Film Review: "Resident Alien"

Last thoughts for now, maybe, on Quentin Crisp and my own reaction to him.  Last night I watched, once again, the documentary Resident Alien, released in 1990.  This morning I again tried to track down who the various people in this documentary were.

It’s an odd documentary.  In some ways, the sections I like most are the staged scenes.   The film begins with a black-and-white parody of….well, my guess is a cheap, sensational, (bad?) science fiction film of the early 1950s—perhaps even something by Ed Wood.  Crisp walks down an empty alley in New York and is suddenly confronted by a bum declaring “I know you!”

In another scene, John Hurt, who played Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant, faces Crisp through a fake mirror.  The two smile, nod, and acknowledge one another.  It’s charming.

But the film as a whole is a documentary that doesn’t quite document.  But I suppose that’s one style of “documentary.”  Crisp amazes me with the number of people he knows (not really surprising, since one of his ambitions was to know everyone in the world!).  Thanks to this film, I’m now familiar with the the writers Hunter Madsen, Marshall Kirk, and Guy Kettelhawk; the painters David McDermot and Peter McGough; the painter Franco; the chanteuse Holly Woodlawn; the performance artist Susana Ventura (aka Penny Arcade); the painter Patrick Angus; and the writer Felicity mason (aka Anne Cumming).  I haven’t run into this many “friends of the main character” since I started reading about William S. Burroughs—and they’re all generally interesting folks!

But I had to work at this, since the film simply follows Crisp around as he visits these people or they talk about him.  The film uses no captions to identify anyone; you have to pay attention (or rewatch repeatedly).

And I’m not sure I learned much from this documentary that I didn’t already know from Civil Servant or the sequel, An Englishman in New York.  Several people have made the case that Crisp was a profoundly unhappy individual and an embarrassment to the Gay Movement.  But he never intended to be a part of any “movement.”  He held what seems a rather Calvinist view of humanity (“If people got what they deserved, everyone would starve”), and yet what impresses is the extent to which he seems to have been at peace with himself.  He realized early on what he was and how he wanted to live; he proceeded to live that way.  By age seventy he had become “one of the stately homos of England”—but not a celebrity until the release of Civil Servant.  Moving to New York in the aftermath of the film, he did become a celebrity; and seemed to feel that he and the human race had at last met and accepted one another.  He still generated controversy and hostility, but he felt accepted in New York, apparently, in a way he had never felt accepted in London.

Finally, he was witty, he was provocative—he’s been called the closest thing to Oscar Wilde that we’ve had recently.  In life he seems to have been a warm and considerate if somewhat distant person.  Considering the gender issues he grew up with and faced head-on when British society would have preferred to ignore them, that’s not bad at all.  Certainly a person worth knowing and knowing better.

Review: "An Englishman in New York"

Two watchings now of An Englishman in New York and I’m still processing what to make of it.  It isn’t straight-forward, at least for me.  The Naked Civil Servant, which dealt with Quentin Crisp’s life in England seems simpler, more funny.  Its sequel strikes me as more problematical, more ambiguous.  Of course, the story of a man growing old is bound to be different from the story of a man coming of age.  But the films also deal with different places and times.  New York is not London.  And the 1970s and 1980s are not the 1930s and 1940s.

For now, I just want to say a few things about the second film, the film about New York, share my initial reactions, and suggest some deeper issues.

With the BBC broadcast of The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp has become a celebrity.  He is invited to New York to speak.  This is around 1980.  Arriving in Manhattan, he immediately falls in love with it.  And New York seems to fall in love with him.  But not for long.  Crisp misjudges the growing AIDS epidemic.  Fearing that the straight world will once again saddle homosexuals as the bearers of disease, Crisp suggests that AIDS is just the latest “fad.”  His remarks spark outrage, event cancellations—and even threats of violence against him personally.

In the meantime, Crisp has been introduced to the New York gay scene, and been asked to leave a gay bar because he and his friend were not dressed in the “appropriate” garb—in this case, construction outfits, leather, or shirtless.  It’s a change for Crisp, who in England had always been bullied for not looking “straight.”  But this is New York after Stonewall.

Now, feeling like a relic of a bygone time, he meets Susana Ventura, aka Penny Arcade, who invites him to join in her performance art.  He is still relevant, she tells him, pointing out the prevalence of gay-on-gay discrimination, pointing out the rise of the commercialism of the “pink dollar,” decrying the party culture of body building and drug taking where deviation from the new gay “norm” means expulsion.  Crisp continues onstage into his eighties.

He has also met a young artist, Patrick Angus.  Crisp helps to win him some recognition, despite mainstream feedback that his paintings are “too gay” and “dirty.”  Angus lives long enough to see some success, before dying from complications of AIDS.

By the end of the film, Crisp has become an icon all over again.  He is now donating thousands to AIDS research.  Speaking at a gay club in Florida, he sums up his attitude towards life, urging people to ask themselves, “Is there anything inside that you have not yet unpacked?”  He dies having returned to England for a speaking tour.

That’s the outline.  Within this lie questions about the value of being yourself, being who you are; questions of how to behave when you are part of a despised minority.  What is the value of art and artifice for an individual?  What is the value of politeness and civility?  

Crisp had an oddly Calvinist attitude.  He said he didn’t believe in “rights.”  If everyone got what they deserved, he said, everyone would starve.  And he didn’t believe in an afterlife.  He made other controversial remarks in addition to the “AIDS fad” remark, but they aren’t covered in this film.

I plan a report, though, on the related documentary, Resident Alien.  Curiously, the documentary was released in 1990, when Crisp was still alive.  An Englishman in New York appeared in 2009, ten years after his death.  In some ways the film builds on the documentary.  Curious also is the interaction between Sting and his song/video (“An Englishman in New York”), and Crisp, and the documentary (in which Sting appears).   But more on that later.

Getting to Know Quentin

As I get further and further into watching films about Quentin Crisp, I realize the depth of the questions raised here.  
 

Now you may ask, “Why should any of us care about Quentin Crisp?”  For myself I can say that I was profoundly affected by watching The Naked Civil Servant.  And why was that?

It was that a man who was profoundly different—because homosexual and effeminate—chose to live openly and take the consequences.  He believed that people didn’t understand effeminate homosexuals and so feared them.  He was determined to show people that effeminate homosexuals were nothing to be afraid of.  

But here, already, we run into a quandary.  He was indeed no one to be afraid of.  He was beaten up by men, or gangs of men, on multiple occasions.  He always remained polite, considerate—and never hit back.  After release of the film The Naked Civil Servant he was asked, “So you never struck back because that would have reduced you to their level?” and he replied, “Oh no.  I never hit back because they would have killed me.”

Having grown up in the time of Martin Luther King, and having also been deeply affected by watching the film Gandhi, the idea of standing against oppression appealed to me.  The idea of non-violent resistance appealed to me.

But Quentin avoided “movements.”  He did not attempt political action.  He simply asserted who he was, and took the consequences.  This strikes me as much more problematical.  And yet this idea exerted a strong influence on me in the years after I learned about Quentin.  And yet:  Had any of his attackers actually killed Quentin, we would probably never have heard of him.

I’m currently rewatching the sequel to The Naked Civil Servant.  More on that shortly.

Experiences Poly…Gay

I’ve been back rereading some books and rewatching some films of gay literature, in particular Andrew Holleran’s novel Grief and the film The Naked Civil Servant, dealing with Quentin Crisp.  I tried to go on to the film’s sequel, An Englishman in New York, made thirty years after the first film, but the DVD was damaged.  I’ve also read the autobiographical novels of Edmund White, and one of his memoirs; plus the earlier novels of Christopher Isherwood.

Isherwood left England in 1929 to live in Germany.  When Hitler came to power, he spent some years moving from country to country, before settling in California in 1939.

Crisp spent most of his life in England, where homosexuality was illegal, but spent his last years in New York, in the time “after Stonewall.”

Andrew Holleran was a member of the “Violet Quill,” a group of gay writers who met and exchanged ideas in New York in the early 1980s.  Several have since dealt with life since the AIDS pandemic.

One theme I’ve picked up on is the great sense of liberation which followed the gradual loosening of anti-gay laws, leading to many people feeling that “anything goes.”  Edmund White remarks that, during the first years of the AIDS epidemic, he was puzzled by the advice to “know your partners.”  Wasn’t the whole point that you could just have sex with anyone, as many strangers and however often you wanted?  Holleran’s novel Dancer From the Dance apparently deals with drugs and gay orgies at Fire Island.  In An Englishman in New York, Quentin Crisp and his friend are asked to leave a gay club in New York because they’re dressed “normally” rather than bare to the waist or in leather.

I’m still tossing around the question of how much “poly” is an orientation (“I’m naturally happier with several lovers”) and how much it’s an ethic we can choose.

For me, “anything goes” has to have limits:  I need openness and honesty.  I need mutual respect and caring.  Then “anything that works for all involved goes.”

Postscript to The Naked Civil Servant

The Naked Civil Servant, the film based on the autobiography of Quentin Crisp, is lighthearted and inspiring.  It’s inspiring in part because it is lighthearted.  Crisp took a lot of heat for being who he was: An honest, open, "effeminate" homosexual, back in the 1930s in England, when homosexuality was a criminal offense. The way he tells his story, part of how he survived was through a lighthearted approach to his troubles—you don’t see much angst in this film.  He and his friend, the club-footed woman, do discuss suffering to some extent; but it’s brief.

It’s possible that the only way someone could survive the indignity of constant contempt was to be honest and whimsical.  This combination provides the charm to this film.

In preparing to watch the sequel, The Englishman in New York, it helps to consider a few questions implied by the first film.

What are the roles of sex, of love, of friendship, of compassion, in this film?

At several points in the film, Quentin professes never to have experienced love; of course, he’s speaking of conventional love:  Between man and woman.  But it’s not clear whether Quentin experiences love towards anyone.  His first sexual experiences are as a male prostitute.  He and his clients get sex, and he gets money.  What might a gay man expect to get at that time?

He has relationships with four men in the course of the film:  The first is a man known only as Thumbnails (his thumbnails are somehow misshaped).  But Crisp claims this love was never sexual.  The second is a civil servant.  This is sexual, but not terribly exciting.  The third is a large man known as Barn Door, who after knowing Quentin awhile, declares they should sleep together; then, after another while, declares they should stop.  The fourth is a Polish man who has spent some years in a mental institution and is “sexual, but impotent.”  Not a very fulfilling list.

He has platonic friendships with several women:  The club-footed woman, who eventually becomes a nun; the wife of the Pole; a ballet teacher who is his landlady for a while.  These connections seem deeper than the relationships with the men, though non-sexual.

Friendship runs deep in this film.  Quentin is a friend of the Pole long before they are lovers.  He is friends with both the Pole and his wife.  The Pole later divorces the wife and marries the club-footed woman.  Crisp remains friends with all of them.  He is loyal to them, and they are loyal to him.  At perhaps the climax of the film, when Crisp is arrested for soliciting (many years after giving up prostitution), his friends proclaim his good character in court and he is found not guilty.

Crisp is compassionate as well.  In his relationships with men, it is always the other man who initiates the connection.  When questioned about his relationship with the Pole, he declares:  “Love is never closing your hand, not even to the unlovable.”

Looking forward to the film’s sequel, one might also consider the role of fantasy and make-believe in Crisp’s life.  At the beginning of The Naked Civil Servant, Crisp suggests a central image might be him playing dress-up as a young boy.  Certainly part of his endurance came from his refusal to concede to anyone that he was doing anything wrong.

But how does a world of wit and fantasy confront the dark realities of AIDS?  This becomes a major theme of the sequel.