Let’s Make A Movie

Sat at home with the twins watching the Oscar coverage.  It was wonderful to see The Artist grab all of the best awards.  It was wonderful watching Plummer accept his Oscar with such elegance and dignity.

It was even more moving to see that little Producer of The Artist grab the Oscar for the best film.  That lone French Producer fit himself into the history of Motion Pictures, nodding to his predecessors…his heroes.

Of course I sat there and wondered if I would ever make another movie.  There is nothing stopping me…except me.

The script I sent out just before I was arrested had some great feed back.  I reread it yesterday afternoon.  It has to be sharpened…but it’s good.

The stage play comes first, and the documentary…and the trial.

Life is filling up!  It’s not ending!  It’s just beginning.

I’ve been watching Robby grow up.  Watching him inhabit his new skin.  I’ve been thinking about him and you know who…but not obsessively.  Trying to work out what went wrong, why I reacted so badly and for so long.

You know, it’s obvious that I am a very bad gay.  I don’t fit it.  I don’t like them and they don’t like me.  God, I really tried.  I tried being gay here in LA, in NYC, I tried being in gay AA.  What a waste of time.

So, I wondered what it was that JB had that I didn’t have, that Robby has that I don’t have.  Well, they just seemed to fit in effortlessly.  JB met people and had dinner with them, sex with them, he is a likable fellow, largely uncomplicated (on the surface), doesn’t want to cause trouble.

I am none of those things.  He fitted in immediately, he just did.  And when he fitted in I had no place in his life, there was no room for a misfit like me.

So it is with Robby as he makes his way, meeting people this unwitting Malibu dad doesn’t think appropriate for him…but that boy has to make his own mistakes and I am not his dad.  I am here to help, not to judge.

Perhaps I am indeed how JB described me.  Perhaps his assessment was just too accurate.

He will make some man so incredibly happy!  They both will.

Hey!  I’ve seen you smiling, it’s a lovely picture.  You look so happy, happier than when I knew you darling.  Of course, you were tormented then.  Tormented by guilt, by indecision…now look at you, staring into the camera.  Do you love him?  I hope you do.

You know, don’t you, that we would never have met as out gay men.   I would have passed you by and you would have thought me absurd.  Just like they do.

I know that I’m not meant to think about you…but I do!  I think hopeful thoughts.  I know that you’ll be happy.  Forever.  I am so relieved that the fury is over.

You don’t need to be scared of me darling.

I am fighting bigger battles.  Fighting for others.

Did I ever tell you that I was sorry?  Perhaps I didn’t mean it back then.  Just hollow words.

It must have been very scary for you all.  It was scary for me.  Well, it’s all over now.  All over.

Oscar Weekend

The week before The Oscars can be a great deal of fun.

One really doesn’t expect to pay for anything to eat as one can survive on huge amount of free food given away (largely wasted) at various events all over town: breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Yesterday was no exception.

I have been preoccupied with my legal situation so I hadn’t really put much effort into RSVPing or bothering to find parties etc.

Do you know who Deepak Varma is?  He played Sanjay on Eastenders, a British soap.  He’s an old friend from London and we always have great fun whenever he arrives in LA.  He has found success at home producing and writing theatre, making movies and getting married.

Filling his life with exciting possibilities.

He’s also working with disgraced ex Prime Minister Tony Blair and Lord Putnam on a project Deepak initiated called Faith Shorts.

Faith Shorts is a global film competition launched by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that provides young people with the opportunity to express their faith through film.  

Anyway, he drove to Malibu yesterday for breakfast, primarily to discuss the play I’m writing about The Men’s County Jail.

You know…I haven’t even bothered to think about theatre for years, so it was really thrilling to sit with him and brainstorm.  I ‘d forgotten what it was to sit with anyone and act out an entire play and for them to react so positively.  How this meeting with Deepak contrasted with my meeting a film producer the day before.  Lackluster, bored, unfocused.  All the time I sat with the film guy my mind was elsewhere.

I just don’t have the energy to think about film.

After our long, creative breakfast that ran into an equally productive lunch we pulled on our glad rags and headed over to Hancock Park for the first of that afternoons/evenings pre-Oscar events.

The British Consul-General 

Dame Barbara Hay 

requests the pleasure of your company 

at a cocktail reception 

celebrating the British Oscar® nominees 

of the 2012 Academy Awards® 

The residence of the British Consul-General on June Street was the temporary home of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during their recent sojourn in Los Angeles.  It is a large, Spanish revival affair, moorish details, manicured lawns, heated pool and art from the national collection hung randomly around the sparsely decorated interior.

Two rather lovely Howard Hodgkins hung in the drawing-room.

The food was British: Yorkshire pudding and beef pieces with horseradish cream etc.

There were rickety tables set up with fancy British cheeses and chocolate.  The garden had been lit with red white and blue lamps.  Projected on the wall were the words GREAT and in a smaller font the word Britain.  Deepak and I wandered around chatting with old friends, Stephen Daldry and his wife Lucy Sexton arrived with their 8-year-old daughter who was ‘cold and bored’.

I told them that I had been in jail. In fact, I told many people I had been in jail.

What do you expect?

I told Jeremy Hunt, The Secretary of State that I had been in jail.  I told Dame Barbara Hay that I had been in jail.  I told her how impossible it had been to reach the consulate.  She handed me her card and told me to call and share my experience.

I didn’t tell Gary Oldman I had been in jail.  I didn’t tell Julia Ormond.  I didn’t tell Victoria Beckham (sans David).  I didn’t tell Christopher Plummer I had been in jail. I didn’t tell the man who runs Virgin Galactic.  I didn’t tell the Christian intern working for the British Consulate.

Victoria didn’t look very happy.  She posed for the cameras, this odd long pose, contorting her body, her hand on her hip, her face angled toward the floor, her eyes looking upward toward the camera.

Jeremy Hunt gave a weak speech about his role as minister for culture and how important it was and (randomly) how the film Philadelphia had altered perceptions about HIV and AIDS.  He obviously knew nothing about the film industry.  He was, however, ‘very excited’ to tell us all about The Queen’s Jubilee and how it was only the second time in British history that a British Monarch had sat on the throne for 60 years.

He was incidentally ’very excited’ about The Olympic Games.

The Brits who lived here suddenly remembered why they live here when he started waxing about The Monarchy.

Deepak collared Hunt after the speech and demanded to know why the same people who administered the lottery funding at The Film Council now administered the funds at the BFI?   He had rehearsed replies for Deepak.  He told us that the Brits made too many ‘art films’.  So, we talked about arts funding in the UK.

I reminded him that the hit show Warhorse would never have seen the light of day if hadn’t been for the subsidized arts.  He said, “That’s a very good example.” Fearing we were being too confrontational his American PR attempted to drag him away.  My hand on his shoulder, I told her that we were the people who elected Jeremy Hunt and paid his wages.   He looked perplexed.

Stopped in at Starbucks to meet a beautiful Brazilian boy I had met online.  More of that later.

The Warner party was fun.  Stephen Daldry and Lucy, Max von Sydow, Leonardo DiCaprio, delicious food.

Jeff Robinov (President of Warner Brothers Pictures) said, “What were you doing in jail?”  So I told the story again.  He behaved like he already knew me, then I realized that I had met him with Sharon yonks ago.  When I told Stephen more about the last few months of incarceration he looked sort of dumbfounded.

The Brazilian joined us after we left Warner.  He kissed me outside Serra Towers.

I was too exhausted to schlep over to the Ari Emmanuel’s party.  So we drove home with the Little Dog on my lap…replete.

hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed

“Between August 2010 and March 2011 Roy wrote a 50,000-word blog to Bauman.

Roy coldly examines his career to date, how he had been a colourful agent provocateur, his art, like his paradoxes, seeking to subvert as well as sparkle. His own estimation of himself was of one who “stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age”.

It was from these heights that his life with Bauman began, and Roy examines that particularly closely, repudiating him for what he finally sees as his arrogance and vanity: he had not forgotten Bauman’s remark, when he was ill, “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.”

Roy blamed himself, though, for the ethical degradation of character that he allowed Bauman to bring about on him and took responsibility for his own fall.

The first few months of the blog concludes with Roy’s forgiving Bauman, for his own sake as much as Baumans’.

The second half of the blog traces Roy’s spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment. He realised that his ordeal had filled the soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time.”

…I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.

Thank you Oscar Wilde, thank you Bosie.

Two Weddings

Unusual and wholly unexpected events witnessed at the Men’s County Jail included two weddings held in the gay dorm.

The first within days of my arriving at dorm 5300.

Madeleine and Oscar were married before first count one Saturday evening.  A popular couple.  There was a great deal of excitement in the dorm from both the incarcerated and the deputies.

Madeleine, trans, 23 years old, white skinned, full-lipped, long dark hair, sexy voice marrying Oscar, a madly jealous, beefy Mexican boy with a huge bull-dog under bite.

Hedi Slimane…this is the sort of thing you should be photographing.

Madeleine wore a long white dress and veil made for her that week by a gaggle of excited trannies.  It was fashioned from two shredded tee-shirts.  It looked like a Vivienne Westwood gown.  Madeleine held a bouquet of toilet paper flowers as she walked between the bunks toward her nervous groom.  The rings were woven for them, their names inscribed on both. Oscar had re-purposed his pale blue jail uniform to look like a prom outfit from the 1970′s…complete with bow tie.

The ceremony was very moving, the deputies videoed it and then took pictures of the happy couple through the bars of the observation booth.

The House Mouse officiated.

Later, I discovered that Oscar had married 4 other boys whilst he had been in dorm 5300.  On the streets he’d also married two real girls and had several real children none of whom he was allowed to see.  This was Madeleine’s first time.

After they married they fought all the time.  Domestic violence.  “We fight hard and we love hard.”  Madeleine told me.  They sure loved hard…you could hear them all over the dorm huffing and panting.

The second wedding, held a month or so later in dorm 5200, was very different.  A double wedding for 4 black boys, Juan and ‘Baby Boy’, Reggie and Steve.   The service was very moving.  Ex Marine Juan and ‘Baby Boy’ really loved each other.  Reggie and Steve…not so much.

Juan and ‘Baby Boy’ made their vows and cried.  Juan read an extravagant love poem. “Baby Boy’ cried some more.  A huge cheer erupted as they were pronounced husband and husband.

After the short ceremony we ate a huge nacho spread on an abandoned top bunk.  I was the only white guest.

That night bunks are pushed together creating comfortable double beds, illegal ‘tents’ made of old sheets are hung around the bottom bunk for privacy and voila, the happy home is complete.

Reggie and Steve separated after a violent clash.  Bleeding noses, being torn apart by opposing groups of friends, then separated for ever into different dorms.

‘Baby Boy’ was released, leaving poor Juan to mope about the dorm until he found another boy to bunk with.

As I mentioned before, the bond that exists between these jail house gay boys/trannies can lead to unexpected consequences.  Unable to leave their loved ones behind couples reunite by forcing an unnecessary arrest.  Occasionally, however, by the time the released returns…their boy friend, the love of their life, has found someone else.

There sure was a great deal of fucking in the dorm.  The craziest couple, Kenyatta and Andrew, could not keep their hands off each other.  They fucked all day and all night.  She was a fun, feminine black trans accused of hit and run, he was a masculine latino boy with no personality.  She fucked him.  He couldn’t say no.

Coffee in Venice yesterday.  Lunch with lawyer.  Cooked dinner, boiled brisket, Brussels sprouts, snap peas and quinoa.

Ate a cup cake at midnight…bad mistake…up all night vomiting.  Can’t eat rich food yet.

I thought having a vagina would be fun but now I hate it

…which was how somebody found the blog yesterday.  Nothing worse than a tranny with buyers remorse.

Golden Angel Head

Resting my lap top on my ball.  Did I learn nothing?  I can feel it burn my thighs.

NYC.  Why so secretive?  Secret love?  Maybe.   Secret litigation.  YES!  Not so secret.  Secret parties after the Armory?  Well…of course.  Secret drama at my favourite places?  Definitely.  Secret film stars at NYU.  Secret fuck buddies who don’t want to wear condoms.

Secrets…and I am on the verge of giving birth to this huge secret shit.

A love affair?  maybe.

Walking the dog as usual.  Selling art.  Not selling art.  Fuck!

Met up with a gay friend who is just so pissed at Obama and the HRC and can’t imagine how things are going to change for him and his lover.  How are things going to change?

It’s only a matter of time.

Don’t give up.  Read this:

Speech Michael Moore delivered at Wisconsin Capitol in Madison, March 5, 2011

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we’d have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic — and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here’s what I learned: Money doesn’t grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don’t pay their fair share of taxes, the state can’t function. The schools can’t produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs.  That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.

The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It’s part of the Big Lie. It’s one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can’t win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.

The truth is, there’s lots of money to go around. LOTS. It’s just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn’t work, they’ve got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day – this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart — because you — yes, you, too! — might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep your head down, your nose to the grindstone, don’t rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.

2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it’s Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin’ awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. “Here! Take our money! We don’t care. We’ll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!”

The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).

Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant know as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone tells us America is broke and broken. It’s just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!

So how do we get this? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.

Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois — whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn’t have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn’t be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job — their $19,000 a year job. That’s how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people here to Madison. But he’s stopped trying to get better pay. All he asks is that he doesn’t have to sleep in his car between shifts at O’Hare airport. That’s how despicably low we have sunk. The wealthy couldn’t be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They wanted to take away his sleep. They wanted to demean and dehumanize him. After all, he’s just another slob.

And that, my friends, is Corporate America’s fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement — a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don’t understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. “Why are they all standing out there in the cold? I mean there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!

“There’s something happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you…?”

America ain’t broke! The only thing that’s broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it’s one person, one vote, and it’s the thing the rich hate most about America — because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!

LOUD AND DIM

Gary Winick (Tadpole 2002) died.  He was 49-years-old.

Gary once introduced me to Mark Ruffalo.  Mark wouldn’t remember me, Gary would.

Gary was one of the forward thinking guys who set up the ground breaking film production company InDigEnt.  He was a really, really sweet man.  No news as to how he died but I think, from what I can remember, he may have had a serious illness that he kept quiet about.

He was very discreet.

Crikey, so many deaths!  I just diligently report them.  It’s rewarding to find something nice to say about the recently departed like poor Wally in Whitstable.

In Jean’s case, it was quite hard.  We hadn’t spoken for ages because we had a money issue that neither of us wanted to resolve.  He was a terrible drain on his friends and family.  Let’s put it this way: it was very hard for Jean to enjoy his gifted life without endlessly complaining or taking drugs.

People die.  I just put on my bombazine shift and write the bleeding obituary.

Perhaps I should try writing my own?

I would entitle it:  WEAK TEA  or  LOUD AND DIM or NOTHING REMARKABLE.

To be run in the Whitstable Times in the event of my death:

Surly Duncan Roy (65) found dead in his Swalecliffe bed sitting room.  Former Lord of The Lies refused medication for obvious mental illness and made unremarkable films.   Campaigned for the Red Spider Cafe.  He will not be missed.

I have not written a last will and testament so the fuckers can squabble over what is left.   I may leave it all to that little girl or to a bat charity or Jake’s ex-girl friend.  That would be funny.

Watched Oscars.  Was James Franco stoned?  No!  He’s been sober for YEARS.  He just looked a bit unprepared.  I would have preferred if Social Network had won best film.  It deserved to.  The Kings Speech is constipated TV tosh.   Tom Hooper is a director of no importance.  Why does Colin Firth KEEP telling the world how important Tom Ford is to him and how he wouldn’t be receiving these awards without having met him?  I thought that Firth had a rather long and distinguished career before meeting Ford?  Are they or have they been…fucking?

It occurred to me why Portman trumped Benning…Portman has more mileage in her and will generate more cash for CAA.  Poor Annette Bening so obviously deserved that Best Actress Academy Award but she’s an old mare and who writes great roles for old mares that Meryl Streep isn’t getting first refusal?

Clip Clop Annette.

Catastrophe!

The past few weeks have been really interesting.

Annoyingly I’ve not been able to write about most or any of it and will not be able to in the foreseeable future.

As I have said before, as life gets really interesting the blog becomes less relevant.   Real life interrupts blog life and for that I am very grateful.

Eventually, when I am allowed, I will explode all over the blog and tell all but for the time being I am keeping my BIG MOUTH SHUT.

I am having to be covert.

Presently staying with friends whose main morning preoccupation is to read really bad news out loud off of the internet.  The corruption, the greed and the misery we create around the globe gleefully read out loud to their increasingly cynical children.

Frankly, there is no reason for a young child to have the worst possible news read out to them first thing in the morning as they prepare for school.  Scares them.  Scared me when I was a kid.  All that bad news about nuclear weapons.  I had a recurring nightmare about the atom bomb exploding.  On my own walking home from junior school up Windmill Road, Whitstable just in sight of my family home…when the atom bomb detonates.  A blinding light then a fierce, hot wind.  All I could think about was that I had to get home.  Of course, there was no home to get back to.

Right now my friend is telling her 8-year-old, “Brain damage is linked to cell phone use…”

Like a fairy story.

They had a lunch here on Sunday for two German friends.  A well-known actress and her film industry husband.   Within two minutes of arriving he announced the death of Perry Moore a man I knew in passing from New York.  Perry produced the Narnia films.  Years ago Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and I had lunch with Perry and Tatum O’Neal at Freeman’s on Rivington when it was hot to have lunch there.  Perry and Tatum were both very drunk and weirdly abrasive.  Terry Richardson joined us for coffee.

Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and? NYC

I was not shocked to hear about Perry’s death as it was somehow gay inevitable.  His father sadly telling the press that his son was on fine form the day before.  Well, nobody ever expects the death of a healthy young man, no father ever expects to bury his son.

Unless, of course, their son leads a double life.  We live, as gay men, lives away from our loved ones. Compartmentalized, fine one day..dead the next, slumped in the bathroom…oxycotin overdose.   It is too familiar to me.  So sad.

It would not surprise me if Jake ended up like Perry.

Anyway the German made some flip remark about Perry dying and gay people in general.  He didn’t realize that I was gay.  He didn’t realize that I was half Iranian so later made equally racist, inappropriate remarks about Iranian films winning the Berlin Film Festival.

Sometimes you just have to take the bullet so…I challenged him.  Within minutes he was threatening to punch my fag lights out.  His wife apologized for his behaviour.

They left.

Scratch most white Germans and a jackbooted Nazi goose steps out of the wound.

Samia Saouma my Lebanese ex-friend, gallery owner who lives in Berlin and is arguably one of the chicest women in the world was once applying her lipstick in the back of a cab when her white driver told her that she was a rag-head whore who should prepare for her next trick out of his cab.

Nice.

Recently I took down a whole heap of posts from this blog.  Blogs about him.  Removed until they had no internet traction.  Yesterday I reinstated them without his name attached.  Self censorship is not a good thing.  I also reinstated the Angry Reader blog that obviously came from ‘you know who’.

It amuses and disturbs me in equal measure that he would think that every achievement, everything of which I am proud he considers worthless.  This coming from a man who has achieved NOTHING before he was thirty years old (17th May) when I, in comparison, achieved so much!  Much more than anyone ever predicted.

By the time I was thirty years old I had written and directed plays, opened a restaurant, renovated houses, travelled the world.  Christ!   I did all that as well as being mentally ill, making enemies, etc. etc.

Achievement is not to be judged by others but rather owned by oneself.

I know that he gets drunk, stoned and lonely.  I know that deep down he would prefer to resolve rather than reload.  Time will tell.  Time, as I have often quoted, is the greatest distance between two people.

I know that the we he suggests laugh at me has always laughed.  They want me imprisoned or dead.   They condemn me and they condemn my friends for being my friends.

He, on the other hand, may be surrounded by friends, family and lovers but at the end of the day he has to face himself, as we all do, in the mirror.  I saw him wrestle with his conscience.

At that moment when I was most proud of him I should have just walked away.

As for the film?  It takes shape before my very eyes.  Working with CP in quite a different way than I have before.   That’s all I can say.  That’s all I want to say.

I still have no interest what so ever to meet, engage or have sex with any man.

Oscar party week.  I am not involving myself until Saturday.  Kick off festivities with Sharon…we will do the do…the merry dance.   Still, if I am honest, I can’t really be bothered.

I want to make my own film now…not celebrate the achievements of others.

P.S. Tatum O’Neal wouldn’t remember me.   She and Melanie Griffith once broke down together in an AA meeting.  Crying about the relationships they had failed to have with their children.   Meg Ryan looks like Melanie Griffith.  They must have had work by the same surgeon.  Meg Ryan wouldn’t remember me either.

Related Articles

• Narnia producer Perry Moore dies at 39 (guardian.co.uk)

You Are Everything

I am everything I ever think about.   You hear that a great deal in the rooms of AA.  We are indeed a self obsessed bunch.

Without the relief of thinking about somebody else I am back to my old ways:  dubious web sites..currently a member of four hook up sites, making plans with strangers.

The only thing that has really changed is the level of compulsivity.  I no longer compulsively look at those sites and I don’t look at porn like I did.  One of the benefits of the last few months, as I have written before, is my attitude toward sex.  I can now meet people and have sex with them without shame or complication.  Perhaps that’s a good thing?

I don’t know yet.  I made up my mind that in lieu of a relationship I will chase another sort of dragon.  Sport Fucking.

It’s amazing just how many of them (as do I) describe what we want as ‘fun’.

Funny.

It’s funny because I don’t regret that I never got into this sooner.  I am sure I would have gotten into trouble.  Already recent past conquests want repeat performances but I have no desire to meet them again, know their names or anything about their lives.

I am not even bothering to write about these men.  They are all the same.  I have become adept at just getting on with it.  They arrive, I do it, they leave.

These are changes in me to focus on and praise?   There’s always..my film.  My film is really getting everybody who hears about it really fired up.  It’s a perfect story with a big idea at it beating heart.

Just in case you’re wondering, the story has nothing to do with him.  I would normally try manipulating recent events into some kind of narrative.  I don’t seem to need that particular catharsis.  The sorry fact is..our story just isn’t that interesting.

The story is pretty much written here…well pretty much.  Many of the wonderful times are not written because I wasn’t allowed to write them.  There are days on end that we spent with each other that remain unwritten.   Waking up in the Jane Hotel…his absurd fear that I wanted to sleep with his best friend.

I did as I was told and didn’t write any of it.

Yesterday, ran around Beverly Hills paying bills (mortgage etc.) and after some deliberation decided that I would donate the money that I received from him to charity.  I sent it to the Trevor Project, every $1, 191.71 of it.  For those of you who don’t know what the Trevor Project is check it out.

Trevor Project

It seemed like the right thing to do in the circumstance.

Ultimately the money I received from him felt dirty and now it has been effectively laundered.

I made the donation in his name.  As a supporter he will receive the following benefits and will get to meet other aspiring A gays at charity events in NYC.

Supporter ($1,000 – $2,499)
All “Member” level benefits plus:

• A complimentary copy of Trevor, the Academy Award®-winning short film
• A Trevor Survival Kit sent to the school of your choice
• Listing as a Circle of Hope Supporter in event program books, newsletters, our annual report and on Trevor’s website.

I imagine he will be able to claim it back against his taxes too.

I had lunch with J&J in WeHo.  Dinner with Ashley at Nobu.  Woke at 4am.  Chased a big buck around the garden with a torch.  Eating my geraniums.  Bastards.

I know now that he had already met someone else before we left for France.  I don’t blame him.  I couldn’t meet his needs.  He wants to be an ‘A’ gay and if he works hard enough at it he’ll get there in the end.

Like a character from an F Scott Fitzgerald novel.

For all of his terrible flaws I enjoyed his conversation.  I loved laughing with him.  I am aiming to remember him with kindness or..and this is more likely…not at all.

We have at least contributed to the happiness of others by making such a healthy donation to charity.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

Oscar Day 2010-Academy Awards

 

For those of us who live in this part of Hollywood the Security around the highly anticipated Oscar Award Ceremony can be a big pain in the ass, at least for the one day of the ceremony.

 

I live exactly two minutes walk from the Kodak Theatre in the very heart of Hollywood.   Franklin Avenue, where I live,  has been completely closed and all the cars that were inadvertently left after the 6am deadline have been towed. More money for the city of Los Angeles.

 

Swarms of security guards patrol the streets, armed police with vicious dogs hang out in ominous gaggles, guards check under cars with mirrors on sticks, concrete road blocks hamper normal journeys in and out of our neighborhood and for one day only we get to feel what they must feel in Baghdad every day.

 

 

 

 

I had a huge dream last night.  Kay S, Amanda E, three other unknown women and I were descending a steep mountainside. Lil dog had transformed into a waist high dog/goat, his soft ears all leathery like a goat, his soft coat transformed into wiry fur.   I knew that we were facing something treacherous at the bottom of the mountain and as with all of my bad dreams the light was eerie like during an eclipse.  I woke up exhausted.

 

 

 

 

 

My Scar

When I last saw my therapist she asked if I thought I might be depressed.   I could tell immediately that I might get all sorts of expensive medical attention if I said yes.  I gleefully imagined a warm hospital bed somewhere.  My favorite.

 

 

 

I remembered the terrible car accident that my family were involved in when I was a small boy, remembering the moment that I was thrown off of my mother’s lap, out of the warm car and through the front passenger window and into the cold rain and the wet grass.  I remember my aunts bleeding legs, I remember the ambulance, the hospital where I would stay for a very long time as my head repaired.  I still have a huge scar that when I have very short hair everyone comments on.

 

 

 

 

When I write the word family I wonder whom I could possibly mean?  Does that word apply to me?

 

I am sitting outside the supermarket Fresh and Easy waiting for the store to open.  It is 8am, an endless stream of determined Academy Award production crew pass by me, their scripts in their back pockets. They are all dressed in black so they can vanish amongst the stars.   They are the night.

 

 

 

 

I feel like I have been fast asleep.  I wonder if it is worth waking up?

Love and Let Love

Can one of you please explain to me why American’s hate Natalie Denise Suleman- more commonly known as Octomum-so violently?

I don’t get it.  Does her fecund nature offend you?  Her fetal abundance?  Of course, her ability to produce that many children in so many cultures in other times would be applauded.  Here, however, helpful ‘Christian’ women threaten her that if she refuses to do things their way she risks having her children removed from her.  Ripped from her breast like so many Inuit children were in the middle part of the last century.

I can think of far worse circumstances where children are allowed to fester unaided.

There is a meanness of spirit, a petty mindedness and an unfathomable desire to remove from this woman something that obviously makes her very happy.

There are many myths that surround Octomum, the worst being that she remains on welfare.  This, from what I can gather, is no longer true but even if it was..What of it?

My friends say that she is selfish and selfish seems to be the word that is most often leveled at Natalie.  Yet, isn’t having a child always selfish-and also extraordinarily selfless?  The issues seems to be, for many, money and responsibility.  Natalie is also, they say, irresponsible.

Well if only we could take children away from their mothers based on irresponsibility and selfishness-there would be millions of orphans.  Millions and millions.

While other women are waiting for the perfect moment in their career and financial security to have a child they often miss the boat.   Natalie just didn’t seem to give a damn.  She was going to have those babies and nothing was going to stop her.  Even though, it turns out,  she did not expect even 50% of the embryos to take.

Sadly, many modern couples are faced with an inability to naturally produce children.  Either they have waited too long placing their career above starting a family or they simply can’t get pregnant.   In about 15% of cases an infertility investigation will show no abnormalities.

“It’s becoming more and more important, in terms of what studies we do, to focus our efforts on the physiological effects of stress and how they may play a role in conception,” says Margareta D. Pisarska, MD, co-director of Center for Reproductive Medicine at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and editor-in-chief of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine News.

There must be a certain jealousy surrounding Octomum, her effortless ability to not only produce but also to singlehandedly raise and provide for so many children causes consternation amongst married couples that find it almost impossible to raise even one child.

My initial disgust, since rationalized, was for the doctor who implanted so many embryos inside Natalie or that the science for helping the desperate, infertile couple had somehow been skewed to provide one woman a meal ticket, publicity and children for all the wrong reasons.

Now, whenever I am forced to think about Octomum, I think about her growing tribe of children who will, undoubtedly, learn to love and support each other in such a way as only a large family can.  I am envious that I did not grow up with my 11 brothers and sisters, as Natalie’s children will.  My gentle envy, unlike the rampant jealous hatred of her many detractors, does not make me want to break open her life and steal what is hers.  Regardless of how I might have felt then I now wish her all the best.

“Jealousy is always born with love; it does not always die with it.”

Rouchefoucauld

Stop the Bus!

Christmas Eve in Beverly Hills last year was a mass of heaving bags, frantic women and dissolute men.   This year there was scarcely a soul on Rodeo Drive.  ‘Deck the Hills’ Beverly Hills tacky shopping slogan-hadn’t worked.  Tim, Amanda and I walked briskly from shop to shop nere another shopping bag to be seen.

In the spirit of Christmas Past I was wearing a pair of black cashmere pantaloons with pink socks and buckled shoes.  I had both the dogs with me.  All eyes on Duncan.  It is possible to be a chic farmer-as Martha Sitwell proves.  I am so sick of dressing DOWN.   Bland, dreary jeans, meaningless sweats: how can a man of any sexuality express himself sartorially?

Women, for that matter, don’t seem to have it any better.  Note the tribes of identically dressed club girls waiting in line on Ivar.  Shivering, tiny, rectangular micro-mini dresses and boucle crop tops, emaciated spikes of pink/brown flesh once born as arms and legs.

Since my rehab experience I am having a cris de coeur.  A real one.  A bone fide cris de coeur.  Well, not so much a crisis of the heart but of the cock.  A cris de pallique!

I am having an unplanned, unwanted, unloved revelation about my sexuality.  I really don’t know if I am gay anymore.  I think I might not be.  Genuinely.  I am having a MOMENT about my gayness.  Somebody wrote on some board somewhere, “If Duncan Roy doesn’t like gay sex-he isn’t gay.”  Well, as it happens, that might be true.

Lets face it; my sexual relations with man are based on recreating earlier abuses.  I seldom get excited-if ever.   I don’t get no-satisfaction. Perhaps if I trained myself to be present during sex with men but…even…even that seems like nonsense.   I just don’t enjoy men.  I lay there wondering, unengaged, what the hell am I doing here?  Out of body.  Thinking about Delia’s thick bean and bacon soup.

Wearing pantaloons does not make you a gay.  Nor do pink socks.

Justin Bond

There’s something about dressing up, wearing wonderfully exotic clothing that makes me feel complete.  Frankly, at my age, I can wear what ever I damn well please.  I could wear make up if I wanted-and have been considering it.

I don’t want to be a star cross dresser rather a star-crossed lover of beautiful things.  After all, there’s a tranny deep inside of me-who’d like to be deep inside of you.

Somewhere along the way I became confused, disillusioned or just plain bored of GAY.   It used to be fabulous; it kept me coming back, the mere spectacle of GAY..but now look..it’s crazily banal.  The bars, clubs, private parties are all the same.  The same ghastly narrative, the same Benny Hill type chases, the same miserable, vacuous queens.   I didn’t sign up for that.  I signed up for glamour and individuality.

Would any of you mind if I just stopped the gay bus and got off?

Yesterday, I found myself in conversation with a woman whose life I had been at the periphery for many, many years.   We met at lunch with Amanda and Tim and, as so often happens, we had both been caught in the same social cobweb.  But, whereas the spider had already sucked me dry-my friend is in the process of being eaten alive.

I am incredibly attracted to a certain kind of woman as I am attracted to a certain kind of man.  However, a man’s intellect does nothing for me.  I don’t wake up thinking about his brain-I wake up thinking about his cock.  His story is a means to an end.  A woman’s story can, and often does, lead to intimacy.

Okay, more of that later.  Some other day.  More will be revealed etc. etc.

I voted round one for the Academy Awards.  My personal shortlist (films I had seen) was three times longer than 2008.  The Academy will be thrilled to hear that I took my voting duties very seriously this year.

The best actor category was the hardest vote to cast.  Gordon Levitt from 500 Days of Summer left a lasting impression-but really, that was IT.  So much easier to vote for the women!   There seemed to be real choice.  The role as written for women hasn’t gotten any better but women seem to have fun with their performances.  Whilst the men seem imprisoned by introspection the women are having a fucking blast…think Up In The Air.

Finally for Christmas!  My Christmas cheer:

If you have the chance, time or inclination do please check out Fanny Cradock.  Fanny, a 1970’s TV chef of the British snob variety became a ‘camp ’ legend, rude, funny and disparaging she predates Simon Cowell by thirty years.  Fanny had all his savvy but in those genteel days was fired for being a bitch whereas nowadays she would be given a pay rise.

My Grandmother couldn’t stand Fanny because she’d wear long sleeves whilst say, stuffing a goose.

I always wanted to create a mid-century modern TV bitch type character based on Fanny Cradock but Justin Bond got there first with his Kiki in the award winning show Kiki and Herb.

Johnny Cradock after eating a freshly made doughnut once said, “Mmmm, delicious.  I hope all your doughnuts taste like Fanny’s”