REEL UNDERGROUND

FILM REVIEWS
AND CALENDAR
BY PAUL D. GOETZ




Ballot Measure 9 and the Politics of Hate

The Varsity
(4329 University Way NE, 632-3131)

Ballot Measure 9
July 14-17 (produced and directed by Heather McDonald). No matter what your viewpoint, this prize-winning chronicle of the 1992 campaigns for and against Oregon's anti-gay initiative is one of the most powerfully engaging films you are likely to see this year. Unfolding with the intensity of a suspense film, McDonald has captured the climate of ignorance and deeply ingrained anti-gay prejudice which was whipped into a storm of violence by the Oregon Citizens' Alliance (OCA)'s scandalously vilifying campaign. At the same time, she has documented the extraordinary power of grass roots organizing crossing lines of race, religion, and sexual orientation. It's a film that sounds an alarm and practically demands a response. Its gravity is underlined by the vow of the OCA's Chairman Lon Mabon (the measure's sponsor) to introduce similar measures across the country.

Oregon's initiative would have revoked and prohibited laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination. It would have further mandated that governments and agencies including the state Department of Higher Education encourage Oregon's youth to see homosexuality as "abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse," and teach "that these behaviors be discouraged and avoided." If enacted, discrimination in the areas of housing, employment, and public accommodation would have been legalized.
From the beginning, however, the OCA's strategy, which lesbian activist Donna Red Wing admits was "brilliant," was to camouflage their agenda with the lie that gay and lesbian people had attained or were seeking "special" rather than equal rights. With national backing, they also distributed flyers and videos based on widely discredited "research" that in Red Wing's words, "took the stereotypes of homosexual people and turned them into grotesque caricatures." Many in the gay and lesbian community were surprised by the ignorance of those who believed the OCA's claims - that homosexuals regularly ingest feces, recruit children, and are 90 times more likely to be pedophiles. Because of that, the rallies in opposition to Measure 9 were, in part, a call to educate and enlighten - a call to "come out."
McDonald gives equal time to many on both sides of the issue, and the portraits that evolve are sometimes scary, sometimes inspiring, but always deeply revealing. Like so many among the religious right who somehow confuse love and hate, the director of the Klamath Co. OCA, Orin Camenish, and his family describe in one breath how they "love the homosexual" and in another how they equate them with disease-carrying rats. But it's Kevin Berrill of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force who most eloquently clarifies the situation when he says before the Oregon legislature, "While the OCA does not espouse violence, they must be held accountable for creating an atmosphere of bigotry that facilitates violence. By sponsoring this initiative and by waging a campaign of lies, the OCA has opened up a Pandora's Box of hatred that has undermined civility, safety and democracy." It's a position that is impossible to deny.

Brother Minister: The Assassination of Malcolm X
July 7-10 (directed by Jack Baxter). This provocative, confusing, but ultimately captivating documentary has been causing a firestorm of controversy since last year when New York Post columnist Jack Newfield disclosed that it contains a 1993 speech made by Nation of Islam (NOI) minister Louis Farrakhan in which he seems to implicate himself in the assassination of Malcolm X thirty years ago. But Baxter and Jefri Aalmuhammed, the film's mysterious co-producer who supplied footage of the speech, aren't fully able or willing to fix the blame on any one individual. Through an impressive array of interviews plus excerpts from FBI and NYPD documents, however, they have painted a disturbing portrait of a period in which incongruent forces combined to create a climate of hate resulting in the assassination.

The film concisely follows Malcolm's transformation from common criminal to disciple of NOI leader Elijah Muhammad, to his suspension from the NOI, his renunciation of their doctrine of racial separatism, and his pilgrimage to Mecca. But it delves much deeper into the events surrounding his assassination, making claims that cry for the case to be reopened.
The interviewees include bodyguards Benjamin (2X) Karim and Charles (37X) Keyatta, and undercover NYPD informant Gene Roberts - all eyewitnesses to the assassination; Thomas Johnson, a Harlem NOI member who served 20 years for the killing but convincingly proclaims his innocence; Muhammad's son, W. Deen Mohammed; attorney William Kunstler, who tried in vain to reopen the case when Thomas Hayer, the one assassin captured at the scene, finally named three New Jersey members as his accomplices in 1977, and retired New York FBI chief James Fox who denies any direct FBI involvement.
In the end, however, the film raises more questions than it answers. Was Malcolm's defection from the NOI and his interracial view of Islam enough to cause, as Kunstler claims, "a spasmodic, spontaneous act by these five men out of the Newark mosque"? Or, did Malcolm's claim that Muhammad sired eight children by six different teenage girls incur his former leader's wrath? Considering Malcolm's home had been firebombed and his life repeatedly threatened, why was there only one uniformed officer nearby when the assassination occurred? Did the FBI encourage the assassination with its divisive disinformation campaign? And what of Farrakhan? Did he conspire with Muhammad? If his speech is not an outright confession, is it a defiant expression of complicity? He has admitted being Malcolm's enemy and being in the Newark mosque at the time of the killing.
Most interesting, though, is Baxter and Aalmuhammed's religious subtext. They quote the prophet Muhammad, who preached racial equality in the seventh century, and suggest that when Elijah Muhammad became a disciple of the mysterious W.D. Fard, who said he was from Mecca, claimed to be the "supreme ruler of the Universe," and who preached that white people were "wicked devils soon to be destroyed in a lake of fire," it was the beginning of the Nation's divergence from the true Islamic path. The film suggests that it was a divergence that eventually led to the assassination of a leader who, one suspects, would have added needed vigor to an impending black coalition with Martin Luther King, Jr., the prospect of which, according to Newfield, "had to be J. Edgar Hoover's worst nightmare."

The Seattle Art Museum
(100 University St, 654-3121)

SAM's Summer Film Series Summer Holiday: The Films of Judy Holliday will be shown on Thursdays at 7:30 PM, July 6 - August 10 featuring, in succession, Born Yesterday (1950) in 35 mm, The Marrying Kind (1952), It Should Happen to You (1954) in 35 mm, Phffft! (1954), The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956) in 35 mm, and Bells Are Ringing (1960). Holliday, a former cabaret performer, first found stardom on Broadway in Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday. She repeated the part on film and won an Oscar for her effort. In an all-too-short career (she made 11 films before succumbing to cancer in 1965), she periodically played variations on the role of the dumb blonde, though her intelligence made them sympathetic characterizations, after which most other imitations have seemed demeaning. A personal favorite:

Born Yesterday (1950)
July 6 Judy plays Billie Dawn, former chorus girl, now the submissive, uneducated girlfriend of abusive, controlling, corrupt millionaire Harry Brock (the perfectly cast Broderick Crawford). Less dumb than numb, she's given up wanting to know what she wants from life. In Washington, D.C. to buy political influence, Brock is embarrassed by her lack of cultivation and hires journalist Paul Verrill (William Holden) to tutor her. Of course, she blooms, and they fall in love. She teaches him a thing or two, and the tour of historical landmarks provides for some cut-rate Capra-esque lessons. Holliday brings remarkable depth to the part. A painful self-loathing begins to bleed through the numb blonde exterior, and we begin to understand how she has filled the emptiness within her, appropriating abusiveness from Harry, and hating him and herself for it. Crawford is hilarious at times, but the menace in him overshadows the humor. We know he's going to hit her sometime, and when it comes, the empathic connection she's created provides a wallop of emotion. As adapted by Albert Mannheimer and directed by George Cukor, Garson Kanin's dialogue crackles and dominates, but the unexpected silences are vital.

911 Media Arts Center
(117 Yale Avenue N, 682-6552)

The Agnostic Party
June 23 (written and directed by Matt Wilkins). This short video feature opens with a long, anguished wail (or whine) across a field of stars. The camera finally comes to rest on the source of this cry in the void: a young couch-bound man. His girlfriend tries to cheer him up but he's drowning in Kierkegaardian melancholy. Or, maybe he just can't find a job. Soon, friends arrive, beer is consumed, a party begins to materialize, and discussions and actions become increasingly bizarre.

Like Slacker, Richard Linklater's influential indie about aimless, disaffected young people lost and floating somewhere between school and employment, Wilkins mines considerable humor from his characters' use of language to create an absurd yet recognizable reality. He also brings an existential point of view to the material and a sympathetic yet gently mocking approach to his characters. Though our young friend on the couch would like to escape, he can't seem to move out of what has become a continuation of an unplanned way of life - a seamless circle, a closed universe. The whole Universe is that room, at that moment. And then a letter from God arrives.
Also on the same program: Caustic Comments, a hilarious short film by Wilkins about a despondent middle-aged manager and a nearly inanimate teen-aged cook who torment each other in a fast food restaurant. Both The Agnostic Party and Oh Shit! That's My Mind, a collection of comedy shorts by Wilkins, will be available to check out free in video stores including Scarecrow Video and Rain City Video.

The Sanctuary Theatre
(upstairs atScarecrow Video, 5030 Roosevelt Way NE, 524-8554)

June 17-18 - Husbands (1970). A rare screening of John Cassavetes' well-acted story of three friends who leave for Europe when their friend dies. Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, and Peter Falk star.

July 1-2 - The Festival of Puppet Animation II. featuring the films of Bretislav Pojar, Emil Cohl, Willis O'Brien, George Pal, Jiri Trnka, Howard Moss, Ladislas Starevitch, and the Brothers Quay.

July 15-16 - The Festival of European Animation. A collection of cut-out, stop-motion, and cell animation featuring the films of Lotte Reiniger, Walter Ruttmann, Berthold Bartosch, Jean Couignon, Bretislav Pojar, Paul Grimault, Jan Lenica, and Piotr Kamler.

July 29-30 - The Master Killer (1977). The Hong Kong martial-arts masterpiece directed by Liu Chia-Liang with a newly dubbed soundtrack by Cullen Gerst, John Hicks, Mike Sherman, and Kristian St. Clair, with music and effects by Robert Graves.





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Contents on this page were published in the June/July, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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Copyright © 1995 WFP Collective, Inc.
Goetz