MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG

Got a bunch of emugs about my memory post about the male model John “Connie” Francis. A lot of folks wanted to know what other male models have I had a connection to. That got me thinking down memory mammary lane and I realized that I had quite a male and female model history stemming from my brief time modelling for Zoli’s Models in NewYork in the early 1980s and just having been alive on this insel Earth for soooo many centuries. The first male model that I swooned over was Jeff Aquilon who was also a water polo player at Pepperdine University where I won a scholarship to that religious university in Malibu after high school. Like everyone in those days Jeff saw me as just a little innocent teenage girl and I didn’t exactly exude any sexual allure or menace and in the late 1970s you had to give off that quality to bag a stud beauty prize like Jeff, but I was just happy to be in his orbit for a blazing minute even if he didn’t desire me. I did a photo shoot with Tom Hintnaus who was the first Calvin Klein underwear model and let me tell you - having his muscular naked Brazilian body draped over me for hours was utter joy. I actually stole a pair of his used underwear that had a skid mark. Shows you that I was perverted even in my youth. I also partied down over the years with such modelling hunkasaurauses as Tim Easton, Mark Vanderloo, Mark Norlun, “Moose” Khan, Hoyt Richards, Hart Bochner who later became an actor appearing as a Fratboy in Breaking Away with mypal Dennis Christopher and Dennis Quaid who was humpy when he was young but had bad skin. Hart also was in George Cukor’s last film Rich and Famous starring Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset. Hart Bochner had the most intoxicating body odor. He didn’t like to wear deodorant so he smelled kind of funky with a musty aftertaste. Lecher smecher! I also had little forays with Nick Kamen, who I met through the Flip of Hollywood Store on Melrose, Nick Scotti, Nick Constantino, Joel West, Brian Buzzini, David Fumero who went on to success on the Daytime drama One Life to Live, Nacho Figueras, Alex Lundquist and Travis Fimmel. The new breed of models I have had bumpings with are: Marlon Texeira, Chad White and Antonio Navas. O and my alltime fav model pas has been Tony Ward who I co-starred with in Judy LaBruce’s Hustler White back in 1996. I first met Tony in mid 1980s through photographer and stylist Beulah Love for a photo shoot with Albert Sanchez that recreated the paintings of Paul Cadmus. I still have the tear sheet from that photographic outing. Tony Ward was a darling boy, super muscular at that time. He had to slim it down for fashion purposes later in his career working with Matthew Rolston and Herb Ritts who of course fell madly in love with him and ripped him off. Tony was best friends with my former neighbour and University buddy Billy Hoye a sweetheart of a man who was also a former model but now works behind the scenes on films and is from a wealthy Hancock Park family.

One of my all time favourite actresses died from complications of Cancer the great Karen Black. She was born the same year 1939 as my oldest sister Gracie Lee who died two years ago of cancer. I got to meet Ms Black when we performed on the same bill for a Lou Reed Halloween salute to Edgar Allan Poe at UCLA’s Royce Hall back in the late 1990s that also featured a young Antony Hegerty when he was still Lou Reed’s protégé, Kembra Pfhaler of the Voluptuous Horrorof Karen Black and Ron Athey were also on the bill. Karen Black did a dramatic resissitation of Fall of the House of Usher that was one of the most spectacular performances I have ever seen. To say she embodied her role didn’t do justice. She became a banshee on stage howling and screaming blood curdlingly in fits and torrents like she was being exorcised while having an epileptic fit. She also introduced Kembra and her band VHofKB at one of their gigs in Venice, California at a loft/warehouse space off the boardwalk a few years earlier and seemed to be quite a good sport and looked always incredibly young and vital. Besides her portrayal in the TV film Trilogyof Terror 1975 which inspired Kembra to name her band after Karen Black. Karen Black was phenomenal in the film The Great Gatsby 1974 directed by Jack Clayton, Alfred Hitchcock’s last film Family Plot, Airport 75, The Pyx 1974 where she plays a call girl involved with devil worshippers, Cisco Kid 1972 set in Venice Beach with a young Kris Kristopherson and the looney 1974 film of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinocerous with Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. She should have won an Academy Award for Nashville 1975 where she wrote and sings her own songs and Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean 1983. Another underrated fav is Can She Bake a Cherry Pie 1983 Henry Jaglom. We both had small roles in Tales of the City 1995. Another actress I adore who died at age 80 was Eileen Brennan who made a bunch of films for Peter Bogdanovich in the 1970s like At Long Last Love, The Last Picture Show and Daisy Miller where she plays a hypocritical expat socialite in Rome. Daisy Miller is quite good and Cybil Shepard gave an underrated performance in that film which features the fine work of Mildrid Natwick, Cloris Leachman and Barry Brown who later committed suicide by hanging himself in Silverlake at his lover’s restaurant The Frog Pond on Hyperion Blvd in 1978. Eileen Brennan also was in the original cast of Hello Dolly on Broadway in 1964.

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Our trustworthy young heroine Vlautin has not been short on bobby carnalvale encounters. The other evening she had to flee the overzealous embrace of a kinky couple from Spandau only to majestically bump into a hard bodied Pole with an unfortunate face of butter, followed by a hesitant blondine boy with a bottle rocket and a German 6foot 9 inch giant with sad eyes hungry for stink. In the valley where the evening sun goes down Miss Vlautin shamelessly donned nothing but a thong and cha-cha heels to sow some wild roasted oats in the balmy Laure’. She was immediately tackled by James CoCo and Nestor Almendros dopplegangers who like newborn babes attached themselves to her mighty bosom and wouldn’t let go no matter how much she protested. It was alright because soon Vlautin was enamored by Prince Harming in the form of a dainty Satanist skinhead. Everything was proceeding with romantic bliss until they were interrupted by a handicapped man in an elaborately decorated motorized wheelchair. Miss Vlautin and the Prince had to salute this man for his dedication to the Evangelische cruising work ethic. Bravo hero!

GAZUNK UND GAZINK

I hate going to the KW in speissig Mitte. For some reason I always have trouble finding this museum and the general ickyness of the area doesn’t help matters, but I had to support my Arsenal Inst fur film und Video Kunst and Forum Expanded colleague Uli Ziemons who is also known as the most handsomest young man in all Europa. He curated a special one nite program called NATURE ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE George Kuchar's Video Diaries. The program included these delicious titles 500 MILLIBARS TO ECSTASY (1989), BIG ONES HURT (1992), ROCKY INTERLUDE (1990), GASTRONOMIC GETAWAY (1991) and OASIS OF THE PHARAOHS (1997).
For those of you not familiar with Gorgeous George Kuchar here is a little bio info: George Kuchar, one of the most prolific exponents of the American Underground Cinema, produced an œuvre of more than 250 videos from 1985 until his untimely death in 2011. Kuchar became known alongside his brother Mike as the Avant-garde class clown and pioneer of Camp Cinema in the 60's, shooting shrill 8mm adaptations of Hollywood B-movies with his schoolmates in his parent's apartment. In the 80's he started working in video and began a series of diary videos documenting his life in San Francisco, artist and filmmaker friends, his pets, family gatherings and, above all, his travels and vacations. Especially his annual trips to Oklahoma and the WEATHER DIARIES, which he produced there, earned him a faithful audience. These diaries, which were exhibited as part of the Berlin Biennial in 2010, deal with Kuchar's fascination for violent weather and try to hotwire the turbulent phenomena in the sky with the physical and psychological tribulations of their protagonist.

Taking 500 MILLIBARS TO ECSTASY, an addendum to the WEATHER DIARY series, as its starting point, this program of lesser known titles shows examples of Kuchar's engagement with the American nature and landscape as well as with the home movie format. Again, the interrelation between the sublime beauty of nature and the banalities of everyday life are examined. By virtue of Kuchar's Hollywood-infested gaze, his holiday and family videos become humorous disaster movies of epic proportions. Earthquakes, eating disorders, electrical mice, Egyptian gods, mummies, the majestic vistas of the Rocky Mountains, dead snakes, and phallic tornadoes are the stuff these low-budget dreams are made of.
The VIPs in attendance at the event: Ellen Blumenstein (head curator KW), Adela Yawitz (also KW), Anja Lückenkemper (curator, formerly of KW, 16mm filmmaker couple Juan David Gonzales Monroy and Anja Dornieden, Tobi Ashraf, Todd Sekuler, Katharina Fichtner of the Canadian Embassy, Manuel Schubert of FilmHighlights, Daniel Hendrickson, little Alex from Macedonia, Ruben Donsbach of Fräulein magazine and his girlfriend filmmaker Laura Laabs, Florian Zeyfang, Mia Sellmann, Angela Melitopoulos,DJane Olga Damnitz with Angie Anderson, documentary filmmaker Henrieke Meyer, and my brilliant Chicago Art Institute student Natalia just in from Paris.
Uli is off to Locarno Film Festival and then holiday in Greece. I’ve been mesmerized by the Arsenal’s summer salute to Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki. Saw his 1967 classic Branded to Kill starring Jo Shishido with the surgically enhanced Mitzi Gaynor apple chipmunk cheeks as a perverse contract killer vying for the number one spot. Mr. Shishido can look equally handsome and revolting in his Saville Row suits. His muscular body got the full leer treatment in Gate of Flesh 1964 where he is nursed back to health by a girl gang of tough street walkers. Suzuki’s 1960s Cinemascope features are my favorites with such titles as Comfort Women, Detective Bureau 23-Go To Hell Bastards, Tokyo Drifter and Youth of Beast. His surreal 1980s films are spellbinding but a little hard to sit through at times.

Was on my bike and glanced at what must be the most hideous creature in the world. This thing was wearing a pastel colored leather jacket with matching leather speedo. He was shirtless with an orange ruffy tan and melting skin, bleach blonde hair in a faux hawk /mullet hairstyle. To top this off he had on brown boots with a Cuban heel, and a rainbow colored fannypack and visor cap. The poor thing was working every ill look in the book simultaneously plus a trendy thick beard that was braided in sections like a Radical Fairy.