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!
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30 31SE Powell Blvd
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fx 503 * 23 V 0239
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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. W ilde
and Asquith make perfect co-confectioners.
—C M
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