Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

Friend Robert Chesley , who died eighteen years ago this month, left a cabinet of letters, notes, plays in manuscript form and ephemera—all of which are now in the care of the foundation that bears his name. When it became clear they needed a better home, literary executor Victor Bumbalo asked Michael and me to check out the GLBT History Society in San Francisco. And so it looks like the Chesley papers will soon be returning to the city he loved. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE _____

Acquaintance and Cantaraville author (find his poetry in Cantaraville Two) Gary Walkow’s Slamdance-entry film Crashing gets its DVD release today. Campbell Scott stars in this wicked tale of writer’s block, with Alex Kingston, David Cross, and the new hotties in town Izabella Miko and Lizzy Caplan . I shall leave my beloved Stephen Gyllenhaal’s two onscreen minutes of sexual splendor for another posting. Crashing is a brilliant film, possibly the most insightful portrayal of the creative process of writing fiction. But it’s also a film that’s just too much in its own head, that’s just more than a little bit masturbatory, to the detriment of the narrative. Story? Through the flimsiest of plot contrivances, a handsome, successful middle-aged novelist ends up crashing on the couch of two roommates, fetching young college students who are also aspiring writers. Complications ensue. He writes about them, they write about him. Writing equals sexual fantasy. They all fuck each ot

Don’t know about you, but I find his pre-diet punim absolutely lovable. On his jaunt through a Christmassy NYC Twitter follower Stephen Fry (of A Bit of Fry and Laurie , you philistines) took this intriguing shot and I have no idea which church it comes from. Help here?

The sexual icon Bettie Page died at 85 today, broke but famous and upbeat as ever. She was Miss Pinup Girl in 1955, the year I was born. Sexual self-expression is and always has been one of the fundamentals of the Women’s Movement, of which I was a card-carrying member in the early 70s. (No, really. I had a membership card from the National Organization for Women.) It was a contentious issue for libbers then as much as it is these days, but back in the 70s we thought we were really changing things. We were wrong. The dominant puritanism in this country means the death of eros. What is porn, anyway? Porn is sex when it sells something besides sex. Porn ceases to be porn when all sex sells is itself. But don’t go by me, let your gonads speak. I ask you: Who would you really drop your pants for, this amused, saucy, knowing, kind-eyed sex goddess? Or this trying-to-be-ironic-but-actually-projecting-a-not-for-you- mother -dear-attitude underwear salesgirl ? SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk After we were refused seats with an unobstructed view at the so-called “People’s Premiere” at the Castro Theater, a couple we know who are Academy members were kind enough to let Michael and me watch a screener of Milk in their very comfortable home screening room. What is there more to say about a film that has as much relevance as ever? In 1978 there was the fight against Proposition 6—the infamous Briggs Initiative —Harvey Milk’s shining moment in his too-short political career. Now there’s Proposition 8, only no Harvey to show us how to fight. Four bullets took Harvey from us and three decades of AIDS took away the leaders we might have had. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

This posting should really be about Shock Therapy , my friend Tom Baum’s zingy stage comedy that just closed yesterday in Los Angeles, but self-absorbed mutt that I am it’s about how I finally got an apology from an actor in it who by sheer coincidence had put me down at a cast party in San Francisco back in 1980. It took a confrontation at another cast party twenty-eight years later to get his apology, but listen! This is no sturm-und-drang recounting. I knew I’d have no trouble getting Scott Paulin to say it because, my God, we’re all a generation older, we’ve all got grown kids. Back in San Francisco in the ’70s he was you might say kind of off-puttingly intense , nowadays he’s just another sweet dad , as witness his recent appearance on a particularly mindblowing episode of House ). So, as I said, I cornered him in the craggy fireplace nook and told him that I’d waited twenty-eight years to get an apology from him for insulting me, and watched as he immediately looked stricken.

It was an acquaintance, the film and stage director Mirra Bank, who turned me on to Vimeo, which I like a lot better than YouTube. You get a nicer profile page, you can make it part or all private if you prefer, and if you have any digital footage (terrible word footage, like saying dialing for phone, what word do people use now?) you can try them out here. Mirra uploaded material on Vimeo to raise interest in one of her documentaries. Me, I’m just seeing how much I can do with my little pink Flip camera, and it’s turning out to be more than expected. My friend, underground comix-maven-turned-“herstorian” Trina Robbins—whose upcoming book, Forbidden City: The Golden Age of Chinese Nightclubs is excerpted in Cantaraville —was so happy with the clips I managed to get, impromptu, of the subjects of her new book, she let me know that she wants to show them at her book party at the San Francisco Historical Society, they were that good. Well, we’ll see. Of course you can’t do much edi