This was the day the weather changed. It changed very quickly and very dramatically. It was a sunny summer morning when we set out to check out Salona, Trogir, and Šibenik – all north of Split. By the time we got to Šibenik, it was cold enough for coats and hats (none of which we brought). The weather changed as we drove from Trogir to Šibenik. We could see the storm approaching from the distance, the sky a bruised dark color, everything blotted out from the rain. Then we hit what felt like a wall of wind. Rain poured down. The car skittered over the road – we were in some real back roads areas – and I saw with my own eyes out the car window a tree crack in half and fall over.
But before that, all was sunny and summery. As we traveled out of Split, we passed through the suburbs, and then an industrial area, and we joined up with the biggest road we’d been on yet. On our way out, Ante pointed stuff out to us out the window. There were clouds in the sky, so the effects of cloud shadows and sunshine on the mountainous outskirts was stunning. As we passed by Salona – birthplace of Emperor Diocletian, just FYI – which is why he decided to “retire” in this area – Ante said, “There’s the Roman aqueduct … it still works.”
Three words: It still works.
The Romans, man.
They had many issues, were barbaric in many ways. But their engineering feats boggle the mind.
As we emerged from the more crowded areas, we could see the wall of mountains surrounding all of Split, and you really got the perspective of Split geographically – why Split was so important: protected by a wall of mountains on one side (which also, conversely, left it vulnerable to attack) and the sea on the other (ditto). In an indented ridge in the mountains, an enormous fortress – practically a city – came into view. Like a mirage. It was even more impressive than the fortress in Hvar.
“Ante, what is THAT.”
It is the fortress of Kils (Game of Thrones fans, take note – apparently it was used for some scenes in the series). It was built in medieval times by the Dalmatians, and was known as the “key to Dalmatia.” If you wanted to conquer the area, you had to take THAT monstrosity. Medieval Croatian kings lived there. It was a bulwark against repeat Ottoman invasions. (“Turk” was said in the same biting tone as the word “Serbs.”) We didn’t go up there but apparently ever since Game of Thrones aired, more and more tourists have been asking to visit the site. It’s really something to see. I mean, you look at it and all you see is State Power. Impressive, formidable, smart. The mountains rise up on either side. The ridge is like a small doorway, an entrypoint. But you need a “key” to get through, and that “key” is the fortress. Do not pass Go. You’ll have to come through us.
Trogir was another place I’ve wanted to see ever since I read Rebecca West’s book. It’s a small town on a small island, with two bridges leading in and out – one connects to the mainland and one connects to a nearby island. These are not big bridges. You can walk across them in one minute.
Protected by UNESCO, Trogir is a small gem, and representative of so much of what we saw in Croatia: over the centuries, the millennia, these places were settled by people, conquered by other people, conquered again, conquered again … and each phase left its mark architecturally. So you’re looking at striations of time, it’s visible in the place (Diocletian’s Palace being the most obvious example). Trogir goes back to the Greeks, in the centuries before Christ. Then came the Romans. As a Dalmatian city-state, they were ruled by the Venetians.
Like Dubrovnik, Trogir is a walled city. Even though it’s very small, it feels like it’s practically all churches. Steeples, clock towers, cathedrals, monasteries … all crammed inside these walls. There are also open-air markets, palaces, and a stunning loggia. And, of course, people actually live there. The squares are small, the “roads” narrow (no cars in the walled city). There are gates to get in and out. As you walk through Trogir, you are literally in a narrow corridor most of the time. You can barely see ahead of you 10 feet. It’s a true maze. We weren’t there long enough to get the lay of the land. By the time we left Split, I knew my way around the Palace, and knew which way I was going to get to the hotel, or to the sea … Trogir I was completely confused.
Right within the gates is the stunning Trogir Cathedral. It took five or six centuries to build, and so you can see different styles in the architecture as the years passed. The bell tower came last, I think, so you can see how it’s a more Gothic style.
It was a madhouse out front, but I did want to go look at the main portal. Dating from the 12th century, the door and whole gateway area is covered in elaborate carvings. If you know your Bible, you can figure out much of it. The carvings show stories from the life of Christ, but also stories from the Old Testament. It’s so crowded up there it’s almost like a Bruegel.
I mean, it’s a masterpiece.
We walked through Trogir, and I almost instantly lost my bearings. Which way was back? No idea. Can I go see the cathedral door again? No idea where it is. Which way is east? No clue. Ante took us through, pointing out the palaces, the Benedictine monastery, and the loggia … which I’ll get to in a second. You can see the Venetian influence in a lot of the architecture, elaborate, ornate, lots of pointy arches. Beautiful.
I loved the white-painted shutters here, closed. Someone’s bedroom hallway or something like that.
You walk through the city (it takes about 15 minutes) and you emerge from the other gate onto a long stone promenade, dotted with palm trees, ending in a gigantic blocky 15th-century fortress. Those Venetians, man. They were NOT KIDDING AROUND. I guess you don’t get to be an empire like that without knowing you need to pepper every single important place with something that looks like this.
An unbreakable WALL of windowless stone. Good times.
It was still hot and summery. Rachel and I wandered around in our “matching hats,” with no real plan of attack, just soaking up the beauty. We walked back through Trogir.
Now about the loggia. These are open structures with roofs, and incredible acoustics. Town meetings, community meetings were held in these places, group speakers, whatever. There was one in Diocletian’s Palace, and one time Rachel and I were walking by there, and it was filled with people, playing guitars, laughing, kissing, talking – it was like Washington Square Park, except it was a place that’s been there since before Christ. The loggia in Trogir is an absolute stunner. You get to it by ascending about 10 marble steps. There are these wild carvings on the wall. There were so many people crowded in there it had a kind of frenetic feeling – even more so than in Dubrovnik. Ten times worse. The time to come would be at 10, 11 at night! Try out those acoustics!
Here’s one of the carvings on the wall.
One of the treats was listening to an a capella group singing a couple of traditional Dalmatian songs. They set themselves up in the loggia, and do performances four times an hour or something like that. It was amazing. Unfortunately, this woman was gliding around in the front row with her phone on a selfie stick – and she planted herself in front of the singing group – with her BACK to them – filming herSELF with THEM in the background. They’re PERFORMING and this is what she is doing. It was so rude and disrespectful – not only to US – because her behavior meant any pictures we might want to take of them would include HER smiling vapid face – but also to THEM. You’re not even LISTENING to them perform. You are filming YOURSELF, with them in the background. Fascinating footage, lady. I’m sure your family back home will love it.
Honestly, I try not to complain about people. I spend the majority of my time in New York City. I have lots of practice cutting tourists slack. But this was some next-level bullshit.
Ante told us this whole area empties out in the winter months. All the islands, Korčula, Vis, Hvar, Trogir … the whole Dalmatian coast becomes a ghost town. Listen, I love people, and I was a tourist myself … but it would be nice to visit off-season! Our drive out of Trogir took us up the mountain. The switch-backs were insane. You could see the road snaking along the side of a cliff wall, and of course the roads were super narrow, and everyone drove at 60, 70 miles an hour. There was one car chugging along at 30 miles an hour, and everyone passed it (“That would be me if I were driving in Croatia,” I said, and Ante started laughing) … We climbed up and up, so high our ears started popping. Then Ante pulled over onto a little embankment. No guardrail. Nothing. And there we were, looking down on where we just were.
In that photo, it looks like Trogir is just part of the mainland, but it’s not. That little bridge I posted a picture of above connects the two. So really all you can see from that far above is a crowded cluster of red roofs and steeples.
Rachel: “Is it required that everyone have a red roof here?”
We were going over a mountain to then come back down to visit Šibenik, another seaside town. This is when the weather started to change. We were so high up we could see for miles in the distance. Ante pointed and said, “See? That’s rain.” The horizon covered in grey. We were still in the clear, but the sun had vanished, clouds lowering down, dark grey lines, creating amazing effects. Our entire time there it had been sunny, barely a cloud in the sky. We were really out in the wilds, small isolated villages, vast empty spaces and wind farms. Lots and lots of wind farms. Standing stark against the bruised stormy backdrop.
The Happy Prince is Rupert Everett’s debut as a writer/director. He also stars, playing Oscar Wilde in the final 3 years of his life – a period which has always fascinated me (and haunted me).
Rachel and I wandered around through Diocletian’s Palace. We bought gelato and sat on a little stoop, underneath a random Roman free-standing pillar. As you do. Then we bought some Split trinkets for family members. We had no schedule. We had hours of free time. We ended up going to an outdoor bar, shadowed by the Roman wall of the palace, and ordering big steins of frosty beer. So we had gelato and then beer, because we were on vacation.
Like Anne Shirley said in Anne of Green Gables, this place has “scope for imagination.”
Ante told us where to go to dinner, an old family place, traditional Croatian meal. It was outside the walls of the Palace, and he showed us on the map. We napped, showered, dressed, and set out.
Ante did not steer us wrong. It was a beautiful night, we had a delicious meal, wine. The waiter was solicitous, and told us what wines to drink. “No. You cannot have Chardonnay in Croatia.” We laughed about that for the rest of the trip. Croatian wines, people. I drank more in Croatia than I’ve drank in the last 5 years put together. Not to excess, but with every meal. We’d be like, “Oh look at that, it’s 11 a.m. and people are having wine.” But they do it right: Ante told us: “We have big lunch, small dinner.” I mean, that’s the way to go. We had zero processed food while we were there. It was fish, sausages, meat, salads, pasta. Bread and olive oil. Eggplant. Wine. I’m trying to implement this now that I’m home. We laughed so hard at dinner about our elevator confusion back in Dubrovnik that we were CRYING. We had been so jetlagged back then the humor of our joint confusion hadn’t really sunk in – but it hit us like a ton of bricks once we discussed some days later. Tears streamed down our faces.
Afterwards, we walked along Split’s gorgeous storied waterfront. The Palace loomed to our left, the water stretched out to the right, reflective, dark and beautiful. A lighthouse beam out on one of the points. It was basically a party down on the waterfront. People hanging out, a live band playing (they were doing covers of Banarama songs … a Shania Twain song … we were like, “Wait, what year is this?” Time is so fluid in Split, even the live band participated in it.) We had said a couple days earlier, “Let’s smoke a cigarette in Split.”
We bought a pack of cigarettes in a ceremonious fashion, plus a lighter, and we sat on the sea wall and smoked our cigarettes. It was merely a reminder of why I don’t smoke. We discussed afterwards, because, again, we were gigantic nerds. “How was your cigarette?” “I kind of have a headache.” “Yeah, me too.” “But that was fun though.” “Oh, totally.”
O’Malley cousins. On the loose.
We walked back to our hotel, going through the Palace, now emptied out of crowds. It was dark and quiet, people sitting and having wine at the little bars, but most of the shops closed. It was absolute and pure magic. Without the crowds, the Palace reveals itself in a different way. History looms in the foreground. It is easier to forget it was 2018. You feel the millennia in those walls.
We then created yet another Comedy of Errors trying to find what was labeled as the “rooftop terrace” in our hotel. We found ourselves huddled on what appeared to be a tiny roof, with an exhaust fan taking up one entire wall, and the terrace provided no view of the city or harbor, just the walls of buildings around us.
“Is this it?”
“Wait, hold the door open.”
“If we get locked out here …”
“Do you have your cell phone?”
“Yeah, but how would we call the front desk from our cell phones if we get locked out here.”
“They said there was a view?”
“But, like, there’s no view …”
“Is that door going to close shut if you let go of it?”
“I’m afraid.”
Rachel huddled down and tried to prop open the door with her tube of sunscreen … all as we staggered around surrounded by exhaust fans and walls of other buildings. Huh. Rooftop terrace. Okay. We were on a roof and it was indeed a terrace but …
Scott Wilson had one of my favorite kinds of careers: the Reliably Great Character Actor For Decades and Decades kind of career.
He started off in 1967 with the one-two punch of In the Heat of the Night, playing murder suspect Harvey Oberst, and – playing another murderer – in In Cold Blood. Since then, scanning his resume on IMDB, you can see he did a couple of movies a year – sometimes more – ever since. There were no fallow periods. Just this year, he showed up in Hostiles, where he had only one scene, but he was terrifying (it also represented a small reunion with Wes Studi, whom he also worked with in Geronimo).
I love the scene he has with Demi Moore in G.I. Jane, when – after paying lip service to gender equality in order to pacify the activist politicians in D.C. – he lets her know how he really feels in a private meeting in his office.
Smoking a cigar, completely secure in his position of power, he says he resents having to keep a gynecologist on staff to keep track of “your personal Pap smears.” It’s so ugly it makes the breath hitch in your throat.
The disgust Wilson puts into those four words is so intense it actually made me – watching the movie – feel a flash of shame – even though I was just an audience member AND I know intellectually that men like this are wrong, and dumb, and an enemy I look forward to defeating. But that’s the power of acting. He had such contempt for her female body he enjoyed sneering at it – and its natural processes. (Not to mention the fact that “pap smears” are essential to women’s health and he makes them sound like a dirty gross word.) He never once raises his voice. He doesn’t rant and rave. He doesn’t have to.
It’s one of those moments where you go “Oh, okay, so THIS is the real enemy. Not organizations that won’t let women in like the SEALs. It’s men like THIS. Instutionalized misogyny.” You wouldn’t have that response as an audience member without the tightly coiled performance of Scott Wilson.
Character actors … as I’ve written before – in my piece on Bruce McGill, my piece on Thomas Mitchell for Film Comment: Character actors are the ones who have to do what I call the “thematic heavy lifting.” The stars have other concerns: creating a character, the character’s behavior, going through the full arc of the story. But character actors – like Scott Wilson in G.I. Jane (just one example) have to come in and illustrate/underline/represent the Theme of the whole thing. And they have 10 minutes to do it in. Not 2 hours like the stars have.
Good character actors are like clutch hitters or closing pitchers. You gotta come up BIG and you have to do it under pressure with very little time. There are many scenes in G.I. Jane showing her struggles to prove herself, to keep up with the men, to break down stereotypes… but in that scene with Scott Wilson you see what she – and all of us – are really up against.
That’s how you play a scene.
He had a career of great integrity. R.I.P. Scott Wilson.
We pulled off the ferry, and there we were standing on the waterfront in Split. It was the height of day, the sun blazed down. I tried to just calm the hell down, so I could absorb everything I could, be in the moment – take pictures, of course, but also be in the moment. (I felt that way the whole trip. Sometimes you just have to take a breath, calm down the buzz and momentum of travel, relax, so you can actually be present to the damn experience. At least I have to do that.) It was a madhouse on that waterfront: packed with crowds, with roaring huffing motorcycles, activity. There was a long building stretching down along the waterfront, with palm trees in front of it – and Ante pointed to it and said, “That’s Diocletian’s Palace.”
I stared at it, like, Wait, what? OKAY SHEILA FOCUS.
I had no idea it would look like that. I threw out my conception – based on years of reading about it and imagining it – and launched myself into absorbing reality. I highly recommend such an experience if you can swing it. It means you will have to staunchly AVOID photographs of the place you have always wanted to see, and that avoidance has to last years. So start now! I had somehow pictured it on a cliff. Wrong. I had also pictured it somewhat isolated. Wrong. And even though I KNEW the modern world had grown up around and within the Palace, I was still not prepared to see it so much a part of the city that cars were pulled up right against it, restaurants lined its front, etc. Ante pointed to the upper tier of the long building, stone, like a stage set, with blue sky peeking through the empty vacant windows. “That’s the Palace.” And, just like all the books said, perched on top of the walls, or peeking over them, were structures from a later date (but still from long long ago), stone “houses” and rooms, making the entire Palace a worm-hole through time, a place where past and far-past and Now all co-exist simultaneously.
The Palace is not a museum. You do not need to buy tickets to enter. You just walk in. It’s still a part of the city, with merchants and restaurants, shops, theatres, a strip joint, book stores … It never closes. It’s just THERE.
Ante did RIGHT by us, I can tell you that. He took us over to a little map of the Palace, so we could see what we were about to enter. The Palace was created with a big square wall around it (the “fort” element Ante mentioned in my first conversation with him), and each wall had a gate. Each gate had a different name (“Golden Gate” “Silver Gate”, etc.) Within those walls were huge structures, temples to Jupiter, his own quarters, an area that they think might have been a swimming/wading pool, etc. There were streets, passageways, etc. Ante took us through what was known as the basement door.
As Ante barreled us through the Palace, just to give us the lay of the land, providing historical context for many of the elements, he told us about what happened after Diocletian died, and the Roman Empire fell. The people who lived in the area didn’t leave. They continued to live in and around the Palace, building their own rickety shacks and buildings – some of which also remain, which is how you get this hallucinatory mix of eras. Like this:
Paraphrase of Ante’s speech as he took us around:
“The barbarians who lived here after did not know how to build anything right, so you can see the difference between the Romans and later. Diocletian persecuted Christians and so when the Christians arrived, they took what was his mausoleum and turned it into a church – there it is right there -”
“… and the Christians built a church over there too, over Diocletian’s quarters – but you can see how bad the construction is compared to the Romans. Not good.”
Ante made us see. So basically the early Christian tribes came and “disrespected” the man’s home by erecting Christian monuments over Roman monuments. Ante also told us as we came through the extraordinary basement that the barbarian tribes who moved in had dumped all their slop – and waste – down into this basement area. It was completely filled and not excavated until the 1950s. This was what was revealed when they finally cleared it all out:
So it’s an archeological site slash modern-Greenwich-Village-type neighborhood. People still live in there. You could see laundry hanging out to dry. Every nook and cranny is filled. The streets are this slippery … marble? … and at the end of every teeny alley you could see the wall of Diocletian’s Palace stretching up, sometimes with tiny slot-windows in them, showing the blue sky. It is one of the most fascinating places I’ve ever been. Everywhere I looked was some incongruity. That incongruity is the palace’s defining characteristic.
Ante showed us how a modern bank on one of the corners inside had one of the old columns of the palace coming through its lobby. So whoever came in after, from the Dark Ages to freakin’ yesterday, build AROUND the palace. We spent a couple days in Split, and we barely scratched the surface of all that was going on there. It was great, though, because our hotel was literally a one-minute walk away. So we could just go back for a quick nap, a shower, and then come back and wander around, go shopping, have a bite, whatever. Which is what we did.
There are big squares in the palace, lined with buildings. Ante told us which buildings were good, which ones were ugly. (I loved his tour guide style. “That building over there? Poured concrete. Pfft. Not good. Ugly.”) Here’s Ante, by the way.
Ante grew up in Split, so he kept running into friends. He was like the Mayor of Split. In one of the big squares is a statue of Renaissance-era Croatian poet Marko Marulić, done by Ivan Meštrović (a famous Croatian sculptor of the 20th century: we saw a lot of his stuff around, Ante would point it out. Ante loved Meštrović). Marko Marulić is credited with being the father of the Croatian Renaissance, and he hailed from Split. Here he is. His fingers are incredible, with big muscular knuckles, clutching his book.
Ante took us out of the Palace, through the Golden Gate (Zlatna Vrata), to point out how close our hotel was. We walked down a little side street and boom, there we were at the Zlatna Vrata.
This is natural light, just FYI. The gate truly is “golden.”
You can see the theatre nerds (God bless them, they’re everywhere) in gladiator costumes outside the gate.
The whole place is magic, but perhaps the most magic part is that the palace is not cut off from the surrounding community. If you went to college in Split, you could walk through it on your way to class, grab a coffee. You could sit there and study. You could stop by after work and have a drink. The palace has always been “open.” For almost 2,000 years. It remains open. So the Split residents are used to it. It’s part of their world, their backdrop. Like I’m sure the Coliseum is part of the world of those who live in Rome. Or, although not nearly as old, the Statue of Liberty is part of my everyday life. I see her every day on my commute. I’m not “over” her, but I’m certainly used to her presence.
My senses were on overload. I was so … happy. It takes me a while to even label the experience, and especially the kind I experienced in Split, since it’s so rare. Diocletian’s Palace … okay, so I’ve had a love affair with you in my head ever since I read Rebecca West’s travelogue of her trip through Yugoslavia. I said to myself, when I first read that 1,200 page book back in my 20s: “Okay, so Split, and that palace, I gotta see that one day.” I feel that way about so many places on the globe. I haven’t been anywhere. Well, I’ve been all over the United States, and I’ve been to Ireland many many times. But there are so many other places to see. Maybe this trip is a harbinger of things to come.
One of my goals in Croatia was to randomly – very important, it had to be random – see a poster of Elvis somewhere. Because you know he’s there.
Walking down to the beach in Hvar, “Now or Never” was blaring through the hallway to the pool, so that was sort of in the realm, but I still kept my eyes peeled.
In Split, Ante, our awesome linebacker-size guide, barreled us through Diocletian’s Palace, pointing stuff out so we could get our bearings (we came back later and wandered around leisurely).
He stopped and showed us a dark alley, with a wall at the end of it. “See that?”
We did, indeed, see it.
Ante said: “This was the Jewish quarter. Back into antiquity the Jews lived here. Jews had always been here. Important community. But – bad – being in one quarter like this also meant they were all in one place so … easier to round them up. So the Jews lived here in … you know the song … ‘In the Ghetto?’”
He sang those words right in my face.
I said, “Elvis.” Because frankly what else was I gonna say.
Ante shrugged, in a kind of fatalistic Balkan way, and announced, “He is King.” I almost burst out laughing. He said it like “This is how it is, why fight it.”
THEN he said, casually, totally not a big deal, as he turned to continue us on our tour, “I think he’s still alive.”
This random exchange – unprompted by me – inspired by the ancient Jewish quarter (of all things) is far better than coming across a poster of Elvis or something like that.
Here’s a piece Mitchell has performed called “The Tao of Barbra.” No last name necessary. I have known Mitchell since college, and I have heard him talk about “The Tao of Barbra” since our earliest days as friends. What Mitchell can do – almost like no other – is CONTEXTUALIZE a gigantic cultural phenomenon like Barbra. It’s important. Because nothing comes from nothing. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. And what do these iconic figures MEAN to those who love them? To the LGBTQ audience who have, in many cases, held the torch up for the rest of us?
The Tao of Barbra
by Mitchell Fain
I’m not a religious person. At all. But I am spiritual, and while I believe that each person’s spirituality is as individual as their thumbprint, and that I don’t need to constantly show you my thumbprint or convince you that my thumbprint is better than yours for it to be real — I am going to share a bit of my spirituality with you this evening.
It’s very simple. It’s called The Tao of Barbra. The Way of Barbra. The guiding principles being the life and times and music and lyrics and films of our Goddess and Savior, Barbra Joan Streisand (Barbra with two A’s, and Streisand with a soft ‘s’, like “sand on the beach”).
The philosophy involves a familiar concept: the Holy Trinity. I’ve heard that some doctrines have other versions, but mine is, of course, The Mother, The Daughter, and The Holy Jewess: Judy. Liza. Barbra.
Gay men have always loved and needed the guidance and inspiration of powerful women with other-worldly talents. Why? I’m not sure. I’m not a psychiatrist or a sociologist or an anthropologist, but I am a gay man and a believer, so I’ll try to explain my theory.
Gay boys are magic! We are magical and different. Too often our frightened, unprepared fathers recede, and our Mother’s natures abhor a vacuum, so they rush in to build us up. Therefore, the old damaging misogynistic trope of the Evil Dominant Mother and The Emasculated Passive Father creating Homosexual boys is bullshit. Scaredy-cat men, raised to believe that “beer, boobs and baseball” is the only valid parenting tool for their sons, often fail to see the beauty and power and strength of their more than binary sons. And so we NEED that goddess energy to find our “way”. Thank Goddess!
And thank Goddess for the creation of the Movie Star!
When I was 7, I knew that I loved Judy Garland. I would go into my grandmother Bessie’s room and put on the album Judy at Carnegie Hall. I was the only 7-year-old that I KNEW of who had it memorized.
I could lipsync every word to “Stormy Weather” before I even knew that I was gay or that she was a gay icon or even that she was the same human who played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. It was my first experience of the BGT. The Big Gay Thrill. That glorious, gorgeous, electric feeling when something joyful ripples in the Gay Universe, like any time Bette Davis wielded a cigarette or any time a shaft of light crossed Joan Crawford’s miraculous face, or the opening number of every single episode of the Cher show, or when Bette Midler sang goodbye to Johnny Carson for all of us.
These iconic moments in the Gay Canon are endless and endlessly important to those of us who understand and are connected to their flow.
Judy has a very special place atop the Pantheon. From the moment she stepped through the door from sepia-toned Kansas into the Technicolor of Munchkinland she represented us. The need for something more. The need to be seen for ALL of our colors. “Friends of Dorothy” is a coded euphemism for a gathering of gay men. In a time when the mere fact of being gay was criminalized, we needed to meet, we needed connection, we needed to get laid. We met at Judy’s live shows. Literally. It was one of the few places to at least SEE other gay men. A place that was not a windowless, risky, mob-owned seedy bar.
Judy and the other women in the Pantheon have always been our safe havens. Remarkably, she even acknowledged this as true, in her time. She is the ultimate gay icon. And despite her well-publicized troubles with drugs and alcohol and mental illness, her body of work, (freakishly impressive for a women often described as a “mess” by the powerful men who used and bankrupted her) remains a pinnacle of excellence, proving that she was the single greatest entertainer of all time.
Even the famously egocentric Sinatra said, “The rest of us will be forgotten, but not Judy”. When Queen Aretha Franklin was asked who she thought was the greatest soul singer, besides herself, she responded, “If you are asking about singing from the soul rather than ‘soul music’, then it is Judy Garland.” To continue my religious analogy: Judy died for our sins. She lived too hard. She loved too hard. She gave too much and, sadly, took in too little. She smoked and drank and laughed; and, as actor James Mason put it in his eulogy at her legendary funeral, “She simply wore herself out”.
Being an acolyte of all the grand divas – and I do mean all (feel free to ask me about one if you see me later) – I’ve noticed how our divas have changed with the social and personal acceptance of gay people in our culture. We loved Judy: the wounded songbird who sang all of our pain in every note. We loved Barbra, the “ugly duckling” who convinced the world that “different” was beautiful. We loved Liza, the plucky overeager kid who made it big. And, of course, Bette, the busty broad who said “Fuck it.” And then Diana and Cher and Tina and Donna and on and on … all fighting against the lowered expectations of the dominant straight white male culture.
Then we got Madonna. Now, she can’t really sing and certainly can’t act, but she changed the game. She stopped apologizing. It, unfortunately, led to an era of less-than-gifted pop icons. The gays love them as demi-goddesses, for sure. I’m talking to you, Britney (she real cute but … ya know?).
Now, as the Gay Universe is wont to do, we have embraced a new generation of worthy Divas. We had Whitney and Mariah, and now the double-barreled Big Gay Thrill of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. Both take inspiration and aspiration from the Divas of yore. Both acknowledge their ancestors. A huge part of the Tao of Barbra is understanding gay history, politically and sexually and musically.
In 1954 Judy Garland, after being told – by the same men who introduced her, as a child, to the drugs that would eventually kill her – that she was washed up, she, along with her husband at the time, independently produced the first musical version of A Star is Born. Her performance and the film itself is still hailed by critics as the “greatest female performance” in the history of cinema.
Directed by George Cukor, written by playwright Moss Hart with original songs by Ira Gershwin and Harold Arlen and co-starring her future eulogist, James Mason, Judy’s Oscar loss that year to Grace Kelly is still a point of contention and sadness for those of us who believe in The Tao.
In 1964, a then-burgeoning legend named Barbra Streisand appeared on the Judy Garland Show. Pre-Funny Girl, pre-movie stardom, she was being hailed as the New Judy Garland as Garland was being scrutinized by her male bosses at CBS as “over the hill.” In front of a live audience, the women grabbed hands, and Judy whispered to her new favorite protégée, “Let’s show them.” They did. Watch their “Happy Days are Here Again/Get Happy” mash-up duet if you truly want to understand what the #BigGayThrill is all about.
In 1976, Barbra remade the musical A Star is Born, with new story ideas by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne and original songs, including a few by none other than Barbra herself, sharing an Oscar for Best Song with lyricist Paul Williams (of “Rainbow Connection” fame). The male critics savaged Babs for her clothes and her nose and the sheer audacity to film herself singing live on screen in an 11-minute master class in performance that ended the film.
Ironic criticism, considering she was at the time, and is STILL, the most successful female recording artist in history. The film and the soundtrack were smash successes and established her as not only a film star but also as a filmMAKER.
Now on October 5th, the newest version of A Star is Born will go into wide release. Starring the self-named Lady Gaga, co-starring and directed by Hollywood It-boy Bradley Cooper, with original songs by Gaga and others.
Gaga and Cooper screened it for Barbra. She has seen it and given her Divine approval. Lorna Luft (Judy’s second oldest daughter) was invited to the premiere last week at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles – the setting of her mother’s climactic moment 64 years ago. Luft has seen it and declared that her mother would be the first to stand in ovation.
Lady Gaga is the gay icon of the 21st century. She started as a musical theater gal, and she honed her craft and her style and her creativity in gay bars surrounded by drag queens and Queers of every shape and size and color. It’s her turn. It’s the Tao. The Way. She’s ready, and I am ready. I am prepared to sit in a darkened movie theater and let the wave of Big Gay Thrills wash over me.
I will honor the ghosts of Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich and I will glory in the continuing spiritual presence of Judy Garland and I will trust in the benevolent praise of our Savior Barbra Streisand, (soft ‘s’ like “sand on the beach”), and while I maintain that my spirituality is no better or worse than yours, I can promise you, it is a lot more fabulous.
Slacker (1990; d. Richard Linklater)
Did a little walk down Richard Linklater lane, starting at the top, and then going all the over the place chronologically. If you think about Linklater, and his extraordinary body of work – and you go back and watch Slacker, it’s – frankly -awe-inspiring how strong he started out, how he started out with a Joycean time-locale-obsessed non-story, with people talking, having experiences, moving on, moving past one another. This is a bold bold statement of a film. He’s not trying to please anyone, or using this as a “stepping stone” to larger budgets. This is not an ingratiating film. It’s challenging. It’s about all the things Linklater cares about, deeply. It’s not just a statement of purpose. It’s a deeply vulnerable act, saying “This is who I am. These are the things I think about. I haven’t come to any conclusions. But this is the human condition as I see it.”
Dazed and Confused (1993; d. Richard Linklater)
And so it is not surprising that his follow-up film will be equally as personal, a walk down his own memory lane (and many other people of that generation) … and not only THAT, but a film that people STILL quote from. It’s a classic. And two years later came Before Sunrise. And look where THAT two-person film has led us. And him. And he’s doing all of this out of Austin. On his own pace, his own time, and – most importantly – his own terms.
Waking Life (2001; d. Richard Linklater)
This movie … I saw it in the theatre when it came out, and it was so soon after September 11 – a month later – it was the first movie I saw after that terrible day. And what a movie to see. I will never forget that experience, sitting in the theatre, wounded, in a RAGE, still in a state of hypervigilance, cut off from what I knew as reality for all time, hurt, etc. and THIS was the movie I saw. I won’t say it healed me, but I felt like healing was POSSIBLE as I watched this extraordinary film. (And Alex Jones, of all people, has a cameo? Linklater’s comments about Jones are fascinating. Watching him take on national prominence has been totally surreal for Linklater.)
Destination Wedding (2018; d. Victor Levin)
The movie has some issues. It’s way over-written. I said to Allison after that I could SEE the words on the page, even though Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves are two talented actors. But they are fun to watch. And this movie has the most ludicrous sex scene I’ve seen in a long LONG while. (This month’s viewing diary contains TWO ludicrous sex scenes.) Played out in one long take, it was my favorite scene in the movie. Keanu Reeves manages to make his orgasm hilarious. Not to be tried by amateurs!
Tape (2001; d. Richard Linklater)
Another one from 2001, and another one I saw in the theatre. I haven’t seen it since. This was a script brought to Linklater by Ethan Hawke. So it’s slightly different than the others (although throughout his career Linklater has often directed things written by other people, or done projects either to generate money for his next film – and each time, he brings his own stamp). It’s a claustrophobic nightmare, this film, and although you can feel its stage origins at times – it’s quite wrenching, with three excellent performances from Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard (never better, honestly). It’s also very timely – a complex look at “he said she said.”
Bad News Bears (2005; d. Richard Linklater)
A perfect “assignment” film for him. First up: it’s a baseball movie, and Linklater played baseball. Secondly: it’s a classic from the era which clearly informs a lot of his stuff. He doesn’t soft-pedal the story, and neither does Billy Bob Thornton. These kids are maniacs. And Sammi Kane Kraft who plays the young pitcher with a killer fastball … who died, tragically, in a car accident … she brings a level of verisimilitude to it, because she clearly can play. She was discovered on a baseball diamond in Los Angeles. It’s just so damn sad.
The Canterville Ghost (1944; d. Jules Dassin)
Charles Laughton stars as the ghost in this adaptation of the Oscar Wilde story. Wrote a thing on it, should be out this month.
The Aviator (2004; d. Martin Scorsese)
I love it. Was working on something which should come out in the next month or so. Needed a re-watch.
Boyhood (2014; d. Richard Linklater)
Wrote about it here. Not my favorite Linklater, but there’s much here I admire (the whole form of the project, and Linklater’s obsession with time passing and how he attempted to put that onscreen – the sheer level of determination it takes to pull off a movie like this). And Patricia Arquette’s performance. Plus that parade of husbands! They aren’t “villains”, not at the outset: they’re charming, they’re kind, etc. But then they’re revealed. This feels very very real to me.
School of Rock (2003; d. Richard Linklater)
I’ve probably seen this Linklater more than any other. I believe this film – like Groundhog Day – will be watched long after we are all dust. Boyhood’s fine, and it wins awards, and something like School of Rock doesn’t win awards. But it has staying power.
Starting Over (1979; d. Alan J. Pakula)
Burt Reynolds said that this was one of the best movies he ever made. He referenced it constantly, in interviews, on the Carson show, everywhere else. He wanted to do more movies like this. It’s a terrific film. And Candice Bergen practically steals it with her ridiculous scene singing to him in the hotel room. You can’t even believe it’s happening. You also can’t believe Burt Reynolds keeps a straight face. He was a genius at that.
Lizzie (2018; d. Craig Macneill)
A lot of potential here. I was excited about it. But it just doesn’t really … go where it seems to want to go. It’s underwater, somehow, its energy slow and stately which, honestly, doesn’t make much sense, considering the subject matter. I reviewed for Ebert.
Bernie (2011; d. Richard Linklater)
So damn good. A real treat was when it screened at Ebertfest, and Linklater was there, and Jack Black called in, his voice booming through the theatre.
Cape Fear (1962; d. J. Lee Thompson)
If you really dig deeper into the implications of what’s going on … the whole thing is about sex, women in peril, because of their sex, women as sitting ducks for violent rapists … and Mitchum is completely unstoppable here – a force of evil who has to be put down, it’s the only way he will ever stop. Poor Gregory Peck. He can barely hold the screen.
Sharky’s Machine (1981; d. Burt Reynolds)
Reynolds was smart (as he usually was) to place himself in the midst of this large male ensemble. Great actors and friends.) But this is a film with a specific mood, atmosphere … and almost a Vertigo-ish sense of obsession … under-rated, although I hesitate to use the word. It’s a really good movie. And very well directed.
Boogie Nights (1997; d. Paul Thomas Anderson)
You can probably see where I’m going with this. I gave up the Linklater marathon (for now) and moved into Burt-Land.
The Longest Yard (1974; d. Robert Aldrich)
From the director of The Dirty Dozen and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? comes The Longest Yard. It’s filled with football, and it’s filled with Reynolds playing football. Filmed on location in an actual prison. Another smash hit for Reynolds, who was on a roll around this point. Superstar.
Best Friends (1982; d. Norman Jewison)
I’m not sure what’s to complain about. Maybe this was around the time when Reynolds started to lose his stardom but … this is a very good movie. The posters highlighted the two of them in the shower together but that’s kind of a misrepresentation. This is an adult movie about adults. It’s not a sex farce. They’re a well-established couple who also work together, and he’s like “I’m sick of living together, we should just get married” and she’s like “Uhm ….” It’s got him, Goldie Hawn, and multiple funny scenes, and a pleasing role-reversal (he wants marriage, she’s got cold feet). Reynolds was always good with strong female leads. The whole thing is very charming and puts him in a very real world, playing a real type of guy, not a solitary hero or whatever else. I’ve always liked this movie.
Smokey and the Bandit (1977; d. Hal Needham)
This was a gigantic hit – and rightly so – it’s STILL a hit. If you played this now in the movie theatre, people would flip out. But it was part of Reynolds’ string of movies involving car-racing south of the Mason Dixon line – where his audience kind of split off, and where he became such a superstar he started turning down serious roles (it’s legendary, the roles he turned down). Still, though. I love this movie.
Deliverance (1972; d. John Boorman)
The one that put Reynolds over the edge. Into something even beyond stardom. Into icon territory. And the proof is in the pudding. People still talk about this movie. (And, as Reynolds has pointed out, women understand the movie better than men do, they don’t need to be told/taught the world is dangerous, they already know.)
Nappily Ever After (2018; d. Haifaa al-Mansour)
I really liked this! On Netflix now! I reviewed for Ebert.
White Lightning (1973; d. Joseph Sargent)
Not sure I’ve actually seen this one before. I really liked it. Burt in his sweaty gorgeous Southern boy heyday. He plays a man named Gator McKlusky … because of course – and the film’s sequel (directed by Reynolds) is called Gator.
A Simple Favor (2018; d. Paul Feig)
Fantastic! Go see it! (While I was in Croatia, there were posters for it everywhere.) My review at Ebert.
Switching Channels (1988; d. Ted Kotcheff)
A remake of His Girl Friday/The Front Page, with Burt Reynolds as a cable news editor and Kathleen Turner as his star reporter. Apparently, Reynolds and Turner did not get along, and who knows what was going on there, but they actually have good chemistry and there are some moments that alllllllmost capture the slapstick of 1930s screwball. I saw this one in the theatre too.
The End (1978; d. Burt Reynolds)
What a crazy movie. Dom Deluise at his maniac best. Reynolds and Dom Deluise? Come on. Plus – as I mentioned up thread – the MOST ludicrous sex scene in perhaps all time. Even more ludicrous, is Reynolds saying to Sally Field afterwards, “Did you come?” I burst out laughing.
Striptease (1996; d. Andrew Bergman)
Unfortunately, someone forgot to inform Demi Moore that she was actually in a comedy. Everyone ELSE got the memo: Robert Patrick, the other strippers, everyone. You know who got it the most? Burt Reynolds. He knew what movie he was in. He knew what was required. Demi Moore seemed to believe she was in a piercing and socially relevant melodrama. It’s a very bad performance. Sorry, Demi.
Who Am I? (2017; d. Margaret Karlsson-Kociuba & Waldemar Kociuba)
I saw this in a little beautiful theatre hidden in the walls of Emperor Diocletian’s Palace in Split, Croatia. I’ll write about the experience eventually. It was the only time I could go to the theatre, and there was a free showing of this half-hour film by a Polish husband-wife team, about searching for meaning/identity/essence. It was a packed house, not a tourist event, and it is – hands down – the most amazing movie theatre I’ve ever been to.
Supernatural, Season 6, episode 12 “Like a Virgin” (2011; d. Philip Sgriccia)
I like this episode, in general, but this scene just gets more and more important the more I think about the series and the character as a whole. I mean, this is the crux of the matter, isn’t it, the “problem with Dean”.
Supernatural, Season 6, episode 13 “Unforgiven” (2011; d. David Barrett)
David Barrett only directed the one episode. I wonder why. It’s a fine episode, and it takes place in Rhode Island, and I am happy about Sam having standup-sex in a public bathroom.
Supernatural, Season 6, episode 12 “Mannequin 3: The Reckoning” (2011; d. Jeannot Szwarc)
This episode gets better and better each time I see it. The first time, I think I was mostly blown away by that final scene between Dean and Ben, which – BOLD – remains unresolved! They don’t hug it out! But then I started to see all the other elements: the brief glimpse we get of Sam and Dean being normal brothers, as opposed to traumatized obsessive monster-hunters. Sam telling Dean to call Lisa back, sending Dean off to deal with his relationship, Sam being like “I got this, go have a life.” When does THAT happen? And look what happens when Dean DOES go off and have a life? Ouch. The scene between Dean and Lisa is also phenomenal, really well-written – a LOT of care given into Lisa’s language, who she is, she’s a real person, not just some prop in Dean’s life. And Dean sitting at the counter, opening a beer … he doesn’t “read the room.” It’s one of those little details about the character I love. And then, after all THAT, is the fact that the entire style is 1980s-movie, with the monstage, the electronic music, even some of the angles, you’re like “Wait. This isn’t Supernatural.” No, and it’s not supposed to be. It’s a callback to Mannequin, and the cheesy – and yet effective – devices in vogue back then. Perfect, considering that the real point of this episode is the break with Lisa and Ben.
Death of Stalin (2017; d. Armando Iannucci)
Wow, it’s been a long time since I have laughed this hard at a movie. It’s pure absurdity. But it’s also horrifying, because it’s about Stalin. Great performances by a murderer’s-row of talent. Rupert Friend is HILARIOUS. But then there’s Michael Palin, Steve Buscemi … ALL of them. I absolutely LOVE this movie. See it. (Airbrushing Jeffrey Tambor out of the poster is too ironic to even discuss, in a promotion for a movie about Stalin, known for airbrushing his enemies out of photographs. The whole credits sequence shows Stalin’s airbrushing handiwork, so I don’t think it’s a particularly good look to take Tambor out. I realize I’m probably in the minority and I’m okay with that.) You can’t even believe they pulled off this movie, a really deft highwire-act, comedy backgrounded with horror.
The ferry ride to Split was our longest ferry ride yet: 2 hours. It left from Stalingrad, I mean, Stari Grad, which meant we had another hair-raising drive across the mountain to get to it. Ante steered us well! While Ante went to park the car in line with all the other cars, Rachel and I went to a nearby cafe to get some coffee. (Note: it wasn’t as good as the coffee in Trpanj. Nothing was.) We sat there, sipping coffee, watching the sea, watching the cars line up, and … watching the motorcycle gang roar in again, lining up in their own separate groupings. There were even more of them than before.
I don’t know why I was so fascinated by them – all I can say is they were clearly such a well-defined and tight sub-culture, people you would clearly not see hiking the wall in Dubrovnik, etc. (Nothing against tourists. We were tourists, and happily so! But you don’t want to ONLY hang out with visitors. You want to be in local places, you want to get a glimpse of people’s real lives.) So with these bikers, it’s hard to even grasp what all of the varying connections might be among all the different clubs, separated out by nationalities. There were women among them, what my pal Mike would call “tough chicks”, and it was clear the established couples. Again, maybe because we were visiting slightly off-season, but in a lot of places we visited, tourists did not dominate. (In Dubrovnik and Split, they did, but in a lot of other places, we were clearly the only Americans.) This was certainly true on the ferry to Split. You didn’t hear much English being spoken. And the bikers far out-numbered the regular passengers. The noise on that upper deck was deafening, laughter, conversation, cigarette smoke, beers.
It was hot, sun shining, and Rachel and I – in our matching hats – found shelter under a little roof on the main level (which, unfortunately, acted like a greenhouse). Once the boat got far out into the sea, the wind picked up, a gorgeous cool wind. Around Hvar are all these little islands, but once we passed that area, it was a huge open sea, with the mountainous mainland far far away, like a mirage.
I sat in my seat, and watched the Biker Show.
The ride was so long and the movement of the ship so soothing there was something almost sleepy about it. We wandered off downstairs to buy some sandwiches, came back up to sit down amongst the motorcycle gang. We went off to find railings where we could look into the distance, cool our faces.
I was mostly filled with a sense of anticipation that was almost … scary? … because Split was approaching.
What I knew about Split: the Roman emperor Diocletian “retired” there (which was amazing in and of itself, because Roman emperors didn’t tend to retire. They tended to be murdered.) Diocletian grew up in the surrounding areas. He built a palace (which is really more of a small city), down on the waterfront. After the Roman Empire fell, the palace went into ruins over the following centuries. But unlike other areas, which were deserted, emptied out of people, the people of Split never left. They basically just moved into the abandoned palace. They built structures on top of its walls, rickety little buildings – some of which are still there. But since the Roman knowledge of architecture and engineering died with the Romans, the people left behind had no idea how to build things. So you have this gorgeous elaborate palace, with little buildings perching on the walls, huddled in the corners, from later eras. Time collapses here. You have different eras existing simultaneously. And now? There are nightclubs, markets, banks, book shops, bars … all built into the palace walls.
This is all what I have learned about the place. I have had vivid pictures of it in my mind.
For some reason, though, I had it in my mind that it was on the cliffs. Wrong. I have refused to even Google pictures of this palace. For two decades! How did I manage it? I’ve been so poor, people. I knew I’d never get to see Diocletian’s Palace, come on, I can’t even buy new sneakers. This is what “operating from scarcity” looks like. I’m not complaining. I’m in the same boat as many others, I’m just explaining my own personal experience of constant nagging scarcity. But as long as I DIDN’T look up pictures of Diocletian’s Palace, I held out hope that I’d actually get to see it with my own eyes. If this makes sense. If I “caved” and perused photo albums of the palace, it was like admitting: “Okay, I’m never gonna get there myself.” I actually have never put this into words until now, but that’s what was going on.
I had no fear that the experience would be a disappointment after so many years of wanting to go there. Not possible.
Diocletian’s Palace has always been “the substance of things hoped for” and now I was about to see it.
Finally, Split came into view. I stood at the railing, surrounded by bikers, staring at the city as we approached from the sea. A white city on the waterfront, coming into view. It was a very emotional moment for me. People have been living there for thousands of years.
