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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 2002)
O cto b e r 1 8 , 2 0 0 2 v FIL.IVI exas has always produced more than its fair share o f oddities, from executions of mentally retarded prisoners to lawsuits against Oprah for dissing beef to that zany illiterate we call our president. Joining this august company is Hell House, a fundamentalist Christian spœkhouse featuring Grand Guignol tableaux of botched abortions, dying A ID S patients, rave rapes and that peren nial Christian fave, the everlasting fires of hell, rendered in high school variety show style with colored fogs and golden foil. Hell House, from joumalist-tumed-director George Ratliff, is a fascinating cinéma vérité lœ k at this tightly run cultural phenomenon. Staged by Trinity Church in Cedar Hill, just outside Dallas (one of those Assembly of God operations), Hell House claims 75,000 visitors during the past 10 years o f operation, with 15,000 “scared straight” souls instantly convert ed to the joys of the Christian lifestyle. W hat inspired this success rate? Perhaps it was the “hospital” sequence with beds contain ing "abortion girl,” a screaming teen-ager lying in a pool o f blood, and “dying A ID S guy,” another screaming teen-ager whose “choice” of homosexuality and denunciation of Christ assures him a prime place at Beelzebub’s knee. These hokey productions com bine the lat est technology (video monitors, etc.) with very old-school techniques: corny dialogue, scream acting, Disneyland haunted house sound effects and boilerplate messages of dire consequences to any behavior that deviates from an exceed ingly narrow norm. It’s easy to laugh off this stuff as yet another wacky phenomenon from the heartland. Heck, it could even be read as naive art. But the A Musical Political Satire T Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall Thursday, Nov. 7 at 8:00pm Tickets On Sale Now! For tickets & information call 503.244.0111 Mittleman Jewish Community Center OB I CON r u t iK MOADC ASTINO The BIGGEST GAY LEAGUE in Portland bowls at T h e scourge of A ID S in H ell H ou se, playing O ct. 2 5 to 3 1 at Clinton Street T h eater uneasy parade o f little kids and young teens through what look like outtakes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre may make you want to dial the child abuse hot line. T he religiosos running these shows talk a lot about the “susceptibility” of youth to the hor rors of Satan, queemess, sex before marriage, drunken driving and more. But they’re equally guilty in trying to induce trauma in their audi ences, oblivious to the effect these chambers of horrors have on impressionable minds. Hell House the movie (playing Oct. 25 to 31 at Clinton Street Theater) is refreshingly neutral in treating this material. It simply records— in painstaking detail— the complicated process of choosing actors, building sets, rehearsing and the show itself, leavening it with glimpses of the some times pathetic lives of the people putting it on. But one thing that shines through is the organizers’ enthusiasm for what they’re doing. It wouldn’t be overreaching to conclude that these supposedly devout folk are a little too excited at their bloody pastiche. You can almost see them getting off on images of date-raped teen-agers, spread-eagled abortion “victims" and the other unfortunate denizens of this kitschy hell. JH HETtM 300 LANES! For More Info Call Cathi 30 31SE Powell Blvd Portland OR 97202 503 - 23 V 0237 fx 503 * 23 V 0239 Always Means Fun /" OUT ON DVD S tr a ig h t StageDtrect ■ ■ eattle writer and per former David Schmader, who went undercover in 1998 to infiltrate the contro versial homosexual conver sion movem ent, is a bright v. ■ • spot in queer culture. In addition to the original artige*«»)*!- newspaper article, his research inspired Straight, a one-m an stage show just released on DVD. (T h e performance was shot on digital video before an appreciative audi ence at Portland’s C o H o T heatre.) In marked contrast to David Drake’s T he Night Larry K ram er Kissed Me, another recent gay one-m an show filmed and released on DVD, Schm ader’s piece is relevant, well co n sidered and affecting. A s he tells his story in a laid-back, laconic manner, painstaking honesty leads him to skirt easy demonizations to create a more com plex picture o f his experiences. H e’s quotably provocative; tidbits include: “If being gay was my impediment, then pride was the cure. I cam e to realize th at there is no impediment, I required n o cure, and ‘pride’ is as stupid as sham e” and, regarding the “distant father” explanation proffered by the ex-gay gurus, “If anything, my fagginess was the cause of our distance, n ot the result of it.” Never mean-spirited, he’s a thoughtful, charming, attractive guy (you can keep your primpy Q ueer as Folk stare— Schmader’s affability and intelligence make him a crush-worthy star in this writer’s constellation) seeking insight into his own sexuality while explaining his problems with those who would gently intimidate vulnerable people into denouncing theirs. He uses his insult ing yet frequently humorous ex-gay encounters as a catalyst to reflect on coming out, his eventual S ambivalence toward the gay community and his bemusement at his parents’ alternately dorky and touching attempts to embrace their queer son. T h ere’s little sentimentality here, and Schm ader’s descriptions of his fellow future heterosexuals are mostly played for laughs. However, the story of Allison— a young, attrac tive “sports dyke” who so desperately wants to accept what she’s told is G od’s plan for her gender identity that she mummifies herself in a Laura Ashley dress— is intensely saddening. Schm ader is more David Sedaris than Tony Kushner; he avoids self-righteous oversimplifi cation like the plague. Instead, he attempts to understand the motivations of conversion per petrators and their often all-too-willing victims while testing and refining his opposition to their insupportable ideals and methods. H e’s a truth-seeker, not a cheerleader, and what he gives us in Straight is well earned and real. — Christopher M cQ uam T h e I m portance o f B ein g E a r n est C riterion C ollection ecently, in these very pages, I excoriated O liver Parker’s film of O scar W ilde’s masterfully com ic 1895 play The Im portance o f Being Earnest. W ilde’s inge niously airy words and concepts, I argued, were sunk by Parker’s mundane style, which some how made the gay author’s fresh, nonchalantly subversive wit seem stuffy, sluggish and dull. How fortuitous, then, that the Criterion C ollection released a D V D of A ntony Asquith’s 1952 Earnest, which is all the things Parker’s version wasn’t, at the same time as its errant descendant. Here, we see W ilde’s play R filmed in a truly W ildean (read: florid, flam boyant, irreverent) style. Wilde’s protagonists are two rakish friends, golden boy Jack Worthing (plyed with the appro priate self-serious buffoonery by Michael Red grave) and playboy Algernon Moncrieff (the dap per, sassy Michael Denison). The two attempt to mislead their prospective mates, Gwendolyn (Joan Greenwood) and Cecily (Dorothy Tutin), as to their names, a deception necessitated by the two ladies’ ridiculous but heartfelt insistence that they wouldn’t be caught dead marrying a man named anything but Ernest— the only moniker that “real ly inspires confidence.” Aided by the thundering disapproval o f W or thing’s potential mother-in-law, Lady Bracknell (the incomparably ostentatious Dame Edith Evans), the pair dig themselves deeper and deep er into hilarious misunderstanding and coinci dence, all topped off with a giddily improbable Maraschino cherry o f a happy ending. Crises of identity and situation are handled with aplomb by Wilde’s exemplarily satirical char acters— purely social creatures who have no real “inside” psychologically speaking and so always have a witty remark and careless air available for even the most awkward circumstances. Wilde considered any “seriousness” of tone a grave offense, but Earnest is as pure and singular in sen sibility as the greatest operas. Through Asquith’s deliciously artificial sensi bility, Earnest can be read as a skeptical outsider’s view, both of heterosexual convention (Wilde dutifully played hetero and paid the Victorian-era price— two years of hard labor— when his homo sexuality was revealed) and the absurdity inherent in all socially regulated human interaction. This Technicolor Earnest is simultaneously the sharp satire it was always m eant to be and a big, gaudy, delicious cinem atic dessert. 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