DAY 5: ABOUT FACE & SO MUCH MORE

Bethann Hardison is an African American who was a very successful NY showroom model for years in the 1960's but it wasn't until she appeared in her first TV commercial that her mother actually saw her work, and she was totally shocked. In those early days the word 'model' was often a pseudonym for hooker, and she had just assumed that her daughter was being coy!  This is just one of the deliciously funny stories that are told by an amazing coterie of the first ever super-models as they look back on the days when they graced the front covers of Vogue way-back-when in photographer Timothy Greenfield-Saunders delightful new documentary  'ABOUT FACE'.

Greenfield-Saunders interviews some 20 of these women as he gets them all together for a new group photograph. They represent the creme of the crop of modeling and include Cheryl Tiegs, Isabella Rossellini, Christie Brinkley, Christy Turlington, Jerry Hall, Marisa Berenson, Pat Cleveland, Beverley Johnson and Carmen Dell ’Orefice. These women are not only still stunningly beautiful but without exception are intelligent, articulate, very fascinating people with a great sense of humor.  But the most surprising part was the fact they were all disarmingly honest and genuinely shocked that they could have achieved the success that they had which so empowered their lives.

One of my favorites was the ultra glamorous Carmen Dell 'Orefice, who has such a wonderful infectious energy that is still keeping her working regularly at 81 years old.  The interviewer was tactfully trying to inquire if she had ever had any 'work done' i.e. cosmetic surgery.  Ms. Dell 'Orefice laughing simply retorted that 'if there was a crack in the ceiling you would get it fixed without even thinking about it!' So we took that for a yes, even though there simply is no hint of it on her beautiful face.  She has the  last line too when she swans off so elegantly dressed declaring she doesn't care when her time is up, a long as she dies with high heels on.

And less you think Ms. Hardison's mother was the only one naive in their household, Ms. H had us in stitches when she told us that back then her mother ran with a very fashionable crowd.  One day Ma came home with three very handsome well-dressed men and they all disappeared into her bedroom together.  Some time later her mother left with three very spectacularly dressed women in all their finery.  Young Barbara couldn't work that one out for ages.

I love the diversity of our movie schedule, and today I go from seeing people being fashion models and being loved, to a look at someone being a model Christian and being hated. ‘LOVE FREE OR DIE’ is a wonderfully moving documentary that follows the progress of Gene Robinson who in 2004 was elected as the 1st openly Gay priest Episcopalian Bishop.  In 2008 he also became the first Bishop to be banned from attending the powerful Lambeth Conference (the highest forum of the Anglican Church) in London but he traveled there anyway in the hope of making some change. What exasperated the situation is that he was not even allowed to meet or even attend any fringe events with any of the other Bishops, because as Gene Robinson preached in the only London church to defy the ban & invite him, they are afraid. Of him and of all homosexuals.

Bishop Robinson on the other hand allowed the filmmakers unrestricted access and what really moved me in this very touching movie was no matter how bravely he stood facing the intense homophobia of the Church's Establishment and of some evangelical zealots, along with several death threats, in unguarded moments it was obvious that all this hate really upset him.

From London back to his Diocese in New Hampshire where he had a Civil Union with Marc his partner of 20+ years, and then finally to the Episcopalian General Convention in California in 2009 when both the Bishops and the Laity voted overwhelmingly to allow gay man and women to become Bishops, and at the same time they also voted to allow Same Sex Marriages in their churches. Two major forward steps for which  Bishop Robinson can take his fair share of the credit

I should also mention that along the way another career highlight was President Obama inviting Bishop Robinson to lead the Invocation at the Lincoln Memorial at the kick-off event for his Inaugural Weekend.

As an atheist I am never surprised about how so much hate and violence erupts from devout Christians, and equally worse is their  immoral hypocrisy of it all.  As one leading female Bishop said, if the Church really thinks that Robinson is the only Bishop who is gay, then they are living in a fool's paradise. Whilst of course the other Holy Men are living in the closet from where they can continue to be self-loathing gay men.

That’s actually a fairly good link to my next movie 'THE IMPOSTOR’, except in this case the person hiding his true identity was a young dark French man passing himself off as blond American teenager.  I actually remember reading this story in The New Yorker a while back and was flabbergasted then, but now seeing the whole scenario skillfully re-enacted on the big screen, I still have trouble believing it is true.

Essentially a 23-year man gets picked up by the Police in the South of France pretending to be a teenager so that they will have to put him a nice comfortable children’s home.  He acts dumb refusing to talk but eventually knows he must say something before they suss out that he is actually wanted by Interpol. He tells the Social Worker that he is an American and that he had run away from home and then was abducted and bought to France against his will.  He persuades them to allow him to phone his parents himself and because of the time difference they let him stay in the Office one night to make the call.  What he does in fact is phone several Police Depts. in the US pretending to be a French police officer who is from the Precinct where they are holding a young boy who they want to identify. This clever ruse results in getting details on a 14 year old who has been missing from his home in rural Texas for 4 years.  When the US Missing Persons Office fax over the details of Nicholas Barclay, it’s very obvious that he looks nothing like the kid at all, but he goes ahead planning to steal his identity anyway.

The absolutely ridiculous thing is that he actually gets away with it.  To cut a very long story short he fools the boy’s sister and mother and (almost) his entire family back in Texas and gets accepted in the community as Nicholas who everyone is led to believe was tortured and abused and never allowed to speak English ….. hence his foreign accent now.

This detailed reconstruction has lengthy interviews with ‘Nicholas’ and his family, which even suspend disbelief, and even when the impersonation is eventually discovered, it is still hard to imagine that he could have fooled so many people.  There are suggestions that turn into unproven accusations that the reason the family accepted the man so readily as one of their own is that they had actually killed the real Nicholas, and having the substitute around let them off the hook.  We will never know.  But is a preposterous story made that much more fascinating now it has been filmed.

We had spotted William H Macy in town the other day and now we are going to see the reason he was here i.e. to promote his new movie ‘THE SURROGATE’.  Yet again another story so bizarre that it had to be true, but this dramatized movie tells of a very witty and courageous young man who just wanted to have sex once before he died.  Mark O’Brien had polio as a kid and although he wasn’t paralyzed his muscles were so extensively damaged that he was unable too move anything but his head.  He spent his nights in an iron lung and his days strapped to a gurney, and with the help of his aides managed to pursue his goals of being a poet and journalist.

Mark had been wanting to have sex for some time, and when he was commissioned to write an article about sex among the disabled he uses this as an excuse to finally lose his virginity.  He finds himself a sex surrogate who helps him with his tendency to panic and over-think, and as he was a devout Catholic he took to taking advice with his new very droll Parish Priest (William H Macy) on his feelings of guilty pleasure.

The relationship that Mark develops with his Surrogate is tender and touching and despite her extreme detached professional attitude she is in real danger of allowing her feelings to interfere with her work.

It is a glorious warm and compassionate story that was enriched by Mark’s incredible quick-witted dry humor and his passion for his poetry. In the movie he is played John Hawkes who manages such an astounding portrayal without moving a muscle.

There is a significant amount of nudity ….most of it by the Surrogate beautifully played by a very much in shape Helen Hunt … and despite the subject it is not the least bit pornographic.

When you just read the program notes, it doesn’t seem the most obvious of choices to make into a comic drama, but translated as well as this to the screen, it made for one of the most enjoyable feature films we have seen this week.

I do deliberately fluctuate between I and We because some times all three of us see the movie together, but sometimes we split up and go our separate ways if we want to see something else.  I mean I’ve done Latino Hip Hop, Chinese Boxers, Video Game Nerds etc. etc. but I do stop at Horror.  Life is scary enough with out it.

P.S. Too much time spent inside the movie theater leaves me such little time to 'star search', and my efforts were not appreciated anyway as they put this sign out to put me off.  It won't of course.