ju s t o u t ▼ m a rc h 2 1 . 1 9 0 7 ▼ 2 9
INTERVIEW
The first article of mine ever to be
published in a national magazine was
an interview with author Paul Monette,
which appeared in the June 1994 issue
of 10 Percent. Monette and I had
never met, although I’d long been an ardent
admirer of his work, be it poetry (Love Alone),
fiction (Afterlife, Halfway Home,) or autobiogra
phy (Borrowed Time and the National Book
Award-winning Becoming a Man). My being
T
inema
A n A ct of T rust
Filmmaker Monte Bramer reflects on the daunting task of
recording the end of Paul Monetteys life
▼
by Daniel Vaillancourt
Paul if he’s able.” Because the Times piece made
it sound like he was going to drop dead the next
day. We set it up through a friend.
“W e” being you and Lesli?
granted one private hour with him was a dream
come true, and I looked forward to publicizing his
then eagerly awaited collection of essays Last
Watch o f the Night. After our conversation—
conducted via telephone: me in San Francisco, he
in Los Angeles—Monette and I agreed to connect
in person, one month hence, when his book tour
would bring him to Northern California. Unfortu
nately, he became ill shortly thereafter. There
would be no Bay area bookstore appearance. Paul
died of AIDS complications almost one year
later, on Feb. 10, 1995.
Although we never did meet face to face, I feel
asifl knew the man—due to the visceral memoirs
he left behind, certainly—but especially thanks to
the recently unveiled documentary Paul Monette:
The Brink o f Summer’s End. Produced by Lesli
Klainberg, written and directed by Monte Bramer,
the film— which won the Audience Award for
Best Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film
Festival— is a graceful, poignant tribute.
Shepherded early on by corporate fairy godmother
Sheila Nevins, senior vice president of documen
tary and family programming for HBO, it is set to
air on Cinemax in June.
“I wanted to make some kind of connection
with him that would be more than just shaking his
hand at a book signing,” says writer-director
Bramer, 36. According to him and Klainberg, the
film explores “Paul’s life from his seemingly
idyllic New England boyhood to his closeted
adolescence to his development into a successful
writer, committed lover and activist.” Shot during
the 30 months preceding his death, Brink com
bines formal interview footage with family pho
tographs and home movies from Monette’s pri
vate collection. Narrated by Academy Award
winning actress Linda Hunt (a close friend of
Paul’s), the film is laced with testimonials from
such key individuals as Monette’s last lover,
Winston Wilde; his beloved brother, Robert; his
nurse, Ande Hughes; St. Martin’s Press editor
Michael Denneny; his longtime friend photogra
pher Star Black; actress Judith Light; psycho
therapist Betty Berzon; and writer/activist Larry
Kramer. Throughout the film, selections from
Monette’s oeuvre are read by openly gay actor
Jonathan Fried. Original music for Brink was
composed by Jon Ehrlich.
“It’s not just a story about his decline,” warns
Bramer, who traveled with Monette and Wilde to
Paris and the 1993 March on Washington, D.C.,
among other places, in his attempts to record his
subject’s last months. In the same breath, Bramer
admits that Monette did change in the two and a
half years the project took to complete. “When we
first started interviewing him, he had a kind of
sexy swagger, he was a little full of himself, a little
cocky,” says Bramer. “By the end of his life, he’d
turned into a very wise old man.”
Below, Bramer shares further thoughts about
Monette and the making of his celluloid biogra
phy.
Tell me how your reading a Los Angeles
Times article about Paul became the genesis o f
this project.
It was called “Finding His Voice,” and it was
apromotional piece for Becoming a Man. I thought,
“Oh, gosh. We just have to do an interview with
Lesli Klainberg, the producer, and I. At that
point we were already working together. What
Lesli and I had originally thought about doing was
a film where we would go around the country and
do profiles...[focusing] on average people with
ordinary jobs: lesbian coal miners in Appalachia,
gay dairy farmers in Minnesota. We were putting
mmmmm »
Paul Monette
together that concept when I got this brainstorm
about doing an interview with Paul. I just wanted
to have it, because I didn’t know what was going
to happen to him. [The original interview] was
scheduled to go for an hour. We went for three
hours, and it was magical. He was so articulate, so
bright. Lesli and 1 watched the dailies the next
week, and I looked over at her and said, “Do you
really want to haul your butt around the country in
a van?... I think we have a film right here if we set
our minds to it.” And she, with a great sigh of
relief, said, “Oh, thank heavens.” [Laughs.] So
we put together a proposal, and we sent it off to
Paul. About a week later he called. He was very,
very cute about it. He said, “I’ve read your pro
posal; I accept the part.”
W hat is it you proposed?
Quite honestly, I can’t remember, and it prob
ably bears no relationship to the film we have now.
I was afraid to admit to myself—let alone to
Paul—that I wanted the film tocover the end of his
life. I wanted him to see it. I wanted to bask in his
praise for a job well done. But along the way, we
realized that it was probably going to be a much
stronger film if we took it through the end of his
life.... [At some point] I said, “Well, you know,
you’ll never see the movie.” And he said, “Oh,
that’s all right, Monte. That’s not what’s impor
tant.” That was a little hard, because that was the
first time it was really acknowledged up front.
You must have wrestled with how to record
his death, which you ultimately chose to depict
in the Film via photographs.
I was so afraid of being exploitative. I didn’t
want to remake Silverlake Life. It wasn’t that I
thought it was a bad film. It’s just that it had been
done. I just thought, "Well, how do I do this? How
do I do this without exploiting his situation?” I
was scared of doing it, frankly.
Much of the film consists of original footage
of and interviews with Paul and Winston, and of
memorial. Actually, we met her at a birthday party
for Paul, and she was wonderfully, wonderfully
sweet. I just thought, “Oh, my God. What a coup
if we were able to get Linda Hunt.” She’s just got
the most glorious voice. We approached her, and
she was very, very sweet about saying, “I’d love
to.” This is a person who works all the time. I can’t
even imagine the kind of money she must get paid.
Why would she care about doing our film? Obvi
ously, because she loved Paul very much. She was
the first and only choice for that. If she had said no
it would have been a huge heartbreak to me. But
fortunately she said yes.
She was so glorious to work with because, first
of all, she’s such a total professional and perfec
tionist. She wanted it to be as good as it could
possibly be. At first, I thought, “She’s so used to
doing this, she’s probably only going to want todo
one take. What will I do if I don’t like it?” [But]
she was the one who was saying, “Are you sure
you like that, because I’ll be happy to do it again.
Just tell me what you want me to do.”
W hat was it like to screen the film for such
[At some
large audiences at Sundance?
That was absolutely thrilling. You know, you
point]
live with a project for four and a half years and you
watch it by yourself and you wonder, “Is this
I said,
communicating anything to anyone? Will anyone
be moved by this? Will people laugh at it? Will
“Well,
they think it’s dreadful?” You just don’t know.
you know,
You get so close to it you can’t see it anymore.
[Sundance] was the first time I’d seen it with a real
you ’ll
audience.... And those audiences were very, very
warm, very receptive. I mean, there were so many
never see
people weeping at the end of the movie. I didn’t
quite expect that. People would come up to me and
the movie.
say, “I’ve lost a brother,” or “I’ve lost a lover,” or
"My son is sick.” These weren’t people who were
And he
asking “How did you get your funding?” or “What
kind of camera did you use?” They weren’t even
said,
asking questions as much as they were trying to
somehow relate their own experience, their own
“Oh, that’s grief.
I had one boy come up to me and say, “Can
I hug you, because I want to touch somebody who
all right,
touched him.” And I thought, "Well, OK. Maybe
it’s not so bad. Maybe it really is working.”
Monte.
[Laughs.]
That
’snot The film is set to air on Cinemax in June.
W hat do you hope it will achieve?
what’s
I hope it’s a commercial for Paul’s books. I
would
to see Becoming a Man go into another
important. ” printing. love I would
love to see [Monette’s posthu
conversations with family and friends following
his death. What about the archival material: the
childhood photographs, the home movies?
He was always very generous with all this
material. In fact, one day he said in an offhand
way, “You know, Stevie [ Kolzak, Monette’s lover
after Roger Horwitz] and I shot a bunch of videos
of our trips. That wouldn’t be of any interest to
you, would it?” I nearly fell off my chair and said,
“Oh, do let me have a look at them, won’t you,
dear?” And he brings out a pile of them. I took
them home, and they were utterly fascinating. Not
just from the point of view of somebody who’s
making a film, but from the point of view of a gay
person who’d never been in love. I was watching
these two men who were just terribly in love.
They were giddy, silly, stupid in love. It was the
most thrilling thing to watch because it was so
intimate. They were addressing each other through
the camera in these exotic locations— Bora Bora;
Hawaii; Venice, on the Grand Canal, in front of
Marco Polo’s house. It was just these very roman
tic adventures on board ships, steaming through
the South Pacific. They were just gorgeous....
Then we started collecting more and more photo
graphs of Roger and everything. Paul always
intended that we would have access to all of his
photos [and family home movies].
How did Linda Hunt become involved?
Linda was a friend of Paul’s. She spoke at his
mously released fable] Sanctuary do well because
of it. I really think they are great books. Timeless
books, in a way. The viewership of Cinemax is
huge. If it plays in the middle of the night, it’s
going to be seen by unbelievable numbers of
people— more than will have ever read all of
Paul’s work put together. And that faintly horri
fies me. But what it might do is cause somebody
to go out and pick up a copy of Becoming a Man
or Borrowed Time or Sanctuary. Of course, I
envision a gay 16-year-old kid in some small town
some place picking up one of these books. But it
might be some straight guy whose kid is gay and
who is trying to figure it all out. It might be that
kid’s mother, or a friend. I’d feel like it really did
something wonderful if it did that.
W hat would you say to Paul now?
Oh, God.... I guess if he were sitting here now,
I would just say, “Thank you for letting Lesli and
I tell your story.” It’s not like we had Academy
Award-winning films under our belt. It’s not like
we were [Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman,
creators of] Common Threads and The Celluloid
Closet. It’s not like we had any kind of track
record other than the fact that we worked in film
and were very hopeful about what we could
achieve. We were determined to do a good job. If
the film painted a poor picture of Paul it wouldn’t
be helpful to his memory. So it dawns on me what
a great act of trust that was on his part. He didn’t
know us from Adam.