I just saw a film called “Gypsy 83,” which is wonderful and available on DVD. At the Toronto Film Festival, I heard people comparing my film, “Bam Bam and Celeste” to it, and so I was really curious. Who knew there was another fag/fag-hag road picture?! Where have I been? True, I am not always up on the most current releases. I am just so used to being disappointed by film that I don’t look in anticipation of anything new. There is something good every once in a while, but that is never enough to make me think that the local multiplex is going to have anything to offer me.
But “Gypsy 83” is something else. First of all, it stars the superduperfaghagulous Sara Rue. Rue plays Gypsy, an aspiring singer and Stevie Nicks uberfan, who lives in Sandusky, Ohio and wraps her fringed shawls and finger-less long sleeve gloved arms around her young gay boyfriend Clive, played with exquisite gothic abandon by Kett Turton. They leave their hometown and embark for New York City, for “Night of 1000 Stevies” at Mother. They have encounters with frat boys, wayward Amish, and gorgeous Karen Black. As they make their way east, their relationship shifts and grows: transitions that are both painful and enlightening.
I found the really emotional moments difficult to watch, mostly because of their honesty. I am so inexperienced with seeing my own story told on the screen that when I do see it, I want to avert my eyes. It is a self-conscious bashfulness, an immature involuntary reflex borne out of ignorance of experience. It must be the same way indigenous peoples shrink from the camera’s lens. They believe their souls will be taken away, because how can image be separated from identity?
People who are used to seeing their stories in the movies (and will only go to the movies if their stories are being told) think nothing of the loss of soul, because they have found that an audience’s validation can replace it. How nice for them. I would love to see more evidence of our existence in the movies, but even at the slightest glimmer of my reality, I want to cover my eyes. They need a little time to become accustomed to the light. “Gypsy 83” was for me, the emotional equivalent of looking directly into the blazing sun.
Sara Rue’s sweet and raw performance is at the heart of the film’s truth. I wish I could act that well. And I wish I could be that pretty. She is the most beautiful woman and a formidable talent. And – it’s like she is playing me in the movie of my life!!! I urge everyone to see this film, and I am sad I missed its theatrical run. I hope that “Bam Bam and Celeste” can do the newly forged fag-fag hag road picture genre justice. I think our films would make a great double bill, like pairing “Badlands” with “Natural Born Killers.”
