Black Sheep interviews Jeffrey Schwarz

WHY DON’T YOU KNOW WHO VITO RUSSO IS?
An interview with VITO writer/director, Jeffrey Schwarz

I am a 35-year-old gay man and, if it weren’t for the movies, I might not know who Vito Russo is. And I’m willing to lay down money that there is a strong chance that you have no idea whatsoever who he is either. If you do, that’s amazing. If you don’t, make sure you see Jeffrey Schwarz’s latest documentary, VITO, as soon as possible because, believe you me, whether you’re gay or straight, you need to know this man’s story.

“I think if you asked the average gay man or lesbian on the street in the 80’s or 90’s who Vito Russo was, 9 out of 10 people would be able to tell you,” Schwarz tells me when we meet at the TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre, the day before VITO is due to screen at the 2012 Toronto Inside Out LGBT Film Festival. “Now, not so much. As time goes on, memory starts to fade. I felt that it was really important to restore Vito to his proper place in the pantheon of gay heroes.”

Russo was an activist at his core. He spearheaded the gay rights liberation movement in New York; he is the founding father of gay film studies as we know it, having literally written the book on the subject (“The Celluloid Closet”); and he fought ferociously to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic, even though he too was slowly dying from the disease. His strength, bravery and relentless determination, as captured so well in VITO, bring me to tears time and time again when I hear of it.

Vito Russo in the Castro district, San Francisco

“A lot of people are having a very similar reaction,” Schwarz tells me, when I confide to him that his film had me bawling my eyes out in my living room. “The movie hopefully does what any movie should, which is illicit an emotional response. There is a lot of history in the film and the main motivation was to tell Vito’s story but also, through his eyes, tell the story of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement, to spark an interest in our history without it being a history lesson.”

Schwarz, as handsome and relaxed in this photo
as he was in person

The fact that the lesson needs to be taught at all demonstrates how far removed today’s generation of gay men and women have become from these initial struggles. While Schwarz wants to enlighten them, he doesn’t necessarily see this distance as negative. “I don’t know that younger people really stop to think about what came before them. In a way, that’s not really a bad thing. They just take it for granted; they get up in the morning and be who they are, which is a beautiful thing, and that’s what Vito wanted. The gay liberation movement at the time was raising issues that they knew wouldn’t come to pass for generations. They helped to create the world that we live in today.”

VITO is Schwarz’s third feature length documentary. When not making features, he works tirelessly (there are currently 119 titles to his credit as director, according to his IMDB page, 300 as producer) creating extras for DVD releases, including masterpieces like RAGING BULL and BLUE VELVET. He is currently raising funds for his next feature, a documentary about another gay icon whose history is becoming more and more obscure, Divine, the world’s premiere drag queen. Before that though, VITO will be hitting HBO (click for details) this summer and Schwarz couldn’t be happier about the sizable audience this opportunity will bring to the film.

“I made VITO for our community but at the same time, I made it for the world. He is obviously inspirational to the gay community but he can certainly inspire anyone, as long as you’re the kind of person who wants to change the world. His story really shows that one person can make a difference.”

Russo, at one of his final and most important demonstrations

Thank you, Mr. Schwarz, for telling his story. Now, you too have made a difference as well.

VITO screens tonight at the 2012 Inside Out LGBT Film Festival, at 7:00 PM, at TIFF Bell Lightbox. The charismatic Mr. Schwarz will be in attendance. Visit the festival website for details.

SPEECHLESS

SPEECHLESS
Written and Directed by Simon Chung
Starring Pierre-Mathieu Vital and Gao Qilun

Hong Kong director, Simon Chung’s latest film, SPEECHLESS, rendered me just so when I first began to immerse myself in its quiet and patient beauty. It embodies a truly progressive movement in gay cinema, one where stories transcend the inherit issues that come with being gay without sacrificing them whatsoever. SPEECHLESS boasts a solid and sensitive screenplay that allows Chung’s visual language as a director to shine through. And you’ve gotta love a movie that starts with a hot French guy completely disrobing for a naked dip in a river somewhere in the middle of the incredibly picturesque South of China.

This naked man, known mostly throughout the film as the foreigner and played by Pierre-Mathieu Vital, says nothing to the Chinese police officers who bring him in after he is found on a river bank, passed out and being poked at with sticks by local children. They aren’t sure at first if he is just being difficult or not but eventually send him to a psychiatric hospital for treatment under the belief that his inability to speak is trauma induced. They are correct in their assumption and the rest of the film becomes a journey to piece together precisely what this mystery man is running away from. Luke, as we come to know the foreigner’s name to be later on, is joined by Jiang (Gao Qilun), a nurse who helps Luke escape the authorities to pursue his past. Their chemistry is undeniable.

The film may be called SPEECHLESS but Chung is anything but that, showcasing his voice as a director loud and clear with his latest. He exhibits great promise and confidence as a director with the potential to play to audiences around the world. By saying very little in the moment, SPEECHLESS speaks volumes long after its done.

SPEECHLESS has its Canadian Premiere at the 2012 Inside Out LGBT Film Festival in Toronto on Wednesday, May 22. Visit the festival website for more details.

NAKED AS WE CAME

NAKED AS WE CAME
Written and Directed by Richard LeMay
Starring Ryan Vigilant, Benjamin Weaver, Karmine Alers and S. Lue McWilliams

If you’re the type of person who likes your movies melancholic and melodramatic, than NAKED AS WE CAME is the movie for you. This is not to say that the film doesn’t satisfy on these levels, but rather that you have to be prepared to dive into a particular mood for the entirety of the film. If you are properly armed to handle the onslaught of yelling and screaming in this family drama, then you may actually leave in tears. With films like this one, that is the point.

Elliot and Laura (Ryan Vigilant and Karmine Alers) are hardly model children. They run the family laundry business in New York City like dutiful offspring, but they bear so much resentment toward their deceased father for saddling them with this responsibility (let alone destroying their family) and their still living mother for, well, just being a bad mother to them while they were growing up. When they return home for the first time in over a year to insist that their aging mother (played with great fervor by S. Lue McWilliams) return with them to live out the rest of her years, they find that she barely has days left to live. To further aggravate the situation, which is truly unnecessary with these three high strung characters, the mother has a live-in houseguest that no one can quite figure out (Benjamin Weaver).

I often did not understand why everyone in NAKED AS WE CAME felt the need to yell all the time. Sometimes I laughed out loud at how ridiculous they were all being but other times, I was unexpectedly punched in the stomach by how honest they were being. And while it may feel claustrophobic at times to be trapped with this much drama, I came out the other side feeling a little less burdened and little more learned.

Black Sheep was also fortunate enough to interview the film's director during the festival and that goes a little something like this ...

LET'S GET NAKED

An interview with NAKED AS WE CAME writer/director, Richard LeMay

Richard LeMay wears many a hat, from producer to writer and director, depending on the day. This weekend he is in Toronto for the Inside Out LGBT 2012 Film Festival and wearing all his hats at once to present his latest film, NAKED AS WE CAME. Given how much responsibility that has to come with, LeMay is as cool as can be when we chat just hours before his film screens.

“I really didn’t know what I was doing at first,” LeMay explains when I ask how he managed to begin building his impressive independent resume. “I didn’t go to film school. I just started making movies.” This does not always bode well for the finished product but LeMay credits the LGBT audience for providing him with the chance to develop his craft. “When it comes to this market, there is always a need for content. This is not necessarily a good thing because my first couple of movies weren’t very good.”

LeMay himself

His latest, NAKED AS WE CAME, is quite good. It still reads like an independent feature made by an untrained filmmaker but the emotion is quite palpable and effective, proving LeMay’s strength with character and story. This particular story finds a brother and sister (Ryan Vigilant and Karmine Alers) returning home to find out about and subsequently deal with their mother’s (S. Lue McWilliams) imminent death. I found it to be quite depressing but LeMay sees it quite differently.

“I’ve always thought of it as a funny movie,” he begins. “When you see it alone in your living room, its a very different experience from seeing it with a crowd of people.” He’s probably right considering alone in my living room is exactly how I saw it.

LeMay drew from experiences with his friends for the inspiration behind NAKED AS WE CAME. In one year, seven of his closer friends lost loved one’s and one in particular, actually had the chance to say goodbye before it happened. “It is one of the most painful things one can go through but it is also an incredible gift because not everyone gets the opportunity.” It is not directly about any one experience but LeMay still tried to be as honest as he could be. “I just tried to be as truthful to where I thought it could go.”

LeMay, second from right, on Naked as We Came set

LeMay and I chat a bit about the present and future state of gay cinema before I let him go to experience the glorious Toronto weather. Something he says about a question he had a recent screening though I think best captures where the genre is heading. “This one guy commented that the film has a very European ending and that he wishes it could have been a happy one instead. For me, it is a happy ending though. These characters are not succumbing to their patterns; they’re breaking them.”

MORGAN

MORGAN
Written by Michael D. Akers and Sandon Berg
Directed by Michael D. Akers
Starring Leo Minaya and Jack Kesy

For a movie about how no obstacle can stand in the way of true love, MORGAN is awfully depressing. When we first meet the title character in Michael D. Akers’ latest gay-themed love story, he is getting out of bed to what seems like a pretty meaningless existence. He is recently handicapped and, after wheeling himself to the fridge for a beer, he plops himself on the couch and just starts piling them back and watching television. The man just got up and the movie just got started. I miss the days when gay meant happy.

Structurally, MORGAN is extremely straight forward. In fact, at first, it is almost unbearably so. Morgan, played by sweet-faced, Leo Minaya, used to be a basketball and cyclist trophy winner before his accident. His mother (Madalyn McKay) dotes on him but sees him as a burden; his best friend is a sassy, black girl (Darra Boyd), who incidentally has about as much sass as a door stop; and he can’t seem to get his, uh, equipment to work. Basically, everything is set up so that by the time Morgan meets Dean (Jack Kesy) in a park one night, the audience is ready to let love overcome all of Morgan’s misfortune. They have no other choice really.

My being a sucker for a pretty face and a naive champion of love conquering all, I fell for the journey these two boys took to find love, despite the corny dialogue and sometimes forced delivery. Some of the harder questions, like how they can be intimate with each other or how they both wish he could still walk, are touched on in some of the film’s more engaging moments. The trouble is they find love way too soon, which leaves Akers with way too much time to fill after the fact. Subsequently, MORGAN amounts to a reasonably effective, somewhat endearing but mostly missed opportunity to celebrate how any one can find love if they’re open to seeing it.

MORGAN screens as part of the Toronto Inside Out LGBT film festival on Sunday, May 20, at 2:00 PM. Visit the festival website for details and tickets.

MY BROTHER THE DEVIL

MY BROTHER THE DEVIL
Written and Directed by Sally El Hosaini
Starring James Floyd, Fady Elsayed and Said Taghmaoui

Rashid and Mo (James Floyd and Fady Elsayed) are, on the one hand, the kinds of brothers parents dream of having. Rashid, being the older of the two, looks after his little brother in the tough East London neighborhood they call home. He tries to keep him in school and away from trouble with the local gangs. But when you are surrounded by drugs, guns and violence every day, it isn’t easy to avoid it altogether. This is especially difficult when the very brother that you idolize and that is trying to protect you, is also running with those same gangs.

In MY BROTHER THE DEVIL, one incident triggers these brothers’ unravelling. When Rashid’s best mate, Izzy (Anthony Welsh) is shot and killed in a gang fight that Rashid is involved in, and that Mo witnesses, the reality of life sets in immediately. Rashid realizes that life isn’t a game, that when you’re dead, you’re dead. Mo meanwhile has a different reaction. The killing disturbs him but he still fights for a place in his brother’s gang just as his brother is trying to get out. While Mo struggles to find himself and emulate his brother, Rashid deals with the same internal conflict to know who he is now that he has lost his friend. He eventually finds comfort in the arms of Sayyid (Said Taghmaoui), a mutual friend of Izzy’s, and then neither brother knows who they are anymore.

MY BROTHER THE DEVIL is Sally El Hosaini’s first feature film as a writer and director. Her biggest success before this one would be as assistant director on Paul Greengrass’s GREEN ZONE, which I despised. Fortunately, she did not take on Greengrass’s infamously shaky camera aesthetic. She demonstrates a strong sense of sensitivity toward her characters but doesn’t sacrifice any of the reality needed to make a story like this believable. And while it doesn’t bring anything necessarily new to the table, the brothers themselves are a convincing pair. Their once internal struggles become an amalgamated problem that threatens to ruin their relationship. To watch them fight to save it is moving.

MY BROTHER THE DEVIL was the opening night selection for the 2012 INSIDE OUT LGBT film festival. It runs until May 27 in Toronto.