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Alan Parker, pack your bags! | |
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You've all heard me ramble about my appearance in Alan Parker's flop film, Angel Heart. Look in lower right hand corner of the screen during the New Year's Eve sequence in Times Square -- see the bum? It's me! Well, since then, I've always spoken of Alan Parker as MY director. But no longer. I've now been filmed by one of the elder lights of the New Wave of German cinema, Rosa von Praunheim. For the record, Rosa is a man. Germans are weird with names -- remember Rainer Maria Rilke?* Anyway, the occasion was a retrospective of Rosa's work at the Hirshhorn museum in Washington, D.C. Now I'm not saying I'm a von Praunheim star; all I'm saying is that he had a movie camera, he pointed it at me and I heard the motor running. That's enough for my curriculum vitae. And frankly, after seeing two of his films (and seeing him in the bathroom), I'm not sure I WANT to be a RVP star. You see, Rosa does these sorta documentary things. It's all real people telling their stories with dramatizations of key events. As you might guess, his films are only as compelling as the object of the action is. In a two-day period, I saw Survival in New York, about three youngish German women trying to make it in the Big Apple. The other was I Am My Own Woman, the heart-warming story of a 70-year old drag queen in East Germany. In a speech before he screening, Rosa said that Survival in New York was a big hit in Germany. Well, I guess for the people in a former communist satellite, ANYTHING looks good. But honestly, can you think of anything more tired than a real-life version of How to Marry a Millionaire WITHOUT Betty Bacall and Marilyn Monroe? The only interesting thing is the film is Ryan. Who's Ryan? Well, Ryan is the love interest of the young lesbian woman; the other two are straight (but one of them really digs her dog). Ryan was this SEVERE gender-bender. Never smiling, Ryan came across as an art-house version of Julia Sweeney's Pat character. I'd go to see Ryan: The Film in a heartbeat. I Am My Own Woman, on the other hand, was out there. The movie was the true-life tale of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (née Lothar Berfelde), East Germany's answer to Quentin Crisp. He lives his life as a woman -- an S/M loving woman, to boot. Where this film is really cutting-edge, however, is that he lives his life as a badly dressed woman. No Dolly Parton drag tactics for him. He walks around looking like a charwoman: all babushka'd, with an apron and no make up. During the movie, I kept wondering why he even bothered. Charlotte von M. also runs a museum full of furniture that's the Teutonic equivalent of circa 1900 Sears & Roebuck specials. It was just too sad. But about the celebrity encounter? In the Hirshhorn bathroom with Rosa himself. Let me set the scene: I'm in a stall at in Hirshhorn bathroom. I walk out. Standing at the sink, washing my hands, I glance up and see a tall man with a baseball cap, backpack, stripey polo shirt and postmodern lederhosen standing at a urinal. He turns around and I immediately recognize him as Rosa von P. He quickly glances in the mirror and walks out. He doesn't stop to wash his hands. (Circa 1994) * I discovered years later that the name is a pseudonym deliberately, politically chosen and is intended to be read as a woman's name. (And that's almost as much of a bummer as when I discovered that Danielle Dax's real name isn't Danielle Dax). POSTSCRIPT: I completely forgot about Survival in New York -- and, even rereading this, I don't remember a thing about it. However, I Am My Own Woman stuck with me; it'salso the basis of a currently NYC stage hit. If you curious about RVP, he has his own site: http://www.rosavonpraunheim.de/ And Charlotte von Mahlsdorf died in 2000; I don't know what happened to the furniture museum. |
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