A comic book that tells the story of dog-headed gay male escorts living in a London world of sex, drug dealers and porn stars isn’t going to be the easiest sell to a casual reader. Certainly The Lengths won’t be for everyone, but Hardiman has taken this dark and potentially bleak backdrop and created a book that’s warm, sometimes funny and ultimately very engaging. Kes Seymour reviews

Eddie is an art-school drop-out who is starting up a relationship with an old friend, Dan, who he hasn’t seen for a few years. As well as having to deal with the usual insecurities that arise at the start of any relationship, Eddie is also trying to keep his other life as ‘Ford’ the male escort a secret from Dan. The struggle that results from leading two very separate lives, and trying to juggle the relationships within both, underpins The Lengths. Has Eddie immersed himself too far in one world to allow himself to find happiness in a loving relationship in the other?

What could be an insular proposition for a story is made accessible by Hardiman’s brilliant characterisation. You may not have a male escort or a drug dealer in your life (what sheltered lives some of us lead…), but you will certainly know an Eddie or Dan-type and empathise with their day-to-day relationships and dilemmas and it’s this familiarity that draws you in to an otherwise potentially impenetrable world.

Hardiman has said that The Lengths is based on interviews with people in the sex-trade as well as his own experiences and there is a definite sense of just how personal this story is. The characters feel real (which is even more remarkable as they sport the heads of dogs!) and are instantly recognisable in both their actions and inactions. I’m not sure how much of the character of Eddie comes from Hardiman himself but you can almost feel the author’s frustration at Eddie and his questionable choices. “I’m a fuckwit,” Eddie thinks to himself after further jeopardising things with Dan and you can’t help but agree with him. As a reader you want to reach into the page and shake Eddie to stop him making bad decisions that will ultimately lead him too far down a path he won’t be able to return from.

As well as having to “work weird hours” as Ford, we learn that Eddie’s insecurity comes from his previous romances. These are explored through flashbacks and remembered conversations with former lovers and boyfriends. Eddie is obsessed with Nelson, a bodybuilder and fellow escort, but this love is unrequited and has left Eddie in freefall. We also get to see glimpses of Eddie’s previous relationship with James, a laid-back character who gives Eddie free reign to do as he pleases which seems to cause their undoing. These experiences have left Eddie in an emotional crisis and play a huge role in undermining his fledgling romance with Dan.

But while the relationships between Eddie, Dan, Nelson and Ford are what draw the reader in, it’s the characters’ relationship with the city that I found the most fascinating. London looms large in The Lengths. Its presence is felt in almost every panel, towering over the players, making them seem very small and isolated. This is a very separate London to the everyday. It’s a lonely place that feels hard and uncaring; the isolation further highlighted by the absence of any women or children in the story. It’s an unfamiliar London. All of its landmarks can be seen but there’s a sense of foreboding about them; the art portrays the characters looking lost among the buildings as if being penned in and trapped.

I’ve painted The Lengths as being quite austere in tone, but there is a genuine humour present here that’s often quite unexpected. I found myself laughing quite a few times at things that maybe on the surface don’t lend themselves to comedy. Even the fact that the characters are held so much in London’s grip leads to a surprise funny moment with Eddie fantasising about spending a lottery win on an annual Oyster Card. There are some funny references to popular culture that fanboys will enjoy (Eddie’s Yoda ringtone always makes me grin and there’s a comical intergenerational conversation about Doctor Who) along with a knowing nod to the idea of comics themselves (“Do I tell him, or try to lead this stupid double life? Like a superhero”).

Of course, the question that continually arises is ‘Why dogs?’ Hardiman has said that “people care more about dogs than humans”, but I think he may be slightly tongue-in-cheek when he says this. Considering this story is based on real life experiences, the dogs certainly allow a level of anonymity to the lives being written about. It also cleverly lends itself to being able to recognise character traits by just looking at what type of dog they are; for example the muscular, but slightly dangerous Nelson is portrayed as a rottweiler/bull terrier type, whereas the safer, more faithful characters such as Dan and James are portrayed as friendly, loyal breeds (highland terriers and retrievers/spaniels – sorry, my knowledge of dog breeds isn’t that great!). I’m dying to see what sort of character a poodle would be. Or a chihuahua.

Over the course of the first three issues of The Lengths you can see a real progression with both Hardiman’s storytelling skills and his artwork. With the first issue you can sense that he is finding his voice and learning how to pace the story, while the art feels slightly sketchy and lacks confidence. A lot of The Lengths is told in flashbacks and its portrayal is slightly unclear, requiring a second or third reading to make complete sense of the narrative. But these are minor quibbles with what is obviously an ambitious and complicated story that is trying to be told. Certainly by the second and third issue, Hardiman’s storytelling skills have sharpened and his art becomes bolder and starts to flow beautifully across the pages.

I like The Lengths a lot and I really recommend you hunting it down. It’s certainly not your average comic book but while being set in an initially unfamiliar world, The Lengths reveals itself to be a tale that is easy to empathise with. Hardiman tells a very human story with his dog-headed characters. With a focus on relationships, both at their cautious beginnings and messy ends, and the insecurities felt and the mistakes made, it is ultimately a story that readers can relate to.

I’ve read somewhere that The Lengths is going to be limited to just eight issues. I certainly hope that this isn’t the case as Hardiman has created an intelligent comic with thought-provoking characters that can challenge and entertain for a good while yet to come.

• Buy The Lengths here
• Howard Hardiman’s dot com

In 1969, the Australian public would know Roger Ward’s face from TV shows like Skippy. Less than a year later, he would gain tabloid infamy thanks to Frank Brittain’s film based on his novel The Set. Originally a candid look at sexual revolution sweeping the country’s teens, the screenplay jettisoned much of the material to focus on the gay and lesbian aspects of the story. It became a sensation and a huge success. Ward later went on to appear in cult classics like Mad Max and has now published the full text of the novel

What were the defining staples of “the heady days of Australia’s sexual revolution”? How does The Set embody them?

The late 50s/early 60s was a time of abortion, unwanted pregnancy, and shotgun weddings. Where getting the birth control pill when it did arrive, meant a demeaning trip to one’s local doctor. It was a time when sex was never discussed in public and if a young man wished to buy a condom he went to a chemist or drug store, an experience that put them into a lather of perspiration. And even though the age of consent was 16, an unplanned pregnancy meant shame, humiliation, and estrangement from your family

I have tried to cover this humiliation, this shame, and have attempted to describe the terror felt by a teenager facing sex during the 50s and 60s. There was no birth control pill until 1961 and even then it was available only through prescription to married women and there was no words of wisdom or information from one’s parents; a situation that led to Tony’s inability to offer Carolyn a permanent and secure relationship and certainly no desire to go ‘all the way’ for neither one wanted pregnancy, a common fate during that time.

Common because the revolution had started.

It began through adventurous and oversexed teenagers such as the go getting Leah who was prepared to offer her body as a stepping stone to the top of her profession. By Louise, Paul’s first girl friend who was European and had an open mind toward all things sexual.

Sex was a constant with Peg, having been forced into wedlock at 16, she was frightened her daughter Carolyn may have inherited her genes, and her mind floated between a mother’s angst at her daughter enjoying the same pleasures of the flesh that she had at the same age and her dismay that she may be ‘doing it’ with Tony, the young man she also dreamt of seducing.

Later, because of his inability to rise to the occasion when he entered the trap she set, Peg feels free and at ease with the world because she now knows this callow youth could never initiate sex with her daughter. She moves on then to enjoy her more experienced partners.

Paul also experiments with sex, firstly with the provocative Louise and then with various men. His homosexual bent having come to the fore when the deed was forced upon him, but after overcoming the shock he enjoys the act and sets about procuring it.

Tony also disregards his initial fear and attempts to go ‘all the way’ with Carolyn but when her fear overcomes her desire, he drifts toward his latent interest in Paul.

I feel I have shown, in the attitude and actions of my characters, a gradual relaxation of the built in sexual fear, held by most, as the book moves from the late 50s into the early 60s.

Comparatively, how do the struggles of the GLBTQ community differ between Australia 1970 and Australia 2011?  What were the major struggles then and conversely, what are they now?

You’re talking 1970s because that was when the film was released. The film rights were actually sold in 1967 and the book that it was based upon was written in 1960 onward from notes and diaries created from 1954. So my observations were not from the 1970s but from the 50s through to the late 60s.

However I can still answer your question.

Historically the gay community has been hounded for an eternity. And a person of that persuasion was, at that time at least, considered to be some sort of freak, someone to be laughed at, to be ridiculed, derided, beaten up, ostracized, even put to death. And ironically, while I was in the French outpost of Tahiti writing the first pages of The Set, the National Assembly of France declared homosexuality a “social scourge” and urged the government to take action against it. Although a light did begin to glow at the end of the tunnel when in 1961, in a move possibly leading to the acceptance of my own material for film, a television station in San Francisco made and broadcast The Rejected – a documentary on homosexuals. So the change started to begin even then. It continued, in Australia and throughout the world to eventually cause the police department in New York City to change its policy of police entrapment of gay men, and rescinded its hiring practices designed to screen out gay people. And after the Stonewall riots in late June 1969 many within the emerging Gay Liberation movement in the US saw themselves as connected with the New Left rather than the established homophile groups of the time and the words “Gay Power” became a defiant answer to the rights-oriented homophile movement.

This power swept the world and those with homosexual tendencies began to gain a voice and threw off the cloak of shame that was traditionally worn and ‘came out’ as it were.

They were the true pioneers of the movement and have opened the flood gates of acceptance that have allowed the young people of today to kiss a same sex partner in the street, to hold hands, to cuddle in public, to hold highly esteemed positions in the corporate and public world and to marry their same sex partner. So, to my mind, the struggles of GLBTQ of today are minimal to what their forebears have been through.

What were the risks you faced in releasing the film The Set in 1970? Is there any risk in releasing the novel version of The Set today? Do you anticipate any societal scrutiny or backlash?

I felt no risk when I sold the film rights because the book is of a sociological nature, covering every aspect of life, adventure, the seeking of a career, family relationships, social behaviour, heterosexuality, nymphomania, older woman attracted to a younger man, and of course… homosexuality. It was only when the producer indicated the book was too large to be filmed in its entirety and that he would have to cut it that I had reservations. And it was not because of the demand, “I want you to lift every homosexual reference from the book and write a screen play on that”. It was the fact that my baby, the book I had spent almost ten years creating was to be cut to the bone. That my years of work would be relegated to a 130-page script, that was the thing what worried me. I was worried further when, upon arriving on set for the first day of filming, I discovered that the script that I had diligently written had been re-written and toyed with by not only the producer, but by his 24-year-old third wife and also Elizabeth Kata who had written the book A Patch of Blue. I was devastated to see the ruination of a previously polished and highly tuned script and spent my short time on set leaping in front of the camera’s yelling, “Cut! That is not the dialogue”. It got to the stage that the actors were ignoring the director and coming to me in a clandestine manner to ask for interpretations and the correct lines to say. Understandably the director was angered by this and I was packed up and sent out of town on a phony publicity tour so a lot of the film went through without my input or salvaging and ended up in what I thought at the time was a ‘cringeworthy state’. So the risks I faced at that time, and they were real risks and they did eventuate, was one of being a laughing stock, of being embarrassed for creating such a badly written script.

Understandably, but in a way, viciously, the film was slaughtered by the press. Although thankfully, and through the loads of publicity we had received during the making of the film, the general public were keen to see it and it became one of the highest earning Australian films of that time. Ironically, it has now become a cult film and enjoys Film Festival Showings through out the world to hand clapping and cheering young gays.

I now look forward to redeeming myself with the book. I certainly do not fear any backlash and would in fact welcome it if it came because the book is a true diary of the 50s and 60s, written at that time with the thought processes and mentality of one who lived them. So the only scrutiny I may receive will be from the ‘Literary Set’ who may think my raw descriptions of sexual intercourse, particularly the male-on-male and the female-on-female, although delicately done, may be pushing the boundaries. But I wrote the book to entertain, to inform and to illuminate. And I used the thread of both homosexuality and of the life saving movement, although poles apart in terms of subject matter, as a manner of education. Only a few know of the intricacies of the homosexual mind or of what they do behind closed doors, and only a few know of the fears and the dangers faced by the Australian Surf Life Saver and having had experience, either practical or by observation and research of both, I used them as a thread for the narration of the book.

I am pleased too, to have waited this long to publish, for had I taken the poorly paid offers to do so during the 70s, the book would have gone out as a contemporary novel. Now it is released as an historical, true diary of the 60s and gives an insight to the young readers of today how youth lived in that day, and to those of my own age, it will bring back so many memories of the way we lived and of what we thought.

What affect do you believe the film The Set has had on Australian GLBTQ culture? What affect do you believe the novel The Set will have on today’s Australian GLBTQ culture?

I know the film liberated a lot of young men, particularly when it was released. I know because I receive letters and emails even to this day from people who are now established businessmen, and even one from a New York lawyer, who thank me for allowing them to know that their feelings and instinct was not abnormal and that there were others out there like them. The film, they tell me, was a release, an opening of a door to lead a liberated life.

And in these later years, I notice young girls are coming to view the film as well, even though there is only a fleeting reference to lesbianism in the film they cheer and clap every time it is mentioned. They tell me, after the showing, that they absolutely love the film. So it has given many young men and possibly a few girls, a look at the sort of life they previously only fantasized about. It has given them the courage to come out of their shells and seek what they want. During these later screenings, I’m talking from 2000 onward, both males and females come to me to express their dismay at the manner the homosexuals of the day were treated.

The film has also been used as research by Ricardo Peach for his thesis that gained him his Doctor of Philosophy. Ricardo compared the homosexual life in Australia to that of their counterparts in Africa and commented that The Set was the first film to depict homosexuals as everyday people with regular jobs and an accepted appearance without the usual mincing outrageousness usually depicted.

And a Harley Street Psychiatrist asked to view the The Set by a censorship body in the UK came back with the reply, “Normal people acting in a normal manner”.

The book, on the other hand, can be enjoyed by all. It is not, I hasten to add, a gay and lesbian work. Although, I am happy to note that the gay and lesbian brigade in both the UK and Australia have taken it on as their own. It is also a general read for everyone who enjoys a page-turning yarn. Although I do surmise the younger generation of gays who now roam freely and without fear of prosecution or violence, will be appalled by the treatment of homosexuals in the book and of the clandestine efforts they resort to in an effort to protect themselves.

I really want the book of The Set to be taken as a work of entertainment, not as a drum-beating Gay Liberation scribe but, on the other hand, I want the gay reader to enjoy the work and to revel in the fact that their gender is being used as an everyday part of life, which it is, and has been, since man began.

What do you mean by: “The big screen adaptation of The Set could only ever hope to be a shadow of the real story”? In what ways does the novel adaptation expand on the real story that the film version could not?

No film, adapted from a large novel, can ever depict that story as the writer envisaged it. Disregarding the budget, no film can realistically be longer than two hours and it is obvious that if one squeezes a 500-page novel into a 150-page script, something has to give. And surmising we could do a 500-page script and shoot it as well (we’re getting into the mini series here), the thought processes, and the innuendos described by the author for his characters cannot be depicted on the screen, perhaps the actor may try to convey it, but it is not the same as having it spelt out in black and white print. But having said that, I do want the film to be remade and by God I’m having offers coming out of the woodwork, but this time I am being ultra careful as I will not allow the film to be made with the same embarrassment I experienced in 1970. As I mentioned before, I am leaning closer to doing a mini series because I do wish to cover every aspect of the content that is explored in the book.

You’re celebrated for playing ‘tough guys’ in action films such as Mad Max – acting work that has inspired Quentin Tarantino to call you “a legend”.  Ironically, most of your films appeal to a predominantly heterosexual male demographic. Has being an ‘out’ gay male actor made it difficult for you to land these roles? What bearing has your homosexuality had on your acting career?

The procurement of my acting work has always been based on my appearance and my ability to do the job. Fortunately I started acting at a very young age and because no matter what one does, be it cooking, needle work, performing operations, or pulling teeth, one is surely going to improve with experience, so by the time television came to Australia and with it the feature film, I had cut my teeth on stage work from the age of twelve, standup comedy from 14, educational radio drama from 16 and interspersed this with training from an off-shoot of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, weight training and martial arts. So by the time I was asked to audition for film and television, I was highly trained and experienced.

One’s sexual preference should not affect his ability to play the role he is offered. After all, gay or not, one is first and foremost an actor. And, in my own case, I have now performed in more than 80 feature films and over 2000 television roles, plus probably 50 stage plays in which I have played the gamut of hero, monster, womanizer, drag queen, boxer, wrestler, incestuous father, stroke victim, truck drivers, policemen, cowboys, bikers, and a serial killer. I have performed comedy, horror, drama and Shakespeare and never once was my sexual preference ever raised.

What do you say to other ‘tough guy’ gay actors who are contemplating staying in the closet to ‘protect’ their acting careers?

That has never been a problem in Australia, although I do believe it is an issue, or at least it was during the 50s and 60s and into the 70s in America. And I know of a number of actors over there who were forced to hide their preference during that time. Although I do believe it doesn’t matter now. Homosexuality is widely accepted in the streets, in the home by fellow family members and by big business, so why shouldn’t it be accepted in the world of make belief. In fact it appears to be a trend and a social high if one, particularly in the entertainment world, is supposedly gay.

There are a lot of tough guys out there, some in the film business others in areas of entertainment such as wrestling, boxing, martial arts, football, who happen to be gay so a sexual preference “does not maketh the man”. So I have no comment to make to anyone who wishes to hide their sexual preference, actors or not. I do remember though, when I first came to Sydney from my home town of Adelaide to break into the ‘big time’ and was called to see a well known producer. He greeted me warmly enough but after he had eyed up my rather attractive female companion whom I had chosen to take with me, he commented, “I do admire you Mister Ward, coming here, as a man, to try and break into films”.

So maybe being gay may have well been the way to go.

But I did pretty well anyway. Eighty films, 2000 television shows… That producer by the way, I think he’s forgotten it was me that he insulted that morning, because he’s now one of my biggest fans and a constant employer.

Do you plan on writing any other GLBTQ-focused films and/or novels? What projects are next on the horizon for Roger Ward?

Yes, I am working on a sequel to The Set, it will revolve around the five protagonists again but this time they’ll be in their 20s and it will be set in the USA, based around the film world.

I also have a trilogy based on two brothers who are war correspondents, and right now I’m looking for a suitable publisher or agent. They contain high action, romance and comedy. The first of them opens in Iraq and moves to New Zealand. While the second features New Zealand and Tahiti, and the third is set in New York and Iraq.

My other writing credits, films, documentaries, mini-series and TV specials are little known, hidden as they have been behind a pseudonym, as it was discovered long ago that despite the establishment not objecting to a gay actor playing the heavy, they did draw the line when that same actor dared to write a novel or film.

So I’m coming out now!

The book of The Set is now available in book shops throughout the UK and Australia and can be purchased from Amazon. It is also available as an ebook.

Luke Velazquez on the singular experience of the queer punk scene, reflected in the work of sculptor Fernando Carpaneda

In our society, people are expected to behave in a certain way. To grow up, go to school, work a soulless dead end job, squirt out a few kids for the good of the commonwealth and do so without question. But occasionally, a person, or a group of people, comes along and they pursue their own path – a path that draws the ire and the contempt of the masses, but also spawns jealousy and the desire for their lives to be so free of monotony. Eventually, these people find one another, and their numbers grow, turning into a community with its own set of ideals, values, beliefs and aesthetics. They turn their backs on the masses, which in turn, peek over their shoulders to catch a glimpse of their lives, and their ways, to see why they are so content to be living a life so different from all others.

Whether you’re a queer or a punk, it means that you’ve got an attitude that the masses disagree with, and that you’ve dedicated yourself to a life of constant scrutiny. But to be a queer punk means that even among your own kind, you can still be an outsider. As lines are drawn and ideas are solidified, people have been pushed out of either community. This happens for the sake of preserving everyone’s best interests, or to keep the scene ‘pure’. Despite this, however, we exist, and we walk the line between fringe groups, too gay to be a punk, too hardcore to be a fag. And even though discrimination happens, for every hater you’ll meet ten times as many supporters in the gay community or in the punk scene. No other social circles out there can say that they are as open minded or accepting as ours. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what side you stand on, as long as you’re proud of who you are.

The works of Fernando Carpaneda show us a world of carnal desire, where the line between queer and punk is non-existent. Here, we see men unafraid of embracing their libido and all the dark alleyways it may take them down. His depicts his punks, stripped of their studded leather jackets, tight pants and chains, bared naked to the world, so that we can see who they really are. This is done, less as an act of sexual depravity, and more an expression of their overt and undeniable masculinity. Fernando’s works serve as a reminder that sexuality is a pillar on which both the gay scene and the punk scene have drawn on for support, and despite all the differences, the two scenes will constantly look to one another for inspiration. So whether you’re gay, straight, bi or otherwise, a punk rocker or a scene queen: stay proud, stay true, stay queer.

—–

Fernando Carpaneda:Queer.Punk.
Open daily, June 26th to July 2nd,1-6pm
The Leslie/Lohman Basement Annex
127-B Prince Street, New York City, NY 10012

Carpaneda’s sculptures reflect the extraordinary side of the human element. Hustlers, rent boys, punk rockers, unknown artists, junkies, thieves and outcasts are recreated to the minutest detail in clay.  Parts of the artist’s own clothing are hand tailored into miniature wardrobes. In the style of the17th-century paintings of secular subjects, human hair and modern day relics are incorporated into each piece to reflect a sense of capturing a moment in time.The artist takes his inspiration from the urban element and uses the language of the street along with his own experiences with drugs and street life. His bold artistic statements  as a gay activist are painstakingly expressed through this controversial work. Often sexual in nature, his ‘in your face’ approach to the acceptance of gay sexuality and the Queer Punk lifestyle are recreated to provoke and inspire the observer.

Further Resources:

• Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation
• Fernando Carpaneda
• The Kymara Gallery

Real-life drug-busting narc Sonny Grosso was the inspiration for The French Connection, advised Coppola on The Godfather and cruised gay bars with Pacino. Story by Tina Bexson

A dozen or so shiny, black suits and their flashy women were enjoying the exotic floor show of Manhattan’s Copacabana nightclub, whilst the slick-haired man at the head of the table splashed the cash around. It was a sight that would change the lives of the two off-duty NYPD narcotics agents quietly sipping their drinks and surveying the scene from the terrace above.

The man with the dough was Pasquele “Patsy” Fuega, a major player in a Mafia-linked New York drugs ring. “I recognised a lot of the others as being dope pushers up in Harlem,” Detective Sonny Grosso recalls. “I told Egan and he wanted to put a tail of the Patsy at the end of the night.”

So Grosoo and partner Eddie Egan tailed Patsy and his bouffant blonde as they drove off on a stop-start tour of the Lower East Side, before heading across the East River and drawing up in front of a Brooklyn diner at 5am. Suspicion was aroused and they set up round-the-clock surveillance and wiretaps. That was just the beginning. During the next four months they uncovered an operation that had 50kg of heroin being smuggled from France to New York every six weeks for a quarter of a century.

The investigation culminated in one of the biggest drug hauls in American history, worth a mega ¢32m, all thanks to a chance encounter in a nightclub in 1961.

Shoot forward ten years, and chance changes Sonny Grosso’s life again. Up-and-coming filmmaker Phil D’Antoni and maverick director William Friedkin decide to turn the case into a film, The French Connection, based on Robin Moore’s factual book of the same name, and starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as Egan and Grosso (renamed Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo). Once released it became a worldwide box-office hit, winning five Oscars and beating A Clockwork Orange and The Last Picture Show for best film. It had it all: realistic locations, spontaneous camerawork, an unromantic portrayal of policing, and unbeatably pacey action. All of which proved ot be a major catalyst in the revival of the cop genre in the ‘70s, evident in movies such as Serpico and Dirty Harry.

The French Connection’s authenticity was down to advice from the experts. Friedkin immediately hired Egan (who died of cancer in 1995) and Grosso. Not only were they the film’s inspiration – both played small roles – but proved unbeatable technical advisors and location scouts. In fact, they were cinema’s first cop consultants, earning $150 each for working every day of the 60-day shoot as well as continuing 12-hour nightly shifts with the NYPD.

It wa the weeks in pre-production that helped dictate the raw undertones of Friedkin’s feature. Not only did Grosso and Egan grow up in East Harlem, it was also their beat, they knew the score. And in the weeks leading up to the shoot, Hackman, Scheider and Friedkin were taken on a journey they would never forget.

Grosso: “We let them run through the whole gambit with us: the investigations, arrests, even the paperwork and court appearances so they could see us testify. In the beginning they were all shocked by what they saw.

“The first time we hit a shooting gallery it was on 110th Street and 5th Avenue, that’s Harlem. There were about 20 people shooting p. One was a massive woman, about 260 pounds, with a tube around her arm and the needle still jabbed in a vein.

“They came with us when we hit the bars and interrogated people. No one knew they were actors and we let them question the dealers and addicts so they got to feel comfortable dealing with them as though they were policemen. That’s why the movie stands up so well, they’d done it for real.”

In one of two Harlem bar scenes, the extras were all cops posing as drug addicts and pushers. In the other, they were all off the street. “They were people Eddie and I had busted at one time or another. We went to see them at some centre where they were trying to re-habilitate themselves and when we asked if they wanted to be in the movie, they all jumped at the chance. It was that which gave it a real wild smell.”

There were a couple of gun-running scenes, so Grosso and Egan taught them exactly how to hold and fire the weapons during sessions at the police firing range. “They both used our guns in the film, too. Scheider also wore my watch and ring so he felt really comfortable. He wanted my shorts, but I wouldn’t let him have those.”

Scheider was, of course, an excellent choice to play Grosso – same build and colouration; and he hit the right note as the careful detective known for seeing the dark side to situations, hence the nickname “Cloudy” (given to him by Egan). Grosso was the perfect antidote to the flamboyant, risk-taking Egan who mastered disguises such as a hot dog vendor, a deaf mute and a priest. He was nicknamed “Popeye” for his constant “popeying” around Manhattan’s drinking holes. As Grosso says: “He was a real character, way out there, and a great cop.”

Egan’s idiosyncrasies are marked out early in the film. His bizarre method of confusing suspects during interrogation by asking them whether they “picked their feet in Poughkeepsie” is used in the scene when Hackman, dressed as Father Christmas, questions a young guy he and Scheider had chased through the streets. Grosso, having witnessed this so often during the ten years they worked together, hoped Friedkin wouldn’t use it. But he did. “Friedkin loved it. So did Hollywood. They lapped it up, so did the public,” he groans.

Hackman didn’t lap it up, however. Grosso: “Hackman got all disturbed the first time he saw us arrest and lock up a guy. He kept saying, ‘I’m not a copy, I shouldn’t be involved in this.’ Then, when we took the guy to court, he couldn’t wait to get him a hot dog when he was hungry, but Eddie was having none of it. I tried to explain that we had to arrest and bring to court 30 people a month, and bring in another 130 for questioning. If we bought everyone a hot dog, we’d be broke. About three weeks later, he saw the same guy in another shooting gallery. Then he started to get the idea.”

Hackman was far from ecstatic about portraying such an unconventional and sometimes prejudiced cop, and became increasingly irritated by Egan’s Irish “charm”, recalls Grosso: “Eddie was always teasing and chastising Gene. I think Gene had a bit of a problem with the character at the beginning. But as time went on I think he found that there were many similarities between them. When I saw the final cut I was amazed how much Hackman had become Eddie. It gives you the respect you have to have for actors who, with the proper research and direction, actually become the people they play, such as De Niro in Raging Bull.”

It was a great true-life story for the big screen, but the mechanics of filmmaking meant artistic licence was employed to ensure optimum visual effect. The famous scene where Hackman chases an L train was based on an actual chase in which Egan and Grosso tried ot keep ahead of a subway train between Penn Station and Grand Central so they could catch the drug-dealing Frenchman as he got off. To make it more visual, D’Antoni and Friedkin got Hackman to chase an L train which ran above ground along an elevated railway line. A kamikaze stuntman drove the car, driving flat out whilst weaving through the traffic to keep up with the train. The inspired filmic version of this event makes a great action sequence and culminates with Hackman shooting the unarmed Frenchman in the back. Then there’s the ominous and frenzied climactic shoot-out, giving a suitably ambiguous ending to the complicated tale.

Grosso’s new vocation as technical advisor didn’t end here. While Friedkin was completing the final shoot of The French Connection on Wards Island, Francis Ford Coppola was preparing to shoot the interior scenes for The Godfather nearby. Friedkin took Grosso over to meet Coppola. “Friedkin told Coppola that he couldn’t make a movie in New York without ‘Grosso and his gorillas’, so I was hired on the spot. I found locations, showed them how to search, hammered the crowds, drove cars and provided 75 cops as extras as well as members of my family for the wedding scene.”

Grosso made two small appearances in The Godfather as Phil, one of Captain McClusky’s (Sterling Hayden) cops. The first was outside the hospital when McCluskey orders him to lock up Michael (Pacino) and he says: “Give him a break Captain, he’s a war hero. He’s not mixed up with the mob.” They had to do about 18 takes. “I wanted to kill myself,” laughs Grosso. “Because I was acting with Pacino and Hayden, my voice went up in the air like a woman being chased in a dark alley. I learned how difficult it is to be an actor.”

“Phil” was also one of the four guys who shot Sonny Corleone (James Caan) in his car by the tollbooth out on Long Island. “I said to Coppola, ‘If four buys are shooting at him with machine guns each holding 45 slugs, not only would you not find Jimmy Caan, you wouldn’t find the car. They’d all be completely blown away.’

“The next day Coppola called me over, he was such a gentleman, and said: ‘I thought about what you said Sonny, but Jimmy Caan is bigger than life in this movie and we’ve got to kill him bigger than life.’ I still thought he was making a tremendous mistake, but I was dealing with reality and he was dealing with movies. Not only did I learn that he was right, but I also learned that that scene ended up being one of the most memorable in movie history.”

It was on Cruising (1980) that Grosso really came into his own as a technical expert. Reunited with Friedkin, he worked with Al Pacino tracing an undercover cop’s troubled journey into Manhattan’s S&M gay underworld to fish out a crazed killer. Grosso had spent over five years working undercover on all kinds of cases, including a community of deaf mutes (for which he had to learn sign language) and homosexual rings. “We took Pacino out to the gay clubs in Greenwich Village to show him how to operate in that world, so he could observe and get a feeling for how people act.”

But just as Hackman and Scheider would never know what it was really like to work as a narcotics agent, to live immersed in the overlapping worlds of the cop and the mobster, Pacino would never experience the reality of undercover work. He would never know what it took to actually get results, nor would he ever have to master the psychological tactics, or experience the fear.

“Apart from mastering your cover story, the biggest thing is to know how to get information without anyone realising; also, to know how to remember faces, times, locations so you can go back and complete a report. You’ve got to remember to adopt all the characteristics, too. It’s stupid, but I was once trying to buy marijuana in East Harlem. I wasn’t smoking because I don’t smoke, and a guy came over and asked if I wanted a cigarette… I almost said ‘no’.”

Then there’s the decision on whether to take protection. “You’re often afraid to wear a wire or carry a gun into the bars because women will pat you down or touch you in all different places when they hug you – they’re told to do that to check if you’re carrying. So you need to be really creative about where you’re gonna carry a pistol.

“I was once searched when I was carrying a gun in my crotch, they never pulled my pants down, but it got pretty hairy. I don’t konw what they would have done if they’d found it. Same goes with a wire. I’d wear it in a real strategic spot running down the lining in the back of my jacket. They won’t always pursue a search if you have a good line of crap, but you’ve got to have the bravado to call their bluff. I don’t want to make out this is 007, but it’s a dangerous job.”

Grosso went on to advise on many other movies as well as being story consultant on numerous television projects, including Kojak, The Rockford Files and Baretta. He formed his own production company, Grosso-Jacobson Communications Corp, in 1980. They’ve produced some of the most successful TV movies and action series sold worldwide, starring big names such as Martin Sheen and Paul Sorvino.

Still, doesn’t he miss the danger of being a cop and the thrill of the chase? At least that dry sense of humour is still evident in his reply: “What I do is I go once a month to a precinct and the cops let me slam the cell door a few times. Every cop says you get an orgasm when you hear it close.”

This article originally appeared in Hotdog magazine. Many thanks to Tina Bexson for permission to republish.

The status of sexual minorities in today’s India is in a state of transition after homosexual sex was decriminalised in 2009. While the legal judgment can be framed as a move towards a more inclusive and secular society where religious beliefs against homosexuality cannot prevail over human rights, sexuality continues to be a controversial issue, stirring the political and cultural agendas. Through a brief excursus of the legal battle to decriminalise homosexuality in India, the opposition from various political and religious entities, and the persistent discrimination and violence suffered by gay citizens, I would like to open up a discussion around concepts like democracy, globalisation, secularism and modernity. The complexity of the Indian socio-political landscape is a good case in point to show how such concepts are far from clear-cut.

On July 2nd, 2009, the Delhi High Court pronounced a ‘reading down’ of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, effectively decriminalising consensual homosexual sex between adults. After a eight-year-long legal battle initiated by NAZ Foundation India, an organisation working with HIV-positive people, homosexual sex ceased to be a punishable crime. Section 377 (as other parts of the Indian Penal Code) had been introduced in 1860 by Lord Macaulay, at the time of the British colonial domination of India. I arrived to Delhi only days after the judgment, and witnessed a sustained media attention for the following weeks. All the major national newspapers reported the news on the first page. The judgment was called “historical” and “a great, albeit belated, step towards globalisation”, “a landmark judgment”, “sexuality equality”. However, the same day protests started to mount against the legal judgment from various sources. A member of a centrist political party urged the government to appeal to the Supreme Court of India, as the ruling on homosexuality would sadden the old people of India and cause the country’s culture to “crumble”. Lalu Prasad Yadav, a widely-known political figure, said, “Yes, homosexuality is a crime… Such obscene acts should not be allowed in our country. The society is adversely affected”.

Religious leaders from Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh communities unanimously expressed their discontent with the ruling (a rare example of inter-religious solidarity) , citing the ‘unnaturalness’ of gay sex and some advancing the hypothesis that such a decision would in fact help the spread of AIDS. Such oppositions to the Court decision translated in eight counter-petitions filed to the Supreme Court over a period of four months.

The debate around secularism in India was sparked, in recent times, by the death of thousands of people in Gujarat in 2002, a planned massacre supported by the rightwing political party BJP. Such an event, the looting and ferocious murders of thousands of Muslim citizens, was in many respects unprecedented in its scale and organisation, so much so that it has been called “genocide”. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims reached a new high with the Gujarat episode, and called for a reflection on the state of democracy and secularism in India.

Since the end of British colonial power, India had to forge a viable, strong national identity in the struggle for independence. Tensions between different religious groups, political ideals and castes emerged already during Gandhi’s time. Despite Nehru’s secular stance, which inspired the political and social policy of modernisation in India for decades after Independence, conflicts within the management of the republic emerged, particularly with regards to religious and ethnic minorities. India, as an independent nation, relied on the centrality of a strong state in administering national and state policies and on a ‘secular’ constitution.

The configuration of the meaning of secularism in the Indian context does not rely simply on the division and independence of the state vis á vis religion; rather, the dialectics of the relationship between the state and its citizens is complicated by other intersecting factors. If we think of the Gujarat massacre as a horrid example of the ‘clash of religions’, it is obvious that religion refers less to matters of faith and belief than to ideas of identity and political culture. Religion is changing, or rather, penetrating various dimensions of human experience. Is the separation between state and church, seen as the pillar of secularism, enough to guarantee social and civic pluralism, respect for human rights, and democracy? The case of India offers interesting points for reflection on the meaning of secularism and its relation to democracy and rights, in particular with respect to minorities.

Anthropologist Peter van de Veer remarked that any democracy, albeit modern, is always founded on the unequal power that the majority has over minorities and that, as such, from the point of view of a given minority “there is not much reason to fear a religious majority more than a secular one” and that the connection between secularism, pluralism and tolerance is one borne out of a specifically European enlightenment tradition. Given that the power of the majority will always imply that the minorities will have to comply with decisions they might not agree with, how is this power deployed by a secular state? In India the state was a strong presence particularly in the first decades after Independence; it exercised direct control over the country’s economy and it was aided by the political continuity afforded by a powerful governmental coalition. The fact that the state had a strong impact on development policies and the economy does not mean that it could guarantee peaceful coexistence among the various ethnic, religious and political groups of Indian society; one only has to think of the ongoing conflict in Kashmir, or the insurgent Maoist guerrilla in the central state of Chhattisgarh, to get a sense of the struggles the state has to face in order to keep the country unified (if not united). Issues of sexuality, and especially of queer sexualities, don’t seem to be directly related to the political life of a country; at most, they remain at the margins of the political agenda. Yet in the last two decades Indian politics devoted quite some time and effort toward the management of sex.

In the last two decades, India has witnessed a renaissance of the Hindutva ideology; the configuration of Muslims as enemies of the nation found its most destructive outcome in the destruction of the Babri Masjid (a mosque) in 1992, and ten years later in the above mentioned state-backed extermination of Muslims in Gujarat. Hatred based on supposedly religious foundations coexists, in the more recent Hindutva programmes, with campaigns to eradicate Western influences from India. The socio-cultural changes brought about by globalisation and the liberalisation of economy in 1991-1992 are seen as morally corrupting and dangerous for the imagined Hindu identity of India. It must be noted, however, that it was the BJP (the mainstream rightwing political coalition) who launched the now infamous ‘India Shining’ campaign before the 2004 elections; after running the country for the previous five years, the BJP sought to present a new image of India as a modern country, focused on progress, unprecedented growth and global aspirations: from the point of view of economy and foreign investments, interaction with the West was more than welcome. It should not be surprising that the Hindutva ideologues chose to concentrate instead on issues of sexuality and morality as the preferred loci where corrupting influences would spread.

With regards to sexuality, it must be said that ideas of properness and respectability had begun to circulate and be debated already during colonial times. The origins of discourses around the sexuality of Indian women can be traced back to the nationalist project of casting a radically different model of femininity and sexuality from that of the European invader; values such as chastity, wifehood, motherhood, purity and domesticity came to symbolise a form of resistance to the colonial rulers, and women cast as the ideal bearers of such values. If, for some, the Indian nation is imagined partly through powerful symbolic references to sexuality, one can easily see how the emergence of queer subjects and other sexual subalterns (like the sex worker) asserting the right to express their sexuality is not only a question of sex, but it becomes cultural and political. It seems as if sexuality – and in particular non-normative sexuality – easily becomes one of the most important sites where articulations of identity and rights, but also violence and abuse are experienced; sexuality is also one of the main sites where individual subjectification meets power discourses; where secular guaranteed rights do not always supersede religious beliefs; the site where, in fact, the oppositional model that sees secularism as a synonymous for individual rights and liberties and religion as a static, repressive ideology is an imperfect one.

I would like to focus here on two inter-related cases where Hindu-right supporters advanced their protest against what they saw as expressions of moral decadence that came from the West: the spread of HIV/AIDS in relation to homosexual sex, and the screening of the movie Fire by Deepa Mehta. Both events received extensive coverage both in mainstream media and in academic discussions on India’s democratic future in the face of religious and political extremism.

Many organisations working on sexual health issues started to operate in India at the time when the AIDS epidemic was spreading in the country. One of them was the NAZ Foundation Trust, who also initiated the petition against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. In 2001, the Lucknow offices of NAZ and Bharosa (another sexual health organisation) were raided by the police and their workers arrested; NAZ and Bharosa worked primarily with men who have sex with men by visiting the parks and other public places where such practices were widespread and educating people on the risk of infection. The police confiscated educational material on safe sex and condom use claiming that the organisation were distributing obscene material and encouraging sex against the order of nature, and were hence able to use Section 377 to prosecute the NGO workers. A few years before this incident, medical teams visiting the Tihar Jail in New Delhi had found several cases of HIV infection due to widespread sodomy among male inmates, and had recommended the provision of condoms; the prison authorities refused on the grounds that such an initiative would further encourage criminal sex practices and would implicitly admit the existence of homosexual sex in prisons. Such extreme episodes reflect an attitude that circulated among right-wing politicians such as Bal Thackeray (leader of the rightwing group called Shiv Sena), who claimed that AIDS was a Western disease imported into India through decadent Western practices, and that foreign NGOs were only paid to produce ad hoc statistics about increased sexual activity in India in order to discredit the country.

The release of the feature film Fire by female director Deepa Mehta in the autumn of 1998 caused violent reactions in several Indian cities. Women activists from the Shiv Sena demanded that the film be banned in Maharashtra as it was morally offensive. Hundreds of people vandalised and forced cinema theatres to close both in Mumbai, where the protest had originated, and in other cities such as Delhi, Pune, Surat. The incidents were followed by extensive media attention and politicians’ statements regarding the film. Fire is the story of two women, unhappily married to lower-middle class Hindu men, and their romantic homosexual relationship as it develops among the daily chores and the rituals of a typical north Indian extended family. The film gathered positive criticism abroad and enjoyed a certain success in India too, although it doesn’t belong to mainstream Hindi cinema (also known as Bollywood). The relationship between the two wives develops into a lesbian one, and the film contains a couple of love scenes that are fairly unusual in popular Indian cinema. Predictably, Shiv Sena’s chief Bal Thackeray stated that the lesbianism portrayed in the movie was a phenomenon imported with globalisation, alien and extremely dangerous for the social fabric of India. In another interview, Thackeray admitted that, had the film focused on Muslim women, he would have found it acceptable: in both cases, homosexuality is configured as something alien and foreign, whether it comes from the decadent West of from the ‘internal’ Muslim enemy.

The controversy surrounding Fire was part of a concerted attack by the Hindu Right on films, art, and images: as visual culture spread in the 1990s as a result of the diffusion of foreign media and the beginning of the computer age, the Hindu Right used cultural production to wage their war against immorality. It is interesting to note that by casting homosexuality as foreign, what the Hindu Right did was to enforce an idea of hetero-normativity as a nationalistic, anti-colonial move. It was in this political and cultural climate that activists and NGOs started their battle to repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code; it took eight years, and during this time the terms of the debate have shifted considerably. The first petition against 377 focused on health concerns, claiming that section 377 prevented organisations from carrying out important HIV/AIDS prevention work; the government of India dismissed it, claiming that repealing it would provide license to criminal and immoral behaviour and that criminal law must reflect public morality. In 2009, after other organisations joined in signing the petition against section 377, the High Court judgment, invoking inclusion and non-discrimination as basic Indian values, seemed to testify to a truly historic ideological change.

Now that the legal battle has been won, and the Court expressed a progressive message, one would expect a supportive reaction from the government of India. And yet, after the ruling passed and the counter-petitions were filed, it was reported that the central government (centre-left Indian National Congress) still had not taken a clear stand on the issue. Would it support the High Court or the political/religious homophobia? Interrogated on the matter, majority politicians claimed that they needed more time and before making any official statement they wanted to ‘access the public mood’ on such a sensitive issue. One might argue that, even though Hindutva ideologues were not in the picture any longer, the state failed to position itself in favour of the decriminalisation. As for ‘the public mood’, and aside from the openly hostile views of religious leaders, the comments expressed by readers on the main newspaper websites show how divisive the issue of homosexuality still is. While some readers welcome the change as an example of democracy and secularism, others argue that the court’s decision does not reflect the views of the majority of people. A brief sample from the Times of India website:

Its all an example of Democracy , Untill and unless if someone is not making harm to others , it can’t be framed as Illegal.People have full right to live in their own way in a democratic and secular country atleast.Its all a matter of perception for society.(D.R. from Hyderabad)

I do not agree with the judges decision to legalise homosexuality. If the media reports on the growing number of homosexuals/ lesbians, then why cant the media see the majority of the society is against this decision. Does the majority need to take a procession to voice their protest? Very soon we will have these guys holding hands and walking on the streets, same sex marriages and even worse our country will have increase in HIV cases. Sodomy cases will increase. Surely, the HC judges decision is demeaning (Or demonising) our society. Hope better sense prevails or else our country will go to ruin. (C. from Mumbai)

This is one of the biggest progrssive action taken up by India in this 21st century. Our country is the largest democracy and we must not deny the rights of the sexual minorities. (N. from Delhi)

india is gone (M. from Delhi)

On April 7th, 2010, Professor Srinivas Ramachandra Siras, a retiring teacher at the Aligarh Muslim University, was found dead in his residence. Although suicide seemed most likely, the official cause of death was never declared. Two months earlier, Siras was fired after a videotape surfaced of him having sex with another man in his apartment. As homosexuality is not a criminal act anymore in India, professor Siras appealed to the court in Aligarh and was given his job back, but as his sexual orientation was a publicly know fact, he experienced harassment and marginalization. Whether he killed himself out of shame over being caught on video or because of the humiliation and discrimination he suffered afterwards is uncertain. His sexual partner, a rickshaw puller, tried to set himself on fire in July, after being not only shamed but also repeatedly beaten by the police, who initially suspected him of the death of Siras.

I think the case of professor Siras is emblematic. Where is the progressive, democratic and inclusive society? What was the use for Siras to appeal to the institution of the Court, thus gaining his right to work back, only to be blackmailed and marginalised?

In relation to the marginalization and abuse that gay citizens such as professor Siras continue to experience despite formal justice, what can be said about democracy, secularism and modernity? Should we be inclined to think that all the people who maligned Siras until his death were religious extremists? Or, like some could argue, that India as a society is perhaps not ready to accept sexual diversity – as if we in the West were? What interests are being protected by allowing discrimination and violence against sexual minorities?

Societal attitudes are not easily formalised, and a legal pronouncement is clearly not enough to change them. This is nothing new. What I find problematic when discussing social developments in non-Western societies is that common categories and concepts don’t seem to work too well, if taken for granted. I feel uncomfortable in using the words ‘democracy’, ‘modernity’, ‘justice’, ‘secular state’ – the dramatic events unfolding in India remind me how these noble concepts are never stable, never achieved once and for all. Someone is always excluded, left out, for the benefit of the majority.

When the Hindu Right decides to target movies and other cultural products in order to advance its repressive ideas, it does so precisely because popular culture is the ideal terrain to plant the seeds of intolerance and extremism; when mainstream Indian media enthusiastically reports a historic change for homosexuals in India, it nonetheless makes sure to clarify that gays will not be able to marry, a welcome tranquilliser for the public who might worry that the most important social institution may be at risk. Even though sexuality (as well as religious belief) belongs to the domain of the private in any democratic and secular society, one can see how some sexualities don’t seem to fit too well into the social fabric; they may be perceived as threatening, disruptive, polluting. Hence, it is important that their existence, even when sanctioned by the law, is kept away from the eyes of the ‘silent majority’: some sexualities are more private than others as the values they convey are not acceptable. Contrary to what the majority of commentators said on the eve of the decriminalisation of Section 377, in the case of professor Siras the legal change did not have a positive impact on the visibility of homosexuality or the right to positively affirm his sexual orientation. On the contrary, his ‘outing’ took the form of a scandal and marked the beginning of prolonged harassment that had tragic consequences. That homosexuals are citizens enjoying equal rights within an inclusive society was clearly not enough to save Siras’s life. Perhaps in mainstream debates on democracy and secularism the concept of equality has been overdetermined at the expense of the concept of difference. Acts of abuse, discrimination and violence such as the one I reported compel us reflect upon the meaning of equality and difference. I offered the example of India because the very recent events I presented offer, in their dramatic and extreme developments, a picture (even if fragmented and incomplete) of the relation between state and individual encompassing variations which go beyond the traditional Western dualistic model. Variations that, if taken into consideration, could help us question our definitions of secularism, modernity and democracy.

The Voting Booth After Dark: Despicable, Embarrassing, Repulsive delves into the unique subculture of a specific, and frequently overlooked, group of Latino-Americans. The book’s protagonists are comprised of first generation Latino-Americans in their twenties who were born in the US, but raised by parents that emigrated from Latin-American countries such as Cuba, Mexico, and Chile. Characters such as Marta and Diaz Diaz live a rare hybrid reality in which old world and new world cultures enmesh to create the hipster hub they call home – The Los Angeles Eastside.

Neither fully Latino or Gringo, these first generation-ers reside in a place that reflects their heterogeneous predicament. The LA Eastside is a scene where one can buy $1 tamales from the Mexican street vendor while waiting in line to enter through a dilapidated wall into an underground red-lit club, which spins an eclectic mix of musical fusions like Manu Chao and Goldfrapp. At the bar, Spanglish speaking Americans, of all ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations, congregate to buy $12 Long Islands and debate with a stranger about whether to vote for the liberal or moderate Democrat in the upcoming 2008 presidential elections. The nameless stranger they later drunkenly stumble home with. As described in the short story ‘Mourning’: “It wasn’t a gay bar, but it had some of the prettiest young things in town. Most were straight dead eyed hipster girls who enjoyed some lezzie fun in the car after a couple of tequila shots and a Morrissey song”.

The Voting Booth After Dark: Despicable, Embarrassing, Repulsive chronicles a portion of Latino-American experience that often goes undocumented – the existential and spiritual angst, which accompanies laden career-driven twenty-something lives. Common human experiences most frequently recorded from the ruling population’s perspective (i.e. WASP) point of view. My book, however, spotlights the nuances of these struggles as they unfold for Gay & Lesbian Latino-Americans within Los Angeles’ subcultural Eastside scene.

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About Vanessa Libertad Garcia: A Cuban-American writer and filmmaker who has grown up between the ‘burbs and hoods of Los Angeles and lived throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe. Ms. Garcia’s films include the HSF/McNamara Family Creative Arts Grant recipient A Two Woman One Act and the documentary Little Statistics, filmed in India. Full details of her work can be found at www.vanessalibertadgarcia.com.

About The Voting Booth After Dark: Despicable, Embarrassing, Repulsive: A collection of short stories and poems interwoven into a narrative that follows a group of addicted gay and lesbian Latino club kids destroying themselves throughout the course of the 2008 elections. The book focuses on how they affect and are affected by the national politics happening around them.

Since he burst onto the literary scene in 2000 with Anthropology, a collection of surprisingly poignant super-short stories, Dan Rhodes has made something of a reputation for himself. A self-confessed ‘miserable git’, in 2001 he announced that he would no longer be writing fiction, having grown disenchanted with the publishing industry. In 2003 Granta magazine listed him as one of their Best Young British Novelists. His inclusion on the list was justified with the release of his first novel, Timoleon Vieta Come Home, a curious blend of charm and brutality loosely based on the Eric Knight book (and 1943 film) Lassie Come Home. I say loosely, because in this version the heroic canine gets kicked to death. I did warn you that it’s brutal.

Following his ‘retirement’ Little White Car was published under the rather transparent pseudonym Danuta de Rhodes. The story of a French girl who thinks she’s accidentally killed Princess Diana, the book exhibits some of the same quirky humour as his debut, albeit with less brutality. His third novel, Gold, has just been published by Canongate, and with Dan’s real name returning to the front cover it looks as if his retirement is well and truly over. The tale of a half-Japanese lesbian who’s uncannily good at pub quizzes, it’s brimming with the quirkiness, humour and occasional tragedy that first brought him to Granta’s attention. The tag of ‘Best Young British Novelist’ now looks remarkably prophetic.

I meet Dan for a cup of coffee in his Edinburgh home, the ‘miserable git’ actually turning out to be a very congenial host. Unshaven but undeniably cheery, he seems to be in a much happier place than he was five years ago. I start by asking about his choice of lead character for Gold. In Timoleon Vieta the main character was a gay man, and now in Miyuki he’s crafted a very convincing lesbian. They’re a pair of interesting choices.

‘Well it wasn’t really a choice,’ Dan explains, ‘those characters just came to me and I liked them, and wanted to write books about them. People often ask me that question, actually. One day when I’m older I’ll go through my books and draw a sexuality pie chart of all my characters, then I’ll just be able to hand that over in response to this question. Out of five books I suppose I’ve had a gay lead character and a lesbian character, but if you take Anthropology and Don’t Tell Me The Truth About Love they’re very much boy-meets-girl books. So, just like the characters I suppose, there’s no political agenda, or even a great deal of reflection, behind using them.’

Was it difficult to find a convincing female voice, though? Both Little White Car and Gold have female leads, and in the past male writers have been known to struggle to create convincing female characters. In both these cases the end result is remarkably believable, but did he find it difficult writing as a woman? ‘No I didn’t. It’s just the same, although I do have a gender consultant who I run things by. She’ll point out if I’m making glaring errors. Which I often do, of course.’

It’s noticeable that he started out writing short stories, with the collections Anthropology and Don’t Tell Me The Truth About Love, but we’ve now had three novels in a row. Does this mark a permanent change in direction? ‘It didn’t really start that way, because my first three books overlapped a lot. I started Anthropology third, finished it second, and it came out first. Don’t Tell Me The Truth About Love I started first, finished it first and it came out second. The dog book [Timoleon Vieta Come Home] I started second, finished it third and it came out third. So there’s a bit of a jumble there. I sort of wrote them together, really.’

Across all of Dan’s books, short fiction or novels, there’s a strong vein of humour closely entwined with the brutality and tragedy. When I mention this he agrees that it’s a big part of what he’s trying to do. ‘I always think I’m writing comic fiction,’ he tells me, a wry smile on his face. ‘A lot of people disagree with me, but that’s what I think.’ So does he work hard to make the humour work, or does it just pop into his head ready-formed? ‘Well it kind of pops out and then I have to work on it, because most of the gags I put in my books are actually a bit crappy and have to be kicked out. I put a lot in just for the sake of it, to keep myself amused, and they wouldn’t work for the final version, so I do have to do drafts where I take out almost all the gags. Some of them find their way in. Maybe one day I’ll write a book without any jokes in, because some of my favourite books are very, very serious.’

His books often seem to turn up in the Cult sections of bookshops, perhaps because of this unusual blend of humour and tragedy. I ask Dan if he sees himself as a ‘cult’ writer. ‘I certainly didn’t set out to be a cult writer. I was hoping to sell millions, so I wouldn’t really call myself a cult writer. Although I suppose you can be cult and still sell loads, can’t you – like JD Salinger, I think, is still regarded as a cult author. But I think quite often ‘cult’ can be a euphemism for low sales. My sales are okay, so I can’t complain. You don’t ever really know who’s reading your books, that’s one of the weird things about the biz. Sometimes I go out on the road and do readings, and the people who turn up are a complete cross section. They certainly don’t strike me as being cultish in any way.’

Talking of books that sell millions, Dan has been quite outspoken in the past about the quality of some of modern literature’s big-hitters. More than just a case of sour grapes (Timoleon Vieta won both the QPB New Voices Award and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award), he has some valid points to make about the output of certain literary prizewinners. ‘I think a lot of big literary authors take themselves so seriously that they end up churning out work that’s critic-friendly and prize-friendly,’ he explains to me, ‘but it’s actually just boring. For me. I know there’s an enormous audience for it but I find a lot of literary hard-hitters to write quite boring stuff. Whereas I’m as influenced by telly and comedy and music as I am by book writers. And what I’ve taken from those things, I think, is that you just have to keep the pace going, you have to keep things toe-tapping and entertaining.’

It’s interesting that he compares his writing to TV rather than other modern literature, as it’s a nod towards popular culture that some writers seem reluctant to make. I ask him why he thinks this is. ‘A lot of writers seem to think that their books somehow inhabit a different universe from TV and film and music, but in real life they don’t, apart from a miniscule proportion of the population who are solely devoted bookworms. I think most people, when they get home of an evening, they’re going to choose between reading a book, going to see a film, watching telly or listening to a record. And I think that’s where books slot into people’s lives these days. At least that’s how they slot into my life. I’m very excited actually, because I’ve just got the first series of Sabrina The Teenage Witch on DVD, which I’ve been waiting for for years. I’d been wondering when they were going to finally release it, and it’s arrived. So I’m very, very happy about that. And I’ve finally been able to throw away my VHS collection, which has freed up several cubic metres.’

Which brings me (almost) neatly on to his music taste. In previous interviews he’s often referred to The Smiths as a major influence, but the S-Club Juniors also crop up from time to time. ‘Well I object to them on every level,’ Dan says defensively as soon as I mention the mini-Clubbers, ‘except they did one very, very good song. That’s my official line on the S-Club Juniors. If you must know the title of the song, it’s ‘New Direction’.’

It seems likely that The Smiths had a larger influence on Dan’s writing style, though, their songs blending humour and melancholy in a similar way to his books. ‘Well, they sing about life don’t they,’ he replies when I point out the comparison. ‘I grew up with The Smiths, I got my first Smiths album when I was twelve, and I think Morrissey’s a shining example of somebody who should have shut up shop before the well ran dry. I don’t understand how he could listen to his old stuff from The Smiths’ days and then listen to his new stuff, and think that his new stuff is anything other than plodding and dreary. The last album I got of his was You Are The Quarry, which was, bizarrely, heralded as a return to form. But you’ve got to wonder whether those reviewers have actually heard The Queen Is Dead. I think the old Morrissey has been kidnapped and is in chains somewhere, and there’s this impostor out there on the road.’

Luckily for us, Dan Rhodes still looks like he’s the genuine article, despite his new cheery disposition. Gold is sure to win even more glowing reviews for one of Britain’s best young novelists, and hopefully there will be more of the same to follow. Assuming that he doesn’t announce another retirement, of course.

Whose mind isn’t on gold these days with the blitz of TV, direct mail, and radio ads trying to convince us to sell gold jewelry for cash?

Ben Granger

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil – George Saunders

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Someone once wrote that producing comedy is a far harder art than penning tragedy. Shockingly, I believe it was a humorous writer who made this selfless observation. Whether accurate or not, what certainly is true is that whimsy is a surprisingly tricky ingredient to get the right measure of in writing. A tad too little and the result is weak and insipid, a dab too much and the brew is overbearing. And either way it is very, very easy to come over as smug. Think of the output of Punch in the 80s or a great deal of Radio 4 comedy today to see feel the horror of what can unfold. So when a writer gets it right, praise is due.

In his satirical fantasy novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil published in 2005, and his short story collection In Persuasion Nation published in 2006 (and now reprinted together), Saunders hits the spot, lightly yet accurately.
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (hereafter referred to as Frightening) is a dreamlike fairy story, twisted rotten. It tells of the plight of the inhabitants of Inner Horner, “a nation so small it can only accommodate one citizen at a time”. The other six citizens must wait their turn in the Short Term Residency Zone in the infinitely larger surrounding country of Outer Horner. Already existing at the sufferance of their benevolent surrounding power, the Inner Hornerites incur the wrath of the bounteous yet growingly impatient surrounding benefactors, when their small patch of ground sinks further into the earth.

“What are your people trying to pull?” said Larry.
“What’s that part of a guy doing in our country?”

“Our country shrunk” said Elmer, digging nervously in the dirt with his octagonal shovel-like receptacle.

“Oh please,” said Freeda, “You expect us to believe that? Our country never shrinks.”
“Decent countries don’t shrink,” said Melvin.” They either stay the same or get bigger.”

Irked at this taking advantage of their good nature, the Outer Hornerites come under the spell of the demagogic Phil, a mesmeric megalomaniac whose brain is constantly falling out of a rack at the side of his head. Each character in the story, incidentally, seems to be a kind of polymorphous, multilimbed humanoid/vegetation/mechanical hybrid, their peculiarities mentioned only in passing.
As I said, such whimsicality can very easily become trying. Political parables, which this story undoubtedly is, have their own pitfalls, and can be dreadfully preachy and forced.

Frightening evades both traps with its deftness of touch, its opaque absurdism side-stepping both the overly didactic and the twee. Imperialism, the vile hypocrisy of rich states imposing draconian migration restrictions on poorer neighbours, American arrogance, anti-immigrant populism, all these are undoubtedly alluded to, but seasoned with a healthy dose of cartoonish Dada-lite which kill off the sense of worthiness and disorientate enough to make you wonder whether what you have read has made any sense whatsoever.
Above all, it is just genuinely funny. The portrayal of the media’s role in fascistic Phil’s rise is fantastically portrayed, in both senses.

Looking out, Phil saw three handsome, well groomed, squat little men with detachable megaphones growing out of their clavicles.
“MAN REGARDS STRANGERS IN STREET!” shouted the first man.
“What are you guys doing?” asked Phil.
“MAN ASKS QUESTION, EXPECTS ANSWER!” said the third little man.
“MAJOR MEDIA FIGURES PREPARE TO RESPOND!” said the first man.
“IS THE MEDIA HELD TOO MUCH ACCOUNTABLE?” said the second.

The humour in here is equal parts the satire and the absurdity, and such is the tone Saunders carries off with skill throughout. The ending of the story has the weirdly enchanting quality of a genuine fairy tale, yet with enough darkness to freeze the spine. A funny but chilly bedtime.

With In Persuasion Nation, Saunders’ tone diversifies massively while still retaining its core, a mock-simple critique of the wrong turnings of the America of today. It consists of a series of stories, mostly set in an unspecified near future where a creepy combination of consumerism, codification and bigotry hold sway. Some are simple one-line jokes writ large but writ well. “My Amendment” describes a citizen’s belief that not only should Same Sex Marriage be banned, but also “Samish Sex Marriage”.

I implore anyone who finds themselves in a Samish Sex Marriage: Change. If you are a feminine man, become more manly. If you are a masculine woman, become more feminine. If you are a woman and are thick-necked or lumbering, or have the slightest feeling of attraction to a man who is somewhat pale and fey, deny these feelings and, in a spirit of self correction, try to become more thin-necked and light-footed….

Sometimes the world described is not distinct from the present day at all. “The Red Bow” chillingly describes how mawkish emotional pressure can drum up mob violence as a small town turns psychotic following a child’s death. At the other extreme “Jon” tells the tale of teenage breakaways from a sealed- Brave New World-esque bubble environment, and is told in a stilted future-speak language.

At its most surreal, “Brad Carrigan, American” describes a cartoon sit-com of the future, one of whose characters becomes self-aware and has to be destroyed. Touches such as the raining of corpses bring it closer to the fairy-tale nature of Frightening, but with the macabre cranked up higher.
It’s a quality of Saunders’ writing that while the tone and style itself doesn’t usually alter too much; spare, droll, wry, and precise, it can not only describe a vast variety of worlds and situations, but convey and create a great array of moods within this language too.

Satirising is high on Saunders’ agenda, but his commitment to creating an authentic emotional atmosphere is higher. In “My Flamboyant Grandson”, the bewildered hero is desperate to bring his gay 7 year old grandson to one of the latter’s favourite musicals, and is in turn harassed by a weird byzantinne bureaucracy of officials with sinister technology seeking to punish him for not viewing enough adverts in the process. The snipes at bully-boy capitalist consumerism are enjoyable, but it’s the warm relationship at the story’s centre which is both its core and its most entertaining aspect, as is the intention.

In both the novella and short story collection Saunders manages to amuse, entertain, and shake out thought on a great variety of subjects, and does so in a subtle, sideways style which could so easily be annoying but isn’t. Its unobtrusive nature, its essential lightness of touch, makes it fall short of any claim on greatness, but on its own terms it succeeds, quite triumphantly so.

Cautious consumers shouldn’t expect Dungeon Family-era Cee-Lo here (as if that ship hadn’t sailed a while ago), or any largely comparable effort for that matter; this team-up with Brian Burton’s Danger Mouse character may indeed not be liked at all by even the lowliest mall-gangsta who typically finds hirself hypnotized by loosely related product like Gorillaz. And so on, but forget that.

The new jack Motown compiled by the pair is sure to be tagged as an overstimulated revision of Marvin Gaye, but what’s most obvious is how Black Eyed Peas the tuneage is (see the remake of Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone”) and how much time it spends lifting its ear up for a scratch from indie snobs (”The Boogie Monster), neither of which is a capital offense, but only a major label would scribble “ALT” on its forehead in such a garish font.

Among other oddities you’ll encounter a Nintendo-meets-Fat-Albert novelty item (”Transformer”) and an Urge Overkill spasm interrupted with random occurrences of scorched-earth breakbeat (”Just a Taught”). Unerringly cool despite Paris Hilton sticking her stupid fat nose into it and threatening to do a cover of “Crazy.”

Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album – Matthew Robertson

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In the late 70s, the mysterious, topographical radio waves of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures appeared like a burst of energy in an empty void, signifying the arrival not only of one of the best bands this country has produced but also its finest independent record label, Factory. It’s not too strong to say that Peter Saville’s sleeves for Unknown Pleasures and New Order’s Blue Monday are up there with Peter Blake’s Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Kraftwerk’s Autobahn and Vaughan Oliver’s 4AD covers. The design mostly matched up to the quality of the music.

The chaotic, quixotic Factory Records existed from 1978 to 1992, from post-punk to rave, and continues to influence those making music now, not only in nostalgic terms but because they were essentially purely about the music – and the design was all about enhancing the music. Ironically, it was on the very front that Factory couldn’t compete that it ended up competing on – design. This is the label whose die-cut Blue Monday single by New Order, the best-selling 12 inch of all time, cost them money every time someone bought the record.

Of course, Factory is most closely associated with the graphic designer Peter Saville. In the summer of 2003 there was a big Saville retrospective, The Peter Saville Show at the Design Museum and a book, Designed by Peter Saville, which of course featured a lot of his work for Factory. [See Spike's interview with Peter Saville]. Saville’s book presented his art work and other writers put it into context with long, considered essays; what this book does instead is simply catalogue the work and provide minimal expositionary notes. Unlike the Saville book, it highlights the work of other people involved in the Factory story and shows how it evolved beyond the visually literate aesthetic of Saville.

The shadow background of the artwork in FAC461 reinforces the idea that these are objects, artefacts, photographed as if from above on mini-plinths. Ironically, a lot of the artwork published here that we are forever told works best as a 12" vinyl or 33rpm sleeve is shown at pretty much the exact dimensions of a compact disc.

There is a fantastically pretentious but sublime introduction from Factory co-founder and twat-about-town Tony Wilson whose register and sentence construction is unique. How about this, with its brilliantly ambivalent "or": "It all began after a very, very bad Patti Smith gig in late 77 or early 78…"; or this, explaining the Factory design rationale, the pick of the crop: "Does the Catholic Church pour its wine into mouldy earthenware pots? I think not." How can one not love this man (other than by meeting him perhaps)? [See Spike's interview with Tony Wilson for much, much more in that vein].

However, Wilson’s got a gimlet eye for the design success of the Happy Mondays album Bummed, writing about its controversial inside sleeve: "It wasn’t the fact that the woman was middle-aged, it wasn’t the shaved pubes, it was the colour quality which made the viewer feel dirty. Sheer genius, that."

The Durutti Column album The Return of the Durutti Column (1979) designed by Dave Rowbotham is composed entirely of sandpaper and was inspired by the situationist Guy Debord‘s Memoires, "a book bound in raw sandpaper designed to damage all other publications around it" – perfect for punk.

Of course, Factory didn’t just operate in two dimensions – as Tony Wilson might have said – there was Ben Kelly’s Hacienda nightclub, for a while the most famous club in the world, with its chevrons, bollards and cats eyes – a kind of theatrical industrial space, which included the Gay Traitor bar, with its spot lights and furtive air of treachery. (Saville said astutely that "Instead of being a monument to the 80s, the Hacienda is the birthplace of the 90s".) Then there was Factory HQ on Charles Street, a disused textile warehouse (since the 70s they had operated from Alan Erasmus’s one-bed flat) – "a mausoleum to the corporate brand that the label could never be", plus the Dry bar, a continental-style bar, one of the first of its kind in England, all in Manchester.

There’s even info here that’s new to a Factory nut like me (and I made sure my son’s initial allowed me to have a FAC family code, though perhaps that’s a retrospective justification), such as the f-hole logo which I’d always taken to be f for Factory but it’s actually f for Fractured Music, Joy Division’s company (fascinating eh?). Also that there was a cigarette pack design for the Joy Division video Here Are The Young Men, got up like 20 John Player Special’s – I want to trade my VHS copy now! There’s even plenty to drool over in corporate terms such as the stationery and the Factory Christmas cards, especially the one from 1987 designed by Johnson Panas (they were of course commissioned and absurdly lavish), a cardboard model kit of the Hacienda.

While Saville continued his "grand tour for the masses", a visual journey of cultural heritage, with the New Order covers taking in De Chirico for Thieves Like Us, Futurist Fortunato Depero’s Dynamo (1927) for Procession (1981) and appropriating Jan Tschichold typography, there is a sense of a fast-approaching dead end. Luckily, the Happy Mondays covers rescued Saville’s anally retentive control freakery and let rip: they were garish, often unreadable and trippy. Happy Mondays’ Lazyitis single by Central Station Design looks as if they can’t be bothered, which is perfect of course, the bloated lettering slurring its way across the sleeve – you half expect the cover to belch in your face.