A whole blog talking myself out of going to an important film festival I should've attended. It pleases me to see Sam Lerma or Bryan Ortiz jetting out to festivals all over the place these days. What the hell was I thinking not going to this? I'm a fool. Hey, gas was the same price back then as it is now! Is that good or bad? Thursday June 1, 2006
Lisa says I need to go north so I can be there for the debut of my short "Mars Needs Bibles!" at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival there. (And is PIGLFF really the acronym you want to be associated with your party?) It's next month, not exactly sure what day. I won't be there, of course -- Philadelphia is the other side of the world, and I can't even get KLRN to pay me for the freelance debacle with them, I can't afford food, much less a plane ticket. Some have suggested a road trip, but with gas at $2.59 a gallon (and that was the price I was giddy to find last night), I might as well fly. By flapping my arms.
But I don't know if I would go even if I could. I have no problem with homosexuality; some of my best friends, don't you know. But I felt a little awkward even making this movie, being not just straight but square. Do I have the right to depict, however sincerely and sensitively (and damn, Christopher was great in the part), the pain of sexual confusion? I went to some trouble to find a gay actor (not Christopher) to put into this, in fact, once I realized that I had no one gay involved in the project at all, because I felt so uncomfortable with it.
And now I'm going to go to Pennsylvania and stand up in front of people and say, yeah, I'm the guy who made this, aren't we liberal straight guys great?
Roy Thomas uses a great gag, I've heard him do it a few times, he says "I experimented with heterosexuality once -- I fucked a straight guy." It's a funny joke, but more than that, it's empowering. He's fucking somebody, not getting fucked. But there's no straight dude version of this. And the reason is, straight white guys don't need empowering. We're already tops. Pitchers, to a man (all of us out of prison, anyway). And I can't help feeling that I'm horning in on someone else's limelight by being a part of this film festival. The fact that I love Freddie Mercury and Stephen Fry doesn't make me an honorary homo. I can't go. Can I? No. It'd be wrong.
Not so wrong that I'm withdrawing my movie, mind you, or not submitting it to other film festivals.
But I don't think I could go.
Mainly because I can't afford it. I went to Tim's OUTer fest in Austin (www.outerfilmfest.com), where "Mars Needs Bibles!" debuted last year. And sure, my crew made up close to half the audience, but I still stood up there and basked. Oh, did I bask...
Damn, but I'm an attention whore.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment