Transforming minds with portraits of trans trailblazers
- April 1, 2017 - 2:15am
There’s a photograph of Jess T. Dugan from 2005 with bandages over where her breasts used to be. She’s standing nude beside her mother and the two are pillars. The photo is a powerful declaration of self – recognizing it, embracing it.
“I have always used photography to understand myself and my place in the world,” Dugan says. “At that time I used my work to come to terms with my body and my gender. Those earlier pictures were very much about, ‘This is my body, this is my gender, this is my mother, this is my community.’”
Community was a harder find in high school. And so were gay people, and so were butch women. Back then, Dugan found her people solely through photography books she sought out in stores throughout Boston’s Harvard Square, where she first discovered the true power of portraiture. There, she immersed herself in “really influential” collections featuring images by Robert Mapplethorpe and Catherine Opie, a photographer known for exploring Los Angeles’ leather-dyke community in her portraits.
Says Dugan, “I look back and think, ‘My 16-year-old self was interested in the same exact thing I’m interested in now.’”
For a decade, Dugan’s photographs have explored gender, sexuality, identity and community, capturing the essence of transgender men and women, with a focus on aging adults in the last few years. Her staggering breadth of work has been exhibited internationally at establishments such as the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Grey House Gallery in Poland, the Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, and at many colleges and universities nationwide. In addition, her photographs have colored the pages of the New York Times, The Advocate and the Boston Globe.
And she’s worked for it, earning her BFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago and also a Master of Liberal Arts in museum studies from Harvard University. In 2015, the fruits of her labor were recognized in a big way when the White House named Dugan a Champion of Change. The nomination came via Jennifer Levi, director of the Transgender Rights Project at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders. Prior, Dugan took portraits of transgender people for a book that Levi co-edited called “Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy.”
“I am a huge fan of Jess’ work,” Levi says. “I helped to curate a show Jess did in western Massachusetts several years ago and was impressed with how her art touched a wide range of people. It was especially important for transgender and gender nonconforming people to see their faces and bodies included in portraits. Jess’ work captures the diversity and humanity of the community.”
For Dugan, it’s “because of my own identity and my community.”
“Deeply, at the core,” she continues, “I’m interested in people and identity and kind of how we each come to be who we are and then how other people perceive us as that person that we know ourselves to be.”
At 13, Dugan came out as gay. Five years later, after questioning her gender throughout her mid teens, she underwent “gender-affirming chest reconstruction surgery” to remove her breasts. Currently, she identifies as queer.
Dugan is 29 now, and her artistic scope has broadened beyond herself, while also being “deeper and more subtle” in her approach to identity and sexuality. “Those issues are still there,” she attests, “but it’s not always my primary need to assert my own identity over and over.”
Instead, Dugan has turned the lens outward, using portraiture to spotlight a niche transgender demographic. Her photographs of transgender people over 50 are honest, empathetic, bold and beautiful. And in the case of Stephanie James, frighteningly real.
“I was a little shocked actually,” says James, 66, of St. Louis, Missouri. “I’ve seen zillions of photos of myself since coming out, and I thought I looked pretty old and like a caricature of myself. Jess caught me just as I was.”
Even before Dugan met her partner, Vanessa Fabbre, in 2012, her interest in portraying people’s authentic self was evident in “Every Breath We Drew,” a project she started in 2005 that examines masculinity in queer communities (a monograph of the project, her first, was published in 2015 by Daylight Books). But upon meeting Fabbre, a college professor whose research is centered on the intersection of aging and LGBT identity, Dugan narrowed her focus to older transgender and gender-variant adults. Dugan worried that concentrating only on transgender people of a particular age was too specific, but that concern was quelled when she made this surprising revelation: There are young trans people who’ve never seen a photograph of an older trans person.
“They didn’t know what they’d look like as they got older,” she says. “Because of the aging component, people who know nothing about the trans community or are not a part of the trans community relate to the images. People are talking about very universal ideas of wanting to authentically be themselves as they get older and wanting to have lived a life that feels true to them before they pass away.”
For “To Survive on This Shore,” Dugan has made 50 portraits in total, with 11 more scheduled – so far anyway. Shooting across the United States, in cities like Atlanta, New York, Baltimore and Washington D.C., Dugan has met a melting pot of people she says she never would have otherwise. Her subjects share intimate identity stories. Their struggles. Their triumphs. On several occasions, she’s photographed men who medically transitioned in the early 1970s, which, for her, was “amazing because I had never known anyone that had transitioned before maybe the late ’90s or early 2000s.”
“I think just the whole experience has been moving and has been inspiring to me,” Dugan muses, “and really I’m kind of in awe of the strength that each person has. A lot of these stories would be untold or kind of invisible if we weren’t trying to capture and preserve them.”
Bill introduced to protect LGBTQ youth in Nevada’s foster care
- April 1, 2017 - 1:47am
Out assemblyman Nelson Araujo (D-Las Vegas) is sponsoring Assembly Bill 99, a bill that would require case workers and potential foster parents “undergo training that would cover gender identity, using preferred pronouns and providing appropriate clothing”, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“This would be a requirement for everyone in contact with LGBTQ youth, whether it’s directly or indirectly,” Araujo told the publication. “So people know how to respond if they encounter a 6-year-old who identifies as male even though their gender marker (at birth) might be female.”
Religious parents will not be omitted from being caregivers, nor required to foster LGBTQ children if this bill passes.
Writes the paper: “The law would also require the Division of Child and Family Services of the Department of Health and Human Services to improve how issues are reported and resolved”.
The bill has the support of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada, the Children’s Advocacy Alliance and other organizations.
Tristan Torres, 19, testified when the bill was introduced on Feb. 20 in the Health and Human Services committee. He told Gay Vegas that no one showed up to oppose AB-99.
CCSD settles discrimination and harassment case with trans officer
- April 1, 2017 - 1:38am
The Clark County School District (CCSD) has reached a tentative settlement with a transgender school police officer in a lawsuit dating back to 2014.
Bradley Roberts, who is no longer an officer, sued the district after officials prohibited him from using any men’s or women’s restrooms at district facilities.
The settlement must be approved by School Board trustees. The expected amount is $80,000, reports the Associated Press. Additional attorney fees will be determined in arbitration.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey ruled in October that the CCSD had discriminated against Roberts under state and federal laws. A discrimination and harassment case, the lawsuit’s harassment claims, however, remained in dispute but were included as part of this recent settlement hearing, which was held on Feb. 3.
“We’ve agreed on a settlement structure,” Kathleen England, one of the attorneys representing Roberts, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. England says trustees are expected to take up the settlement soon at an upcoming board meeting.
Working for the district since 1992, Roberts began transitioning in 2011. Co-workers soon complained about his use of men’s restrooms. Police officials responded by limiting him to unisex, single-occupant facilities, this after complaints that he shouldn’t be able to use women’s restrooms either because he looked like a man.
Reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Department leaders, along with the district’s general counsel, told Roberts he would not be permitted to use men’s facilities until he showed them proof that he had a surgery to change his anatomy.
By 2012, Roberts had filed a complaint with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission. Court records show the CCSD reversed its bathroom ban in response.
Roberts also filed a second complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He claimed emails about him were sent to the entire department and opened him up to workplace harassment and retaliation.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that a district spokeswoman said there are rules against harassment but “no specific policies about which facilities people who are transgender can use, whether they are students or staff.”
Gay assemblyman filing resolution to protect same-sex marriage in Nevada
- April 1, 2017 - 1:32am
Assemblyman Nelson Araujo of Las Vegas is filing a resolution for a constitutional amendment to safeguard same-sex marriage’s legality in the Nevada Constitution.
The gay Democrat made the announcement on the steps of the Nevada Supreme Court building. With him were several Democratic leaders who took part in a news conference criticizing President Donald Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“By adding this amendment to Nevada’s Constitution, we will be able to protect marriage equality from whatever actions may come from Trump’s hateful and divisive presidency,” said Araujo.
Despite same-sex marriage having been legalized nationwide in 2015, Araujo and the other Democrats present expressed concern that Gorsuch might rule to overturn the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision. For his part, Araujo said he wanted to make sure the state’s same-sex couples were protected, this according to the Reno Gazette-Journal.
The first same-sex couple to marry in Washoe County, Karen Vibe and Karen Goody, also attended the press conference.
“This title has meaning that everyone understands,” said Vibe. “It is the level of love and commitment that we have for each other.”
The amendment would need to pass in two sessions of the Legislature, as well as require a referendum vote to become law. This would be a five-year process.
Out former Las Vegas singer running for Congress
- April 1, 2017 - 1:24am
Out former Las Vegas singer Brian Evans will run for Congress next year as a Republican.
Having just wrapped up a three-year Maui concert series, Evans, who is also an investor in Point Motion Control technology, now plans to run for a seat in Congress in 2018 representing Hawaii.
Evans married Diego Garzon this past October. In an email to the Las Vegas Review-Journal in late January, he said, “I have no concerns about being gay and a Republican. I can have values that are Republican and still be gay.”
The new candidate, who lost his mother after she was left in an unmonitored recovery room after knee surgery, this despite the hospital knowing about her sleep apnea, will focus his platform on hospital negligence, which is now the third-leading cause of death in this country.
“As a republican candidate for Congress in 2018, I will fight to make hospital negligence a crime,” he tweeted on Jan. 19.
Evans says he plans to donate his congressional salary to charity. His campaign website, www.BrianEvansForCongress.com, has already launched.
The political hopeful also told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that 2017 will be his last year in the entertainment industry:
He will finish a new album produced for Quincy Jones Productions, a TV series and novels that have been optioned for films, including one with our Luxor headliner comedian Carrot Top.
Evans’ history with Las Vegas dates back to the mid ‘90s when he booked a 377-show run at the old Desert Inn. He would continue to perform in the city over the years.
All in the Family
- March 1, 2017 - 4:31am
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Early in her career, she stole our queer hearts as Toni Collette’s freewheeling yang in 1994’s buddy comedy Muriel’s Wedding, but before long, Rachel Griffiths became one of our most passionate allies both on- and off-screen.
In 2001, the 48-year-old Aussie actress starred as Brenda Chenowith, the enigmatic, gender-subverting girlfriend-turned-wife of prodigal son Nate Fisher (Peter Krause) in HBO’s Emmy-winning landmark series, Six Feet Under, out creator Alan Ball’s gay-inclusive, darkly comic rumination on life and death. One of TV’s finest hours, the show was heralded for its character David (Michael C. Hall), who was praised for portraying the first authentic gay character on TV. A year after Six Feet Under concluded, in 2006, Griffiths made the leap from the Fishers to the Walkers, the family at the center of ABC’s Brothers & Sisters, also celebrated for its LGBT representation.
Now, Griffiths is taking her longtime queer advocacy to the next level with When We Rise, Dustin Lance Black’s moving and timely portrayal of the progressive post-Stonewall movement. The seven-part miniseries seeks to connect with the heart – not the politics – of Americans through real family stories, something Griffiths’ gay-affirming résumé certainly reflects.
In When We Rise, you play Diane, who’s raising a daughter with women’s rights activist Roma Guy, portrayed by Mary-Louise Parker. What are your thoughts on bringing the lesbian-led blended family dynamic to audiences on a mainstream network like ABC?
Brothers & Sisters was on ABC at the same time as Modern Family, and we had Will & Grace, so I didn’t have any kind of surprise it was on a network (like ABC), because ultimately it is about family – it’s about the “we” of gay, lesbian, transgender lives, not the “they” or the “others.” So, for me, to move these people’s lives away from the premium cable niche – I love that by not being on a niche network, there wasn’t a pressure to be noisy in a more sexual way. We’ve kind of moved past having to explore that.
That’s there in other shows if you want it, particularly with women’s lives. We’ve had The L Word, where the women are identified first off in the show by being lesbians. But Roma and Diane’s trouble was, first, (being) women – 51 percent of the population – then the gay/lesbian, then it was understanding the power of how those two movements can come together.
Your roles on both TV and in film suggest that you appreciate portrayals of social and political issues that are reflected through a personal lens.
I absolutely love that. I think if people aren’t living in a wider sociological space, they’re in a bubble. Growing up, my favorite movies actually were World War II movies – get motor bikes and outdo the Nazis. I was just really primed by seeing political moments intersecting with personal and moral choices, and the drama of that.
That certainly explains your career trajectory.
(Laughs) With a few exceptions!
How do you feel knowing that a half century after the liberation movement of the late ’60s and ’70s we’re still, to some extent, fighting the same fights that are being fought in When We Rise?
The last few years have definitely been a wakeup call of thinking that progression is always forward moving. I think we really thought progression was a simple, straightforward thing, so it’s definitely a shock that things go backward and forward. Millennials and the younger generation are very comfortable in the gay, lesbian and transgender space, and their comfort level is very high, so it’s a shock to see an older generation insist on moving back. I think for many within that younger generation, when they hear certain slogans about how great America used to be, we know that was true for white men, but not necessarily true for all other people.
Which is the crux of the Trump administration. But you’re right: The pendulum swings back and forth, and now we’ve entered a time when progressives are once again stepping up to the plate, and I think younger generations feel compelled to become activists and stand up against this pushback.
I think there are also periods where you have young presidents who are really representing a moment in time, and then we get an old president who is a status quo president. So, I think people are afraid of too much change too fast, and he’s the tipping point.
There’s been a lot to be afraid of these last 16 years, and if you just read the news or tune into the news cycle, you’re conditioned to think we live in the most vulnerable time in human history, which of course you and I know we don’t. And I will say, I’ve got two little American girls and they have their little anxious moments, and I still tell them that there’s never been a greater time to be born as an American female than now. Never has she had more opportunities. Never has she had a stronger voice. And never has she had more reasons to be confident. Gay or straight. I’d still say now is a better time to be gay anywhere in the world.
Growing up in Melbourne, Australia, what was your introduction to the LGBT community?
There were huge rumors at school that George Michael was gay. I was like, “No, no, really?!” (Laughs) And Freddie Mercury had AIDS. “No, he’s not gay, too!” It was kind of a mix of probably negative and controversial, I would say, in a Catholic backwater.
I remember there was a gorgeous, contemporary boy and the rumors in the parish: He wasn’t well, he was a drug addict and he died of a heroin overdose, and he was from a big Catholic family. I had only recently learned that he died of HIV/AIDS. So, the family would have rather said he was an addict and died, when he was actually living a very loved life with his partner and died very young. Died at 24, I think.
In 2012, you performed in the Australian production of Dustin Lance Black’s play 8, centered on California’s controversial Proposition 8. Was that your introduction to Dustin?
Apparently, we met in the Valley for a project. I was the hugest fan of Milk. As a history lover, what I loved about Milk, which I kind of sat down somewhat dutifully to be educated with, and I think the same holds true for this piece: how committed he is to elevating these heroes that are gay, lesbian and straight. And perhaps my first introduction to that topic and feeling the outrageous injustice of how they were treated in their own time was seeing the Alan Turing play (1986’s Breaking the Code) at the West End (in London). I was 19 – very young – and that was my introduction to probably the key hero of World War II, who was a gay man and died tortured and broken for his own sexuality. I recall the wrongfulness, and I think had that not been made (into a movie), Lance would’ve made that story as well.
In When We Rise, you say, “Gay dads – I wonder if that will ever be a thing.” It’s kind of hysterical, but also true.
Not very long ago I really remember thinking, “Gay marriage – that’ll never be a thing.” Even being gay and lesbian supportive, the actual idea… there were just enormous strides being made very quickly. And in my country, Australia, gay and lesbians still cannot marry and are denied fundamental rights to celebrate their unions.
But it’s a wonderful thing, the Bill of Rights. It can be used in other countries very much as a political football, and it’s just the most inspiring document that human beings have ever come up with as a model and ideal to which we should move forward. And I still believe that that document is going at its strongest and most triumphant when all “men” includes all people: men and women, gay and straight, white and colored, Christian and non-Christians.
How did you end up playing Diane?
I knew the project was on, and I read the material and just fell in love with it. I was in LA and got to meet with (Dustin)… and I just got really lucky, I think! (Laughs) With Diane, just holding the heads of dying men, having no answers, and then going home feeling helpless and yet finding the mettle to get up and return and do it all again and handle all the bodily fluids in a plague that had no known source was just heroic bravery. I love that balance – it takes many different styles of work to fight these battles. Hers is through duty and service, not the megaphone.
In addition to When We Rise, you’ve been a part of many landmark moments in LGBT programming over the last 15-plus years. Is there a project that stands out to you as being particularly groundbreaking?
I think they all have been in their own way. Of course Six Feet Under was massively groundbreaking in that that was the first time I recall there being a gay member of a family not defined by his otherness or his trouble in reconciling it all. And I think this is groundbreaking in its lesbian characters. (Laughs) I love the article somebody wrote “Why Is TV Killing Its Queer Women?” It was really interesting. So, I think there are fewer lesbian characters than gay characters probably because they’re not as fabulous with fashion and cute, funny quips.
I think this is groundbreaking for its representation of gay women on network TV and really exploring the day-to-day life of many lesbians, which is not looking hot, or picking up girls in bars, or talking about sex. It’s talking about picking up the kids and, “Oh my god, how can I possibly pay for my family and get better gender equity and pay?”
Six Feet Under is still my favorite show to have ever aired on TV.
I think it’s mine too, next to M*A*S*H. My “straight” show is M*A*S*H (laughs), which really defined me and half of Brenda Chenowith. I was always like, “Why can’t a woman be a guy on screen?” Just that kind of badly behaved and morally righteous person, but absolutely incorrigible.
What kind of mark did Six Feet Under leave on you?
I think it definitely has left a career mark, not just because it was an enormous success, but pushing the boundaries of women in television and unpredictable modules of likability. I think (Alan) really explored a depth and a breadth of key archetypes. I was really on that show as the girlfriend – then there was the mom, the bratty teen daughter, the Latino wife. He blew the female stereotypes out, and the legacy of that is for all women in television to enjoy on that level.
I was also so proud to be a part of a show that could speak to death and dying and serious themes of human struggle at a time when no other show was doing that. That was a big draw for me, and that (pilot) script that I read, to this day is possibly the best script that’s ever been sent to me with my name actually on it. And the feedback we had from people in the wake of September 11 about how that show nurtured and comforted and enabled them to have conversations they didn’t know how to have – that was really incredible.
(Alan) just kind of found a common space, and said the American family is all these things. It is gay. It is straight. It is lesbian. It is unsure. It is an artist. It is a mother whose personal dreams are not being met. It is a young woman trying to find her identity in a postmodern world. It can be all these things.
Susan Sarandon is Bette Davis
- February 24, 2017 - 2:40am
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Maybe gay people are customarily compelled to thank Susan Sarandon for her longstanding advocacy, because that’s how I begin my frank, anything-goes conversation with the 70-year-old multi-hyphenate. After all, no matter where you stand on Sarandon’s divisive decision to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the recent presidential election, we can all agree that the Oscar-winning actress has used her massive screen-icon prestige to aid in the advancement of LGBT rights. She’s been a staunch supporter through the AIDS crisis and the fight for marriage equality – even in times when vocal Hollywood allies were scarce.
Reinforcing Sarandon’s pro-queer stance is a breadth of bold, iconic and uninhibited film roles dating back to 1970: Sarandon had sex with her co-star, Catherine Deneuve, in a lesbian-favorited scene that steamed up 1983’s vamp flick The Hunger; as Janet, she got her freak on in the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and then, in 1987, teamed up with Cher for The Witches of Eastwick to, presumably, offer fresh fodder to every late-’80s drag queen. Later, in 1995, Sarandon appeared with many of her industry peers in the acclaimed documentary inspired by gay activist Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet, which examined depictions of LGBT characters in Hollywood.
The next step in being a gay icon, apparently, is playing one: Starring alongside fellow acting dynamo Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford, Sarandon portrays beloved Hollywood legend and All About Eve leading lady Bette Davis in Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Bette and Joan. Sarandon was fresh off the set of the FX series when she dished on Feud, and numerous other aspects of her storied life and career.
“I’m just getting back and acclimated,” she told me, dramatizing her experience shooting Murphy’s latest creation. “I’ve been gone for a very long time. Once I joined this cult, I didn’t get out.”
Free from Feud and any canned-answer pretense, Sarandon refreshingly freewheeled through revelatory discussions about her “up for grabs” sexual orientation, the gay actor she once romanced, and her impassioned response to critics (“to blame me is not productive”) who challenge her political convictions.
Between Feud, your film career and your LGBT activism, I’d say you have more than earned your queer cred.
(Laughs) Well, I hope so! I mean, I feel like an outsider myself. My people, my family for all these years have always been my allies and have always been very, very important to me, very dear to me through the AIDS crisis and everything. It’s just a natural, very easy extended family for me.
You grew up Catholic in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in the northwestern end of the borough of Queens in New York City. Would you say LGBT people felt like family then too?
Well, not in my high school; I had 500 in my class. This was ages ago. But sure, in college, of course if you’re in a theater department or in any of the arts, that’s just part of the landscape, so there wasn’t any delineation as I became an adult. It was just natural. And, honestly, the people who I made friends with in my early day in New York in the ’70s are still my friends.
I find the guys who don’t stick with you are the guys that you’ve had affairs with or marriages… or whatever! (Laughs) It’s very rare that those guys – once you’re not involved in a relationship, it’s hard to maintain those ties. So, really, my friends I’ve had forever and ever and ever are gay men and women.
That makes sense, unless you’re having affairs with gay men.
Well, I did at one point have a very successful and very loving and wonderful affair with a man who then wasn’t with another woman after me, and that worked out fine! I don’t think you had to declare yourself as rigidly as you do now in terms of having to declare yourself almost politically about your sexual preference.
Just to clarify – you were in a romantic relationship with another actor who was gay?
Yeah. Philip Sayer (who also starred in The Hunger) – he was a wonderful actor. He passed away, but yes, he was gay, and we had a great relationship in every way.
Is your sexuality more or less rigid these days? Basically, should we be welcoming you to the family?
(Laughs) Well, I’m a serial monogamist, so I haven’t really had a large dating career. I married Chris Sarandon when I was 20, and that went on for quite a while – each of my relationships have. I haven’t exactly been in the midst of a lot of offers of any kind. I’m still not! I don’t know what’s going on! (Laughs) But I think back in the ’60s it just was much more open.
Are you open regarding your sexuality?
Yeah, I’m open. My sexual orientation is up for grabs, I guess you could say. (Laughs)
The great thing about Feud is having you, a gay icon, play a gay icon. I can’t think of many things gayer than that.
(Laughs) Well, I hope the appeal seems to be broader! I’m hoping we reach out across the aisles to heterosexuals also, because what I think the story is about is a really interesting examination of all kinds of things: power and roles and misogyny and aging. Have you seen it?
Not yet – episodes weren’t available before our interview. But because it’s my due diligence as a gay man, I’ve seen What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? countless times.
Oh, you’re gonna love it then! Although it’s not all about that. We do move on, so at least you don’t think I’m wearing gobs of makeup (the whole time). There are some younger folks who haven’t seen Baby Jane who are like, “What is up with that? Does she do that through the whole thing? I don’t get it.” But we had a lot of fun recreating gesture for gesture, voice pattern for voice pattern. And some of the little snippets of the scenes were very tough.
What’s the closest you’ve come to a Bette / Joan-type feud?
I think I’m just a little too young to see women as my adversary. I think that changed. I really haven’t experienced that. I think women just a little bit older than I am tried to align themselves with power, which were the men, and saw every woman as a threat. With my generation and slightly younger, you might be jealous that someone is getting all the good parts, but it’s just a different time – you don’t see them as your enemy. So, women are producing more projects, are finding things on their own. I feel very comfortable with all the women that are my competition.
There was someone that came (to Feud) for two seconds who was not particularly collaborative, and I didn’t get rid of her, but that was just not the tone. She kind of announced herself, and she was gone in two days. Because Ryan is responsible for having a wonderful environment with a very collaborative atmosphere, and it starts at the top. He just doesn’t tolerate anybody who isn’t part of that family, and looks at the bigger picture. And that was it. She was gone.
But it wasn’t about women against women – it was just about somebody who came in, sat down and announced that she was going to be difficult. I’m sure that came from a place of fear, in all fairness to her, but there wasn’t time or interest in developing a relationship with someone who isn’t a team player. Everybody was a team player on this. And I’ve seen men go at it on films, but I’ve never had an experience myself. It doesn’t work for me to work in an environment where there’s tension. I go out of my way to make sure there’s not.
Can you imagine throwing your guts out there and you have to be brave and you’re in a hostile environment? It’s just impossible. You open up your heart and all your energy, and you can’t do that if you’re in a protective mode. There’s a line that I found in one of Bette’s books where she said, “I would rather have a go at something I feel, and be hurt, than always be protecting myself – that way, one does not really live.” And she did that in romance, and I think she did that in her work.
That’s definitely where our philosophies align. You can’t live your life according to just what looks good on paper. I think the most interesting things happen when you’re out of your comfort zone, and this was way out of my comfort zone. It took me a good five weeks working with Ryan and working with Tim Monich, my dialect coach, to really get the fear/fun ratio to a place where it was in my favor (laughs). I was just terrified! I said to Ryan, “This really, really scares me. I just don’t know.” And he said, “Well, I’m scared too. We’ll find it together.” And that made me jump at it.
How do you explain the gay fascination with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford?
Well, I can’t speak for Joan – I can only speak for Bette. But, first of all, being some kind of outsider – she was an intruder at the time, when she was trying to get good parts, because she wasn’t your classic Hollywood beauty. So, she started off as an outsider, and I think that she had a secret, and in the early days of being gay – and still in some places – that has to be a secret. I think she had a lot of secrets, and you sense that she was trying to do things that were not easily done as a woman and as an artist, and she was a very straight shooter. When we were working on it, our biggest challenge was trying to make it grounded in reality because they’re so big. Her gestures, everything – I felt like, “Here goes another meme!” (Laughs) The question was, are we able to make this into something that people are actually moved by? It’s very funny, obviously, and interesting.
Do you think audiences might come away with more empathy for Bette as we watch this?
I hope so. In watching all of her interviews and TV appearances, and in reading all the books she wrote and that her daughter wrote and other people wrote, she was pretty special in her focus to find good work that (gave her) some control over her choices at a time when you were given the protection of the studio in exchange for your freedom. Now, of course, if you do episodic TV, you’re right back in the same kind of contractual bind. Films have been liberated, but not these seasonal TV shows, because you really don’t know what they’re going to do with you. You sign away for years at a time, which was exactly what she was fighting against.
Shifting to politics, some LGBT people were disappointed in your decision to cast your vote for someone other than the predicted winner, Hillary Clinton. If you would’ve known that Trump would be elected, and that we’d currently be experiencing such a threat to human rights, which I know are so important to you, would you have voted differently?
This is the thing: To have the conversations about “woulda, shoulda, coulda” opens up everything about the primaries and all kinds of things. The important thing right now is that we stop harping on blame because blame, if you really want me to talk about this election – you know, I was not the person who brought Trump into power. The DNC has a lot of… there are already suits all over the country about how that was rigged, the primary.
So, to talk about this, for me, is a waste of energy. I think right now we’re about to appoint Scott Pruitt, which is the end of the EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency), and we’ve got this gal, (Betsy) DeVos. People have to get over what happened, take some personal responsibility for being in a bubble and not paying attention to what was going on in the country, and start applying their anger and their energy to rectifying what’s going on.
We’re at a moment in history where a revolution is taking place. We have a guy in there who is so obvious that he gives you very clear targets – this didn’t happen overnight. In the last eight years, the Democrats have lost thousands of seats. In the last eight years, we’ve put fracking and Monsanto and everybody in place. In the last eight years, there were tons of people deported. This guy is horrible. But this didn’t happen overnight.
So what are we gonna do now? This is a moment where we have to start using our energy and the time that we have and the media to divest from our banks that are building these pipelines all over the place, not just in Dakota, which are going to bring down this country. Fracking is going to go full speed ahead. We have to stop that. And we have to protect those who are vulnerable under this administration, and that’s not gonna happen until we let go of what happened before and really dedicate ourselves to making phone calls, putting our bodies in the street and, most of all, taking our money out of organizations, banks and networks that are supporting the actions of this guy.
Now that everybody is awake, we have to take that and that fear, and we have to not indulge our depression – not indulge on pointing fingers – and get out there and work with some of the people who are going to be betrayed by Trump who voted for him and use that as a force for real change, because now it can happen. And we’re in a moment in history where you’re gonna either be on one side or the other, and to be quiet or to be depressed or to blame me is not productive, so that’s what I would say about that.