Monthly Archives: July 2011

News & Updates

Welcome by

irapic

I want to welcome you to keepthelightsonfilm.com and invite you to look around, relax and see what this site has to offer. Keep The Lights On is the name of a new film which I begin shooting this month. It’s the story of two men—a filmmaker, like myself, and his boyfriend—who embark upon a loving, messed-up, passionate and ultimately very human relationship in New York City from 1997 to 2007. It is a very personal film that tells a story I believe many others will find familiar.

When we first talked about creating a website for Keep the Lights On, I knew I wanted something that was more than just a vehicle for the film’s promotion. Keepthelightsonfilm.com draws upon the themes of the film as well as the community of artists I’ve come to know over the past 20 years who continue to inspire me to create new work. Here you’ll find interviews with artists from across the creative spectrum who make autobiographical art, as well as stories of gay New York, past and present. A special section on the site is devoted to the virtually unknown photographer and filmmaker Avery Willard whose homemade queer films have gone unseen since the 1970s. We also have a section for you to tell your stories, secrets, and celebrate your own lives. Finally, we’ll have regular updates on the making of Keep the Lights On, including interviews with the cast and crew and a production diary by yours truly.

When I was young, I was an open book. Then came sex and gay sex, particularly, and things got a lot more quiet. I “came out” at 16 (Memphis, TN, 1981), but that didn’t change things as much as I might have hoped. The secrets piled up. New closets were created. Life went on. Keep the Lights On is an attempt to swing open the door, to recognize that shame lingers and creates darkness. It also creates distance: between lovers, between families, inside ourselves.

When I was in my 20s, I bought a painting from my friend Max Schumann. On a rectangular piece of cardboard, he had painted the words “TELL YOUR STORY” in white on a black background. I placed the painting on my wall above my desk. When, 20 years later, I ended a long relationship that had more secrets than one could count, I found Max’s painting in the back of a closet under stacks of old magazines. I don’t even know when I took it down. It’s back up now, welcoming people at the front door. This site is a call to arms. Tell your story. Keep the lights on.

Welcome,

Ira Sachs

Gay New York

Leaving Our Keys at the Pink Teacup by

in a photo booth

We used to leave our keys with the Pink Teacup, just under the Coconut Cream Pie, in case friends needed to get in. You could also call from a payphone and we would lower the keys down on a string. This was 42 Grove Street and we had all moved there in 1992—fags and dykes and in-betweeners—and there were four of us in a two-level apartment with a spiral staircase and mice. We came with our ACT-UP t-shirts and Doc Martens and we sneered at Gay Pride, though we marched in it. We wanted to be part of gay history. More…

Avery Willard

In Search of a Backstory by

Charles Wassum, Jr.

One of the things non-narrative films often do that traditional narrative films don’t is pose questions without simple answers. Things get a little tougher in our case since Avery Willard, the filmmaker we are researching, is one who received precious little attention during his lifetime and is virtually unknown today. Charles Wassum Jr. (excerpted above), one of the earliest films by Willard still in existence, offers a first-hand illustration of the challenges posed by this project.

A nine-minute experimental portrait of a young man from Willard’s hometown of Marion, Virginia, the film demonstrates Willard’s keen eye at a young age and brings to mind elements of the later structural film movement of the 1970s, especially the repetition of shot composition and motion. There is a hypnotic and compelling rhythm to the cuts and mirrored frames. With little visual context, Willard is able to create a sense of intrigue around his subject, which makes for a deceptively simple and elegantly textured work. More…

Tell Your Story

Rats ‘n Crackheads by

I’ll never forget the time I was walking home on Suffolk Street in the Lower East Side with my roommate and two men we had just met at a church-turned-bar. It was 4 a.m., prime rat-roaming time, and in true form the little critters could be heard and seen playing connect the dots from trash bag to trashcan all along the block. Roommate and her photographer walked paces ahead, while I meandered behind with my guy who was packing his one-hitter and respectfully attempting to persuade me to toke with him. I wasn’t aware at this point that omens and signs should be taken seriously when you’re a single-ready-to-mingle girl in Manhattan (although I had cautiously begun to wonder if my mother was right in saying nothing good happens after ten o’clock). I also hadn’t concretely formed the opinion yet that a strange man who tries to get you to smoke with him almost immediately upon meeting, while perhaps very attractive, may not be the kind of person you would actually want to see again. More…

Art & Autobiography

Chinese Take Out by

Dominique and her brother

In the Art and Autobiography section, we’ll be regularly featuring interviews with artists from across the creative spectrum who create, or are attempting to create personal or autobiographical work. We’ll also be featuring examples of personal storytelling from many of these artists. For our first post, Obie award-winning playwright and one of the legendary Five Lesbian Brothers Dominique Dibbell has graciously agreed to share an excerpt from “Adam and Jane”, a memoir she is currently writing about her parents.  

After an hour or so, maybe more, my father stopped into one of those Chinese food shops in New York that are very bare bones. Thick, scratched, and dirty plate glass front, approach the counter, order from the menu on the wall above, order taker scurries back through a door to the kitchen and delivers order. Wait 5 to 10 minutes, order taker retrieves your meal from the back and gives it to you. It is in plastic containers, in a plastic bag, and included is a plastic fork, maybe a napkin, and soy sauce and hot mustard packets. If you’re lucky, it comes with a free egg roll.

So we go into this little Chinese food place with my father, and it smells bad. It smells more sad than bad. Like death, sickness, and loneliness are their fare more than lo mein and spare ribs. I am having a moment of disgust for this food and the people who eat it. On the other hand, it is around lunchtime on a cold winter day and I have probably eaten a bagel about four hours ago so I am hungry. I would like to eat some of this Chinese food. Because sometimes, of course, very good food can come out of very sad looking places. Not usually, but sometimes. Also, I am new to New York, so I don’t know that most likely the food from here will be terrible. Also, it might not taste terrible to me because my tastes are not fully matured. More…

News & Updates

Director’s Commentary, Part 1 by

Two weeks prior to the beginning of principal photography on his new film Keep The Lights On, I sat down with director Ira Sachs for an interview about the challenges and triumphs of making his film. In part one, Sachs explains why he’s making this film, and discusses some of the challenges for filmmakers telling queer stories in Hollywood. The video was shot by Cary Kehayan and edited by Adam Keleman.

Production Diary

Day 70: Too Nice by

D5-9097

I walked past my ex-boyfriend’s first apartment on W. 15th Street on my way to set this morning. Mild musings, but it was a long time ago—14 years—and I feel somewhat like a different person. I do believe people can change, maybe not essential personalities, but the level of pain goes up and down and, with it, the character. I don’t live in the kind of steady pain I used to, and loneliness and isolation. It’s a running theme in the movie, certainly, that from the age of 13, when I first started having sex, in secret, with a lot of shame, I held a certain part of me back from others for the next 26 years. I came out at 40, I might say. I decided, through the Program, to not keep a part of myself back anymore. You get mostly what you pay for. More…

Production Diary

Day 69: A Change in Weather by

Producer Lucas Joaquin on set

I got a good night sleep and the skies are clearing after a rained out day yesterday. We weren’t really prepared for the change in the weather, and soon enough it seemed best to give into it. The days are going fast. I’m both ready for the shoot to be over and sad it’s only a month more. One good thing about being a director is that you finish shooting and have editing to go into. It just gets more interesting. Last time I finished production—in Vancouver, years ago—I was a mess, so I think the silences were larger when the crew went home (or “the circus left town” as they might say in Canada). More…

Production Diary

Day 66: Take 21 by

the carrot, an integral prop.

I forgot how totally grueling it is to direct a film—maybe this one more than others, because of the intensity of the material, though in truth, the little throwaway scenes in a movie are actually the hardest to shoot and probably should be literally thrown away. Which is why they are hard to shoot. Last night, we were at Sue Simon’s house, shooting the “Ken” scenes, one of the pick-ups. She mistakenly thought we were shooting a party scene until I arrived on set with three carrots and explained they were props for a blowjob. More…

Production Diary

Day 64: A Good Nap by

director of photography Thimios Bakatakis

I just watched the first dailies, no sound, at the editing room, and I came away wanting very much to go to sleep. They aren’t what I imagined and I just want to go to sleep. We were on nights last night, so I got to sleep around 7am and then was awake by 11am, so I’m also tired, clearly. The day ahead seems long. Funny how quickly when you direct you can go from elation to depression. A grave desire to sleep. To turn on the A/C to get online and watch porn. To escape. More…