Director's Blog

December 25. Christmas Present.

Eric was hot. He was drenched in sweat. The blankets and sheet twisted around his legs and torso in a tightened knot and he struggled manically to push the covers away, get some air. He kicked with his feet and pushed the bedding down with his hands, over his damp chest hair, his churning stomach, his soft member.  

He breathed deeply, grasping for clarity. And then the chilled room hit him. It was cold. He was wet and cold. He sat up to unravel the mess that lay around the bed and the dropped back on the pillow, pulling the blankets to cover him.

‘Fever. This must be fever,’ Eric thought. ‘This happens with fever.  The delusions are real. But the events didn’t happen.’

He wasn’t trying to deliver a manuscript to a restaurant bathroom and wasn’t stopped by the police to be in a line-up. And his husband’s death was two years ago, not last night, and there was still nothing he could do to prevent it.

That part was real. The delusions and the reality mix, making it harder to discern what happened. ‘This must be what Alzheimer’s is,’ Eric thought. ‘Five years of nightmares. Please, not me.’

He calmed his mind. The night of his husband’s death flashed again. 

Kneeling over Tom’s gray body on the concrete floor in the house, uncontrollably screaming, the cop telling him to blow air in Tom’s mouth and then watching saliva gurgle from Tom’s throat as the cop applied compressions. Tom’s eyes staring straight ahead.  The victim assistance woman assuring him everything was going to be okay as he rocked in a fetal knot in the backyard. Eric yelling, “This is not okay!” Wanting to kill himself right there, feeling his chest clinched so tight he thought it was heart attack, then knowing if he did kill himself everyone would think he was responsible for Tom’s death.  The way they believed Chris was guilty of pederasty after he used a shotgun on himself in the cotton field.

No, he was in his room, in his house, Eric assured himself.  The room heater whirred in the corner. He vaguely saw the door and window outlines illuminated by the heater’s orange light.

It was before dawn, he figured, since he’d been awake at 4am and taken a hot bath to warm his bones. He’d gone back to bed. So this had to be close to dawn. Christmas morning.

Eric coughed, a deep rasping in his chest. The cough lasted for multiple attempts to clear his lungs, and then stopped without results. Eric rolled over on his side.

This was the cold that Charlie got several days ago.  It wasn’t allergies, as Charlie proclaimed; it’s a cold. He felt worn out, sore, spent.

The day ahead would be easy. He was taking Charlie to noon dinner at the Hyatt, a short drive and the only meal preparation required was pulling his credit card out of his wallet. He could sleep the rest of the day, if his mind would let him.

Tomorrow would be the challenge.  His boy-toy was arriving at the airport mid-morning. From there he’d find them a motel and they had five days ahead for sex. That was all. Sure, Eric was going to drive Mark around to the tourist spots, and maybe do some of the things Eric normally never took the time or spent the money to do, but Mark bought the plane ticket and laid out five days for fucking. Eric cleared his schedule for the same purpose.

A worry crossed his mind. He knew he was going to give Mark this cold. He thought about ways to avoid it. Wash his hands. Don’t kiss him.  ‘No, let’s think about this,’ he argued, ‘I get laid two weekends this year and I’m not going to kiss during the second one?’    Maybe give Mark those homeopathic fizz tablets as soon as they meet in baggage claim.  ‘Or tell Mark it’s allergies?’ he wondered.   Then Mark wouldn’t be angry at Eric when the coughing begins.

Maybe Eric won’t be contagious tomorrow.

Maybe he’ll just deal with it tomorrow.

Being the holiday, Eric’s parents insisted they see him. Originally Eric, without Charlie, was invited to his aunt’s house to overeat and engage cousins in meaningless happy talk. But he lied his way out of the ordeal by claiming he was working both Christmas Eve and Day.

Instead he met his parents two nights earlier at an Italian restaurant, a place Eric and Charlie liked in a nearby town. His parents had joined him there before. They liked it because it was easy to find and had lots of parking with big spaces which was a necessity with his father’s aging driving. His parents were already seated when he walked in the door.

“You’re not telling us you’re working because you don’t want to go to your aunt’s?” his mother drilled him as he lifted his napkin and let the silverware noisily drop to the table. “No,” Eric insisted calmly, “I’m working both days.”

“I hate to see my son working so hard,” his father began from the other side of the table. “If I won the lottery, I’d be sure to set you up.”

“I’m fine, Dad.  I like working. I’m making extra pay because it’s a holiday.”

They both looked suspiciously at Eric, but he picked up the menu and flagged down the server to ask about the day’s specials. The subject didn’t come up again.

At the end of the meal after his father had complained about his food, gotten the server to replace it with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, argued with his mother about politics, asked the server to turn down Frank Sinatra singing carols on the stereo, glared at the noisy children sitting at the next table, spilled sauce on his shirt in two large splotches and chastised himself for ‘always making a mess,’ Eric’s dad finally inched his way into the conversation he drove to the restaurant to have.

“How’s Charlie?” he ventured.

“He’s happy. He’s baking, baking, baking, gardening, and baking.”

“Did he get any landscaping clients?” from the other side of the table.

“None that paid,” Eric said as he took another roll from the basket.

His mother continued. “Well, couldn’t he get a part time job?”

This had been the conversation every time they’d met since last spring, when Eric admitted to them that Charlie was again living in the house and had been since January. Eric’s problem was a yearning to be understood by his father with whom he was so much alike. Yet every new revelation about his life put a disturbed look on his father’s face which proved how different they really were.

Once again Eric explained the financial downside of Charlie getting a minimum wage job, doing something he would hate and the inherent cost to Charlie’s health and attitude. It was better for both of them if Charlie stayed home to play with the cats. Eric was making the bills. How was this any different from his parents’ marriage?   They stopped having sex decades ago. They still lived together, and his mother definitely brought in the income while his father drifted from inopportunity to inopportunity.  Unlike Eric’s father, Charlie didn’t feel guilty about not bringing cash into the house. In an unexpected way, Eric had a better relationship with Charlie than his mother had with her husband.

His father approached the subject from a different tack. “Are you having your…” he struggled to choose the word, “friend…stay with you later this week?”

Eric took another bite of bread while he regrouped.  “Mark flies in on Friday. We’re going sightseeing for a couple days.”

“You know you can stop by the house anytime,” his father suggested.

Eric spoke quietly, but as clearly as possible.  “Mark is a lover, like in the Alan Alda movie where they meet in a cabin once a year. I’m not bringing him to meet my parents. My partner is Charlie. Charlie is my family.”

Dinner was over. Eric’s father insisted on paying the check and Eric chose not to argue this time. Eric pulled his mother’s arm tight against his body as she wobbled to their car. He noticed how much more unsteady her steps were than when they met last time. He kissed her goodbye and imagined her soon confined to a wheelchair. He kissed his father goodbye, who choked up a bit as he told Eric he loved him.  Eric waved as he pulled out of the parking lot first and drove home to tell Charlie about dinner.

The bedroom was beginning to glow a bit, a sort of bluish hue coming from the windows, as Eric settled his right hand over his groin. Mark would arrive tomorrow.

Charlie had movies due to arrive in the mail, a full fridge and a stash of pot that would entertain him for the week. Charlie was taken care of.

Eric began to think about the fun he would have with Mark, the curve of Mark’s butt, the pattern of his chest hair, the pleasures they’d both have from a five day stamina marathon. A little coughing wouldn’t curtail this. This must be what the Christmas carols meant by ‘good will to man,’ Eric mused.

In fact, as he became more excited about the week ahead, Eric couldn’t imagine a better Christmas present.   

December 16. Dinner Invitation. 

Eric stretched his right leg deeper into the bed coverings, unraveling from the ball he’d slept in, but quickly pulled his foot back after brushing the cold footboard.  

The bedroom was still dark.  No light from the curtains.  

He risked reaching over to the desk to illuminate his cell phone. The harsh plastic case was rock cold.

Eight thirty in the morning. Second day off from work. A day that was supposed to be productive. Time to do things Eric wanted to do. No other obligations. Just an underlying nausea about wasting time, which was an infection he acquired in childhood and hadn’t yet overcome.

His cat, the solitary one, was curled into the folds of the blanket. It did no more than open an eye when Eric rustled the mattress. The winter blast that battered the trees and no doubt froze both ponds was too cold for a cat known to prowl the night under the house. He wasn’t moving from his den, no matter how much Eric bounced the bed or pulled the blankets.  

Eric was floating between dreams of paperwork with missing data, customers demanding attention, doors that refuse to open and windchimes shattering in a hail storm. His cell phone displayed a received message. He pressed the keypad.

“Eric, it’s your Aunt Sharon. I told your dad but want to make sure you know we’re having Christmas at my house. I hope you’ll come. It’s just going to be family. I really want you there, but we’re just keeping it to the family this year. Give me a call when you get this message.”

“You have no more messages. Main menu…”  Eric disconnected. He dropped the phone back on the nightstand and retracted under the covers.  He could hear Charlie walking into the adjoining room and rolled over to face the door opening.

Charlie peered around the blanket hung over the door frame. Long ago Eric and Charlie discovered it was futile to close doors inside the house. At any moment one of the four cats would claw under a closed door making it impossible to sleep, read a page in a magazine or finish a sentence on the computer until the door was opened. So they hung floorlength curtains or family quilts to isolate the drafts and muffle each other’s TV’s or radios.

“You still in bed?”

“No, I’m running the Boston marathon.”

“Have you decided yet what you’re doing for Christmas?”

“Uh….no.”

“Did Sharon invite us?”

Eric’s mind was still drifting through the myopia of his dreams, wondering why the doors wouldn’t open. His mouth operated autonomously.  “She invited me.”

Charlie stood still for a moment. Eric thought he could discern steam escaping from Charlie’s mouth, which is only supposed to happen outside. When it’s cold.

Charlie spoke. “But she didn’t invite me?”

Eric’s dream about the jammed door shifted. Charlie came more clearly in focus. It was 8:30 in the morning, on his second day off from work. He was in bed. Charlie was talking to him. Eric’s mind started slowly engaging reality.

“No.”

Charlie stared at Eric for a moment, and then brushed his way through the blanket, opening the passageway long enough for a cold draft from the next room to hit Eric in the face.

He’d have to get up now.

The cat didn’t stir.

Charlie and Eric met more than three years ago in a bar a thousand miles away. They had a passionate and intense three weeks together before Eric’s training ended and he flew home. A year of letters and emails followed before Charlie moved in with Eric the next summer. The first year together was rocky, not just from learning to live together, but more from job changes, dashed hopes, and accidents that derailed what should have been the perfect life.

So much so that Eric gave up on the relationship and told Charlie to move out. Neither of them wanted to find a new boyfriend. A few months later Charlie was back in the house to stay, though under new circumstances in a relationship that wasn’t guided by sex. They agreed it was less costly overall for them to share one house than maintain two. And like straight couples who have children to avoid divorce, they adopted more cats.

Charlie was in the kitchen baking cookies, or tarts, or something else from a recipe he found in a loaned cookbook. It was the warmest room in the house, probably because the oven was on, the hot water heater was firing, a room heater blew across the floor and all the lights were blazing.  Charlie’s coat was in the chair. He was in shirtsleeves. He pounded dough on the countertop before turning to rummage through a kitchen drawer. He slammed the drawer shut and threw open the cupboard. 

“Godamnit. Where’s the measuring cup?”

Eric padded over to Charlie, and in an unusual sign of affection, pulled Charlie tight against his waist. He kissed him gently on his mouth, letting their mustaches mingle. Then kissed him again.

Charlie tried to pull away. “I’m just tired of being rejected.”

Eric reached his hand behind Charlie’s shaved head and pulled their lips together again.

“It’s not you. I was told twenty years ago my boyfriend would never be welcome at holidays. They invited you two years ago because they’re trying.  Discussing peak oil at the Christmas table was probably more than they could handle.”

“They’re just a bunch of hypocrites, being nice to my face.”

“If we were married they’d have to accept you.  They accept my brother-in-law and he’s Satan incarnate.”

Charlie grimaced. “I know if you die I’d better rent a trailer and start packing because they’ll have me out of here.” Charlie turned back to his dough and kneaded it between his hands.  Eric loosened his hold. 

“You get everything in the will. I wrote my will with a ‘no contest’ clause to keep them from touching it.  Besides, they’re old. I hope we both outlive them.”

“What are you going to tell your father?”

The room turned colder, despite all the appliances.

Eric had spent his adult life fighting social stigmas against people like him. He had been outspoken in public at times when friends feared for his safety and belligerent with his family demanding they accept him ‘for who he is.’   He was an angry teenager, an angry young man, and still angry in middle age. At some point, Eric began to see his anger could only accomplish so much.

“Dad has tried really hard to understand. He just can’t. He doesn’t even understand sex is more than three minutes of penetration. How can I expect him to understand us?”

Charlie was quiet. His family had made it clear to him that he wasn’t welcome back home. Charlie half believes he’ll never see his mother again.

Eric’s family held the most potential for the couple to be part of something bigger.  The icy Christmas invitation destroyed any hope there. “You go. I’ll do something else.”

It wouldn’t be the first time Eric refused Christmas with his family. He’d had more holidays without them than with.

Eric wrapped his arms around his mate. “I’m spending Christmas with you.  I’d rather be comfortable with you, than stifled by relatives. I’ll find us a good restaurant. Somewhere with a fireplace and central heating. ”

December 9. Day Without. 

No post today.  It's Day Without a Gay.

December 2.  May-December.

Gerb and I ate chicken enchiladas verdes with rice, no beans. He told me about his first trimester out of state: his dorm, his roommate, his crushes and disappointments. He barely mentioned classes.

I talked about my past lovers when I was younger and felt a bit patronizing as I did. I changed subjects to my job, but Gerb didn’t care about the details. We kissed goodbye and discussed getting together a couple more times before he returns to Illinois .

The next day he emailed me that his bank teller tried to remember where she saw him the day before. He listed his stops at Garden Ridge, Walmart, Amaya’s Taco Village . “OH YES! I definitely saw you there! You were with your grandpa.”

Gerb turned legal last spring.

I’m 43.

We could be May-December lovers, but not relatives. (We’re not lovers either, in case any of Gerb’s friends ask.)

These short days with the sun scooting across the southern horizon trigger feelings of aging and death. The lush green growth surrounding the house is struggling to hold on. Joe ruthlessly hacks away the withered plants, as if the sight of a spent plant is an abomination to the garden. The mice move into the walls of the house. The indoor cats stop trying to get out, and the outdoor cats appear only briefly mid-day for lunch before disappearing back to their winter hideouts.

All around us, life is visibly getting old and dying.

I nearly died twice before, once by choice and then from a burst appendix that I assumed was extremely bad indigestion. Dozens of emergency and hospital staff members saved my life, whether I wanted them to or not.

I’ve thought I was going to die moments before several car wrecks. In the two seconds before each of the wrecks I am instantly calm: This is it. I have no control now. Let’s just play it out.

BAM.

Oh, I’m still alive. 

Then the body chemistry hits and I’m a nervous wreck. My body shakes and hands sweat as the adrenaline of the ultimate catastrophe overrules all rational thought.

Many years ago I used to fly to California for anonymous AIDS testing. In that decade the disease was still pretty much a fatal condition, even to western civilization. Each time as the plane rolled down the concrete strip in early twilight I reminded myself that I have a good life, that each day is a gift I’d been willing to sacrifice before, and I could handle my body shutting down and my mind experiencing an altered reality.

It’s the same thing with getting older, with or without a known disease. In America we dread getting older. You hear strangers confide in you at the checkout line how depressing it is to face another birthday, or to count the escalating number of Christmas dinners they’ve served. We praise youth and despair when our hair falls out.

This is it. We have no control now. Let’s just play it out.

At my partner Tim’s memorial service, many people spoke about the Tim they knew. And each of their memories was extremely different. Tim was a different person to them based on the role he played in their lives. Tim’s memory lives on as the person they remember him to be. 

For months after I kept thinking how strange it all was. Here had been a man I’d lived with for five years, who’d shown me all these components of his personality, yet his identity became what other people perceived. They didn’t see all of Tim. They saw the Tim they knew. Some of them were tragically wrong. No! He wasn’t like that! But the Tim they knew is who Tim will forever be.

It will be that way for each of us. You are the person I know you to be, even though I may be completely mistaken. If your memory of me outlives me, then I will be the guy you knew.

I won’t be around to set the record straight. 

That will be it. I will have no control then.

And you know, that’s gonna be okay.

I have no choice but to handle my body slowly shutting down. If I make it to my 44^th, 60^th, 93^rd birthday I’ll celebrate the experience of living. If I’m in a wreck this afternoon I’ll be calm before impact. Each day is a gift I could have lost many times before.

So let’s just play it out.

November 25.  Artistic Uproar.

There’s a bit of a fuss right now over the director of the LA Film Festival supporting the Proposition 8 campaign in California . This ballot initiative was approved and marriage between two men or two women is illegal again in California .  The uproar is over the fact that an employee of a non-profit organization that tries to showcase diverse points of view donated money to pass a discriminatory law in a campaign that was dishonest and vitriolic.

Some filmmakers are calling for the director to be fired while others are rushing to defend his right to express his opinion as a matter of free speech. This online debate spread across the country, leading commentators to challenge each others’ right to their opinions based on where they live or what generation they are or whether they are being too politically correct or too dogmatic.

In the surge to focus on one individual’s actions, the issue is lost. It’s not about one guy. The issue is our entire country’s attitude.  

The doctrine of every major religion and government lags behind the socially popular view.  Here’s a forgotten example: The Equal Rights Amendment. It was defeated on the grounds that women would be drafted into military combat. There is still no Equal Rights Amendment guaranteeing a woman the same rights as a man.  But there certainly are plenty of women dying or getting maimed in Iraq . And today you could not get away with openly discriminating against a woman because of her gender. The law isn’t there but the culture is.    

So how do we change the popular understanding of marriage to embrace two people who love each other, regardless of their gender?   

While I worked for Southwest Airlines in the ‘90’s I married my partner. We had a ceremony in the United Methodist Church (before gay ceremonies were banned) performed by my university minister. I petitioned Southwest to recognize my marriage. I challenged Southwest to write into their policy a non-discrimination clause. I formed an employee group to present all the hardships we encountered from co-workers.  

And not a damn thing happened. 

At first.

It took time. Attitudes of our popular culture had to change before the corporate culture changed. The corporate culture changed because the attitude of many of its employees changed.  

At the first two railroads I worked for no one, NO ONE, claimed to have ever met a homosexual before. They didn’t know how to talk to me. They didn’t want to sit on the same bench with me because they feared getting AIDS. (All gays have AIDS, right?)  This wasn’t the 80’s, this was in the past five years.

It was three years at the first railroad before I was just one of the guys. We had late night, honest and open conversations as we rolled down the tracks, struggling to stay awake. They had to get to know me as a person to realize I am almost just like them. Turns out, one of my co-workers had a gay brother he hadn’t spoken to in many years. As he got to know me, he started telephoning his brother to mend past hurts.

I didn’t stay at the second railroad long enough to make much difference. Yes, I was asked why I wasn’t a florist or beautician. Do I wear a dress? Does my partner wear a dress? Was my father a wimp? Am I going to hit on my co-workers? Quite frankly, the second railroad had thousands of employees and I was the only openly gay employee. The burden to change my co-workers’ understanding was too much. I quit.

Instead of calling for someone’s job resignation, we must engage our acquaintances in discussions. Not our friends, since our friends probably agree with our perspective. We have to talk to people we don’t know very well.

Slogans don’t change anyone’s mind. Marches show the popularity of an issue, but don’t help anyone understand.    

Because you know me, you understand that my relationship with my partner is as typical a marriage as you could possibly conceive. Now I challenge you to help your co-workers, members of your Temple or Church, neighbors and social club friends understand that gay people have loving relationships just like straight people do.

When our culture sees gays as people, then we can get laws changed.   

November 18. Bathtub Reading. 

My toes are pruned.  

Not a sexy thought, I know.  

I wish everyone thought of me as a Greek God, barely alighting the ground, with thunderbolts exploding from my massive muscled arms and rain clouds billowing forth from my robust barrel chest. 

But I’m a geek who spent yesterday and this morning in the bathtub devouring the Nov. 17^th edition of the New Yorker. There are 31 dense pages still to go. Maybe by the time I reach the cartoon on the back page I’ll have gills.

I considered a narrative today about the struggle between paying bills by working for an employer versus the call to follow my artistic destiny even if it risks great financial peril. Nearly everyone who is compelled to artistic creation faces the dilemma; to starve or not to starve, that is the question.

After a discussion with Mike at Water Bearer yesterday spawned ideas of living in a community of creative people similar to me, I contemplated today’s narrative would be a calling for artists to reach out and touch each other.

Then at lunch I was surprised, maybe shamed, by how concerned my parents were for their former neighbors living in an LA community that was destroyed by wildfire last week and all I kept thinking was ‘Thank God you weren’t still living there.’ What does that say about me that my compassion and sense of relief was for my parents and not for the strangers who lost everything, and possibly died, in the fire?  Though I suppose my parents’ compassion was for people they know. They probably don’t feel the loss of thousands of people killed monthly in other natural disasters. This lunch munch (paid for by my employer, by the way) would have led to a narrative today about worldwide community or something like that.

But I’m not going there today.  I still have 31 pages to read.

And, my little art project is flashing at me across the room. The only way I can make a film, is to actually make the film, so I’m signing off to go and do. Or read.

As my ex-husband used to say, he married a ‘human doing not a human being.’  Is that so terrible?

I’ll catch you next week.

November 11. Hollywood in the Garden. 

Joe was pointing out the latest seedbed he’d created in the backyard, where the winter kale would grow, the peas, the poppies for the spring. The afternoon sun lit the yard in the golden hour, the southern breeze was light enough we couldn’t smell Luling’s oil wells, and we both remarked how great it felt to be outside—which is unusual for Texas. Around the corner of the house a dark haired guy in his mid 20’s, probably growing his first beard, comes walking toward us on the brick path.  

Okay, I knew immediately before he opened his mouth what he wanted. You can always tell with these people by the clothes they wear, the clipboard, the attitude.   

He was a location scout.  

I live next door to an empty 1930’s gas station that sits on the intersection with an old Dairy Queen, a decrepit movie theater and a beautiful brick library with stained glass windows.

When I moved here in the 90’s I was wanting to get as far from Hollywood as possible. My seven years as an actor ranked me in a top percentage of paid performers, but the cost was my soul, appearing in painfully bad TV shows or ad campaigns hawking products or religions I disliked. Any profession working with trustworthy people seemed better than the glitz of Century City . I figured a small town in Texas would be as distant from movie studios as Siberia .

Turns out I live on the Texas backlot. Dozens of movies film in front of my house. Two different city managers have stood on my front porch while I’ve screamed about blocking my driveway with no notice, trampling my property without permission to enter, keeping me up late at night with klieg lights.  City ordinance now at least requires film companies notify residents before blocking streets.

“We’re filming a movie next door and we’d like to use your front yard.”  

No.  

"This is a motion picture for HBO called…”  

No, I’m sorry, you can’t.  

The front yard isn’t a slab of lawn grass. Over the past three years Joe has rooted out the grass, mulched, fertilized, seeded, transplanted, transplanted the transplants again, and created a cottage garden. Anyone calling it a yard gets snapped at. “It’s a garden,” he quips and flicks his cigarette.  The roses, sages, butterfly bushes, plumbagoes, oleanders, zinnias, water lilies are still in bloom in November. Scattered among the perennial plants, the seedlings for spring are already emerging: poppies, bachelor buttons, bluebonnets.  These tiny slivers of green poking out of their travel cases have no defense against a misplaced boot or dropped tool.   

“We’re going to pay you.”  

I explained about the seeds, but the scout was determined. After all he had to get access to my land because the art director plans to stick two 20 foot Styrofoam saguaro cacti here. Tomorrow. Morning.

I don’t care about the money.

No.

I walk him back out to the front yard – garden – to get rid of him.   

A second location guy comes over. Older, mid 30’s. Balding. Congenial, friendly, apparently the young guy’s boss.  All right, I’m not making any progress as a homeowner, as a common ordinary human being. I have to be one of them. I tell them I work in the industry, that I was on the set of this production company the week before and I know it’s a huge crew.  Hundreds of people descending on my property will destroy the garden. I stick it to him: You wouldn’t want a production company working on your property.  

“If I didn’t I’d be a hypocrite.”  

I know it, he knows it: He’s a liar and full of shit. If he’d admitted that he knows how destructive the army can be, then I would have trusted he understood my concerns. But we’re still not communicating.

Finally I drop to the ground, and point out individual seedlings along the path. Next spring this house will be the location for my fourth feature film. I have two films in distribution and the third in postproduction.  If I allowed you to damage this set I would be fucked this spring.

Bingo.  It’s for a movie.  Oh, well, now that’s different.

I refused to sign the amended contract with stipulations about where the crew could walk until the next morning, to be absolutely certain everyone on their crew was willing to work with these conditions.

Overnight Joe watered. A lot. Anything that was sacred ground was the consistency of mud by sunrise.

Joe stayed home to sign the contract and watch the crew.  I came back that evening. He was laying on his bed, slightly shaking, naked, frazzled.  

So how was it?

He launches into an epic story:  Mostly the crew stayed off the seedbeds. Joe perched in the front porch swing, chainsmoking, wearing a garden hat, cut off shirt, shorts, boots, ready to attack. When someone wandered into the no-go zone, he exploded like a cat on prey, “YOU!  GET OFF THAT NOW!”   The aimless crew member jumped in terror and melted in apology. Joe would then lean back on the swing, a glowing sense of dominion flooding his glands, and wait for the next mouse.

They got the shots at the gas station dressed as a used car lot. Joe described the camera angles, the lead actress, the extras, the dozens of crew people standing around, the paltry craft services.

As the prop guys loaded the truck, Joe went over to thank them and let them know he appreciated that most people were good about respecting the place.  The junior prop guy cowered as he told Joe that people stayed away because they were afraid of him. In retelling this part of the story he laughed, rekindling feelings of omnipotence.

Joe never understood until last week why I am so defensive, in fact an asshole, when film companies knock on my door.  The only reason the crew respected the property was because it was going to be used for another movie. This is the language they could grasp, a future job.  Someone even asked Joe during the shoot if the movie we’re filming in the spring needs a director.

As a filmmaker who is completely and entirely dependent on using other people’s property to make my movies, I am extremely respectful that no one on our crew does any damage and we leave it clean and restored to its previous state. To me this is common courtesy. The arrogance of Hollywood doesn’t understand this behavior; they have to be shamed to act like considerate human beings.  It’s too bad.

So many of my neighbors vow to never let a film crew set foot on their property again.  Every time I ask someone to use their land I explain how small my crew is, how we’re just a couple of friends, making a little home movie. I never mention my previous films or international distribution, hoping they’ll agree to the shoot despite how badly they were treated by the previous crew.

Joe asked me later if I was really going to film at the house next spring, a note of dread in his voice. He’s been through two shoots with me already. Maybe six months down the road he’ll be less apprehensive.

By the way, the wind kept toppling the foam saguaros in my driveway. They never used them.

November 4. Circus Animal Cookies. 

Today I’m at the bottom of the circus animal cookie bag.   

They taste sooooo goooood.   Mmmm, got to have another one.  I know, I know I’m getting a headache. I know I’m feeling queasy.   Euwuuuuuuuuu.   

But one more cookie, here’s a pink one,  will taste, mmmm,  grhhhh, smack, smack,  mmmmmmm.       Ahhhhhh.  

I’ve devoured every one of those ice frosting coated crackers with rainbow dots—the elephants, the donkeys, the lions, whatever all those other things are.  

Anything else in the bag? Yes, yes, here at the bottom is the slurry of rainbow dots and loose icing, scoopable, compressed against my finger tips, dots wedged against my fingernail and pink icing staining my lip.    

Ohhhh, the headache.  I’m gonna be sick. Maybe some milk will help.  I’ll lie down for a while to let my sugar saturated bloodstream congeal a bit.   What would be good?  A soda?  No, no, that would make it worse.   I’ll just lay here.  Twitching.  Turn on the TV.  

Turn off the TV.   I can only handle one hangover at a time.  

Today’s election will impact the rest of my life, your life, all of us. I always thought the President was more a figurehead and didn’t have much power.   

Obviously, I was wrong.  

This morning I wonder if this sickening hangover feeling will last a couple days, or the next forty years.   

When Ronnie won I thought it was going to be the end of the world. When Georgie won as governor, I thought it was a disaster. When he won as President, I thought it was a nightmare.  When he won again I investigated moving to Spain .  

If Johnny wins, will I be safer staying in this country or safer leaving this country?  Johnny's friends don't like outspoken gays.

 I keep thinking there has to be a way for all of us to live together and accept each other for our beliefs and agree to disagree.  Wasn't that the idea they had 230 years ago?

 It's just like my life, despite all the well intentioned decisions we've made, how the hell did we wind up here?

October 28. Switching. 

While filming AARON, ALBEIT A SEX HERO last May I made the switch from PC to a Mac.  

Or rather, I bought the Mac and Final Cut software.  I still haven’t made the switch.  

Mac users tell me how ‘intuitive’ the software is. How much better it is. I was even in an editing seminar last week and the editors stated “No professional uses Premiere to edit. Everyone is on Final Cut or Avid.”  

Except me.   Dusty loaned me tutorial DVDs for learning the operating system. And they were a lot of help.  I have a six volume textbook with instructions. I can research my questions on line.  I can call a hotline phone number, and if they answer, can make an appointment for one-to-one tutorials.  There’s a world of support, right?

 What happens at midnight when I try to do the most basic task for Premiere, but can’t get Final Cut to do it? I spend an hour in the text, scroll through the dvd tutorials, make a useless phone call, stare at the screen some more, try the same thing three more times with failed results.  Give up. Turn off the machine. Go to bed defeated. Wake up the next morning and write a scorching rebuke of Final Cut.

Then feel stupid for admitting my stupidity.

I reluctantly turn off the PC and walk back over to the Mac.  If I don’t learn this system, AARON won’t happen.

I blare the Tubthumpers in my CD player.  “I get knocked down, but I get up again. I get knocked down, but I get up again. I get knocked down, but I get up again. Ain’t nothing going to keep me down.”

I reach behind the Mac and apply pressure to the ‘on’ button.  Deep breath. Ain’t nothing going to keep me down.

October 21. Vehemently Passionate

Twenty five years ago my generation was told we had no ambition, we weren’t leaders, we didn’t care about the world. We were told we didn’t care about anything.

Whatever.

Obviously we were the products of our environment.  We didn’t have the drive to change the world like our parents because we didn’t feel as threatened as they did. Except for the incurable ‘gay cancer’ there was no threat to our existence. Nuclear annihilation was a possibility, but out of our hands.  The Germans were carrying off chunks of concrete as wall mementos. And that guy in Tiananmen Square wasn’t squished by the tank.  So what was there to get all worked up about?

We were taught to never discuss politics or religion. The politically correct thing to do was to avoid saying anything that might offend someone else.  So it seemed we were dispassionate.

But we’ve always had strong opinions about movies. We are passionate about our movies. We’ll tell anyone, a total stranger even, if we thought a movie sucked. “Worst movie ever.” “I hate that actor.”  “It was stupid.” If we love a movie we’ll talk about how great it is, how much we love it, how we’re gonna see it again.  Love or hate.

We are vehemently passionate about movies.  

If someone at work expresses a religious or political view contrary to our own, we look away in embarrassment. It would be impolite to argue. We think “They may not like me if they knew what I really believe.”

But once the conversation turns to movies, everyone in the break room is suddenly animated, freely expressing their opinions, even if they completely disagree.

We use movies to convey our personal beliefs to one another. It’s the safe way to express our values. When we love a movie that destroys the evil terrorists, we take a stand for killing terrorists. When we swoon over a chick flick about the hero falling madly in love, we are telling the world we yearn for sweet romance in our lives. We tell other people about the movie we saw so we can find people who are like us.

My generation has been passionate about life since we were teenagers. We’ve simply used movies as a way to talk about it.  

Movies make it safe for us to tell someone who we are.

October 14th. Extra Day  

It’s 4am. Today I’m extra.  

A large budget production was looking for extras close to my home. I submitted my headshot since it would shoot on a day I don’t have other gigs. Turns out they’ve called me to work a scene 50 miles from home instead. It pays close to minimum wage.  

So I’m driving to Georgetown this morning.  Once the submission process starts, there’s no saying ‘no.’  

Here’s the thing about being an extra: You are absolutely, totally essential to the success of the film. Without extras, the scene wouldn’t be believable and the audience would reject the movie. But you’re not considered an actor, you’re a body moving on cue. You’re a color of clothing in the background or the shadow that blocks the camera between cuts.  

Extras are kept in a holding area near the set, sort of like sheep in a pen. The extras talk amongst themselves, mostly because few other people will talk to the extras. When it’s lunch, extras sit together at the table. There may be some crew people at the table, but they don’t talk to the extras because extras belong to the unclean caste.  

The biggest ambition of an extra is get ‘camera time’ or ‘face time.’  Maybe they’ll hit the jackpot and be seen on camera long enough that the union will force the production company to upgrade their salary to ‘actor.’  Extras devise plots as to how they might get more face time, what they can do to be seen, who they should be friendly to on the set. This is the biggest topic of discussion. Because if they get face time, maybe they’ll be discovered and become a star!  

As a director I’ve never watched a movie, seen an atmosphere person and suddenly shouted “Find me the back of that head—he’s gotta be in my next movie!”  Come on, people, we’re there to add credibility to the movie, and that’s as far it goes.  

I don’t use the word ‘extras’ on my shoots. These actors are not extra to me. They’re part of the movie.  

Hollywood has a deep prejudice against extras. Real actors don’t work as extras. Real actors don’t do anything except act. In LA if anyone ever saw me do something else, word would have spread: “He’s not an actor—he’s a waiter/teacher/receptionist/tour guide/hustler/extra.”  

But Texas is a different game. We don’t pretend to be anyone other than who we are. I do acting gigs, manage volunteers at a non-profit and work as a railroader.  That makes me a person with multiple jobs.  One job doesn’t invalidate my ability to work another. That’s like “He can’t be a railroad conductor, he’s gay.”  

The Hollywood psychosis infests even Austin , which is incredibly far removed from the major studio industry. Studios shoot here and bring their primary cast and crew. We get the little jobs.  That doesn’t mean we have a film industry rivaling Culver City . But just like the sheep in the pen, many actors dream Austin could be just like Hollywood if only…  

What?  We build a bigger soundstage?  We build a whole suburb devoted to filmmaking? We legislate a favorable incentive tax rebate?  

The industry’s base will remain firmly rooted in Southern California until that state falls in the ocean. The many thousands of craftspeople can make a living only because there is such a huge number of employers in one central location. And the employers have no reason to leave an area with such a diverse talent pool.  

No matter how we entice film productions to work in Texas , we would have to relocate nearly the entire industry here to have seemingly endless jobs. But if the industry moved here, so would all the people looking for work. And the number of jobs would be far fewer than the number of people looking for jobs, which is the way it is in both Hollywood and Austin now.  

Hollywood has their principal players and craftspeople who network and socialize together. It’s an inside clique.  

Those of us who choose to live outside the studio system are just extras.

October 7, 2008  

Seven a.m. Tuesday morning and we’re four weeks from the election. The Democrats are pulling ahead in the polls, polls which do not include the twenty year olds who don’t have land lines.  Can we get rid of the corrupt and hypocritical Republicans for four years, or at least two years and get back to taking care of our own people?  I don’t know.  

Aaron, sits on the Mac in the other room.  Waiting for me.  Congealing in an electronic goo on the hard drive. Undisturbed.  My recording session for sounds with Patrick, was not what I envisioned. Though I don’t know what I envisioned.  A miraculous sound score suddenly erupting from his fingertips for me to simply record and import into the Mac?  Instead I have many sounds that were burned to cds. Sounds for me to combine and tweak to create a sound score for a movie that doesn’t exist. A movie that is just a bunch of files, with no apparent sequence, yet.  

So here I am at the beginning of creating the next movie. At the end of this morning’s stream of consciousness I’ll fire up the screen in the other room, shoo the pigeons out of its rafters and see if I can figure out how to make the thing work.  

The financial world is reeling, and with it many citizens of the westernized countries are fearful of financial disaster. We don’t give a rat’s ass for the guys who made a lot of cash in the past 8 or 16 years, but we’re fearful for ourselves since we have so little to begin with. The children of my generation grew up on wealth and entitlement. Soon they’ll discover what it means to sacrifice to pay the minimum of bills. The luxuries for the middle class are fading quickly along with the middle class.  My economic group has been on the decline for decades; this crescendo of financial peril will be our final hurrah.  From here on out it’s peanut butter sandwiches with iced tea for the main course, and a can of soup for the midnight snack.  

The American gay film market is a reflection of the larger US film industry. We have made very few narratives in the past couple of years because of the expense, and many filmmakers find it easier to pick up a camera and shoot documentary than write a script, cast, design sets and costumes.  With docs, all that stuff is provided at no charge. So for the few of us who continue creating narratives, there is little competition. At the same time, there is a very limited and shrinking audience. So many other choices out there to watch.  Thus, there’s little compensation for the work. In the last Great Depression, people escaped with movies. It will happen again this