➤ DAVID HOCKNEY, from p.43
roadie for The Clash: “That was
better accepted, their fans loved
it but, again, it was confusing as
people still didn’t understand the
genre. Is it a doc or a feature?
Which seems very important to
people here in the states. My fi lms
were scripted, in a way, and everything
was designed to make a
point. I would set the dialogue the
night before, maybe write a couple
of lines for one of the actors — or
shall we say, performers. I’d say,
‘Can you ask this question to Celia?,’
and that would maybe prompt
something and vice-versa. As I was
also the camera operator, I couldn’t
have anything too complex, just
something to trigger a reaction.”
I told Hazan that, along with being
a splendidly intimate and rare
portrait of a great artist, I sincerely
think it is one of the best gay fi lms
ever made, and he replied, “What
I’m quite happy about is that after
the fi lm came out, David would receive
phone calls in the UK from
boys who’d somehow gotten his
number, crying and saying, ‘So it’s
not wrong to be in love with another
boy?’
“‘Of course, it’s not,’ he’d say. ‘It’s
totally normal.’ At that time, homophobia
was considered normal,
but we treated this as something
normal. I didn’t know how else to
do it. And it certainly was normal
in Hockney’s milieu. It wasn’t
something I invented, I just refl ected
it.”
As I write this column on the
eve of Pride Sunday, I am pallning
to join the Reclaim Pride Queer
Liberation March. I am both exhilarated
and exhausted by the wondrous,
seemingly endless celebrations
of us that have been going on
all month. Highlights included: the
Saks Fifth Avenue affair at Edition
Hotel (June 4), where Kesha fully
expressed her love and support
of the LGBTQ community with a
mini-concert of her most beloved
hits which further enfl amed a totally
lit crowd; Broadway Bares’
annual strip extravaganza, “Take
Off” (June 16), one of their best and
sexiest in its 27-year history, which
made a point of having two older
gays schooling two age-ist twinks
on the importance of the Stonewall
Uprising, raising a record
$2,006,192 for Broadway Cares/
Equity Fights AIDS; the New-York
Historical Society’s comprehensive
gay history exhibit , “Stonewall 50”
and uber-fun disco party (June
11), matched by the New York Public
Library’s similarly themed “The
Library After Hours: Pride” show
and fête (June 21), which I particularly
loved as it was delightful
to see so many queers awe-struck,
many for the very fi rst time, by this
fecund marble expanse of gay lit we
had totally taken over, with young
‘uns spiritedly performing trenchant
excerpts from Baldwin, Capote,
Woolf, and others in its holdings.
Then there was Macy’s free
Pride + Joy soiree, which turned
two fl oors of its men’s department
into a saturnalia of cocktails, snocones,
photo ops, vogueing, spirited
concertizing by Big Freedia
and “Drag Race” Season 10 winner
Aquaria, and, of course, shopping,
where seemingly every designer
had magically transformed the
Rainbow motif (which, frankly, I
have oft found to be a tad cornball,
not to mention busy) into garments
with true style and elan.
On June 28, I threw myself
for the fi rst time into the gorgeously
free-for-all ethos of the
Drag March, starting in Tompkins
Square, which immediately
evoked fond old school memories
of the thrilling, loosey-goosey days
of Wigstock and the Pride March,
itself, when there were less police
and commercialism, and nobody
had to fucking register to march,
f’Chrissakes. The biggest ever, two
block-long peacock cortege wound
up in front of the Stonewall Bar,
of course, where Lady Gaga and
Alicia Keys had earlier done their
praise-fi lled bit for us and where
tradition demanded the annual
singing of “Somewhere Over the
Rainbow.” With the incredible infl
ux of an estimated millions of
international tourists here, making
not only my Christopher Street
neighborhood, but all of New York
magnifi cently looking tres, tres gay,
I can only paraphrase the marveling
words of our St. Judy in another
of her cherished epics, “Meet
Me in St. Louis”: “I can’t believe
it. Right here where we live! Right
here in New York City!”
A BIGGER SPLASH | Directed by
Jack Hazan | Metrograph, 7 Ludlow
St., btwn. Canal & Hester Sts.;
metrograph.com
GayCityNews.com | July 4 - July 17, 2019 45
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