Playwright on Celluloid: BAFTA 2015, Rosewood

February 9, 2015 by martinbelk

I haven’t been to a major celluloid soirée since New York City, at an Edith Head Gala for charity — film & tv are not typically in my otherwise literary/professional theatre travels. But something remains wild in my mind about watching the models walk the runway in Bette Davis’ dresses & Clark Gable’s suits. A little bit of Hollywood goes a long way.

Last night, I arrived with the pretty-much-early-on-time crowd for the official BAFTA-bash. Why not? Waiting for ‘the perfect time’ to coincide with the celebrants of 2015 was, to me, precisely akin to chasing a herd of cats. At Rosewood London, me & photographer Jonathan Daniel Pryce (@garconjon) popped out of the Mercedes our gracious hosts from Grey Goose and Michael Weinstein Company sent to collect us. Outside were black ropes and red carpets — and another intimate party-of- five which included someone I very much admire, entrepreneur Kelly Hoppen (@KellyHoppenhome). I figured if Kelly can be early, we could warm ourselves by the faux fires that burned all around us without social stigma. Success runs its own time.

As things went from underway to full swing, and a milieu of celebrity (names you can get over from the boys at Hello) poured in, I began to notice how familiar yet sui generis things appeared to me, the expat New Yorker who’d lived several previous lives in rooms of fancy and faces. Perhaps it was the hour of the evening, or my 10-year old jet lag from crossing the pond, but I noticed something perhaps only Stephen Hawking might explain — a string theory in images.

Being an East Coast music and theatre-bred indigene the only sighting that excited me was Nick Cave…but the rest of the crowd certainly did not disappoint. They came, went, some joined us at our table along the route to their tables, and it was as if we were in some parallel universe far way, these happy, relaxed faces mingled. And it was as if this prime night gave everyone an excuse to just be, together. Sure there were a scant few operators, meh, but few anxious moments that tend to wrinkle the eyelid at such affairs. It was also refreshing to see some LA chickens out of their roost — perhaps London gave them permission not to perform so hard.

Yet it was within this excitement that this playwright-observer found new lament to the corporatization of this lost world. The cultural destruction of our cities came to mind — I cannot imagine the Paris soirées of La Belle Époch, the bashes at the old Algonquin NYC, or the swing of London thriving under the hammer of brand, label and spreadsheet. And it’s too bad that the world is so, very, troubled right now… humans tend to create pretty good drama when you allow them … thankfully these ‘last nights’ still exist in pockets.

Later, while awaiting our chariot, a black car pulled up and a very large man got out carrying his BAFTA Award — which he sort of carried like a notebook down by his side. We caught a brief glance and, noticing my attention to his shiny new accessory, quickly held it tastefully-halfway up for me to grab a seconds’ closer look, as if to say – “oh yeah, I got this, and it hasn’t sunk in yet.” And while Oscars are nice, I guess, in that moment I was reminded of the sophistication of Europe — (to which London shall remain a cultural and geographic part of despite the recent efforts of corporatists and political Philistines) — a sophistication that still has the potential and legacy to provoke the creative spirit.

Trophies are crafted to sit on shelves — BAFTA’s are crafted to wear, as it were. But also comes to mind, a column in Interview magazine way back when with a Studio 54 regular:

“You spend your energy getting in, and then you’ve arrived. Then you get into the VIP room, then you’ve arrived. Then you get invited to the manager’s private suite, and then you’ve arrived. Then you wonder what’s behind that secret door at the back of Rubell’s manager suite, and in a fog you go through it, and find yourself in the alley, on your way home.”

Time to keep creating…

MLB – London, 9 Feb 2015

(with thanks to Charlotte and the team at Grey Goose).

A Tale of Two Christmas (short)

December 25, 2014 by martinbelk

“I don’t care much about it…” grandma Ruby pondered out loud, while we sat in the din of the failing December North Carolina city sunlight. “Why not?” I asked, looking around her massive living room, with three sofas and at least three comfy wingback chairs and a goose-necked rocker, in case ‘company’ came.

“When I was a young girl, my Daddy’d come in from work on Christmas Eve, we’d go to church and then go cut a tree. Decorate it with popcorn. Next day we’d eat, get a few things, then clean it all up and out the door it went.”

She never mentioned my great-grandma Huntley. And it wasn’t because she was half American Indian on account of her mother, my great-great called Polly Cason in English. No, the shame and the pain came from losing her mother at a young age. But I imagine she was with them when they had their Christmas-in-a-day: cooking, baking or making nice things. Much like Grandma Ruby did for me throughout the year.
All of my grandparents knew the value of making things. Creating life, as opposed to buying it. I’m glad they were spared the spectacle of “Black Friday” with the gift of death.

Grandma Ruby never attempted to thwart my Christmas. As a young teen my Dad’s part of Christmas would come to her house in a big box, delivered by the brown man. It would contain all manner of packages wrapped for my sister and me. Grandma Ruby would get as excited as I did, and let me open everything right away.

The things Daddy sent were foreign — he worked for big time clothiers, and I’d get nice things — shirts, sweaters, socks and jackets — to big for my body, but not for my imagination. Daddy gave me license to dream.
Other than delivery day, usually on the 20th or so, the only sign of Christmas at Grandma Ruby’s was a foot-high miniature tree my aunt Susan managed to sneak in and place on the dining room buffet, amid calls of “I don’t want too much — it’s all a big build up for a big let down.”

Indeed, although each year, joining the miniature tree on the buffet was grandma Ruby’s famous coconut cake. Five layers — more if she could fit it on — of the most delicate, home-baked angel food cake, suspended in an ensemble of her secret freshest spritzy hand-grated coconut, heavenly whipped cream cheese, fresh cream, sour cream and sweet white sugar icing brought together with a blissful vanilla reserved for special occasions. To have a slice was to taste time — made right Ruby’s coconut cakes cannot be eaten quickly. We’d have a slice, sometimes two, while she’d tell me stories of things she and my granddaddy RB used to do at this time of year.

• • •

On either Christmas Eve or morning, Mama packed me and my sister Adrienne and some combination of pets of the time up in her Toyota hatch back and took us up to my other grandparents home in the Blue Ridge foothills. I loved the contrast to the small city celebrations — something about the open land and small gestures of festivity in the form of some lights, or bright red bows on mailboxes made the journey almost excruciating with excitement for me.

This was a more active, louder affair, and very church oriented. Grandmother Katie took us to the outdoor “Living Christmas” with the Baptists, and my aunts and uncles would take us to singing and so forth with the Lutherans and somehow, even the non-denomenationals agreed to come together on the 25th for a meal and gifts and the mayhem of getting around 30 people all into a house built for a small family of five.

Inside, my grandmother Katie directed things from the kitchen, while the others clumped in small groups throughout the house and on teh front porch. She liked to decorate her house — with a tree in the living room and greeting cards she’d received all around the archway leading to the dining table. She’d make turkeys and hams, a monster potato salad and her pièce de résistance: oyster stuffing with fresh gravy. A lot of the things we had, pickles, jams, jellies and green beans had been grown by her and my grandpa William the preceding summer, and during August visits I’d watched her can them all in preparation for the long winter.

My great-grandmother, Blanche Gertrude Gunn Montgomery, was the cheeriest elf in the house. Although confined to a wheelchair from which she held court since around her 97th birthday, she glowed with excitement with the approach of every cousin, child and new grandbaby. She’d dress in a bright red blouse and white shawl she’d knitted herself, and grandma Katie would make her a little pendant out of some holly or somesuch from outside. At times, before or after the crowds, she’d ask me to sit on her lap — and did so up until I was 16 — and would get a fresh apple or turnip and sit with her knife and shave little pieces for me while she told me about what life had been like for her since 1883.

Later, when the conversations would begin to lull and great-uncle somebody would nod off into a snore, I’d tag along with my grandpa William out to his barn, to help him feed his cows. The cows seemed to like me, as I could get them all to come straight away with a bull horn I’d been given one year, and they’d allow me to mingle in between them as they ate the hay and grain grandpa’d grown and stored. Even the massive, 2-ton bull would leave me be, so long as i didn’t try to pet him like I did the heifers.
“Do they know it’s Christmas Papa?”
“Well, I don’t know son, they might.”

Today, 25 December 2014, and a world away in the centre of Paris, I now recognise and understand the times, during those times, when any one of these people would take a brief minute out from their chatty grandson, and look off in the distance for a memory.

Radiocast: Pretty Broken Punks intro, Congrats Hedwig, & Get Busy

September 9, 2014 by martinbelk

By request, I’m reading the intro to my book, Pretty Broken Punks: lipstick, leather jeans, a death of New York. Here’s the text if you’d like to follow along and see where I vary and veer. I don’t edit these things – life’s too short.

Audiobook, Stage adaptation, and North American release of new version to come. New cover pictured, with a very favourite shot of mine with Candace Cayne.

introduction

Don’t get me wrong: at its grand finale, our club was just as big a spectacle as the day it opened. On the moist Friday night of April 15th 1994, my friend Blair and I threw our leather MC jackets on stage beneath Misstress Formika’s six-inch heels as she belted a rousing ‘You Gotta Fight, For Your Right, To Be Queer’ to christen the joint. Just four months after Rudolf Giuliani raised his iron fist to be sworn in as Mayor of New York City, SqueezeBox! raised itself on Spring Street and would outlast Rudy’s reign over Manhattan.

Every Friday night for a decade the crowds came, and came, and kept coming. They converged for a rock scene I took for granted as the only place in the world to be. Black outfits at midnight, guitars screeching til’ dawn, glitter in your breakfast cereal. Torrid affairs before, during, and after. Those of us who worked there lived it, created it, and made love to it. Counter-culture became our career. This was good for me, most of the time — I was used to the back of the bus.

As a young twenty-something, if I’d not been running on the go–out–booze–get–laid–booze–recover hamster wheel, I could have turned Squeezebox! into a true empire – like Ian Shrager did with his loot from Studio 54. There was even talk of SqueezeBox! Records – we certainly had enough bands to sign. There were side gigs at colleges in New Jersey and Vermont. Private parties in LA and Tokyo.

Since the big Debbie Harry internet show in January ‘96, she and Chris got back onstage, reunited Blondie, and their new single Maria took over the international airwaves. John Cameron Mitchell blew the roof off with Hedwig. Patrick had Psychotica so sewn up, Marilyn Manson copied a lot of what he created. It was all a sparkling, delicious mess. I was a mess. But maybe, that’s exactly how the twentieth century was supposed to end.

By mid-’97 Clinton’s DNA was hardening on Monica’s blue dress, and the Republicans would try for years to beat him from office. On the streets, America followed the vibe. We either blew or beat each other. Over time, the cocaine, drug vibe, infighting and troubles with other underground clubs began to wear me out. People seemed to be shifting from going out to be fabulous — like we did in the Big Apple to going out to get fucked-up — like they did in suburbia. As homogenization trickled down, a lot of folks forgot they were living in the center of the cultural universe.

Most of the so-called ‘gay’ community loathed SqueezeBox! from the start, most likely because we were only queers. Just queers. None of us went to a gym, owned lycra, or had any inclination to ‘assimilate.’ Local magazines wouldn’t run our ads. Other so-called alternative clubs made it nearly impossible for us to promote. Nobody played fair — not since the old East-Village-Pyramid-Black-Lips-DeeLite-Blackbox-Channel-69-Boybar-Lady-Bunny-Wigstock-at-Thompkins-Square-Park days. Not since the fame bugs began to bite.

Contributing to the atmosphere of beige, Giuliani’s quality of life troops were hemorrhaging throughout the city. They’d harassed Coney Island High almost out of business. Some chick from Boston stood up at a community board meeting and whined because she couldn’t sleep in her newly renovated apartment located just above the Coney dance floor – which had been there twenty years. A bunch of yuppies and blue-hairs formed a group and named it ‘Save Avenue A Association’ – although Avenue A didn’t need saving unless you were a real estate developer. A really fun night during the week popped up at a place called Cake on Avenue B, and, of course, the quality of lifers set their sights square on it. ‘NO DANCING’ signs popped up all over the city. Giuliani’s cronies found a 79 year-old cabaret law concocted to discriminate against Harlem jazz clubs in the Twenties,’ and were now using it to discriminate against Manhattan queers, trannies, hip-hoppers and ethnic parties in the boroughs. The city Fire Marshals were taken from protecting people against fires and put to harassing clubs with phony inspections at 2AM. Giuliani took the fireworks away from the Chinese New Year and sanitized Times Square so it would be just like home for all the squeaky tourists who apparently ached for more Disney in their lives.

To me it looked like every city agency was to be stacked with henchmen, and Giuliani’s culture war didn’t stop with nightlife or entertainment. He was forcing community libraries to close; museums to cut back hours. All over town, historic landmarks like the Palladium Theatre were falling to the wrecking ball. NYU was allowed to run rampant through the East Village – buying up every piece of property it could get its dirty purple hands on. Thousands upon thousands of arrogant, binge-drinking, yuppie adolescents were being herded over the rivers and into our woods to enroll for thirty-grand a year at NYU, a university originally founded to educate poor. Mr. & Ms. Fort Wayne and Nashville took out second mortgages and sent junior to New York City so he could pretend to be trendy and complain about things.

Winks, nods and blind oversight camouflaged the biggest case of housing fraud in city history. Rent regulations and housing department codes were ignored; inspectors paid off. Had to have been. How else could landlords turn seven-hundred-a-month tenement shitholes into fifteen-hundred-a-month ‘Sunny Renovated Apartments’ but with a cheap coat of paint and forged paperwork? My hunch was that Giuliani did it for spite first, profit second. To me, he acted like a spoiled, overgrown teenager who probably never got picked for the baseball team, probably grew up with Mommy as his only friend and probably never got laid until he was a sophomore in college, and even then probably had to pay for it. Now, the rest of us were paying for the mercy fuck he never received. Funny thing was, if he’d have calmed down for a minute or ten, he might have discovered real friendship in the very misfits he sought to destroy. For similar reasons, I resented other club ‘rainbow’ promoters who used the same kind of spin to crown themselves the new Kings and Queens of nightlife.

Too many folks like Haoui, who knew the real score, were gone. Because of AIDS, the credit for almost everything noteworthy on the downtown scene since Studio 54 was up for grabs — and the bottom-feeders began grabbing just like Rudy, who’d grabbed the credit for the drop in crime. ‘He cleaned up New York…’ said the news media and salesmen from Kansas City. Bullshit. Crime dropped everywhere because Clinton had balanced the budget and people had jobs to go to. My take on all this: Giuliani cleaned up for his pals, petty club promoters pocketed the proceeds of mediocre nightlife, and the whole fucking thing gave me a migraine.

So what’s a boy to do? Go out, booze, get laid, recover. Repeat. Until he somehow fights a hole in the side of his paper bag. And aside from any criticism that the politically-correct naysayers could hurl, at least me and mine were at the pinnacle of our game. Collectively we were prettier, smarter, grotesque, hornier, and more glamorous than any other group in the whole tired, rotten city. We didn’t need to lip synch – we could sing. We didn’t need to search for stars, they came to SqueezeBox! on their own — through the same door as everyone else. Simply by existing — boys in bikinis dancing next to the Steven Spielbergs of the world; trannies with new boob jobs dancing with the naked Drew Barrymores of the world; homeless kids chatting over martinis with the Sandra Bernhards of the world; East Village drag queens like Lady Bunny, Misstress Formika, Lily of the Valley and Sherry Vine were singing duets with the Deborah Harrys and Marc Almonds of the world; Michael Schmidt was creating fashion with the JFK Jrs of the world — for a brief moment on thescale of life, we were the world — and many would go on to put a chink in the bourgeoisie armor well into the 21st Century.

Me? I’d managed to climb from the foothills of North Carolina upstage to the hottest NYC scene since Max’s Kansas City. In my teen-hood Debbie and folks like Freddie Mercury came through my hi-fi stereo console with stuff like ‘dreamin’ is free’ and ‘don’t stop me now.’ And I believed every word. I still do, but I’ve also learned beliefs come with a price.

For now, in the words of Sylvester, let’s party a little bit…

—MLB

Want your copy of PBP? http://www.prettybrokenpunks.com/2012/12/15/pbpunk/

©2014 all rights reserved

Saturday in my Park: Music, Marty and Mary June (with audio)

September 6, 2014 by martinbelk

Dad, called Marty, used to go out with a gal named Mary June. We hung out at weekends when it was Dad’s turn to keep me and my sister. Mary June had a son too. She worked at the local radio station, making the shows with the DJs, which I thought was a big deal. I always wanted to be a DJ. A real one — not the kind they have today — the kind that sat alone, in their little rooms surrounded by metal and vinyl, making the world happen in the minds of their listeners.

Later, after Dad’d moved on, Mary June moved into the same apartment complex where we lived. The complex: the place where the new swathes of divorcées now allowed to show their faces in public and us, their kids, went-to for a home — and they were real homes — not these cheap builds they have today — the kind of place where, despite the best efforts of the Holy people, folks of all rank and register, craft and colour mixed and mingled. Mind, I didn’t say ‘blend,’ the word is mingle — shared, exchanged, collaborated & conspired to a respectable semblance of happiness in a place reserved for those with nowhere else, really, to go.

What festered there fed my mind: without Mary June, I’d have never heard of Supertramp — “You’ve never heard of SUPERTRAMP!?!” Bloody well right. Without the black kids, I’d never appreciated Bootsy Collins or dancing the ‘Bus Stop’ — “You can’t do the BUS STOP!?” Not yet. There was even a woman, Marlene, who’d get merry and blast Janis Joplin from one end of the street to the other. And without the geeky kids from up north, I’d’ve never heard of the Human League. “You’ve…” ok, you get it. I got it. And although I was born appreciating a good hustle, something new awakened at my ripe age of 13, and I wanted to know shit — to read between the lines and lyrics. And it was good.

Once, I sat in Mary June’s living room, amongst her massive record collection, studying the front of an album while she went the kitchen. I remember not wanting to be caught surveying the art so intently — nonetheless she whipped back and did — I shuffled ashamed, but she reassured: “Oh, that’s fine, I like to be very familiar with my album covers” — the graceful permission to be curious — which must always, without fail, come from a neutral source.

So when I hear all this broken-home bawling, and consider my own — it recently occurred to me that all might not have been so terribly, absolutely unfortunate. Marty’d left early on, but I wasn’t abandoned. The things I learned in my neighbourhood of misfits and wayward people inform me to this day. I wish I could turn on Soul Train or Bandstand this Saturday morning, & play it real loud with the windows ajar — it used to be guaranteed to attract visitors. It was more fun than staring at the internet.

-MLB

OK, so everybody been wanting me to read – well, here it is, raw, & unedited:

Woodie Guthrie

June 20, 2014 by martinbelk