Ira Sachs: Gay Marxist Cinéaste

Sachs, who says he has a “Marxist perspective on how people live”, was raised in Memphis, the only openly gay teenager in his high school. He was one of only two out students in his class at Yale. He got his first taste of how economics can affect the makeup of a neighbourhood after moving to Brooklyn in 1988. “I was the white, Yale graduate coming to town to find my place,” he recalls. “I moved to an Italian neighbourhood – the street was Dominican. When I arrived there were three Dominican social clubs on my corner, and within three years they were all gone.” ...

Has his sexuality been a stumbling block? He equivocates. “I think the stories one chooses to tell – that’s what hinders you. I’m a gay man. But you may say first off that I’m a man. The power that sometimes comes with that is part of who I am, as much as the vulnerability that my sexuality might create.”

Change can’t come quickly, he thinks, because minority tastes must remain such in today’s marketplace. “I find that my generation of both gay film-makers and independent film-makers are having a hard time creating sustained careers because of content. Content needs to be homogenised. And what tends to happen is the dominant cultures tend to become the homogenous cultures.”

Guardian.

Possibly the most important gay Marxist filmmaker since Pasolini.

Nah, I haven't watched anything by him either.

Morrissey:Mporium

Jeez.

It costs about £2 to make a t-shirt, why are you selling them for £25 plus?

Orlando: Morrissey

Although the gunman who massacred 49 people at an Orlando gay club is said to have been 'repulsed' by homosexuality, he nonetheless left behind a slew of self-adoring 'selfies'; a handsome man gazing enchantedly at his own face. It is therefore acceptable for him to lovingly admire his own maleness, but it is not OK for other men to like other men. Does Islamic scripture say it is fitting for a man to sit alone taking adoring photographs of himself? I doubt it.

Meanwhile, Donald Thump, probably America's next President, reacts to the Orlando massacre by explaining how, if the people within the club were themselves armed with guns, then there would have been fewer casualties. This, of course, is his way of avoiding any words of support to the Orlando gay community (it is their own fault for going into a nightclub without hand grenades). Donald Thump would therefore probably claim that the massacred children of Sandy Hook would still be alive today if only they'd had the common sense to carry sawn-off shotguns to school. The Thump response to Orlando is therefore anti-gay and pro-gun possession. Ann Coulter will be waving her baseball cap and cheering. It's all going so well for America!

Unfortunately, CNN obliged the gunman once again with a flashing flood of publicity - which is all he ever wanted, and which will encourage the next shooter to prepare for international fame. Why show the gunman's face? Nobody needs to see it...

Hate-rosexuality, True To You.

One of her less bobbins missives.

It would be churlish to point out that the sleeves to Morrissey's solo records have been a succession of 'self-adoring selfies'.

Morrissey: Bad Sex

Morrissey has won the 23rd annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award for List of the Lost (Penguin). The prize was presented by the lawyer, columnist and performer Nancy Dell’Olio.

The award was announced at a lavish ceremony on Tuesday 1 December 2015 at the In & Out (Naval & Military) Club in St James’s Square, London, where the 400 guests raised a toast to the winner. List of the Lost is Morrissey’s debut novel. His memoir, Autobiography, was released by Penguin Classics in 2013. List of the Lost follows four Boston relay runners who are cursed by an old man in the woods. The judges were swayed by an ecstatic scene involving Ezra, one of the athletes, and his plucky girlfriend, Eliza: ‘At this, Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.

Morrissey rose to fame in the 1980s as the lyricist and frontman of The Smiths, before launching a lauded solo career spanning ten studio albums to date.

Morrissey was unable to attend due to touring commitments and was unavailable for comment. As he explains in List of the Lost: ‘Sex was always there – everywhere photographically, in print, in film, so expansively thought about that almost nothing more could need to be said about it…’

Literary Review. 

Rumour has it Miss Morrissey could win a few awards for 'crap sex', too...

PS '[Transportation Security Administration] have ignored my official and legal and constitutional complaint. From this we gather that TSA stands for Thorough Sexual Assault. If you are traveling through San Francisco International Airport you must be ready for a full sexual attack by people who claim to have your interests at heart. It is unlikely that ISIS would stoop so low.'

La Mozza keeping things in perspective as usual via a new missive on True To You.

Morrissey: Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

I think the sex scene in Morrissey’s much-mocked first novel, List of the Lost, sounds quite fun: “A rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation.” I mean, that sounds better than the rollercoasters I’ve tried at EuroDisney. But the moral of Morrissey’s otherwise terrible foray into literature is: repression can be a wonderful thing.

I don’t mean repression for everyone. For humans, it’s not good, as a rule. But for artists, yes. As a teenager, like so many of my generation, I yearned with Morrissey, not for him. It was only in adulthood that I realised why: he was a gay man born in 1959, facing a triple whammy of Irish, Catholic, and Northern repression. No wonder he hated the gay scene, himself and everyone else, with a twisting, superior self-loathing that royally screwed him up for evermore.

But for everyone else, it was great. In the closet he became a songwriter of genius. Now, I look back and see he was hiding in plain sight — his best songs hissing with anger at forcing his self away. Yet it was coded enough that I never noticed at the time; I didn’t need to. Putting on record after record in my bedroom, his peculiar, dated, suffering became universal. It was a longing made sarcastic.

Repression, paradoxically, restricted Morrissey enough to be creative. Now he has the licence of his latter years to write this novel, he just isn’t editing himself enough. What if Morrissey had been born in Brighton today and found contentment and a lovely boyfriend aged 17? All of his best stuff would never have been written.
Helen Rumbelow, The Times.

Well yes, of course.

Though this point has been made before and - dare I say - far more eloquently in the essays, Ambisexality and Morrissey: The God That Failed in Richard Smith's quite brilliant Seduced And Abandoned: Gay Men And Popular Music.

PS As with the stinking reviews of the Stonewall movie, I can't be arsed compiling all the bad reviews of List Of The Lost.

Morrissey: There Is Only One Thing Worse Than Being Talked About...

It’s commonplace in this kind of article to tell you we’re reading the book so you don’t have to. It’s a tease, usually. In the case of List of the Lost, however, it’s absolutely true. Do not read this book; do not sully yourself with it, no matter how temptingly brief it seems. All those who shepherded it to print should hang their heads in shame, for it’s hard to imagine anything this bad has been put between covers by anyone other than a vanity publisher. It is an unpolished turd of a book, the stale excrement of Morrissey’s imagination. 

Michael Hann, The Guardian.

The digested read: Morrissey is still obsessed with death and young men's athletics.

"Hello? Morrissey? Right, well... I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that EVERYONE’S talking about your book…"

— Pete Paphides (@petepaphides) September 24, 2015

Morrissey: Song Of The Loon

True To You.

Alternative cover...

Morrissey: Work Is A Four Letter Word

News that the DWP had used made-up quotes from made-up people on some bumf promoting the wonders of benefit sanctions inspired a  'Twitter meme' where people faked their own #realDWPstories.

PS Morrissey has given an interview to TV's Larry King. Only a video clip and some quotes from Mrs Mad so far; 'He put his finger down my rear cleavage...'

Cilla Black: 1943-2015

Any friend of Brian Epstein is a friend of mine (even though you're a Tory).

PS Cilla also made The Smiths split up, some claim to fame.*

* The straw finale that made Johnny Marr quit The Smiths was Morrissey getting them to cover Cilla's Love Work Is A Four Letter Word.

Morrissey: 'He Crouched Before Me And Groped My Penis And Testicles'

On leaving the US on 27 July I flew from San Francisco International Airport to London on flight BA 284.

At 2:30 in the afternoon I went through the usual airport security procedure including the stand-up 'scanner', and all was well - no bleeps and nothing unusual.

Before I could gather my belongings from the usual array of trays I was approached by an "airport security officer" who stopped me, crouched before me and groped my penis and testicles. He quickly moved away as an older "airport security officer" approached.

The officer who sexually assaulted me was identified as the General Manager On Duty. Luckily I was accompanied by two members of British Airways Special Services, who were horrified at the sexual attack and suggested that I lodge a complaint. I asked if there would be any point in lodging a complaint since, as with any complaint against a figure in "authority", the complaints are simply collected in order to protect the guilty officer should the matter go further. The British Airways Special Services employees assured me that a complaint was worthwhile, and so I filed the appropriate information. However, before doing so, the guilty "officer" was confronted, and the conversation went thus:

You have just sexually groped this man.
Officer: That's just your opinion.
What you have done is illegal.
Officer: That's just your opinion.
You have no right to do what you have just done.
Officer: That's just your opinion.

Apart from "that's just your opinion", he would not comment, even though, since the penis and  testicles were mine and no one else's, then my opinion must surely have some meaning... [SNIP!!]

Morrissey, True To You.

Nuts!

Morrissey Comes Out: For Gay Marriage

Behind you!!!

True To You.

What a loon.

Feel free to make up your own 'Morrissey's in Sydney' gags.

PS Will Never Marry.

Update: As warm and welcome as the Irish referendum. All good Morrissey shows are 62% gay pride and 38% Catholic guilt and his Sydney sojourn is no exception, just with added tan and didgeridoo, Guardian review. Eh?

Twinkle: 1948-2015

Farewell Lynn Annette Ripley. x

Fagburn's thoughts are with Morrissey at this difficult time.

General Election 2015: Those Celebrity Gay Backers In Full

Conservatives: Christopher Biggins.

Only patron of LGBTory who's not an MP!

Though they can also count on Ivan Massow and David Starkey*, too!

What a right bunch of right-wing gay cunts, eh?

Lib Dems: Patrick Smugtwit?

Probably.

He is Britain's most boring wet liberal poove.

And it's a family affair!

Green: Peter Tatchell.

And who better to dispel the myth that the Greens are all a bit nutty, than the publicity shy campaigning celeb?

Pete's probably said somewhere that he founded the Green Party, if not Planet Earth itself.

Bless.

Labour: Owen Jones.

No, really, he is. Trust me on this one.

SNP: Alan Cumming.

Was often wheeled out during the 'Yes!' campaign.

But like their most famous celeb supporter, Sean Connery, Mr Cumming is an ex-pat. Oops!

'England for the English...' etc etc.

Ukip: Morrissey.

"I nearly voted for Ukip. I like Nigel Farage a great deal," he told Loaded in 2013.

"His views are quite logical – especially where Europe is concerned."

And La Mozza's views are highly logical, too.

She loves England so much she's spent much of the last 20 years living abroad in tax exile, cos it's been flooded with foreigners, innit?

Silly old queen.

* Dr Starkey threatened to do a big queeny flounce and leave the country if Cameron didn't win the 2010 General Election. Paul O'Grady - a man Fagburn much admires - has said he'll leave if the Tories win again this time. It's usually the most unbearable right-wing shits who do this - I am unaware if anyone has actually carried it out.

PS If you decide how to vote because of something a famous person has said, may I implore you not to vote tomorrow?

Update: Undecided/Undeclared - Will Young. Former politics student Will Nice-But-Dim offered his astute analysis to Digital Spy; 'I don't know, it'll be a hung parliament and it all just feels like a wet fart.'

Viv Nicholson: 1936-2015

Bye, luv! x

PS Why Morrissey loved Viv Nicholson.

Morrissey: The Queen Is Knitted

Available here - arthritis permitting.

PS Bet she never got asked to give Channel 4's alternative Queen's Christmas speech.

Oops! She didn't!

Russell Brand: The Revolution Will Not Be...

Russell Brand may have become the poster boy for people who love politics but hate politicians.

Tonight, however, he was forced into an old-fashioned political retreat when he cancelled a debate to launch his new book after guests including the leading human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell expressed concerns about the make-up of the panel.

Activist Laurence Easeman, who appeared with Brand on a recent video to highlight the plight of an under-threat community in London’s East End, had been due to join the panel at London’s Hoxton Docks to discuss the issues raised byRevolution – the comic’s treatise on the travails of the modern British body politic.

Mr Tatchell said he flagged up concerns with Brand having been alerted to a series of blog postings by others which, if accurate, would suggest that he and Mr Easeman may not share all the same political views...

The Independent.

Oops! 

Next stop... Russell meets our Owen!

People should storm the cinemas and pay nothing on Thursday for my chat with Russell Brand. And demand they give their workers a living wage
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 19, 2014

Only just realised this, OJ?

Why did you agree to speak there in the first place, then?

Johann Hari, Owen Jones, Morrissey, Peter Tatchell...

Can anyone explain this gay love-in with the great phoney Brand?

If Russell Brand is taken seriously as a left-wing thinker, then no wonder our movement's fucked. 

PS Saint Peter interviews the even babier-faced Mr Jones in 2007!

UND! Russell Brand tries to go gay for his little missed TV show, RE; Brand. And here he is interviewing two flucks fom Westboro Baptist Church. The second's much better.

Update: Evan Davis does Russell on Newsnight.

'Evan, mate.. what a lot of people in your line of work misunderstand is that we don't want some pedagogic figure coming in and didactically shouting at us...' LOL!

Rather a lot of creepy, patronising touching there, Russell, would you do that to Paxman?


Mr Brand does come out of that quite well, for a raving idiot.

Fagburn thinks he'll do a David Icke before long.

Pasolini: You Have Killed Me

Early in the morning of November 2 1975, in Idroscalo, a shanty town outside Rome, the 53-year-old Italian film-maker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini was found beaten beyond recognition and run over by his own Alfa Romeo. Twelve hours later, Giuseppi Pelosi, a 17-year-old rent boy, confessed to the killing. Yet almost 40 years on, the known facts of the murder still form no coherent picture, and the case remains open.

Abel Ferrara’s new film, Pasolini, starring Willem Dafoe in the lead role, chronicles the last two days of the Italian director’s life. Mingling a documentary verismo style with dreamlike images, the film grips like a thriller, yet leaves the circumstances surrounding the murder as murky as ever. “I don’t care too much who killed Pasolini, only that he was killed,” says Ferrara, a straight-talking, expletive-happy New Yorker. “Whoever it was behind the wheel of that f---ing Alfa Romeo – did he intentionally roll over Pasolini? Who knows? It was dark, man, the headlamps might have been off.

“It’s not as if an American director like me is going to uncover the truth of what happened 40 years ago. I’m no detective. The tragedy is that Pasolini was in the prime of his creative life – a passionate, compassionate man lost to the world.” ...

Telegraph.

But was this notorious Italian gay communist bumped off by L'Uomo? *

This film director clearly hasn't the foggiest...

November 2, 1975 – the final day of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s life as he awaits certain fury over Salo. In this artist-to-artist love letter, Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant) casts a sublime Willem Dafoe to play Pasolini in the hours prior to his brutal murder. It’s a death that has aroused suspicion and controversy, but Ferrara neither investigates nor accuses. Instead he celebrates fearlessness, creativity and a sharp mind, dramatising the unproduced screenplay that shows Pasolini’s undimmed urge to provoke, Porno-Teo-Kolossal (lesbians and gay men have an orgy of procreation as the hero seeks Jesus’ birthplace). He also recreates Pasolini’s final interview about disruptive art and politics where he commented, with unwitting prescience, ‘given the life I lead, I pay a price... it’s like a descent into hell. But when I come back – if I come back – I’ve seen other things’.

BFI London Film Festival programme. 

You may also enjoy this documentary, Whoever Tells The Truth Shall Die.

PS 'Pasolini is meeee!', You Have Killed Me, Morrissey.

* ie The Man. 

Morrissey: If

Morrissey has revealed that he has previously been treated for cancer, stating, "If I die, then I die. And if I don't, then I don't" regarding the procedures.

The singer has been hospitalised a number of times over the past years with several dates of a recent US tour cancelled due to ill health.

In a new interview with Spanish magazine El Mundo, however, the singer admitted for the first time that he had undergone a series of cancer-related treatments.

"They have scraped cancerous tissues four times already, but whatever," he said. "If I die, then I die. And if I don't, then I don't. Right now I feel good. I am aware that in some of my recent photos I look somewhat unhealthy, but that’s what illness can do. I’m not going to worry about that, I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

The 55-year-old singer went on to state that now he is at an age where "nobody knows what to do with [him]".

"[I'm] now at an age when I should no longer be making music," he told the magazine. "Many composers of classical music died at age 34. And I'm still here, and nobody knows what to do with me. With luck I will be able to stop singing forever, which would make many people happy!"

NME.

So it's not HIV/Aids like some people thought/hoped?

PS The exclamation mark is the canned laughter of the written word.

Ramones: Sweet And Tender Hooligans

Morrissey has compiled the track-listing for the forthcoming Best of the Ramones CD/LP which is due for release by Sire-Rhino. Morrissey has also chosen the sleeve image (above). Morrissey is thankful to the Ramones management for this invitation.

True To You.

Beautiful, though totally incongruous, sleeve photograph.

PS Of course, Steve Morrissey has always been a champion of the band. 

PS 'This would not have happened to the Teletubbies', from Morrissey's statement on his recent split with Harvest Records after one album. She's so barking and bitter these days, it's hard to know if La Mozz is being ironic or not.

Loxfest: What Has Am, What Has Am, What Has Ambridge Done To Deserve This?

Pet Shop Boys have been announced as the surprise headline act at Borsetshire's first and finest music festival, Loxfest!

Fagburn is too thrilled for words.

Apart from all the words I am now typing, clearly.

The episode will be broadcast on Monday.

This is like, I dunno, Chomsky appearing on Curb Your Enthusiasm or something.

Fagburn would like to pad this out with loads of hopeless farming puns on Pet Shop Boys' song titles - West End Cows, It's A Pig etc - but needs a lie-down now.

PS But does this mean Ambridge rejected Morrissey?

PPS Next Pets' stop Festival No. 6 at Portmeirion! Now that's a nice venue...