Three years ago, when director Dan Ireland was pushing his film Passionada, he agreed one sure way to cure his being successful yet single was opening himself up to the B.A.R. readership. Deluged with enticing offers, this gently rowdy gentleman still found himself alone, although with a few new solid San Francisco friendships.
Ready to take another chance, and with another film to promote, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, Ireland thought he’d try again. So if after reading this article and after seeing his latest effort, you are interested and on the fertile side of 60, please send an e-mail to Mr. Ireland at imnotcocteau@aol.com. You can be older than 60 if you’ll be satisfied with a less carnal relationship.
With our procuring safely aside, it is safe to state that B.A.R. sat down with the dapper Ireland in the lounge of the Palm Springs Film Festival a few weeks ago, where his film won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Starring Dame Joan Plowright as the titular lead, Mrs. Palfrey is an adaptation of British writer Elizabeth Taylor’s popular novel, whose plot is a simple one.
Mrs. Palfrey parks herself in a small hotel in London after the death of her spouse. With her daughter and grandson nearby, this septuagenarian has high hopes for a new life. Quickly, though, she discovers that her kin have no time for her, and that the residents of the Claremont are all highly eccentric, with more than several having one foot in the grave. “I had imagined something quite different,” she notes.
Then one day, due to a faulty maneuver, Palfrey falls in front of the residence of a young, attractive writer, Ludovic Meyer (Rupert Friend). Quicker than you can mouth Harold and Maude, the mismatched duo becomes solid friends, with Ludo impersonating Palfrey’s grandson to impress her peers. “I’ve never enjoyed myself more %u2014 with my clothes on,” Ludo admits.
Witty, sentimental, and wise, the film mirrors Ireland himself. But why this project?
With a debonair smile, Ireland recalled, “I, throughout my life, have always found older women so colorful. So when I read the book, it definitely hit me. I also love doilies. Doilies are my life. I have them everywhere in every room.”
Turning serious, he added: “My mother nearly died two years ago, and there was a scene in the film right at the very end where Mrs. Palfrey mistakes Ludo for her husband. That happened to me and my mother. So I went along with it. I just went along with it.”
As for the critical reaction, it has been mostly positive. Even the usually staid Hollywood Reporter waxed poetic: “Fine achievements in craftsmanship dovetail beautifully with Ireland’s evocation of this tiny world where souls await life’s final challenge.”
“It’s funny,” Ireland notes. “The intellectual critics always like to give me a smack about being too weepy. But then the audiences that go see it seem to embrace it, which has been great. As for the gay audiences so far, at least my friends, they have been supportive.”
Smooch report
Before concentrating on the elderly, Ireland helmed The Velocity of Gary (1998), where Vincent D’Onofrio gave Thomas Jane one of the great man-on-man on-screen kisses. With that in mind, how does Ireland explain all the hosannas befalling the Brokeback Mountain smooches?
“If you go back, there’ve been a lot of guys that have kissed before. But it’s perfect timing because of gay marriage, etc., and because Heath and Jake are so damned cute. They’re hot. Even with Sunday Bloody Sunday, it was an ‘art-film,’ and it was with an older actor. Here you have two young, very red-blooded, healthy Americans. Well, not quite American, Australian-American cowboys talking like the Old West, and throwing the gay theme into it. I don’t think anyone can quite believe it that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal would actually kiss. You know, I think audiences are finding it hot because it is hot. Girls like it. Even straight guys are sort of intrigued. They’ll never confess to it, but it’s suddenly cool. Don’t you think so?”
Because of Brokeback Mountain’s success, Ireland is hoping now to be able to direct his dream project, Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner . “I mean, I’ve always loved it. It’s not my project yet. I have a friend that’s producing it, and I know the writer. I mean, it needs adaptation because of the time it was written in, but I was coming out when the book came out, and it was one of the things that sort of helped me come out of the closet. If you look at it, in its own way, it has the same sort of relevance as Brokeback. It’s set in the sports world. There are a few things in it that I don’t think would work today, but definitely that’s something that comes to mind. A project I’m pitching myself for.”
In the meantime, Ireland is pulling together a feature on the last three months of John Dillinger’s life, including the gangster’s friendship with a 16-year-old boy. Yes, this is the very same Dillinger who was Public Enemy #1 until he was fatally shot by the FBI in 1934, and the very same Dillinger who, according to an urban legends website, was rumored to have a sex organ “estimated at anywhere from 13 to 28 inches” that is now in the collection of the Smithsonian. Sadly for our fantasies, for the museum, and for the forthcoming film, these rumors are, unlike Mrs. Palfrey, pure fiddle-faddle.
Gosford Park Poofs
by Brandon Judell
It’s freezing in the conference rooms of the midtown Manhattan W Hotel, and Robert Altman isn’t feeling too well. “I might just throw up on your tape recorder,” he cheerfully warns. Immediately, I try figuring what that will fetch me on E-Bay.
But Mr. Altman, best known for helming Nashville and M*A*S*H, holds up at least until our chat’s over, then only misses the bathroom by a few feet. No wonder. Emotionally, he’s riding high. Gosford Park, his “Upstairs, Downstairs” escapade about ladies, gents, and servants, murder, sex, plus singing, has garnered Golden Globe nominations in numerous categories plus kudos from national critics groups.
“In 33 years, or whatever it is,” Altman insists, “I’ve never been without a film and it’s always been a film of my own choosing. I’ve never had a film taken away from me. They’ve tried a couple of times, but anything you see out there, that’s mine. My cut. And if you hate it, that’s mine.”
Calm down. Calm down. We love it although some might first raise an eyebrow or two upon hearing such lines as “Desperate for a fag?” or “Two many fags. They’ll be the death of me.” But the locale here is England. The date: November 1932. And the “fags” that are being alluded to are puffed on and cause cancer, not the other type.
Anyway, there’s no doubt Altman has made one of his most deliciously entertaining features in years and years and years with all the Altman trademarks in spades: Dozens of characters scurrying here and there, each with a highly unhinged psychological make-up, and once again everyone’s talking over each other. But what delectable witty dialogue they spout thanks to Julian Fellowes’ truly marvelous screenplay. It’s as if Quentin Crisp and Edward Albee had a baby.
Additionally, there are a bunch of gay characters. We’ll skip over the servants with the exception of a valet (Ryan Phillippe). I mean why waste time on the downstairs folks? We expect them to be that way.
But upstairs, there’s the real life matinee idol and composer Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), who was Noel Coward’s contemporary and absolutely beloved in Great Britain. Happily, we get to hear at least five of the songs that Novello wrote and sang to fame.
Then there’s Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban), a gay Hollywood producer of Charlie Chan films, and is he horny? You bet.
Balaban, who also co-produced Gosford Park, is in a reminiscing mood. “Did you know the first thing I ever did in a movie was go down on Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy. I was 20 years old. I think I was Midnight’s X-rating.
“Then I was a gay character on West Wing last year,” he continues. “Did you see that? I played the head of a Hollywood studio who’s trying to force the president to do some gay rights things. Then this.”
Explaining “this,” Balaban adds, “There was actually a little bit more gay stuff. We had another scene or two about my relationship with my valet. It was more spelled out. In fact, interestingly, the way it was edited, in the scene in the bedroom, that’s the only time you officially find out that I’m gay. I hold Ryan’s hand and he pulls his hand away. But they used the tighter shot, so I come up to him and you don’t see me grabbing for his hand, so you didn’t know what was happening there. At the end of the scene at one point, I sort of caressed him. Well, you don’t see it but it wasn’t removed because Bob wanted to remove that specifically. It just ended up that in the takes we chose, Ryan and I were at angles where you couldn’t see what was happening.”
Playing a bisexual hustler/valet who doesn’t think twice about bedding a producer is not a character type Ryan Phillippe is unfamiliar with, but not from personal experience. Laughing, he shares, “I have heard about them. It’s certainly not my inclination. I think this guy I play is more than bisexual. I think he’s doing what he’s doing to get ahead and is trying to compensate [for his gay behavior] by hitting on every other woman around just to convince himself that he’s still masculine in a way. I truly believe [his type] existed in the thirties; it exists now.”
This, by the way, is not the first time Phillippe has bitten the gay bullet. Remember 54? Then on The Days of Our Lives, he portrayed soap’s first gay teenager.
“I realized how important that role was because of the fan mail that I got. Especially since I was first starting out, I read every piece that was sent to me. But at the same time I was seventeen so I was a little like intimidated by the idea of playing a gay character. Like I grew up in Delaware, not in a metropolitan area, so I didn’t know very many gay people. It was an interesting learning experience for me.”
As for being a sex symbol to both guys and gals, “It’s exciting. That’s cool. I think there’s a lot of people who would love to have that attention or get that response. It’s fun. But also it’s not the way I see myself. I’m not a dick, you know. I can appreciate it but I don’t behave according to it.”
Also not a dick is Jeremy Northam who plays Novello, an immensely popular matinee idol considered one of the greatest British actors, playwrights and composers of his day.
Northam, who portrayed a straight pretending to be gay most recently in Happy, Texas, was taken aback when I asked if Novello was supposed to be homosexual in the film.
“Oh, yes,” he replied. “To my mind, I thought I played him too camp. It’s always been interesting with that period. I mean Novello was a huge idol among the ladies. He was so mourned when he died. He was a complete love god to millions of women in England, but he was of that period of time where he was as openly gay as it as possible to be but people never talked about it.”
Like with Noel Coward? I venture.
“Just like with Noel,” Northam agrees. “To look back and think about it now, it’s quite strange. No mention was ever made of it. But he was gay. My problem was really I suppose how do you show that without getting into some horrible stereotype. Am I going to make him sound very camp? Do I need to do anything at all? I just thought there was something epicene about men of that time. It always struck me that there was something rather soft and effeminate then about the way people dressed, about the way they moved, the way they smoked a cigarette, and so I just did a little more of that in a way.”
Sadly, there are no Golden Globes given out for Best Epicene Performance. But then whoever said movies were fair? Anyway, life has more pressing problems as Maggie Smith’s character, Constance, Countess of Trentham, gets to note: “There’s nothing worse than breaking in a new maid.” Who can argue with that?
Francis Veber comes out of ‘The Closet’
by Brandon Judell
A placard at a 1979 gay pride march read, “The closet is an awful place to die.” Not anymore, thanks to director/writer Francis Veber.
You’re probably familiar with the work of this striking Frenchman because of his Oscar nomination for co-writing the groundbreaking hit film La Cage aux Folles (1978). Elaine May slightly rewrote his screenplay for the 1996 hit The Birdcage. And of course you remember the Broadway version, which spawned every drag queen’s national anthem, “I Am What I Am.”
Other gay-content films Veber has had a hand in were the dreaded Partners (1982) with Ryan O’Neal and John Hurt, plus the enjoyable La Cage aux Folles II (1980). His straight hits include My Father the Hero (1994), The Dinner Game (1998), and The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972).
But The Closet might just be his most hilarious and savvy work. Here, a humdrum accountant in a condom factory makes believe he’s gay so he won’t get fired. If you’re selling rubbers, you don’t want to upset the gay market, right? The hero’s declaration elicits delicious farcical consequences, but at the heart of the film Veber is out to make us more than just laugh. Here is an astute observation of how once straights learn we’re gay, they no longer react to us, but instead try to mangle us to fit into their absurd stereotypes.
“You’re right,” Veber agrees in the coffee shop of the Soho Grand where our tête à tête is taking place. “I’m not using gay to try to be funny or commercial. It’s not a choice. Sometimes you have a premise that arrives in your mind, and you say, ‘Oh, God, this is interesting.’ Actually while writing The Closet, I recognized that being politically correct is changing quite a bit, but of course, not as much as I say in the film.”
Talking issues
Taking a sip of his coffee, he continues sternly, “I discovered that this is a very serious issue. Did you know that in 38 states in America, you can be fired from your job if you are gay or lesbian?”
I note how good ol’ sodomy is faring just as well. Veber nods and persists: “So what I’m telling you is the fact that the manager of this condom factory is scared not to be politically correct. He’s not firing this make-believe gay man because he’s afraid of the consequences. This is a fantasy compared to what the reality is.
“What I hope,” he adds, “is that other people will start understanding that you don’t have to judge people on their private lives. Judge him or her on the way he or she is working. This was what interested me. I was not intending to write a gay movie or a straight movie, but I’d certainly love to hear that The Closet has transformed some bigots.”
Veber, who’s dressed smartly in black, will head for West Hollywood when his publicity tour is over. There he lives seven months of the year, often bicycling about, unrecognized, in spandex shorts and a tight shirt.
“No one recognizes me because I’m anonymous in Los Angeles. I’m less anonymous in Paris. This is the reason I came to LA.”
I note how fit the low body-fat Veber is for a director. How his hair is perfectly coifed. And how attractive he is for a helmer—unlike, say, Orson Welles.
Veber laughs: “But I have less talent.”
