Hollywood Gays (18 page)

Q: You know that, briefly, he had an actress wife? Some said for show.

A: I knew that.

Q: A movie could include that but shouldn’t dwell on that.

A: I know what you mean. That was the exception, not the rule.

Q: And it didn’t define who he was, it was more reflective of the society he lived in—its expectations.

A: Yeah. There’s this German director, one of her movie titles says: “It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society That Persecutes Him.” Something like that.

Q: Very similar. But Rosa Von Praunheim is a man.

A: She is? He is?
Rosa?

Q: Well, there’s Sir Carol Reed, the British director.

A: I guess you can’t always judge by...you know.

Q: One can rarely judge. Covers are usually convincing.

A: To tell you the truth, Rainer was very jealous, professionally. I don’t know about in his personal life. ‘Cause I happened to mention this other German director who admitted he was gay, and he did gay movie stuff…and Rainer got very jealous, became real cold. He said, “When you go back to Hollywood, you can work for him!” He got real heated, but only for a few seconds.

(Ironically, the director in question later moved to Hollywood and became an A-director and is now officially heterosexual, with wife—he had
The Advocate
retract their note that he was openly gay. Yet again: Hollywood, where the truth lies…still.)

Q: Fassbinder was a very dramatic man. One of his quotes was, “I don’t throw bombs. I make films.”

A: That’s cool. Scary too.

Q: And as a workaholic, he averaged one motion picture every three months, over 15 years.

A: Yeah, and directing and writing’s more time-consuming than acting. Even the star parts.

Q: There’s also pre-production and postproduction....I have one of your quotes (reading from notebook).

A: (Beams.) Let’s see if it is.

Q: After accepting to play Querelle—”I realized that if I let the fear of being persecuted by the industry stop me from doing something I felt was right, then my whole life was a lie.”

A: For sure. I still feel that way, and I’m proud of
Querelle
. It didn’t do so hot, but that’s okay.

Q: It was a very sexual film. Was it comfortable kissing male to male for the screen?

A: It would have been
uncomfortable
in L.A. Rainer made it very comfortable every day. I asked myself, later, how people I knew at home would react.

Q: Despite doing gay roles on screen and stage, you were allowed to play Robert Kennedy. That’s progress, isn’t it?

A: There was some resistance, but hardly anyone saw
Querelle
. And what you do on stage hardly counts.

Q: Why?

A: Stage and Hollywood are two different things. Like, you can do anything on stage. And if it’s in New York, it’s almost like doing it in Europe.

Q: After I saw
Midnight Express
, a friend asked if I liked the book better than the movie.

A: Dumb question, isn’t it?

Q: A better question would be, “How different are the book and the movie?” I did say the book....

A: Of course.

Q: Of course. And she said the book might be good, but it couldn’t have Brad Davis’s butt.

A: (Laughs.) My butt! I got a great one too! People do say I have a great body (shyly).

Q: And some probably say, “If I tell you, you have a great body, would you hold it against me?”

A: (Laughs.) I would! I do think, physically, my body’s better than my face. It’s okay, and my teeth are good, although—

Q: You look fine. All right, more than fine.

A: But when you’re not taller than average in Hollywood.... (Shakes head.)

Q: See that guy? He’s one of the managers. You’re tall next to him.

A: So’s everybody.

Q: So it’s relative.

A: But not in Hollywood.

Q: That’s true. Hollywood is a business of absolutes—it’s either/or.

A: Didn’t you like the movie (
Midnight Express
)?

Q: It was very emotionally involving. Repulsive at times—like the combination of anti-Turk, anti-gay emotion in the scene where it looks like the guard’s going to demand oral sex, then the sudden, applauded violence. Killings, biting a person’s tongue off or whatever—I had to close my eyes during that—and of course, keeping the drug-smuggling hero straight and narrow....

A: It made a lot of money.

Q: Then it succeeded. In Hollywood terms.

A: Have you ever been to Turkey?

Q: The first time when I was 12. Istanbul is a beautiful and exotic city. Outside its prisons, obviously.

A: Personally, I’d have let Billy, my character, be bisexual in the movie. But I don’t know if it would’ve made as much money.

Q: Do you think one brief, non-explicit scene of male-male pleasuring in a prison, of all places, would cause audiences to stampede out of the cinema? Especially with such a riveting plot?

A: You should’ve interviewed Billy Hayes.

Q: I did.

A: You did? (Slightly disappointed.)

Q: He sent me the book, but my deadline meant I couldn’t see the film first. Anyway, the piece focused on the real-life drama and how a movie had actually been made of it!

A: So daring of Hollywood! (Both laugh.)

Q: Exactly. Did you do much research into prison life for
Midnight Express
? 

A: (Pause.) It was SO long ago. I don’t think I did a whole lot. Why?

Q: One thing I wondered is whether someone in prison would cry a lot—daily?—or become inured to tears, or try and hide them, conditions and most other prisoners being so hard.

A: That would be something someone could find out.

Q: Preferably secondhand! Oscar Wilde, who was jailed for homosexuality, wrote that a day in prison when a man didn’t weep wasn’t a day of happiness, but a day in which his heart was hardened.

A: They should make a movie about him. A good new one.

Q: Would you want to play him?

A: I don’t think so. His height, looks, accent...too different from me.

Q: He had a wife and two sons. Why do you think he married?

A: To get ahead. Then, especially!

Q: What about today?

A: Would he marry if he was alive today? Gee, I don’t know. It would depend on what he was aiming at. How come?

Q: Or how he felt about himself?

A: I guess....I read someplace that he was so wild—sorry, I didn’t mean to make a pun—he was so, like, flamboyant, that he needed a wife for a cover.

Q: I can think of two comic actors whose non-macho was surprisingly camouflaged by their having long-term wives. One of them deceased....

A: Jack Benny?

Q: So several have said.

A: Who’s the other one?

Q: This one, I know two older gentlemen who had affairs with him when he was younger too. He not only hides being gay, but Jewish. Changed his name, of course, and he’s never looked back. (I mention his name.) (Tony Randall,
né
Leonard Goldenberg.)

A: He’s Jewish?! I knew he was gay, I didn’t know he was Jewish.

Q: Then, he’s half-succeeded, by his and Hollywood’s standards.

A: I think he’s one of those guys who always needs to have a wife he can mention on a TV talk show. (Randall later remarried, to a female decades and decades his junior, and became a father by whatever means.) But about Oscar Wilde, what bummed me out was reading how the reason he got sent to jail, and having to do hard labor; was that he led such a reckless life.

Q: Who wrote that?

A: I don’t remember. But it bummed me out because it wasn’t about his being reckless or... flamboyant. It was the law. If you were homosexual and got caught, the law sent you to jail.

Q: Or bisexual. Non-heterosexuality was criminalized. As it still is in most of the world and not just abroad.

A: (Shakes head.) Bummer.

Q: In one of his later poems (
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
), Wilde wrote, “For he who lives more lives than one/More deaths than one must die.”

A: A real bummer. He was deep. When I was in Europe, I found out where Oscar’s buried, in a cemetery in Paris. The same place where Jim Morrison’s buried.

Q: And Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, together.

A: Yeah? So I wanted to know where he died, ‘cause that would be more personal—where you’re buried isn’t really part of your life. A friend of Rainer’s told me Oscar died in this hotel in Paris, the Hotel d’Alsace, I think. It’s still there. I wanted to go and see the wallpaper, ‘cause he hated the wallpaper. I mean, what about having to die in a room where you couldn’t even stand the wallpaper!

Q: I wonder if it’s the same wallpaper now.

A: I don’t know. I was surprised the building would be there that long.

Q: In Paris that’s not so long. You were in
Chariots of Fire
.

A: (Beams.) Yeah. Nobody knew it was gonna take off like that.

Q: Did you get to know Ian Charleson?

A: In a way. (Warily.) He’s okay. How come?

Q: Do you consider yourself bisexual, Brad?

A: (Eyebrows jump.) Well—had—didn’t someone once say everyone’s bisexual, deep down?

Q: Not everyone acts on it.

A: James Dean said he didn’t want to go through life with one arm tied behind his back. Why do you ask?

Q: Did you know, making the movie, that Ian Charleson is gay? He’s admitted it—actors actually do that in England, sometimes. He said a British movie producer tried to get him to pretend he wasn’t, which he went along with until he saw he wasn’t going to get much work in Hollywood.

A: Wow. I knew. He sort of...came on to me.

Q: Did you react? Or come on to him?

A: (Laughs shyly.) He’s cute.

Q: Do you ever get involved romantically or furthermore with costars?

A: I don’t think business and pleasure should mix. A little masturbation can save all kinds of complications. (Grins.)

Q: Since you bring that up—pun not intended—

A:
I
like it....

Q: Wilde said, “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.” Anyhow, I heard you began an interview by telling the writer that before she showed up you were feeling kind of low, so you...took matters in hand. Is that true?

A: That I told him—it was a guy—or that I jerked off?

Q: Either. It’s a provocative way to begin an interview.

A: That’s the idea. You got to make yourself known as a stand-out interview, ‘cause you’re competing with every other actor who’s a potential interview, and if you’re not in a new hit movie....I’ve done it a few times, mostly in Europe. I start the show by saying I was feeling yucky, then I masturbated, and now I’m ready to begin the old question-answer.

Q: How do journalists respond to your statement?

A: If they’re guys, they smile—they’re either embarrassed or turned on. If it’s a gal, one was...like, indulgent, the other pursed her lips—she thought I was lying or scum.

Q: Is it just an attention-getting device or a statement of fact?

A: Once it was both. Another time, I did it after the interview was over. On account of the interviewer. (Grins.)

Q: Appealing?

A: (Nods.) Yah-man.

Q: Jamaican?

A: No, he was...
oh
. I mean I don’t remember. I’m kidding anyway. I didn’t do that. Jamaica, huh? There was this old, old joke: Man says, “My wife and I went to the Caribbean.” His friend says, “Jamaica?” Man says, “No, she chose to go.” (Laughs.) Yeah, Rainer told me about some of his lovers. One of them was Turkish, and he liked
Midnight Express
. He has blue eyes.

Q: Many Turks do. In French, that’s what
turquoise
meant, “Turk’s eye.”

A: Lots of Jewish people have blue eyes.

Q: Especially Jewish actors, from Newman and Bacall to Streisand, etc. Yet Jewish characters seldom do, or have light hair. Hollywood stereotypes.