November 8, 1996 GAY People's ChronICLE 21

EVENINGS OUT

Changed forever by the journey to the Million Man March

Get On the Bus

Directed by Spike Lee

Reviewed by Jon Dallas

The Million Man March that was held in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1995 recently had its first anniversary. In bringing together between 400,000 to 1.5 million black men, it was a time for all "black men to declare to the government of America and the world that we are ready to take our place as the head of our families and communities." This 'Day of Atonement' was instrumental in bringing together black men to join in love for one another, to end violence, raise strong children, respect women, and support black businesses.

Get On the Bus, a Spike Lee ‘joint,' tells the story of a group of men who board a Spotted Owl bus as strangers headed for the historic Million Man March, but emerge three days and thousands of miles later as brothers. The story begins with a group leaving the First AME Church in South Central Los Angeles and heading for Washington, D.C. Their journey is not just across America, but down forgotten roads within themselves and onto the common ground of unity and hope on which they all must tread. On board is a tremendously diverse group, including actors, students, businessmen, a policeman, straight men, and two gay men.

The relationship of those two gay men, Randall (Harry Lennix) and Kyle (Isaiah Washington), combusts within the cramped quarters of the Spotted Owl. During an argu-

ment early on in the ride, Randall blatantly outs both himself and Kyle to all the passengers on the bus. The shock is universal, but reaction is varied, from coldly tolerant to disgusted.

Among general comments of "Sissy" and "We got faggots on the bus," comes the observations of Jeremiah "Pop" Washington (Ossie Davis), the respected elder on the bus. About the gay characters he remarks, “The Bible says its an abomination. Still, I ask myself, what if one of them was my son? Or if it was myself who had been born that way?"

After their blow-up, Kyle moves to an empty seat to avoid Randall and to continue reading his copy of James Earl Hardy's BBoy Blues. As the bus ride progresses, both Randall and Kyle have confrontations with another passenger, Flip (Andre Braugher); a homophobic and out-of-work actor who endlessly voices his volatile opinions. His angry presence stirs up the mix on the bus and soon leads to a fight with Kyle.

The roles of the two black gay men are representative of a more diverse black gay community, beyond just the RuPauls that are often the only focus of news and entertainment media. Randall and Kyle represents a more political and macho aspect of the black gay male. Kyle is a hip-hop dressing Republican, and Randall is a sharply dressed liberal.

One particularly strong moment of the film comes in Kyle's response to Flip's prodding him as a "sissy." Kyle spouts off his 10year service as a U.S. Marine and recounts

Road film is a search for love strewn with corpses

Butterfly Kiss

Directed by Michael Winterbottom Cleveland Cinematheque

Reviewed by Bob Boone

A butterfly kiss is an affectionate fluttering of one person's eyelashes along someone else's cheek. There is little of anything immediately evident in Butterfly Kiss that would suggest to

of their kind and intelligent nature as superior creatures. Eunice smugly contends that dolphins cannot be superior because humans kill dolphins, which proves human superiority. Eunice's hubris melts when from the ensuing silence, Miriam meekly counters that since some mosquito bites can kill humans, by Eunice's theory, mosquitoes would then be superior.

REMOVE ONWIDE

URP

Amanda Plummer and Saskia Reeves.

the viewer such moments of tenderness.

Amanda Plummer stars as Eunice, a young woman clutching a handful of love letters maddeningly in search of their supposed author, Judith. Instead she discovers Miriam (Saskia Reeves), so painfully ignored by life that she grasps upon Eunice as her one invitation to love and adventure.

Eunice is calmly bloodthirsty as the two women travel about a small area of Great Britain. Murdering most anyone that is snared in her net, Eunice is furious that nothing she does gains her the attention she craves. She screams that even God ignores her by not punishing her for her crimes. Indeed no one does seem to notice Eunice's trail of victims. Never do the two women have to flee from officers of the law. They flee instead from their loneliness and frustration.

Insight into Eunice's motives comes when she scoffs at a hitchhiker's comments that he is taking his daughter to the shore so that she can see the dolphins, which he considers by virtue

TURBO

In such a simple response, Miriam outlines her dilemma. All at once she aims to convert Eunice from her evil ways and still bring the excitement of that wickedness into her own life, without ever risking Eunice's love. Miriam yearns to make things better without destroying what she needs. She is in essence the mosquito, hovering about Eunice in need of nourishment, always fearful that Eunice may crush her, and yet there is always the fear that some

mosquito bites can kill.

Stunning performances by both Plummer and Reeves save their characters from the doom of being totally unsympathetic, especially within interspersed black-and-white segments where Miriam reflects upon the events and the characters in a combination of therapy session and confession.

"You have to look for the good in everyone," she says, and she does, even in Eunice. It is in Miriam's bittersweet interpretation of her time with Eunice as less a series of violent and appalling events, and more as a time shared with someone who needed her and loved her, that we can find the reason for the movie's title..

Butterfly Kiss plays at the Cleveland Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd, University Circle, for just one showing, Friday,,November 15, at 9:25 pm. Tickets are $6 for nonmembers and, due to violence, nudity, and sexual situations, no one under 17 will be admitted. For more information, call 216421-7450.

LESTER SLOAN

Randall (Harry Lennix, left) can't deal with Kyle's (Isaiah Washington) refusal to be open about the fact that he's gay.

how during Desert Storm he was shot by the "friendly fire," of another Marine, who proclaimed he had "killed two birds with one bullet," referring to Kyle being both black and gay.

This incident typifies the attitude of nonacceptance within one's own group that many gay black men sometimes experience within the black community as a whole. A year ago, when the National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum participated in the March, between 200 and 300 black gay men openly showed up wearing rainbow flags in the shape of Africa on their clothes. According to reports, a gay man recommended by the Forum board was supposed to speak at the

March demonstration. However, organizers gave the board conflicting information about whether or not it would happen, and no openly gay speaker ever addressed the masses of black men.

Though this film rekindles the spirit of the March itself, it serves as a reminder that the black community is not monolithic. From dark-skinned to light-skinned and straight to gay, these twelve men are in search of their own humanity, which they find through incidents on the bus on the way there. They find it through their own inner-reflections. Somehow, when they end up in D.C., it isn't the march that will change them forever, but the journey and what they discover about themselves.

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