Yearly Archives: 2011

Avery Willard

In Search Of Avery Willard: A Message From The Co-Director by

Avery Willard with Flowers, date, photographer unknown

This week in our quest to understand the life and work of Avery Willard, Cary Kehayan, the co-director of the documentary In Search Of Avery Willard explains how the project came to pass, how it relates to Keep The Lights On, and what intruiges him about this unusual but exciting endeavor. 

It’s a great privilege to share with you the work of the late Avery Willard. Avery wore many hats – photographer, filmmaker, writer, editor, leatherman, pornographer. He was a creator in the truest sense. Ambitious, elusive and prolific, he was an unsung trailblazer of the queer art world. The work of innovators like Avery is what drove me to become a documentarian. I’ve always felt that a good doc filmmaker is, first and foremost, a disciplined and acute observer – one who isn’t afraid to take the side streets and embrace each tangent along the way. The process requires a tremendous amount of movement and obsession and perseverance. There’s a lot of joy but even more frustration and heartbreak. And yet, every once in a while, there is a discovery filled with such promise, it gives you the shivers. This was the case with Avery. More…

Tell Your Story

The Bisexual Blues by

Desiree and her partner (photo courtesy of Sarah Deragon)

It was a year ago this week that I told my parents I was in love with a woman. Dan Savage always advises callers in the process of coming out to give their parents a year for them to get over the initial shock. I think I mistook this to mean that by the time 12 months had passed they would have magically come to terms with my sexuality. This hasn’t been the case.

My parents emigrated to America from Iran in the early 80s. As result, they’re hard to pin down: quite progressive and open when it comes to certain issues, but also traditional and stuck in time when it comes to others. Growing up, I related more to the upbringing of my friends’ parents than my friends. In the year since I’ve come out to my parents, there have been screaming matches, silent treatment, one very public four-hour tear-fest at MoMA, and very little progress has been made. My father refuses to meet my girlfriend. “You don’t understand what it’s like” my mother says. “We were raised differently.” This argument is hard for me to swallow because didn’t they raise me? Weren’t they there for that entire period of time that my beliefs morals were formed? How can we differ so drastically when it comes to this one issue? More…

Production Diary

Day 79: What The Film Needs by

Zach Booth in front of a Neil Goldberg on set

A wasted day off. It’s hard to rest when you are used to working. It’s hard to rest in general I find. I am one of the many who has fallen, who has stopped knowing how to read a book, who can only read a paper if I’m having a meal by myself. I still hope this changes again, reverts to the years just after college when I could read for hours, days in fact. Though I was also more depressive then. Now I’m healthier, happier, but still not very good at staying still. And with Facebook and now Twitter, and the emails, and the calls….and the dreaded cam sites. It all overwhelms me and makes my day off the opposite of peaceful. Writing helps. Though now this ”production journal” is now on the Internet—the site was launched and looks very good (though how do we get people to go to it?)—and people make comments (not many, given), and I wonder if I’ll regret some things I say. I don’t say everything. More…

Production Diary

Day 75: Extras by

On set at El Faro

Tense day and short turnaround. We stopped shooting at around 11:00 and the crew was probably there for another hour. Now we start again at 9:30 and there’s a good chance for bad vibe. Arrived in the morning at 8:30 at El Faro and the guy who was supposed to open the restaurant at 6:30 hadn’t arrived. Lots of talk of possible other locations—I call Jim Bidgood and he is as funny and charming as ever and open to us coming over if necessary that morning for the re-shoot—but we end up getting in and by 11 or so.we are starting to shoot. It’s a group scene, lots of new actors, lots of extras. I’m not sure I’m on my game—some days you feel like you are shooting but you aren’t necessarily in complete control—but, luckily, the actors are very good and natural, so it works, hopefully. More…

Tell Your Story

The Train by

I was sitting next to the window on the train into the city late one morning. It was one of those seats where someone can sit facing you on the other side, but I was alone. My headphones were on to wash out the noise and chatter around me. The first stop after mine came up and this silver daddy type gets on. He stops, scopes out the area and then picks the seat diagonal from me. We quickly looked at each other, smiled, nodded and went on with our business.

I kept scoping him out to see if there was anything that would light up the gaydar, but nothing stuck out in particular. He looked like a typical IT guy: company polo, jeans, brown shoes and glasses. Someone would text him on his Blackberry every few minutes and he would respond. It rang at one point and he picked it up to speak to whoever it was on the line. The ride continued and he pulled out a New York Times. He held it up high, which gave me the chance to check him out. This went on for some time and I figured it was crazy to pursue anything. Still, I took off my headphones and pulled out a book to increase my chances at conversation. More…

Art & Autobiography

Superior Autobiographical Memory by

In my interview with diarist Kevin Bentley last week, Bentley and I discussed the form of the diary, and how it can help or hinder the type of autobiography an author is trying to tell. Bentley spoke about his decision to edit out many moments of high emotion, instead focusing on the descriptions of his sexual encounters – and the way that helped him create an entertaining and sharp narrative. Keep the Lights On director Ira Sachs also used his diaries to help write his film, but the resultant script lingers on some of his most painful moments. With this in mind, it’s interesting to consider the case of the six known people with what scientists call superior autobiographical memory.

In the first part of the report (above) from an episode of 60 Minutes last year, reporter Lesley Stahl interviews those who both suffer and benefit from this strange memory disorder, where the tiniest details of every experience, conversation (and the ensuing pain, pleasure, or ambiguity) can be re-experienced in real time. More…

Gay New York

The funniest “superficial, homophobic lesbians” on the planet by

Desiree Akhavan and Ingrid Jungermann have started the first ever comic web-based narrative series about a lesbian couple in Park Slope. In the first episode “Miserable Animals,” The Slope introduces us to Desiree and Ingrid, “superficial, homophobic lesbians.” Like Jonathan Lisecki’s Gayby, Akhavan and Jungermann repurpose the style of deadpan comedy seen in shows like The Office, Parks & Recreation and Curbs Your Enthusiasm with their unique strand of queer humor.

The second episode, in which Desiree and Ingrid compete over who is better looking, will premiere on The Slope’s website on August 15th.

Production Diary

Day 74, Part 2: Shooting Sex by

Actor Chris Lenk on Set

Shooting sex. A difficult thing to write about. There’s a good long essay to write about it, if one had the skills, because there are so many moving parts to the story. The thing I’ve begun to notice with this film, on this set is that as we’ve shot more of it—and there’s been a lot—there is a familiarity about it that I’m guessing is not unlike what begins to happen on porno sets. My deeper hope is that the set of the movie is not unlike the movie itself, meaning that the openness of our approach to shooting these scenes makes these types of moments less foreign to the grips, to the gaffers, to myself as a director. That we are making a movie about openness and bringing sex into the picture (into the light), and so it becomes visible, familiar, easy to talk about. That we are making a movie that keeps the lights on. More…