about that.
Ari-san: Was there something new you wanted to do with this film, a different approach you wanted to take?
Zero: Yes. ‘Spider Lilies’ was more of a fantasy. It has a dream-like quality. For this film, I felt a responsibility to Taiwan, and to the gay community in particular, to make something that was closer to the everyday reality of that community.
Ari-san: You are here today with your partner Hoho Liu. You are an openly lesbian couple and have been together for 8 years…
Zero: Yes. Although we often travel to festivals and events together, this is the first time we have been asked to appear on-stage together as a couple. I hope you like her! [laughter; the audience obviously liked her!]
Ari-san: I’d like to ask Serena, how did you prepare to play the role of a blind singer who falls in love with another woman?
Serena: In terms of portraying a blind character, it was a somewhat difficult role to play. I researched being blind by watching blind people and documentaries about their lives. But in terms of falling in love with a woman, love is natural - we all experience it - so that part was not difficult. [Serena later told Ari-san that Zero also asked her to watch ‘The L Word’ to help prepare for the role!]
Ari-san: Serena, in March of this year you were photographed for a fashion magazine in a very sexy pose with Xu An’an, an actress who has appeared in the famous Taiwanese lesbian film ‘Candy’. You were both sort of half-naked, and embracing each other. What was it like posing for this photo?
Serena: [Perhaps a little embarrassed, as the audience reacted with laughter and obvious excitement at the discussion of this photo!] Yeah, so they wanted us to pose together in the nude. We had characters for this picture - we were supposed to be dancers. All I can say is we had to do some stretching and yoga to get into that pose ! (laughter)
Ari-san: This question is for Chao Yi-lan [Elaine]. This is your first role in a feature film. I understand you are studying acting at the National Taiwan University of Arts. How did you get the role?
Elaine: I really don’t know. You’ll have to ask the director why she cast me ! (laughter) It was an open audition, so I came in and the director told me about the role and the story, and I was really happy about that [the story and character]. I was so happy to be cast. I’m really grateful to have been given this role.
It really is a star-making performance, and as we’ll see in our interview with them later, neither Elaine nor Serena seem to realize just yet how their lives are going to change when the film is released theatrically in Taiwan in August, and they become instant celebrities, as they surely will.
The audience was invited to ask questions, the first of which was : The performances and the casting in the film are really great. I have two questions. How did you [Zero], as director, go about finding actors to play the openly gay roles of Diego and Yen? And, for Yi-lan, did you already know how to play the accordion, or did you have to learn how for the film?
Zero: The casting for Yen was difficult, because most male actors don’t want to do roles in drag. However, I found Sam Wang, an actor who was already out, and was more than happy to play this role. Actually, he also appeared in my first dramatic film, ‘Splendid Float’.
Elaine: Yes, I did have to learn to play the accordion for the film. I didn’t know how to play before. I also had to learn to perform with traditional Chinese shadow puppets. I learned a lot from the great teacher they found for me.
2nd audience member : I noticed that in the last section of the film, which actually is the first section chronologically, Diego appears to be taller than in the first section. (laughter)
Elaine: Yeah, maybe I grew between the two stories ! (laughter)
Zero: She isn’t actually any taller in the last section. [Films are usually shot over a period of 10 - 12 weeks - not long enough even for a growing teenager to show any height difference on screen!] But I did ask her to slouch in the last section, because she is playing a teenager who is a bit unsure of herself, so I wanted her to appear smaller. In the first section, she is in the role of protector, of Jing and May, so I wanted her to stand up and look like she could protect them.
At the close of the Q&A session we were reminded that a selection of 8 Taiwanese feature films will be screening over several weeks this summer (August 23 to September 26) at Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills, and that ‘Spider Lilies’ - Zero Chou’s previous film - will be among them. For more information, please visit: http://www.cinemart.co.jp/taiwan2008/
For more on this film and its stars, see my interview with Chao Yi-lan and Serena Fang.
Monday, July 21, 2008
UPDATE... It’s over, but it ain’t over!
Well, the festival came to a fantastic close last night with our closing night film, ‘Out at the Wedding’, with two of its fierce and fabulous stars -- real-life girlfriends Kathy DeBuono and Jill Bennett -- in attendance.
This year’s festival was a huge success -- the biggest yet, with the most films we have ever screened, the most fabulous international guests we have ever hosted, 8 days of screenings, and nearly 8,000 visitors (more than double that of Tokyo Pride). But just because the festival is over doesn’t mean this blog has come to an end. I was at the festival virtually non-stop this weekend, taking in more than 8 programs of films, and talking to as many guests as my stamina (and, in some cases, the availability of a Japanese translator) would permit. So I have a huge backlog of stories to prepare for the blog, which I will be serving out to you in a tantalizing trickle as the week goes on.
Here’s some of what you can expect to read about in the coming days…
LGBT Youth Exchange Project
Remember that group of 16 youth who attended our opening screening (‘Were the World Mine’) for free, at the request of the director, Thomas Gustafson, and with the help of an anonymous donor? My interview with Inoue Yuko of the LGBT Youth Exchange Project will expand your understanding. You can also attend their special public event taking place on August 24th at Yoyogi’s Olympic Centre.
‘Drifting Flowers’
This week, it’s time to make up for our lack of coverage of women’s and Asian films. We get a good start on both with ‘Drifting Flowers’! I’ll have a transcript of the Q & A session with Taiwanese director Zero Chou and her producing partner (as well as life -partner) Hoho Liu, and interviews with the film’s two beautiful young leads -- Chao Li-yan and Serena Fang.
‘Strange Couples’ & ‘Moon Shadow’
Q & A session with the directors and stars of these two great Japanese short films that screened together on Sunday, as well as interviews with the director (Matsumoto Takuya) and two stars (Takahashi Kanimaru & Ito Asuka) of ‘Strange Couples’.
‘Freeheld’ & ‘A Lez in Wonderland’
Q & A session with Japan’s most famous lesbian, former politician and perennial queer activist Otsuji Kanako, as well as Mr. Yamashita, a lawyer with the Tokyo Public Law Office, to discuss the legalities of gay spousal benefits and other issues in relation to the film ‘Freeheld’.
Bride of ‘Kiss the Bride’!
C. Jay Cox is back for a second week, and this time he’s brought his two hunky stars, James O’Shea and Philipp Karner! Get ready for the three-way Q & A session that followed our second screening of ‘Kiss the Bride’, plus one-on-one interviews with James and Philipp, and a mini follow-up interview with C. Jay about his trip to Kyoto and Hiroshima!
‘Asian Shorts’
Mini-reviews of each film, plus an interview with Aki-san, the programmer of this unique group of shorts.
‘Shelter’
Q & A session and interview with Jonah Markowitz, director of ‘Shelter’ -- one of the best and most well-received films at this year’s festival!
‘Japanese Rainbow Reel Competition’
Mini-reviews of each film, plus the results of the competition, with guest juror Jonah Markowitz (director of ‘Sheter’).
‘Out at the Wedding’
And last but certainly not least, our closing night event, hosted once again by local drag queen and unstoppable MC, Margaret, with stars Kathy DeBuono and Jill Bennett in attendance for the film and a great Q&A session that left us all in high spirits, even as the festival came to its inevitable close for another year.
This year’s festival was a huge success -- the biggest yet, with the most films we have ever screened, the most fabulous international guests we have ever hosted, 8 days of screenings, and nearly 8,000 visitors (more than double that of Tokyo Pride). But just because the festival is over doesn’t mean this blog has come to an end. I was at the festival virtually non-stop this weekend, taking in more than 8 programs of films, and talking to as many guests as my stamina (and, in some cases, the availability of a Japanese translator) would permit. So I have a huge backlog of stories to prepare for the blog, which I will be serving out to you in a tantalizing trickle as the week goes on.
Here’s some of what you can expect to read about in the coming days…
LGBT Youth Exchange Project
Remember that group of 16 youth who attended our opening screening (‘Were the World Mine’) for free, at the request of the director, Thomas Gustafson, and with the help of an anonymous donor? My interview with Inoue Yuko of the LGBT Youth Exchange Project will expand your understanding. You can also attend their special public event taking place on August 24th at Yoyogi’s Olympic Centre.
‘Drifting Flowers’
This week, it’s time to make up for our lack of coverage of women’s and Asian films. We get a good start on both with ‘Drifting Flowers’! I’ll have a transcript of the Q & A session with Taiwanese director Zero Chou and her producing partner (as well as life -partner) Hoho Liu, and interviews with the film’s two beautiful young leads -- Chao Li-yan and Serena Fang.
‘Strange Couples’ & ‘Moon Shadow’
Q & A session with the directors and stars of these two great Japanese short films that screened together on Sunday, as well as interviews with the director (Matsumoto Takuya) and two stars (Takahashi Kanimaru & Ito Asuka) of ‘Strange Couples’.
‘Freeheld’ & ‘A Lez in Wonderland’
Q & A session with Japan’s most famous lesbian, former politician and perennial queer activist Otsuji Kanako, as well as Mr. Yamashita, a lawyer with the Tokyo Public Law Office, to discuss the legalities of gay spousal benefits and other issues in relation to the film ‘Freeheld’.
Bride of ‘Kiss the Bride’!
C. Jay Cox is back for a second week, and this time he’s brought his two hunky stars, James O’Shea and Philipp Karner! Get ready for the three-way Q & A session that followed our second screening of ‘Kiss the Bride’, plus one-on-one interviews with James and Philipp, and a mini follow-up interview with C. Jay about his trip to Kyoto and Hiroshima!
‘Asian Shorts’
Mini-reviews of each film, plus an interview with Aki-san, the programmer of this unique group of shorts.
‘Shelter’
Q & A session and interview with Jonah Markowitz, director of ‘Shelter’ -- one of the best and most well-received films at this year’s festival!
‘Japanese Rainbow Reel Competition’
Mini-reviews of each film, plus the results of the competition, with guest juror Jonah Markowitz (director of ‘Sheter’).
‘Out at the Wedding’
And last but certainly not least, our closing night event, hosted once again by local drag queen and unstoppable MC, Margaret, with stars Kathy DeBuono and Jill Bennett in attendance for the film and a great Q&A session that left us all in high spirits, even as the festival came to its inevitable close for another year.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
C. Jay Cox Interview – “We’re too hung-up on labels.”
‘Kiss the Bride’ (director, C. Jay Cox)
Next Screening: Sunday, July 20, 18:15 – Spiral Hall, with special guests in attendance: C. Jay Cox (director), Philipp Karner & James O’Shea (lead actors)
I wasn’t quite expecting to meet C. Jay Cox when he waltzed up to me, as I was loitering in front of the festival reception desk, and said, “You look like you speak English.”
“I do...” I said, a little flustered, not sure who I was speaking to.
It took me half a minute to properly acknowledge the tall, blond, tanned and cheerful American who was so casual, so at ease with himself that it hardly dawned on me he might be the director of that afternoon’s feature, ‘Kiss the Bride’. I guess I was expecting someone a little more... self-important? Pretentious? A little more... Hollywood? But C. Jay Cox is none of these things. He’s just a really nice guy, and I like that about him. Perhaps it’s his Christian upbringing – he has the manners of an angel.
So, long before I sat down to formally interview him, the conversation had already begun. And to my surprise, he was just as interested in hearing about my experience in Japan, and my reasons for coming here, as he was in having me demonstrate an interest in his films. Maybe that’s the sign of a good writer: he’d rather gather information than monopolize the spotlight and listen to himself talk. He was also eagerly looking forward to exploring Japan on his own, during the interval of a few days when there are no screenings (Monday through Wednesday of this week), the festival staff takes a deep breath, and C. Jay waits for his stars – Philipp Karner and James O’Shea – to arrive for ‘Kiss the Bride’s second Tokyo screening on Sunday, July 20th.
He sold his first script, the Reese Witherspoon vehicle (and hit) ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, before beginning production of ‘Latter Days’, for which most of our audience knows him. Alternating between writing for Hollywood and directing for himself, as well as for all of us, C. Jay has managed to do something most artists only dream of – actually making a living from his work, and having the freedom to develop projects at his own pace, in his own sweet time.
With this success, however, comes the perennial accusation of selling out. Having grown up in a trailer park, C. Jay said, he’s always felt that you need a certain level of affluence to begin with in order to worry about ‘selling out.’ There has to be a feeling that you are wasting that degree in French literature or something, he said, which only someone already coming from a position of privilege can be expected to fret about. C. Jay has no such hang-ups. He tells the stories he wants to tell as skilfully and as unpretentiously as he can, and has found a wide audience that enjoys them. As we say in Japan: ‘omedetou gozaimasu’ – a hearty congratulations to him!
Our conversation continued again after the screening in a little Japanese coffee shop just on the edge of Shinjuku-Nichome, and began with the state of his career just before ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Latter Days’...
And since C. Jay was so self-effacing with me, I think I’ll step back for a little while and let him do the talking here!
C. Jay: ...I had been working on a project called ‘The Thing in Bob’s Garage’, which had been optioned, so I had meetings with all the different production companies. At the first meeting I went to, they pitched the ‘Alabama’ script to me. They had been working on it with a screenwriter who did action movies, so it wasn’t the best fit. The focus of the story then was on the male lead, who was a dirt track racer. But the core of it really was a romantic comedy, so I stepped in to bring that into focus.
The ‘Bob’s Garage’ project got pulled away from me, essentially because it had attracted too much interest. No one was going to let me direct it myself. Sometimes, you have to just go ahead and make a movie to prove that you can make a movie. So I started developing ‘Latter Days’.
In the midst of production on that film, ‘Alabama’ came out and was a hit, so all of a sudden I wasn’t just some guy who had never made a movie before. I was the writer of the number one movie in America, which got people a lot more interested in the film I was making.
So, I had essentially given up on breaking into the industry, and – ironically – that’s when it happened!
The ‘Bob’s Garage’ script starts with a gay wedding, and then it becomes this collage of styles and genres. Everybody really liked it, but they also said they would never produce it.
[The film was ultimately directed by veteran comedy director Penelope Spheeris and released in 1998.]
When I started writing ‘Latter Days’, I thought that I was past all the emotional issues in it. But I wasn’t. I thought it would just be a kind of time capsule, to tell that kid [that Cox himself had been] that he’s okay. So the character wrote a lot of it for me.
[The film, of course, is semi-autobiographical, and deals with a set of experience similar to his own, as a young Mormon, out on his two-year mission to win converts and prove himself to his church.]
Unlike the character in the film, I didn’t get sent home from my mission for being gay. I completed my mission and didn’t start to deal with that stuff until afterward. The ex-communication part of the story was something I had to research, and actually I ended up making it harsher in the film than I had first intended to because of what my research revealed.
I moved to Los Angeles after my mission was over. I struggled with a lot of things, but I saw an article in the L.A. Times about this Mormon writer who was questioning the religion. I read his book and he said that Mormonism is a great religion and lifestyle until logic rears its ugly head. He felt that if God hadn’t wanted us to use our reason, he wouldn’t have given it to us.
[Despite the life-changing effect of this book, however, C. Jay couldn’t remember the author’s name or the book’s title!]
There were a lot of prominent people who fell away from the church around that time. The church has this inability to retain intellectuals. Shortly after I left Brigham Young University, there was actually a purge of intellectuals from the university. Professors and historians were fired and kicked out of the church. A number of documents had been discovered that came into conflict with the official version of the story the church tells about itself, and these scholars were interested in these documents.
Guy: It’s sort of foolish, isn’t it, that religion tries to dress itself up as science, as the Creationists do in the U.S., because fundamentally religion and science address different questions. The moral and ethical questions that religion addresses can never be answered by science.
C. Jay: Yeah. If religion can’t come to terms with science and discovery, then how long can it last?
Guy: So you directed ‘Kiss the Bride’, but unlike ‘Latter Days’ you didn’t write it. What attracted you to the script?
C. Jay: Ty Lieberman first wrote it at the Outfest screenwriting lab, and I was helping lead that workshop. Like me, he was writing from what he knew. An ex-boyfriend of his, who had dumped him, was getting married, and he had gone back to his hometown for the wedding. But in the early drafts, the Ryan character [the one getting married] was always an asshole. Ty was obviously still hurting from this experience. And the wife was going to be this terrible shrew. I liked the set-up – it’s kind of this classic formula of the old love showing up at the wedding – but the more I looked at it the more I found myself pulling for the girl. So I encouraged Ty to take it in that direction, to make the characters more sympathetic. I like that you can sympathize with all of them – it means that you don’t know where the story is going to go. I really like the take Alex [Tori Spelling’s character] has on it in the final film. She would rather have the relationship end based on truth, than continue with it as a façade. And I like what Matt says at the end, that she loved him [Ryan] enough that she would have let him go for someone else that he loved [i.e. Matt].
Guy: Maybe it is too strong a word, but there is a pretty explicit critique of marriage in the film. Gay marriage is now a reality in California. What are your thoughts on it?
C. Jay: I don’t think ‘critique’ is too strong. I think a lot of us are too fixated on labels. A lot of gay men fixate on straight guys – you know, if he’s had a gay experience, then he must be gay – and there is this rigidity to these labels. We want our relationships to be called marriages, but maybe it is more politically expedient not to insist on that label, and to push for something else, like ‘civil unions.’ Some people insist that anything less than the word ‘marriage’ means we are second-class citizens.
Guy: But gay marriage is now a reality in California and some other states.
C. Jay: Yeah, but there’s a ballot initiative for this fall’s election in California to change the state constitution and outlaw it. They are trying to plant landmines so that if one day it becomes legal at the federal level, they’ll still be able to block it at the state level. Not surprisingly, a big source of money for this initiative is the Mormon church.
Guy: But what are they going to do? Unmarry thousands of couples?
C. Jay: Yes, that is the point – to invalidate all these marriages. To say that they were never valid.
Guy: Something like gay marriage is totally off the radar here. It’s not that hard to be gay in Japan, but it is also not that visible.
C. Jay: Yeah, I recall reading an interview with I think it was the Japanese foreign minister who said that they have no problem with homosexuality – because there are no homosexuals in Japan!
Guy: What about being gay in Hollywood? In my conversation with Tom Gustafson and Cory James Krueckeberg [director and co-producers of ‘Were the World Mine’] they said that in Hollywood everyone knows who is gay, it just doesn’t filter into the media.
C. Jay: Yeah, there are a lot of highly respected figures in the U.S. that everyone knows are gay, but it’s not talked about. It is basically a non-issue in the film industry. But I tend to feel that with actors, actually, the less you know about their personal life the better. It’s a distraction. When I am watching a film, the less I know about them as people, the more I am able to enjoy their performances. I am in favour of actors coming out, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it won’t affect their careers.
Guy: There are still no actors of the leading-man type that are out in Hollywood. What do you make of that?
C. Jay: We used to hear that [a big Hollywood star, who is probably not gay] was going to come out and that would make it okay for everyone else. I don’t know if he’s gay or not. I don’t care. There are some popular young actors now who are out in the industry, and will probably transition from TV and become big movie stars, like George Clooney did.
[C. Jay did name names, but to protect him from libel lawsuits, it might be best to omit them here.]
So I think if people have known for years that an actor is gay, it won’t be such a big deal when they become movie stars. But, you know, very few people make it to the level of a Tom Cruise or a Brad Pitt anyway. So it’s not realistic to think that someone like that is going to become a big star and then come out. If they are going to get there, they will have to arrive at that level already out.
Guy: Like Rupert Everett and Ian McKellen did. They basically arrived as stars in America already out in England, so it was never an issue.
C. Jay: Yeah. ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘X-Men’ were huge, and Ian McKellan was everywhere [even on the plastic cups at Burger King!--Guy]. So we do have prominent out stars. For some people, though, until we have an out star who’s the biggest star in the world, it won’t be enough. But I just don’t see it happening that way, and I don’t think it matters.
Guy: I found it strange to see in the news a while back that Jodie Foster was breaking up with her partner of 14 years. I thought, ‘When did she ever publicly confirm she was a lesbian?’ But then she is kind of on the waning side of her stardom anyway.
C. Jay: Well, that is more a function of being a middle-aged woman in Hollywood than of being a lesbian. That last sort of action film she did, ‘The Brave One’, didn’t make enough money, so the head of Warner Brothers announced, ‘We’re not making any more films for women.’
Guy: But now you have ‘Sex in the City: The Movie’ and it’s a big hit.
C. Jay: Yeah, so now they’ll look at that and say, ‘Oh, well, that was a success, so maybe we can make money doing films for women.’
Guy: There is a really interesting moment in ‘Kiss the Bride’ when Tori’s character basically says it’s okay to be average, to have an ordinary life and be happy with it, if that’s what you want for yourself. But it’s a message that’s coming from what is basically a Hollywood movie that’s full of people who are not ordinary. So I wonder, how seriously do you mean for us to take that idea – that it’s okay to be average?
C. Jay: Again, I think it’s a question of labels. It’s okay to be extraordinary if that’s really what you are. But if you are not, it’s okay to be ordinary too. In the movie, the kid whose parents are disappointed by his average report card goes from being a happy kid to feeling like damaged goods, because of a label. It’s the same with gays and the labels we want for ourselves. We think we’re second-class citizens if we can’t call our relationships ‘marriages’. It’s the same thing. Do you need society to recognize you as extraordinary in order to feel good about yourself? I know lots of straight couples who have been together for years and aren’t married. But they know the value of their relationship. They don’t need the label ‘marriage’ to validate it.
Guy: I tend to think that gay people and straight people have been sort of heading in opposite directions. It used to be that there were very few options for gays to be open about their sexuality or to have sort of settled relationships, so you had the anonymous sex thing and a lot of secrecy. Whereas for straights, it was the opposite problem. Marriage was the only valid kind of relationship you could have. You weren’t even supposed to have sex unless you were married. So I think maybe we are sort of meeting in the middle, where it’s okay for straight people not to get married and it’s also okay for gays to have long-term monogamous relationships.
C. Jay: Or maybe we are on a collision course and we’re just going to crash in the middle!
Guy: Maybe! But I think gay lifestyles can open things up for straight people. I know a woman here in Tokyo raising a daughter with a former partner of hers, and she said that her sister – who is straight and unmarried – didn’t think she could have children until her sister and her partner did. And then it was like, ‘Well, if they can do it [as lesbians], why can’t I [as a single woman]?’
C. Jay: Yeah, sure. Again, we get so hung up on these labels. I mean, I grew up in cowboy country, where men were men. But you know, I went to this diner in my home town again recently, and there are all these pictures on the walls of miners, cowboys – from like 100 years ago. And, you know, they clearly portray something like a gay relationship. They have these little captions that say things like, ‘Lifetime riding partners.’ I mean, men outnumbered women 50 to 1 in the old west, so it’s not unlikely that some of them were gay.
Guy: There is an American academic who collects those photos, and did a book about it called ‘Dear Friends’[:American Photographs of Men Together 1840-1918, edited by David Deitcher].
C. Jay: Right. I know that book. Or, take the Mormon thing. You put 19-year-old boys together in pairs of two, send them out together for two years, they are not allowed to have any contact with women, they are supposed to be together 24 hours a day. It’s perfect training for being in a gay couple! And once a week you have a ‘companionship evaluation’ meeting where you are supposed to talk about your feelings for each other. It’s like date night. Then you close with a prayer and reaffirm your love for one another. This is what I went through, and it was the most homoerotic period of my life!
Most of those guys were terribly straight! But still you saw them rubbing each others knees and being very physically affectionate with each other.
Guy: You see the same thing in schools here. But I think it’s because homosexuality is still far enough below the radar that it doesn’t register as queer. I mean, you see outrageous gay people on TV; everyone knows gay people exist. But I don’t think the average person here has accepted yet that the person next to them – their friend, fellow student, or co-worker – might actually be gay. So there is a lot of freedom for boys to be affectionate with each other. Plus, there is such a barrier to socialization between the sexes, even in co-ed schools, that I think boys have to get affection from each other because there is nowhere else to get it.
C. Jay: I have a 13-year-old son, and we are very affectionate with each other. But sometimes, it is more satisfying to wrestle or play fight than to hug each other. I think that’s just the way boys are.
Guy: Well, that’s the way young male animals play with each other.
C. Jay: His mother is much more uptight about this than I am. He’ll be inside all day doing something quiet and creative, and then he’ll just want to throw a punch at me or something. His mother thought he needed to be in therapy, but you know roughhousing is just what boys like to do.
It’s kind of incredible that straight relationships ever work, because men and women are so different. I know lots of straight guys that, aside from sex, really have no interest in or use for women. They would rather work on their cars, watch sports, hang out with their buddies – anything but spend time with women.
Guy: At the same time, though, I think that as gay people become more visible, straight men have to police their sexuality more closely. I gather that in the Arab world, again, homosexuality is so under the radar, that there is a lot of freedom for men to be affectionate with each other, because it is not read as queer. But I think Japan is kind of right on that edge, and that as queer visibility increases, a lot of the nice affectionate stuff that you see between boys here will start to get shut down.
C. Jay: Yeah, straight guys are wary of anything that might be perceived as gay. My son is junior high-school aged, and at that age anything you don’t like or that’s uncool is ‘gay’.
Guy: Do his peers know that his father is gay? This can’t be all that uncommon in Los Angeles?
C. Jay: Yeah, no, it’s not. He sort of has to find something else to be embarrassed about!
Guy: How about having a dad that makes movies? I guess that’s not that uncommon either.
C. Jay: Yeah, for him it just means he has to come to meeting sometimes and be really bored.
Guy: Did you always want to have kids, or did you think you had to choose between fatherhood and living as a gay man?
C. Jay: Yeah, I sort of grew up with that assumption, that it was one or the other – being a dad or being gay. But as it worked out, I didn’t have to choose.
So there you go. Add being an upstanding, responsible dad – to the point of being unembarrassing! – to C. Jay’s growing list of credits. We wish him well with ‘Chilled in Miami’ and ‘Three’, and look forward to seeing him again this coming weekend, when ‘Kiss the Bride’ screens for a second time at this year’s festival, with its two stars in attendance. Maybe we’ll have to quiz C. Jay on what he’s learned about Japan from his 3-day jaunt to Kyoto and Hiroshima. Stay tuned!
Next Screening: Sunday, July 20, 18:15 – Spiral Hall, with special guests in attendance: C. Jay Cox (director), Philipp Karner & James O’Shea (lead actors)
I wasn’t quite expecting to meet C. Jay Cox when he waltzed up to me, as I was loitering in front of the festival reception desk, and said, “You look like you speak English.”
“I do...” I said, a little flustered, not sure who I was speaking to.
It took me half a minute to properly acknowledge the tall, blond, tanned and cheerful American who was so casual, so at ease with himself that it hardly dawned on me he might be the director of that afternoon’s feature, ‘Kiss the Bride’. I guess I was expecting someone a little more... self-important? Pretentious? A little more... Hollywood? But C. Jay Cox is none of these things. He’s just a really nice guy, and I like that about him. Perhaps it’s his Christian upbringing – he has the manners of an angel.
So, long before I sat down to formally interview him, the conversation had already begun. And to my surprise, he was just as interested in hearing about my experience in Japan, and my reasons for coming here, as he was in having me demonstrate an interest in his films. Maybe that’s the sign of a good writer: he’d rather gather information than monopolize the spotlight and listen to himself talk. He was also eagerly looking forward to exploring Japan on his own, during the interval of a few days when there are no screenings (Monday through Wednesday of this week), the festival staff takes a deep breath, and C. Jay waits for his stars – Philipp Karner and James O’Shea – to arrive for ‘Kiss the Bride’s second Tokyo screening on Sunday, July 20th.
He sold his first script, the Reese Witherspoon vehicle (and hit) ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, before beginning production of ‘Latter Days’, for which most of our audience knows him. Alternating between writing for Hollywood and directing for himself, as well as for all of us, C. Jay has managed to do something most artists only dream of – actually making a living from his work, and having the freedom to develop projects at his own pace, in his own sweet time.
With this success, however, comes the perennial accusation of selling out. Having grown up in a trailer park, C. Jay said, he’s always felt that you need a certain level of affluence to begin with in order to worry about ‘selling out.’ There has to be a feeling that you are wasting that degree in French literature or something, he said, which only someone already coming from a position of privilege can be expected to fret about. C. Jay has no such hang-ups. He tells the stories he wants to tell as skilfully and as unpretentiously as he can, and has found a wide audience that enjoys them. As we say in Japan: ‘omedetou gozaimasu’ – a hearty congratulations to him!
Our conversation continued again after the screening in a little Japanese coffee shop just on the edge of Shinjuku-Nichome, and began with the state of his career just before ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Latter Days’...
And since C. Jay was so self-effacing with me, I think I’ll step back for a little while and let him do the talking here!
C. Jay: ...I had been working on a project called ‘The Thing in Bob’s Garage’, which had been optioned, so I had meetings with all the different production companies. At the first meeting I went to, they pitched the ‘Alabama’ script to me. They had been working on it with a screenwriter who did action movies, so it wasn’t the best fit. The focus of the story then was on the male lead, who was a dirt track racer. But the core of it really was a romantic comedy, so I stepped in to bring that into focus.
The ‘Bob’s Garage’ project got pulled away from me, essentially because it had attracted too much interest. No one was going to let me direct it myself. Sometimes, you have to just go ahead and make a movie to prove that you can make a movie. So I started developing ‘Latter Days’.
In the midst of production on that film, ‘Alabama’ came out and was a hit, so all of a sudden I wasn’t just some guy who had never made a movie before. I was the writer of the number one movie in America, which got people a lot more interested in the film I was making.
So, I had essentially given up on breaking into the industry, and – ironically – that’s when it happened!
The ‘Bob’s Garage’ script starts with a gay wedding, and then it becomes this collage of styles and genres. Everybody really liked it, but they also said they would never produce it.
[The film was ultimately directed by veteran comedy director Penelope Spheeris and released in 1998.]
When I started writing ‘Latter Days’, I thought that I was past all the emotional issues in it. But I wasn’t. I thought it would just be a kind of time capsule, to tell that kid [that Cox himself had been] that he’s okay. So the character wrote a lot of it for me.
[The film, of course, is semi-autobiographical, and deals with a set of experience similar to his own, as a young Mormon, out on his two-year mission to win converts and prove himself to his church.]
Unlike the character in the film, I didn’t get sent home from my mission for being gay. I completed my mission and didn’t start to deal with that stuff until afterward. The ex-communication part of the story was something I had to research, and actually I ended up making it harsher in the film than I had first intended to because of what my research revealed.
I moved to Los Angeles after my mission was over. I struggled with a lot of things, but I saw an article in the L.A. Times about this Mormon writer who was questioning the religion. I read his book and he said that Mormonism is a great religion and lifestyle until logic rears its ugly head. He felt that if God hadn’t wanted us to use our reason, he wouldn’t have given it to us.
[Despite the life-changing effect of this book, however, C. Jay couldn’t remember the author’s name or the book’s title!]
There were a lot of prominent people who fell away from the church around that time. The church has this inability to retain intellectuals. Shortly after I left Brigham Young University, there was actually a purge of intellectuals from the university. Professors and historians were fired and kicked out of the church. A number of documents had been discovered that came into conflict with the official version of the story the church tells about itself, and these scholars were interested in these documents.
Guy: It’s sort of foolish, isn’t it, that religion tries to dress itself up as science, as the Creationists do in the U.S., because fundamentally religion and science address different questions. The moral and ethical questions that religion addresses can never be answered by science.
C. Jay: Yeah. If religion can’t come to terms with science and discovery, then how long can it last?
Guy: So you directed ‘Kiss the Bride’, but unlike ‘Latter Days’ you didn’t write it. What attracted you to the script?
C. Jay: Ty Lieberman first wrote it at the Outfest screenwriting lab, and I was helping lead that workshop. Like me, he was writing from what he knew. An ex-boyfriend of his, who had dumped him, was getting married, and he had gone back to his hometown for the wedding. But in the early drafts, the Ryan character [the one getting married] was always an asshole. Ty was obviously still hurting from this experience. And the wife was going to be this terrible shrew. I liked the set-up – it’s kind of this classic formula of the old love showing up at the wedding – but the more I looked at it the more I found myself pulling for the girl. So I encouraged Ty to take it in that direction, to make the characters more sympathetic. I like that you can sympathize with all of them – it means that you don’t know where the story is going to go. I really like the take Alex [Tori Spelling’s character] has on it in the final film. She would rather have the relationship end based on truth, than continue with it as a façade. And I like what Matt says at the end, that she loved him [Ryan] enough that she would have let him go for someone else that he loved [i.e. Matt].
Guy: Maybe it is too strong a word, but there is a pretty explicit critique of marriage in the film. Gay marriage is now a reality in California. What are your thoughts on it?
C. Jay: I don’t think ‘critique’ is too strong. I think a lot of us are too fixated on labels. A lot of gay men fixate on straight guys – you know, if he’s had a gay experience, then he must be gay – and there is this rigidity to these labels. We want our relationships to be called marriages, but maybe it is more politically expedient not to insist on that label, and to push for something else, like ‘civil unions.’ Some people insist that anything less than the word ‘marriage’ means we are second-class citizens.
Guy: But gay marriage is now a reality in California and some other states.
C. Jay: Yeah, but there’s a ballot initiative for this fall’s election in California to change the state constitution and outlaw it. They are trying to plant landmines so that if one day it becomes legal at the federal level, they’ll still be able to block it at the state level. Not surprisingly, a big source of money for this initiative is the Mormon church.
Guy: But what are they going to do? Unmarry thousands of couples?
C. Jay: Yes, that is the point – to invalidate all these marriages. To say that they were never valid.
Guy: Something like gay marriage is totally off the radar here. It’s not that hard to be gay in Japan, but it is also not that visible.
C. Jay: Yeah, I recall reading an interview with I think it was the Japanese foreign minister who said that they have no problem with homosexuality – because there are no homosexuals in Japan!
Guy: What about being gay in Hollywood? In my conversation with Tom Gustafson and Cory James Krueckeberg [director and co-producers of ‘Were the World Mine’] they said that in Hollywood everyone knows who is gay, it just doesn’t filter into the media.
C. Jay: Yeah, there are a lot of highly respected figures in the U.S. that everyone knows are gay, but it’s not talked about. It is basically a non-issue in the film industry. But I tend to feel that with actors, actually, the less you know about their personal life the better. It’s a distraction. When I am watching a film, the less I know about them as people, the more I am able to enjoy their performances. I am in favour of actors coming out, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it won’t affect their careers.
Guy: There are still no actors of the leading-man type that are out in Hollywood. What do you make of that?
C. Jay: We used to hear that [a big Hollywood star, who is probably not gay] was going to come out and that would make it okay for everyone else. I don’t know if he’s gay or not. I don’t care. There are some popular young actors now who are out in the industry, and will probably transition from TV and become big movie stars, like George Clooney did.
[C. Jay did name names, but to protect him from libel lawsuits, it might be best to omit them here.]
So I think if people have known for years that an actor is gay, it won’t be such a big deal when they become movie stars. But, you know, very few people make it to the level of a Tom Cruise or a Brad Pitt anyway. So it’s not realistic to think that someone like that is going to become a big star and then come out. If they are going to get there, they will have to arrive at that level already out.
Guy: Like Rupert Everett and Ian McKellen did. They basically arrived as stars in America already out in England, so it was never an issue.
C. Jay: Yeah. ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘X-Men’ were huge, and Ian McKellan was everywhere [even on the plastic cups at Burger King!--Guy]. So we do have prominent out stars. For some people, though, until we have an out star who’s the biggest star in the world, it won’t be enough. But I just don’t see it happening that way, and I don’t think it matters.
Guy: I found it strange to see in the news a while back that Jodie Foster was breaking up with her partner of 14 years. I thought, ‘When did she ever publicly confirm she was a lesbian?’ But then she is kind of on the waning side of her stardom anyway.
C. Jay: Well, that is more a function of being a middle-aged woman in Hollywood than of being a lesbian. That last sort of action film she did, ‘The Brave One’, didn’t make enough money, so the head of Warner Brothers announced, ‘We’re not making any more films for women.’
Guy: But now you have ‘Sex in the City: The Movie’ and it’s a big hit.
C. Jay: Yeah, so now they’ll look at that and say, ‘Oh, well, that was a success, so maybe we can make money doing films for women.’
Guy: There is a really interesting moment in ‘Kiss the Bride’ when Tori’s character basically says it’s okay to be average, to have an ordinary life and be happy with it, if that’s what you want for yourself. But it’s a message that’s coming from what is basically a Hollywood movie that’s full of people who are not ordinary. So I wonder, how seriously do you mean for us to take that idea – that it’s okay to be average?
C. Jay: Again, I think it’s a question of labels. It’s okay to be extraordinary if that’s really what you are. But if you are not, it’s okay to be ordinary too. In the movie, the kid whose parents are disappointed by his average report card goes from being a happy kid to feeling like damaged goods, because of a label. It’s the same with gays and the labels we want for ourselves. We think we’re second-class citizens if we can’t call our relationships ‘marriages’. It’s the same thing. Do you need society to recognize you as extraordinary in order to feel good about yourself? I know lots of straight couples who have been together for years and aren’t married. But they know the value of their relationship. They don’t need the label ‘marriage’ to validate it.
Guy: I tend to think that gay people and straight people have been sort of heading in opposite directions. It used to be that there were very few options for gays to be open about their sexuality or to have sort of settled relationships, so you had the anonymous sex thing and a lot of secrecy. Whereas for straights, it was the opposite problem. Marriage was the only valid kind of relationship you could have. You weren’t even supposed to have sex unless you were married. So I think maybe we are sort of meeting in the middle, where it’s okay for straight people not to get married and it’s also okay for gays to have long-term monogamous relationships.
C. Jay: Or maybe we are on a collision course and we’re just going to crash in the middle!
Guy: Maybe! But I think gay lifestyles can open things up for straight people. I know a woman here in Tokyo raising a daughter with a former partner of hers, and she said that her sister – who is straight and unmarried – didn’t think she could have children until her sister and her partner did. And then it was like, ‘Well, if they can do it [as lesbians], why can’t I [as a single woman]?’
C. Jay: Yeah, sure. Again, we get so hung up on these labels. I mean, I grew up in cowboy country, where men were men. But you know, I went to this diner in my home town again recently, and there are all these pictures on the walls of miners, cowboys – from like 100 years ago. And, you know, they clearly portray something like a gay relationship. They have these little captions that say things like, ‘Lifetime riding partners.’ I mean, men outnumbered women 50 to 1 in the old west, so it’s not unlikely that some of them were gay.
Guy: There is an American academic who collects those photos, and did a book about it called ‘Dear Friends’[:American Photographs of Men Together 1840-1918, edited by David Deitcher].
C. Jay: Right. I know that book. Or, take the Mormon thing. You put 19-year-old boys together in pairs of two, send them out together for two years, they are not allowed to have any contact with women, they are supposed to be together 24 hours a day. It’s perfect training for being in a gay couple! And once a week you have a ‘companionship evaluation’ meeting where you are supposed to talk about your feelings for each other. It’s like date night. Then you close with a prayer and reaffirm your love for one another. This is what I went through, and it was the most homoerotic period of my life!
Most of those guys were terribly straight! But still you saw them rubbing each others knees and being very physically affectionate with each other.
Guy: You see the same thing in schools here. But I think it’s because homosexuality is still far enough below the radar that it doesn’t register as queer. I mean, you see outrageous gay people on TV; everyone knows gay people exist. But I don’t think the average person here has accepted yet that the person next to them – their friend, fellow student, or co-worker – might actually be gay. So there is a lot of freedom for boys to be affectionate with each other. Plus, there is such a barrier to socialization between the sexes, even in co-ed schools, that I think boys have to get affection from each other because there is nowhere else to get it.
C. Jay: I have a 13-year-old son, and we are very affectionate with each other. But sometimes, it is more satisfying to wrestle or play fight than to hug each other. I think that’s just the way boys are.
Guy: Well, that’s the way young male animals play with each other.
C. Jay: His mother is much more uptight about this than I am. He’ll be inside all day doing something quiet and creative, and then he’ll just want to throw a punch at me or something. His mother thought he needed to be in therapy, but you know roughhousing is just what boys like to do.
It’s kind of incredible that straight relationships ever work, because men and women are so different. I know lots of straight guys that, aside from sex, really have no interest in or use for women. They would rather work on their cars, watch sports, hang out with their buddies – anything but spend time with women.
Guy: At the same time, though, I think that as gay people become more visible, straight men have to police their sexuality more closely. I gather that in the Arab world, again, homosexuality is so under the radar, that there is a lot of freedom for men to be affectionate with each other, because it is not read as queer. But I think Japan is kind of right on that edge, and that as queer visibility increases, a lot of the nice affectionate stuff that you see between boys here will start to get shut down.
C. Jay: Yeah, straight guys are wary of anything that might be perceived as gay. My son is junior high-school aged, and at that age anything you don’t like or that’s uncool is ‘gay’.
Guy: Do his peers know that his father is gay? This can’t be all that uncommon in Los Angeles?
C. Jay: Yeah, no, it’s not. He sort of has to find something else to be embarrassed about!
Guy: How about having a dad that makes movies? I guess that’s not that uncommon either.
C. Jay: Yeah, for him it just means he has to come to meeting sometimes and be really bored.
Guy: Did you always want to have kids, or did you think you had to choose between fatherhood and living as a gay man?
C. Jay: Yeah, I sort of grew up with that assumption, that it was one or the other – being a dad or being gay. But as it worked out, I didn’t have to choose.
So there you go. Add being an upstanding, responsible dad – to the point of being unembarrassing! – to C. Jay’s growing list of credits. We wish him well with ‘Chilled in Miami’ and ‘Three’, and look forward to seeing him again this coming weekend, when ‘Kiss the Bride’ screens for a second time at this year’s festival, with its two stars in attendance. Maybe we’ll have to quiz C. Jay on what he’s learned about Japan from his 3-day jaunt to Kyoto and Hiroshima. Stay tuned!
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