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Author's life is as large as the ones in his books
by Kaizaad Kotwal
A writer's life is always interesting because of the people they get to know, whether imaginary or real, who can lead them on some tantalizing and terrific journeys. My interview with Darwin Porter, author of Blood Moon, proved just that to me.
Having befriended such cultural and societal luminaries as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Joan Crawford and Tallulah Bankhead, Porter has had a life that is as large and epic as the ones he portrays in his books.
A native of Greensboro, North Carolina, and former Key West bureau chief for the Miami Herald--where Tennessee Williams was his neighbor-Porter currently jets around the globe due to his work as a travel writer for the "Fromer" travel book series.
He began focusing on writing novels after he left the Herald.
"Novels are my hobby," said Porter, who has written several books, including Marika, Razzle Dazzle, Venus, and Butterflies in Heat. The last of these was made into a film of the same name with the legendary Eartha Kitt playing a black drag queen. Venus was loosely based on the life of famed writer Anaiis Nin, whom Porter called “a good friend."
Porter's novels have always been controversial, especially in the 1970s and '80s when writing about gay protagonists and drag queens and love among men was not acceptable in social or literary circles.
In fact, Butterflies in Heat has a lot of similarities with the later novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
"I'm not trying to say that Midnight is lifted from my book," Porter clarifies, “but it goes to show that when my book came out it was savaged by the critics even though it was a huge success with readers, and Midnight
has become this literary and cinematic phenomenon."
For his latest epic saga, Blood Moon, Porter drew his inspiration from his time in Miami in the seventies. It wasn't just his work at the Herald (publishing is the main battleground of Blood Moon) but also his connections to the world of evangelism (another war zone in the book) that brought together these bizarre worlds in the novel.
Porter said his brother Powell "is a very big evangelist but he's not anti-gay and he has gay members in his congregation. My brother has been very supportive of me," he explains, "but I'm sure he's not a fan of my novels."
One of the central characters in Blood Moon is Rose, a dynamic evangelist woman who gets off on religion as much as she does on wild, uninhibited sex.
"Part of the inspiration for Rose was Joan Crawford," Porter says. Another source was the infamous Anita Bryant.
He recalls seeing Anita Bryant sing before "she got caught up in the anti-gay crusade." Today, Porter says, Bryant lives in Arkansas and "seem[s] to have softened to a 'live and let live' philosophy, the last I talked to her."
"I was always interested in the way these people were selling their religion and the great performers that they were,” Porter said. "I am not religious, and even though I grew up in the Bible Belt it's something I never felt. I never bought the idea."
Porter also said that he does “attack the politics of the right-wing Christians who use religion to further a political cause.” But he hastens to add that in Blood Moon, he doesn't "preach or promote a cause other than I oppose hate and nate-mongers.'
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Porter says his audience is mostly “men, professionals under thirty-five, the same au-
diences that bought Razzle Dazzle and Butterflies in Heat." Porter has quite a large world audience, from readers in New Zealand to fans in Sweden.
"Above all, I want my readers to have a good time," Porter emphasizes, “because there are so many books where I don't have a good time and feel like I am being put to sleep."
Porter says that he hopes "to do what straight writers have done for ages, which is to put gay people in positions of power, who are the movers and shakers,” as opposed to "deal simply with issues of coming out or dying of AIDS."
Blood Moon is probably the only book in recent memory that has more sex than the Starr report. The book is unstoppably steamy, and sex is the primary focus of the men and women in this novel.
"I am not one for gratuitous sex, but in this book it became the story, since the people are intent on sexually devouring each other," Porter said.
The book is about sexual obsession and the heights to which people will go to satisfy their intimate urges. The book will seem like fantasy to those who came of age in the aftermath of AIDS. The men and women in this book swap partners more often than most people change underwear, and none of the sex is protected or is seen as something that could have consequences.
"I was trying to recapture some of what I had experienced first-hand or through friends," Porter explains about the sexual swinging of his story's studs. "I knew these people and saw how far they went with it and it wasn't until the end of the seventies that America started to change drastically."
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Porter's book is set in these seventies where debauchery would have made the
Roman gods and goddesses blush. To set this novel in the nineties, as even Porter acknowledges, “would have been irresponsible because these behaviors are dangerous [in the age of AIDS] and I don't endorse that at all."
He recalls a time in the seventies where he had a cottage on Fire Island in New York, where one of the popular T-shirts read so MANY MEN, SO LITTLE TIME. "That was the prevailing attitude of the day," recalls Porter, "and it was about the number of people one slept with, the notches on one's belt."
Porter said that he "is fascinated by people like my characters who have no moral, sexual, or other boundaries." In this world, he says, one simply pursued what one wanted with no mind to any externalities.
"If Joan Crawford wanted another man she went for it. IfTallulah Bankhead wanted someone, male or female, she went after it. And if someone fell in love with a fourteen-year-old, you pursued it and didn't think of the morals."
The book also addresses our cultural obsession with youth and our fear of mortality. Porter recounts an anecdote from the Tallulah Bankhead archives.
"She and I were walking down a street one day and someone stopped and asked her, 'Are you Tallulah Bankhead?' and she replied, 'What's left of her darling, what's left of her!'"
Blood Moon pulsates with sexual energy from the first word to the last and is definitely not for the prudish or weak of heart.
His next novel, titled Midnight in Savannah, is set in the 1990s, and Porter has used the phenomenon of the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil as the backdrop theme of this work in progress.
Kaizaad Kotwal is a Chronicle contributing writer in Columbus.
Sci-fi thriller time-travels through romance and murder
The Sticky Fingers of Time Directed by Hilary Brougher Strand Releasing
Cinematheque, Cleveland Wexner Center, Columbus
Reviewed by Dawn E. Leach
Summer is time for moviegoing, and one little gem of a sci-fi thriller coming to two Ohio screens should just fit the bill: The Sticky Fingers of Time.
Sticky has made the rounds at quite a few film festivals over the past two years, including Venice, Toronto, Rotterdam, the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and Los Angeles' Outfest. Movie Maker magazine reported in December that the show stole the spotlight at the Maine International Film Festival last July, causing organizers to arrange an unscheduled repeat. The film has a bit of everything: mystery, murder, an evil (but beautiful) villain, romance and sexual intrigue, and three attractive bisexual women who spend a lot of time in their undergarments.
"I've always found a very personal comfort in dense, layered narratives with a touch of melodrama and an uninhibited absurdity," said the film's writer and director, Hilary Brougher.
Sticky's enigmatic plot is filled with unex-
pected twists and puzzles to solve. Latecomers beware: After a brief artistic series of nuclear test explosion footage, the opening scene is crucial. Embedded throughout that scene are bits of information that will help make sense of the plot as the story progresses.
The premise of the film is that a mutation in the "code" of someone's soul can give a person the ability to spontaneously travel in time-often unintentionally.
The story revolves around two bisexual women who are both writers. Tucker is a journalist working on a science fiction novel in the 1950s. Drew is a self-doubting, suicidal novelist in 1997 who has just broken up with her boyfriend. When the two meet, they are both trying to unravel their confusion after they each have taken unexpected timetrips. Neither of them know it yet, but they both have mutated codes making them time travelers.
Tucker's confusion is compounded by several sightings of her missing boyfriend, Isaac, in the unfamiliar environment where she finds herself, New York in 1997. As Tucker explains to Dres, she had last seen Isaac in the '50s, when she left him to feed her cat while she took a trip. When she returned, Isaac was gone, but in his place was a gorgeous woman (Ofelia) who she said grew on her "like green on cheese."
Though Drew and Tucker are shaken and wary from their confusing experiences, the
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in the 1950s, Tucker gives her 1990s lover Ofelia a kiss before sending her out on a fateful errand for coffee.
chemistry soon begins to flow and they find themselves drawn together. This is perhaps no accident, as the two soon find that their fates, along the fates of with several other "time freaks" are inextricably wound together. The plot becomes more fascinating and intricate with each time jump.
The film is also not without absurdity and moments of humor. At a point much later in the film, Ofelia is dating Isaac.
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"You're going to leave me," she tells him accusingly, with tears in her eyes. "I am?" he replies, confused. Isaac turns to Drew with an ironic gri-
mace.
"See, Drew?" he says. “That's what happens with nonlinear chicks. You get shit for things you didn't even do yet.”
Sticky gets its name from the title of Tucker's science fiction novel, based on the assertion that time has five fingers: the past, the present, the future, what could have been, and what yet might be.
The film was a low-budget venture—it was made for less than $250,000—but you
wouldn't know it from the quality. What the filmmakers lacked in funds, they made up in talent, passion and hard work. It also helped that Brougher happened to have some talented actors for friends to make up the cast, and she and producer Isen Robbins also managed to persuade experienced designers and crew to join the project.
Though the film certainly lacks the flashy special effects of many science fiction fantasies, Brougher and her talented crew used creativity, wit and style to coax the audience to the suspension of disbelief.
Clevelanders will have to hurry to see this film: The Cinematheque, (in the Cleveland Institute of Art at 11141 East Blvd., 216421-7450) has only two showings, on Thursday, July 22 at 9:20 pm and on Friday, July 23 at 7:30 pm. However, the film is worth rearranging plans for the evening.
Columbus audiences have a bit more time to plan, with three showings at the Wexner Center (1871 N. High St., 614-292-3535) August 5, 6, and 7.