12 GAY PEOPle's ChronICLE JANUARY 29, 1999
EVENINGS OUT
Museum to screen Helms film with Shepard footage
Cleveland-The Cleveland Museum of Art on February 3 will be screening Dear Jesse, a film by gay director Tim Kirkman about the senior senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms. The documentary contains what are possibly the only film or video images of slain Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.
Kirkman's 1996 college reunion is the jumping off point for his film, which is part road trip and part diary. It is an attempt to understand his home state's senator, and how two men who share the same home town of Monroe, N.C., could have turned out so differently.
Although the usual Helms is here, blasting gay rights, AIDS research and arts funding, Kirkman spends more time with regular North Carolinians from mechanics and mothers to poets and pastors. The result is terrifically insightful.
Among those Kirkman speaks with are prominent lesbian activist Mandy Carter; students at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., which had invited Helms to speak at its commencement; Mike Nelson, openly
gay mayor of Carrboro, N.C., and the first openly gay elected official in the state; Kirkman's own articulate and outspoken aunt; and Allan Gurganus, author of the best-selling The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, who compares Helms' supporters to "pod people" during their conversation.
In a moment of particular poignancy, Kirkman speaks to Patsy Clarke and Eloise Vaughn, two mothers who lost their sons to AIDS. The two met and intended to start a support group, but in the course of considering their goals, they real-
ized that Helms' attacks on the Jesse Helms lesbian and gay community and especially upon people with
AIDS required a response. So they founded a group called MAJIC, Mothers Against Jesse in Congress, to campaign against his re-election in 1996.
Kirkman's own comments speak to the
TIM KIRKMAN
challenges faced by many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, but use his personal experiences to effectively draw viewers in.
Last fall, Kirkman realized that one of the
first interviews he had done for the film, which he hadn't included, was with thenCatawba College student Matthew Shepard. In light of Shepard's murder, Kirkman decided to add the footage as a post-script to Dear Jesse.
The addition brings together many of the issues Kirkman had addressed, hitting home with the chilling footage of a talking, moving, breathing figure whose face has tragically become emblazoned in the minds of millions of Americans through photographs and words alone.
The film made its small-screen debut Tuesday, January 19 on cable's Cinemax. It will be repeated on January 29 at 5:00 p.m.
The Cleveland Museum of Art will screen Dear Jesse at 7 pm on Wednesday, February 3. The museum is located at 11150 East Blvd., in Cleveland, phone 216-421-7340, ext. 465. Admission $6, $3 for museum members.
Compiled by Doreen Cudnik from press materials.
Painter's love life was as unsettling as his art
by Dawn E. Leach Cleveland-John Maybury's semi-biographical film about the relationship between renowned gay painter Francis Bacon and his lover George Dyer is no romance movie.
The two men met in 1964 when Dyer fell through Bacon's ceiling while trying to break into his London home.
"You're not much of a burglar," the film version of Bacon remarks dryly. "Take your clothes off and come to bed, and you can have whatever you want."
The men become lovers and Dyer becomes Bacon's muse in an increasingly destructive relationship.
Bacon is emotionally detached and frequently heartless. He publicly belittles Dyer in front of his art-snob friends. When Dyer begins to have nightmares, Bacon dryly tells Dyer that he is “a pain” even asleep. Bacon does show tenderness for his lover in an occasional remark to a trusted friend, but withholds his affection where it counts. Instead, he buys him expensive clothes and gives him plenty of spending money.
But Dyer needs more than money from his lover, and he doesn't seem to have the strength to find a way to fulfill his emotional needs. He grows miserable. His self-esteem spirals downward, until finally he kills himself in a Paris hotel during one of Bacon's art openings.
"I think Dyer had his problems before they met, but meeting Bacon simply aggravated things," Maybury said after directing
0
Love is the Devil: A Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon. “He may have just continued a life of petty crime, but instead he's become one of the great icons of 20thcentury art."
Bacon was a disturbed man with a disturbing artistic vision. His paintings are filled with violent images and themes of disintegration: The word horror appears often in discussions of his work.
Maybury, who never met Bacon but spent two years interviewing his friends, explained that ather than recreating precise historical detail, he was trying to give a sense of the atmosphere of Bacon's life. Because Dyer was the subject of much of Bacon's most celebrated work, Maybury centered his film around their seven-year relationship.
Without using any of Bacon's actual paintings in the film, Maybury evokes his artistic style through skilled use of cinematography. Actor Derek Jacobi plays Bacon masterfully in this unkind portrait of a troubled artist.
While a disquieting film, Love is the Devil is a thought-provoking exploration of a gay artist's most intimate relationship and the psyche that created powerfully disturbing art.
Love is the Devil will be showing at the Cleveland Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd. in Cleveland's University Circle, at 9:25 pm January 29, 7 pm January 30, and 1:30 pm January 31. For ticket information, call 216-421-7450.
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♡
Daniel Craig plays Francis Bacon's lover George Dyer.
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