Monday, May 31, 2010

05.31.10

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Saturday, May 29, 2010

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Monday, May 24, 2010

Death by Oil

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A young heron sits dying amidst oil splattering underneath mangrove on an island impacted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Barataria Bay, just inside the the coast of Louisiana, Sunday, May 23, 2010. The is home to hundreds of herons, brown pelicans, terns, gulls and roseate spoonbills. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)



Sunday, May 23, 2010

Oil


As officials approached to survey the damage the Gulf oil spill caused in coastal marshes, some brown pelicans couldn't fly away Sunday. All they could do was hobble.  Read HERE.
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Saturday, May 22, 2010

Koya Moments



Koya Moments / An Edinburgh time lapse movie.  This film charts the progress of the day and night, the changing light, weather and progress of the moon and stars . Philip Glass Violin Concerto, 1st movement, Adele Anthony, violin, Ulster Orchestra

Friday, May 21, 2010

Tattered Palaces


"I am big.  It's the pictures that got small."
— Norma Desmond, "Sunset Boulevard"
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United Artists Theater, Detroit — photograph by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

Article "Tattered Palaces" by Kristen Joy Watts, The New York TimesHERE.

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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

We'd Do It With a Lizard in a Blizzard



Harvey Fierstein as A. Camp in H. M. Koutoukas' "Christopher at Sheridan Squared" directed by Donald L. Brooks at the Performing Garage, November 1971

Mr. Fierstein's first male role, as Arnold Camp, a role representative of the playwright H. M. Koutoukas in which he performed the song:

"We'd Do It With A Lizard in a Blizzard"

In the beginning there was the Verb
We do it cause it's there
And it needs filling -- Jelly donut
No withholding...

No, listen baby maybe --

Subjects get predicated
Bon bons like cellophane bags
Only get deficated -- it's on on on on
In to get out toward warmth then air out

A woman may say no - no - no --
But she can't say no to Darlin' Darwin
Cause he knows she done it with a lizard
Fingernails show she's done it even with a gator
Like her husband Mother --

God knows what slimey creature first
Proved cold-blooded is cold as ice
Yah -- something made those links go out missin'
Those links they grooved on hissin'
When they saw your Mother evolutin'
Somethin's going down there

Claws caress her hair -- and gator's still are cold
If your Mother one time ain't worked a lizard
How did she get so warm-blooded

(As Arnold Camp does tango, cult creatures gather under around ceiling, between rails, join in -- it becomes a non-touch slither).

COBRA CULT

From some reptile you've some recoil
That's because your Darling Darwin
Caught you knowin' without sayin'
Maybe just jokin' -- but knowing all the same
Those links weren't missing those links weren't lame they just wanted
To get out of that snake-making game --

King Cobra -- jeweled and made sober
Called his Auntie Conda -- and after a talk with Little Mary Whann
He placed the apple high in the tree, man met woman
They both were warm --but the gizzard to the brow-bone of Costa Cobra
Remains cold as the silence of your Mother's secret
That she'd do it with a Stone at Stonehenge --
To keep alive some rock and so
The Lizard never knew nor your Father
That her quiet was not virtue but remembrance by his fingernail
That she'd invited in a reptile to spend some generations
In the family's cell -- and was it Mr. Barrie
Creature of that fainting fairy and Peter (Cock-a-doodle-doo) Pan
Then it's gonna' be a Halloween when all hell broke loose, it
Was an openin' and a closin' that sent an Express train lookin' Florentine
of course your ass runs by itself like
Cinderella's Mother, queen of a land where sometimes
To pay for the mistakes made...
Mistakes... are maid.

There is no such thing as an accident -- unless an accident...
I was of even of the more mannish document...
it's a shrinking slip
To pay the maid to take the blame.

-- H. M. Koutoukas
Christopher at Sheridan Squared
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Harvey Fierstein as Arnold Camp observes Cobra Cult dance choreographed by James Waring performed by Bryan Hayes and Cobra Cult in H M Koutoukas Christopher at Sheridan Squared directed by Donald L Brooks.
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

In Search of H. M. Koutoukas

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In Search of H. M. Koutoukas


Prosaic recitation of the wit, the antics and inanity of the world of H. M. Koutoukas is easy– it is a tough task to look beyond and find his soul. In the process, I may speak of myself as much as my subject, but this is intended as I write about not just an individual, but my relationship with that individual. So, with trepidation, I sift through a lost sea of fifty years of memorabilia for H. M. Koutoukas -- Harry as we knew him –The initials of “H. M.” always seemed to portend the mysterious, or perhaps His Majesty, at the least, nothing as disturbing as Haralambos Monroe. One on one, he was “Harry” and in our little underground world of theater, “Koutoukas.” Searching through files for scripts and photographs, I find it difficult to capture his essence, elusive of all that is tactile and existing only in memory – H. M. Koutoukas is gone and has taken with him, H. M. Koutoukas, that brilliant creation I loved for half a century.



A poet first and then a dramatist in the mode of Federico García Lorca, Koutoukas was an irresistible figure whether through his actors on stage, the written page, the spoken word or the silence that often cloaked a gold mine of prose waiting for the right explosive to dislodge an etymological effusion of glittering treasure. He was the wordsmith wonder of the underground in the days of the Caffé Cino, and along with so many other and varied artists traded madness and magic for a few nights of glory in an illegal bistro in the then-forgotten Greenwich Village of New York City. Make no mistake about it, this was an underground in every sense of the word notwithstanding how tame it may now seem compared to the present-day riot of rot and excess of ego.

Working cross-town at the Café LaMama, where Ellen Stewart and I sat in an empty loft closed the previous night for code violations, I found that sometimes the task of directing a play included giving a pep talk to the theater owner, rebuilding the doors and exits, securing pails of sand and fire extinguishers, not to mention escorting actors from the subway to the theater as they feared for their safety on the streets of the Lower East Side. LaMama and the Caffé Cino were heterogeneous -- the Cino had a more daring reputation, and it had H.M. Koutoukas. To make a long story et cetera, a fire destroyed the interior of the Cino and Ellen Stewart crowded the Cino’s scheduled productions into LaMama, whereupon two worlds become one for a few months of indiscriminate mingling.

I had seen Koutoukas productions of "Only A Countess May Dance When She’s Crazy," " With Creatures Make My Way," " Pope Jean" and "Pomegranada" – I requested that we meet and it was arranged at LaMama. A handsome young man in his middle-twenties, a few years older than me, appeared with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder, draped in a cape and surrounded by an entourage. The entourage was waved away as H. M. Koutoukas swept me off to 87 Christopher Street and a night of dreams I can’t remember. Disappointed at being a mere curiosity of the flesh, uninterested in cocaine, overwhelmed by the disarray of the apartment’s amassed material which included three non-working refrigerators in the space of a small studio overrun with things that crawled, I gathered myself and my disappointment, greeting the bright light of morning alone with my fascination, nonetheless, intact. I was not the stone for sculpting a gargoyle to adorn the world of H.M. Koutoukas.

In the fall before Joe Cino’s death, I returned from summer stock to find all my belongings discarded as garbage at the hands of LaMama’s Paul Foster and ‘Ntoni Bastiano. Everything. I was devastated. I was angry, expressed myself in pure heat of hatred, and subsequently feared and unwelcome at the theater I had built and nourished. I wandered. Having appeared in a benefit program for the reconstruction of the Caffé Cino at the Sullivan Street Theatre (Bob Heide’s “The Bed”) before I left for summer stock, I dropped in to take a look at the rebuilt space. Joe took me under his wing and put me to work doing lights, acting, repairs. I was to set and run lights that evening and had been waiting for the actors of a John Guare play to arrive. Harry was hanging out with Joe at the counter, eventually heading to the exit. In a misunderstanding, John Guare did not appear with his play and cast for a performance. I was in the light booth having just purchased and reading a Wonder Woman comic book (The Secret of Tabu Mt.”). Upon hearing Joe Cino say "what are we going to do, we have to have something", I showed him the comic book and said "Let's do this!"  Joe immediately brightened saying yes, and sent Robert Patrick out for more copies at Lamston's five-and-dime two blocks away. I suggested that H. M. Koutoukas (who had just left the building) play Wonder Woman -- he was chased down the street by Charles Stanley, brought back, given a headband and a show went up on time – changing the lights every time a comic frame occurred. By the end of the week, no one needed the script (comic book) but carried it anyway. It was the first comic book play at the Cino and the best.  Others in the cast that night were Joe Cino, the suddenly present Johnny Dodd, Charles Stanley and Deborah Lee. There was a great deal of satisfaction with that simple little 15-minute playlet, as I felt I had finally shared the muse with H. M. Koutoukas.



After Joe Cino’s death, many of the artists never returned to the subsequently short-lived theater/coffee house managed by Charles Stanley and others. Harry was reportedly in poor condition having entered some sort of rehabilitation program at St. Vincent’s Hospital. I recall that the major adjustment achieved in rehabilitation for Harry was the realization that he did not have to constantly entertain those around him – he became much more solemn and, of course, silent.



I had a successful play called “Xircus, the Private Life of Jesus Christ” completing a six-month run with a month or so still remaining on the lease of the Performing Garage in SoHo. The producer, Dick Briggs, was agreeable to a short run of whatever play I would like to mount. I contacted Harry and he gave me fragments of a piece called “Christopher at Sheridan Squared”. It was basically an uncollated pile of poetry. Many of the actors from "Xircus" would be in the production; however, I sent out word to Christopher Street that casting was being held. A good many actors in the production were not actors until they were cast in the play. Harry would send bits and pieces of writing from time to time during rehearsals and I fashioned them all into a narrative – it became a small epic of city apartment and street life. Harvey Fierstein, who had played Our Lady of 42nd Street in "Xircus" played what could be termed as the Koutoukas role. Music was on a harpsichord, composed by A. M. Fine, a heterophobic and paranoid musical genius. A chorus of sorts chanted the lines and danced to choreography by James Waring. A full two-story set was constructed with a tapestry from the Metropolitan Opera as the act curtain. It was a wonderful piece with a full house opening night and no audience thereafter. Harry was fond of one-night-only theater stands – most of his plays could be seen but once. The second night, Harry positioned himself on the top tier of the wooden structure at the Performing Garage and threatened to hurl himself to the floor. I advised him that if suicide were intended that he might not succeed, merely crippling himself for life, paralyzed and unable to ever again attempt to terminate his existence.



Somewhere in my files is a script of our collaboration and an audio tape of a performance – the negatives for the photographs were maintained by Harvey Fierstein, leaving only a contact sheet of same. Fierstein was a demanding diva buttressed only by his being aware of his lack of experience. I recognized his wit and originality in his everyday conversations as being far more interesting than most of the plays that I was given to consider directing. I told him that if he would write a play, I’d produce it. This was twofold in purpose, it would shut him up for a while and maybe produce a lively theater piece. He returned much too soon with a short play called “The Very Last Camp” – with Ellen and myself as characters. No. I was not going to do a play with a second-hand account of my relationship with forces I wanted to forget, and had no desire to provoke – Harvey had in mind another “Superfreak”, a play about the Caffé Cino that upset too many individuals in the Off-Off-Broadway scene. I sent him back to the proverbial drawing board with an assignment. Clean H. M. Koutoukas’ apartment!

Harry’s apartment had become unlivable. It is reported that he dabbed glow-in-the-dark paint on the back of cockroaches that one might turn out the lights and watch the spectacle! He needed to get it straightened so that he could at least find a comfortable corner for sleeping. I sent Fierstein and Russell Krum to do the chore, advising Harvey that if he searched deep enough into the experience, that a real play would be there, one that he could write honestly about. Well, he did. What was his and what was Harry’s one will never know – the play was called “In Search of the Cobra Jewels”.



I approached Harry by chance on Christopher Street, a half-block from his apartment at 87, advised him that Harvey had written a play about him, but that I could not do it unless Harry would play himself – he responded, ”get me a script and a nurse for all the rehearsals and performances.” I set a street actor, Flash Storm to the task. He made sure that Harry was at the required rehearsals and saw to many of Harry’s other needs during the time. Fierstein and I recruited Harvey and Ronald Tavel, Agosto Machado and Mario Montez, for an all-male cast including drag queens Alexis De Lago and Wilhelmina Ross, the stain-glass artist Gilly Glass, who played a window, and many of the street actors from "Christopher at Sheridan Squared."



Opening night, near the conclusion of the first act during a chorale, Harry produced a razor blade and began marking his wrists producing blood. Michael Smith, the Village Voice critic and a friend of Harry was in attendance and noted in a review – “During the first-act finale of “In Search of the Cobra Jewels” last Wednesday, H. M. Koutoukas, who plays the central role, cut himself delicately and deliberately with a razor blade, just deeply enough so blood oozed out on his arms and face. Harvey Fierstein’s play is transparently about Koutoukas himself in the form of Noel Swann, poet and playwright in flirtation with Death. And it is, further, a direct rip-off of Koutoukas’s distinctive style as a dramatist – aphoristic, euphuistic, picturesque, tormentedly romantic, sentimentally nostalgic. But the opening night blood-letting introduced too much reality onto the stage for my taste. I was sickened and horrified. Koutoukas’s gesture, though reviving an ancient sacrificial mode of theatre, by its very truthfulness seemed to go beyond art and call art worthless, and it had the effect of nearly destroying the play… Once again Donald L. Brooks has done a production that gets to me so personally that I can hardly talk about it coherently. Once again he has concocted an indecipherable mixture of brilliance, ineptitude, and nearly pathological acting out… Brooks certainly has a flair for raw theatricality, and he persistently confronts in his work subjects, styles, and personal equations which to others appear in bad taste and simply too dangerous. First I was entertained, then I was frightened, then I didn’t know where I was and my mind was left burning with contradictions. What kind of theatre is that?” Well, it wasn’t the kind I had intended, but Harry took care of that!



I went downstairs to the dressing room, where the actors were a bit confused to say the least. Harry had just fled the theater and I went in pursuit, catching up to him about two blocks away. I chided him for such cheap theatrics, citing selfishness to the other actors, commanding him to return to the theater to finish the performance, and further advised that he was going to do the entire schedule of performances and that if he decided to slit his wrists every night he’d be hamburger by the end of the run – also, to advise me beforehand of same so that I could make sure the audience noticed, as being that the lighting was in red, we were wasting the blood – a white light would show the deed more effectively. Well, he returned and there was no problem after that – he was perfect as himself in the guise of Noel Swann, speaking what surely were many of his own words plucked from the debris of his lair. Only Harry and his neophyte gargoyle could possibly know who wrote what and who played who.



Without a doubt, the best line to come out of off-off Broadway was Harry’s, utilizing an expletive that at the time was wont to make a censor swoon – at the end of the play, a lonely and ruined actress asks the audience, “Anybody want to fuck a star!” Broadway never called, but Times Square occasionally drew Harry to its dark recesses, for I vividly recollect that while I was stripping at a seedy male burlesque house, his incongruous presence surprised me, along with our producer Dick Briggs, in the front row of the audience – caught in the act, indeed! The three of us attended a performance of "Crowbar" at the Victory Theater on 42nd Street while it was still haunted from the ghosts of the early century. The Victory was the movie house that premiered “Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS”, a film with Koutoukas’ participation toward the end of its use as a movie house – so, he did get uptown once in a while!

The relationship never changed, every meeting was as though the last were the day before. We religiously exchanged Christmas cards for a quarter century, and I always looked forward to seeing him on Halloween at Theater for the New City where he appeared as a celebrity judge for the costume parade at the Halloween Ball – his category was always the least conventional. When friends were dropping like flies from the plague, I told him that I had ceased going to anyone’s memorial that I had not known for at least twenty-five years – he wrote that down too! I last saw Harry at the Obies at a hall at New York University, where he, Robert Dahdah and I sat together in the lobby for a good half-hour while various individuals, including some of Harry’s gargoyles, stopped by to pay their respects to the old men of the underground.

Now, he’s left us behind. Let us hope it is just another avant-garde movement and his beautiful soul is merely leading the way to where artists need not struggle against the oppressive forces of our world, but simply wave a hand and the imagination becomes reality. As we sift through his life, let us remember that while he lived, we many times stood aside while he destroyed his own creations. If the art of his muse that now lies scattered among the ashes can rise as the Phoenix into the light of a deserved appreciation alongside the great poets and playwrights of our time, then and only then will we ever have satisfaction and peace in search of H. M. Koutoukas.



Avanti Amori
By H. M. Koutoukas (from Christopher at Sheridan Squared)

Soon the blossoming
Crescendos unto the Spring
Do not speak of it – the veil across our time among the flowers
Is non-negotiable – there’s always credit on the ledger
The bill falls due and the dunning’s done in another place
Listen to the pause the husky silent hue of it
Which breath will turn us unto the Autumn of our own concerto
Oh Chopin live – Love be quick betray me
Rush to a new waltz with a new love do not turn the corner
For autumn is the turnings time
And unto mine own colors I need match my soul
God save me from a life unplucked
Let just my sweet soul hang heavy on the bough
Death has embraced me more warmly
More formally on more occasion than most lovers
Bend the bough swiftly at autumn’s horizon dear September
For I have known that my freedom in life could only serve
The liberation of my tears or smiles at the cost of others weeping
Can you sense autumn – that brightness after bloom
Where the Muse might be accused of going middle class unconcerned
Yes with her Sisters they turn – knowing they may not look on
My new love, sweet death … save me, cure me from this servitude sublime
This poison insidious lust for beauty –
Divine Death – from Durkheim, from Vikings,
From Garbo’s fondest dream I waltz victorious
Free from even art – Death – Dark Angel
They will fear you not knowing only of my wrath
I meet you beyond Jung’s fear or Freud
And you shall duel God on some heavenly common –
Not knowing in what mood you might either win me
Avanti Amori

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Forever

I dream of you every day
Your touch
Face
Smile
Your eyes
Forever
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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Monday, May 10, 2010

Lena Horne

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Lena Horne appeared in “Jamaica,” a musical that ran on Broadway from 1957 to 1959.  Photograph by Leo Freidman

Sunday, May 09, 2010

Mother's Day

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Saturday, May 08, 2010

Oil Spill

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Sunlight Reflecting on Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico, Richard Perry NY Times 2010
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Thursday, May 06, 2010

The Dunes in Bloom

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The Dunes in Bloom,
Smith Point, Fire Island, New York
May 6, 2010, photograph by Donald L. Brooks

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Monday, May 03, 2010

Pink Narcissus, Anonymous and Addressee Unknown...

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"Pink Narcissus"
Internet Interview by Bart Everly with Donald L. Brooks, February 3, 2010:

Everly: Thanks for getting back... I’m trying to interview people that were models or posed for pictures for print and also for Pink Narcissus. Jim also wants me to have people dish the dirt on him but that’s up to you… you know how he is. You are the only one I could locate that ever posed for him so I’d love to have you take on the whole operation. Also if you know of anyone else I should talk to I’d appreciate any leads…

Brooks: My first thought is “where are they?” — some, I know are gone, some whose names were never really known, some who may still live in whereabouts here and there and never think of Pink Narcissus. I honestly can’t say I know of anyone who to this day who is still around. Have you contacted Bobby Kendall (Kagan), he should be of retirement age now – last I heard he was an engineer, married, living in the Midwest. I can name a dozen who have died (Arthur Williams, Cliff Tobey, Charles Ludlam, Eddie Barton, Joanna Schielke, Larry Ree, Harvey Yerkes, Andrew Starr, Donald Kvares, etc.), but that is of little use to your needs, unless identifying actors in the film is desired. When Bidgood decided to credit the film as made by "Anonymous," he also stripped everyone's credits at the same time — whether he ever intended to give same or not.  Dishing the dirt is not really my expertise and summoning up facts is laborious. However, I have kept date books and other forms of recorded material over the past half-century and I see that a good part of 1969, most of that spring and the entire summer, leading into fall, I spent almost all of my waking hours working on the film. It might be of interest that I met Jim Bidgood in what might be considered a rather strange fashion, at least for that era -- disillusioned with theater, relationships and personal life, seeking to validate what I believed to be my own worth however misguided that may have been, I placed an ad in the personals for modeling — one each in Screw, Gay and The New York Times. Among the many calls I received, several were for films, and I can’t say whether Bidgood called me directly or whether I met him through other filmmakers, e.g., Avery Willard, Don Stephens, Bob French, et al – however, I have fond memories of Jim introducing me to his little opus, avidly conjuring an epic ode to the male whore. Well, that was right up my alley!


As to your questions:

Everly: 1) Besides modeling for photos and acting in the film did you help with anything else, i.e. making props or wardrobe, etc? Jim said that you were the one that would round up people for the crowd scenes in Narcissus. So any insight into who was there, what the shoots were like, what was the motivation for people to take part, etc.

Brooks: I worked on every aspect of the film; however, a majority of time was with sets and properties, lighting, filming, recruiting street people and people I knew in theater to work in the film — we never really had a “crowd” scene per se, the loft was small and the sets did not accommodate a great number of people — half a dozen might be a “crowd” — the theater people I brought into the film recommended others including Charles Ludlam who contributes the bizarre slapstick to the Times Square scene, including the pizza maker, the blood bank and the “Get ‘em While They’re HOT!” cart vendor. There were at least six different “Johns” – not by plan at first, but because they never came back! So, plan B, many johns and finally, Bobby was his own at the end. The motivation for people to take part, as you ask, well, it varied — Jim could convince anyone to do anything once he got them in the door — he’d find out what they liked and got it going. There was, of course, it was the 60s, drugs and sex. No pot, Jim despised it, but there were poppers and uppers aplenty. If that seems dilettante, no, it was all just, as you say, motivation — there was little in the way of remuneration for the work, not the amount of time required to be sure — hours, I mean hours and hours of time would be spent on some little detail that Jim would get hung up on, and should anyone dare to object, well, if looks could kill, they would; and if that didn’t work, desperate tears did. Jim made sure the scenes were fresh with the sweat and saliva of Satan’s muse!


Everly: 2) How did you become involved with Jim? Where did you meet and what did you get out of the experience?

Brooks: My main interest in acting had been only due to seeing the glamorous stars upon the silver screen, time and circumstance did not seem to destine any kind of celluloid collision in the immediate future — it was also a rebellion, I turned to pornography (although today, it might not qualify as such) simply because I was ready for my close-up, as Holden’s narration in Sunset Boulevard, “the cameras were finally rolling” — however, with Jim, the price was extremely high. If I had to name the most egotistical schizophrenic madman I’d ever met in my life, I would put Jim among the candidates. I felt that he knew why I was there, and held a carrot on a stick, dangling it before me like some mad Frankenstein taunting a starved Igor! Sets were built and torn down without shooting, seven hours of makeup would go unfilmed, people would come and go with the passing of a day or two and still… I remember not sleeping for five days straight. It became just Jim and myself, he accusing me of having fallen asleep — my eyes pulled tricks, the world disintegrated into worms of light swimming and swirling in circles while the smells of the loft’s garbage and cat litter permeated everything, the hopelessness of completing impossible tasks, the Jekyll and Hyde of a self-flagellating de Sade commanding an erection metaphorical or real for the epic yet whimsical demands of a flaming master of chiaroscuro, the abra cadaver of speed freaks.

Everly: 3) How long were involved in Jim’s life?

Brooks: Twenty-three years.


Everly: 4) What were the shoots like? Can you describe the process?

Brooks: I can recall a few that went well. I think if anyone knew what a particular goal was at any point of time in the filming, there may have been less madness and more productivity. However, the Times Square scene certainly called for some of the insanity that wound up regurgitating itself onto celluloid. The scenes that just Jim and I worked on, the pearls, the miniatures, butterflies, mice, broken mirrors, took a goodly amount of time, but when we were on a one-on-one and Jim kept to a schedule all went very smoothly. This was later in the filming, so perhaps we’d found a method of working together. I remember the final edit before Sherpix provided an editing room and then stole it away — it was very much the same as what is seen on screen. The thousands of discarded frames that lay on the floor of the loft and I never bothered to take any — believe me, they wound up in the garbage! Jim had plans for layers upon the film, ghosts that moved in slow and fast motion — some of the editing of the film seems arbitrary and hackneyed — this was Sherpix trying to get the film into release. Overall, however, the end result is somewhere around the “intent” albeit without the quality that was intended in many cases of the editing. The story is there, the final cut is lost.


Everly: 5) Why did you have a falling out? (It seems to be a recurring theme in his life…)

Brooks: I have never had a falling out with Jim. I love and respect him as an artist and admire his work ethic, his honesty and his dedication to his art, his respect for other individual’s lives and wishes are, of course, secondary to the “thing” at hand, which is always James Bidgood.

Everly: 6) Did you know Alan? Can you tell me anything about their relationship and how his death affected Jim?

Brooks: No. Alan came after Pink Narcissus — during that time I had joined a religious order and had little contact with almost everyone in my past life — when I left the order, I had contact with Jim again assisting with the recording and rewriting of his script “FAG” — it was during that time that I heard of the relationship and how happy he had been with Alan.

Additional notes: Jim and I also worked together in relationship to my plays of “Superfreak, the Death of Joe Cino ”, “Xircus, the Private Life of Jesus Christ” and two plays at St. John’s University, “Once Upon a Mattress” and “A Streetcar Named Desire”. The last play we worked together on was “The Little Book of Professor Enigma” by Harry Kondoleon at Theater for the New City (which he dubbed a multiplex toilet) — I introduced Jim to the late actor/dancer/teacher Bill Maloney during the St. John’s University productions and they became good friends, working together with costumes for the production and recording for Jim's script — Jim seemed upset with me when Bill died in 2001 and has not spoken with me since.

I send a Christmas card every year, and hope that it will not be returned as addressee unknown…

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More on Pink Narcissus — HERE.

Interview with James Bidgood in Bright Lights Film Journal — HERE.

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