Edna’s Kin Brings Family Music to Sag Harbor

Music Performance

Edna’s Kin Brings Family Music to Sag Harbor

(from Dan's Papers/DansPapers.com

EDNA'S KIN

NOVEMBER 8, 2017 BY DANNY PEARY

Of the many characters in Robert Altman’s Nashville, one that stands out for me is a minor player, a musician who turns up Zelig-like in band after band, all over town. The East End has its own ubiquitous musician, guitarist-pianist, singer-songwriter Dan Koontz of Sag Harbor. Koontz heads a few bands and is a sideman for others, recently playing three gigs with three groups in one day. And every Sunday morning, you can catch him playing organ at the Christ Episcopal Church, which, incidentally, is where his family band, Edna’s Kin, will be having its annual concert at 2 p.m. on Sunday November 12.

Danny Peary: You studied classical piano and composition at a music conservatory, yet here you are on the East End playing rock, country, funk, and New Orleans music.

Dan Koontz: My father taught me to play guitar when I was about five. He was a member of the Folk Music Society of Northern New Jersey and sometimes I’d join him on stage to play my grandmother’s half-guitar and sing something like “The Cat Came Back.” He later taught me “Old Dan Tucker” and Lead Belly’s “Black Girl.” I’d sit at home strumming my guitar and listening to Dad’s records all day long—Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, the Beatles. As a teenager I got an electric guitar and, after my older brother Andrew switched from classical violin to bass guitar, we played a lot of rock ’n’ roll, sometimes at parties. I was always interested in folk music and rock, but I also took piano lessons and went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. I got paid for the first time playing in rock bands, but I thought I’d become an academic composer and teach at a university. The further in the rearview mirror that gets, the less I think it would have been a good path for me. Because for a couple of years now, I’ve been enjoying being in various bands playing all types of music.

DP: Which bands?

DK: The Hoodoo Loungers plays New Orleans-style music. I also play keyboards doing rock with the Lynn Blue Band and Suzy on the Rocks. I’ve played with Nancy Atlas. The Rum Hill Rockers features the Hammond organ on Booker T. and the MGs, “Hush” by Deep Purple, Traffic, some Santana. The Complete Unknowns is a Dylan cover band. I’ve played with Joe Lauro’s handpicked ensembles–“The Last Waltz” at Bay Street Theater, “Sgt. Pepper’s” at the Patchogue Theatre. About once a year, I perform with my own unnamed band and do my own songs.

DP: Who is in Edna’s Kin?

DK: Andrew, me, and our father, Warren. The family band started about 10 years ago when my wife Stacy suggested we do a concert, not knowing we’d played together only a few times. She just knew my father played guitar—though he’d switch to bass about five years ago—Andrew played fiddle and bass, and I played guitar and piano, though with this band I stick to guitar.

DP: What will you play on November 12?

DK: Probably Hank Williams, Merle Travis’s version of “I Am a Pilgrim,” a couple of country gospel songs, bluegrass–Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and a bluegrass version of a Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” Also the Coasters, and songs I wrote—country slash blues.

DP: What comes across in your always clever, and often witty, lyrics is that you understand what a rock ’n’ roll song is and what a country music song is.

DK: I do have a sense of craft when it comes to writing those songs. My family dynamic when I was growing up was that we’d clown around with each other, and I’ve always wondered if that’s what set me up to be confined to writing songs that are witty and urbane rather than heart-felt and sincere. What I hope elevates these songs is my adherence to form.

DP: What can people expect at your concert?

DK: To have fun. Edna’s Kin is a cheerful band. We joke around and have guest performers join us and people can sing along. If you like music, you’ll feel like you’re at a party.

Edna’s Kin plays on Sunday, November 12 at 2 p.m. at Christ Episcopal Church (CEC), 4 East Union Street, Sag Harbor. All tickets at the door $15. Profits benefit the CEC Pipe Organ Restoration Fund.

Danny Peary Talks To… ‘Intent to Destroy’ Director Joe Berlinger

Playing in Theaters

Danny Peary Talks To… ‘Intent to Destroy’ Director Joe Berlinger

(from DansPapers.com 11/8/17)

SCENE FROM JOE BERLINGER'S "INTENT TO DESTROY"

NOVEMBER 8, 2017 BY DANNY PEARY

I strongly recommend the ambitious and powerfully enlightening new documentary by Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost and two sequels; Crude; Metallica: Some Kind of Monster). Intent to Destroy: Death, Denial & Depiction opens in Manhattan at the Village East Cinema on 12^th Street and 2^nd Avenue on Friday, November 10. I rated it among the best films—documentary or narrative—at the last Tribeca Film Festivaland it was selected Best Documentary at Doc LA.

From the synopsis in the film’s Press Notes: “Pulling back the curtain on mass murder censorship in Hollywood due to U.S. government pressure to appease a strategic ally, Intent to Destroy embeds with a historic feature production [The Promise, starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac] as a springboard to explore the violent history of the Armenian Genocide and the legacy of Turkish suppression and denial over the past century…in the hope of inspiring a collective sense of international justice and humanity.”

The trailer:

In April, I was one of four journalists who participated in a roundtable with Berlinger about his impressive work.

“Intent to Destroy” director Joe Berlinger, Photo: Danny Peary

Danny Peary: Terry George’s The Promise was released earlier this year, so do you want viewers to see it as an introduction to your film?

Joe Berlinger: It’s great that The Promise is out there and raising attention about Armenian Genocide of 1915 and starting the dialogue going, but we always thought of Intent to Destroy as standing on its own. Obviously the two films are related but you don’t have to have seen The Promise to understand what you need to get out of Intent to Destroy. Really the design was to have them be independent of each other.

Journalist 2: Did your film, which contains on-set footage about the making of The Promise, impact that film?

JB: My role of documenting The Promise had zero impact on The Promise. My job as a documentarian was to come in and observe what is happening not to change the outcome of what they’re doing. I had no role on The Promise I was not there to tell them what to do or have any influence other than to observe.

J2: How did that film impact your creative process in telling your story?

JB: How the making of The Promise affected my approach goes to the heart of what my film is about. The producer of The Promise, Eric Esrailian, is not a film person but is in charge of Kirk Kerkorian’s foundation. Several years ago I was introduced to Eric by a mutual friend, another documentary producer, Chip Rosenbloom. Eric was a fan of my films and wanted to make a film about the Armenian Genocide.

Because The Promise was very much under wraps, a very secret production flying under the radar, Eric didn’t tell me it was being made. All he told me was he’s representing a foundation and wants to do a documentary about the Armenian Genocide. It was a subject I knew something about but after several conversations I wasn’t interested in making a film about it because I’m a present-tense, cinéma vérité filmmaker, not a historical filmmaker. So the idea of doing a talking-heads, archive-driven film wasn’t that appealing to me. It wasn’t my style of filmmaking and I knew several documentaries on the genocide existed already. I didn’t think I had anything to add to the conversation.

So I basically passed on the opportunity. But we stayed in touch and I learned that The Promise was being made and he started to reveal information to me about a big-budget independent movie being made with Hollywood people. That’s when a lightbulb went on for me and I said to Eric, “Look, if you want me to do a documentary about the Armenian Genocide get me into bed with this film you’re making. Because I think the eye candy of being behind the scenes of a big Hollywood movie would make the film accessible to a 21^st century audience. Even though it’s a historical subject, this will give the film a present-tense narrative arc.

More importantly, going behind the scenes will allow me to add to the conversation.” I knew that it was historic that The Promise was being made because the history in Hollywood is that anytime a film on this subject is attempted the Turkish government calls the State Department and the State Department twists the arm of the Hollywood studio to drop the movie. So, it’s just one of those things in Hollywood that you don’t make a movie about the Armenian genocide, which I find really morally problematic. It’d be like pulling Steven Spielberg aside and saying, “Hey, don’t make Schindler’s List because we don’t want to offend the Germans.”

I felt the behind-the-scenes-of-The-Promise structure would allow me to tell not just the history of the genocide, but also the history of the denial, the mechanism of denial, and the aftermath of denial. That no one had ever made a film about that so I thought that would allow me to add to the conversation. Also, I’m fascinated by how you depict atrocity on screen. That’s why Intent to Destroy is divided into three chapters: Death, Denial & Depiction.

Cattle car in “Intent to Destroy”

DP: Which is the subtitle of your movie.

JB: Right. Death: I’m going to give you an overview on how people were killed. Denial: I’m going to give you the definitive history of how this story in particular has been repressed and of the aftermath and effect of denial. Because as smarter people than I have said, the final stage of genocide is Denial. There are lessons today for that in this fake-news, alternative-facts universe, where Time magazine’s cover story is about the death of truth. Depiction: I’m going to be able to show in a documentary some things a narrative film can’t. Like with the massacre scene that Terry Jones portrays in The Promise. Every victim on screen is clothed because you can’t show what they really looked like and get a PG rating. But a documentary can. How do you deal with those kinds of storytelling issues? For me the film works on many levels and by embedding with The Promise I could really elevate the behind-the-scenes genre to tell an important historical story that gets into a lot of very weighty issues. I tried to make a film that’s not just about history but has real relevance for today and issues that we’re facing.

Journalist 3: History is often written by the winning country.

JB: And the Turkish education system doesn’t teach about the Armenian Genocide.

J3: How should children in Turkey be taught about it?

JB: That’s a tough issue.. How do we affect the victor’s educational system? By making films and getting the word out. I’m not sure we have the ability to affect what goes on in the Turkish educational system other than by the court of world public opinion and by standing up for what’s right. That’s why I find it so morally repugnant that the United States refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide just because we want to use Turkey for air force bases.

I think something as weighty and immoral as a genocide and its accountability should be political capital. I think only a greater emphasis on truth in the worldwide community will force countries to deal with their legacies as best as they can, including the United States. We still don’t appropriately deal with the genocide of the Native Americans in our own country. But, as you see in the film, when the genocide was happening there were 150 articles about it in The New York Times, and through the Near East Relief Effort, the largest relief effort that had ever been mounted, Americans were sending tons of money to help the Armenians.

Today, most Americans don’t know that positive chapter in American history because of our government’s policy. So to change the educational system of a country that doesn’t teach about its atrocities starts with the world community standing up for what’s right and truthful. In this instance, I find U.S. complicity in covering up the genocide to be really troubling. Other countries, like Israel, don’t recognize the genocide.

I think a country born out of the ashes of the Holocaust has a special moral responsibility to recognize genocide where it happens, but they’ve traded standing up for what’s morally correct for a relationship with Turkey and I think that’s particularly problematic. Especially since Israel and America like to hold themselves up as models for human rights around the world.

DP: In your film, you show that after the assassination of the activist journalist Hrant Dink in 2007, because he spoke about the denial of Armenian Genocide, there was a large protest in Turkey. So there was the seed of democracy before the recent crackdown by Erdoğan. Is there still any kind of movement of people who recognize there was a genocide?

JB: There’s a growing contingent of Turkish people who recognize it and who advocate for change. It’s not an easy opinion to have because it’s against the law in Turkey to talk what happened in 1915 as genocide. In this current regime with Erdogan’s widened powers and Turkey having the most journalists jailed of any country, I think it’s going to be challenging to have protests.

DP: Has there ever been a film like yours before? Has somebody ever done a mixed documentary that details the making of a film and uses footage from that film to fill in gaps in history?

JB: There have been great making-of-movies documentaries like Burden of Dreams, about the making of Fitzcarraldo, and Heart of Darkness about the making of Apocalypse Now. But I think I’ve pushed the genre in a considerable way. Actually, the behind-the-scenes story–the inside story about how that film was made–isn’t that relevant in my film. Burden of Dreams is all about the relationship between the director Werner Herzog and star Klaus Kinski and the extent to which making that film was just this arduous journey. But I am using the making of The Promise as a structural device to tell the history of the genocide and the history of denial and to pose questions about how one can portray atrocity on the screen.

DP: The Promise is a narrative with a true story as the background. And I say your film is unique in that you have taken that historical fiction, The Promise, and made it real again, taking the true story back by jettisoning the fiction—and making it a documentary. That’s really interesting.

JB: Exactly. I would like to think I pushed the envelope on this behind-the-scenes genre.

DP: In a Q&A in the film’s press notes you say, “I hope to create a dialogue to help bring closure to this painful chapter in history.” Is closure the right word? Can the Armenians ever have closure? And do they want to have closure? I don’t think you mean to say that once there’s no more denial everyone can move on.

JB: I was talking about closure to the debate about whether it really happened. I’ve done a ton of criminal justice stuff and closure is not about “Okay, I feel better” for victims of crime. Closure is a funny concept, but closure is about accountability. People want to know a crime has been solved and that the perpetrator is in prison. It’s not about having emotional closure because the pain will never go away. The pain for the Armenian people will never go away. The pain is exacerbated and amplified by the lack of acknowledgement. So, the closure is about the debate. It happened, the debate is over. As I said before, the final stage of genocide is denial so unless that’s pushed back and people have acknowledgment on the crime that has happened they can never have closure on that issue. As to the pain of losing family members, there’s never closure.

J3: You asked questions in your film of historians on the Turkish side, who argue that there was no genocide. Was it a challenge you faced to have more of a balance?

JB: Being balanced doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion. My film is very clear on where I stand on the issue of whether or not there was a genocide. But I do believe that I should have balance. And this is where I differ from many of the people who are involved in this movement. They’ll probably read this and go, “Joe, why’d you say that?” I don’t believe that everyone who thinks the genocide was not a genocide has just been bought off or is morally deficient. I think that some people truly believe this opinion. It demonstrates how successful the Turkish campaign has been to discredit the genocide.

But I do believe there are people who genuinely believe there was not a genocide. My approach is that I treat everyone with humanity and respect. I don’t believe I throw any of those people under the bus or make them feel bad for having articulated their opinions, I let them have their say and I let the viewer deicide. I have faith in the viewer. I show both sides. My point of view is in the film and the truth rises to the top and that’s what I hope the viewer will gravitate to. The best example of that is the original Paradise Lost. I didn’t tell you exactly what to think, I presented all sides and I trusted the audience to come to their own conclusion, which I think is a different approach than taken by many advocacy filmmakers who are afraid to put in the opposing point of view. Probably 20 percent of people who saw the original Paradise Lost walked out of the theater thinking we’d made a film about guilty teenagers. That’s unfortunate because that was not my point of view, but that’s the price you pay when you are balanced. Certain films lecture to you and bang a point of view over your head. That’s a very passive experience where you’re being persuaded to agree with the filmmaker’s opinion.

I prefer to treat the audience like a jury. I’m not afraid to tell you my point of view, but here’s an opposing point of view and you in the audience will make the decision. And when you come to your own conclusion, as opposed to being lectured to, it’s a much more emotionally engaging experience. For Paradise Lost, the 80 percent who realized the accused boys were innocent came to that conclusion themselves instead of from me telling them that, and when you come to that conclusion yourself, it’s much more impassioned, and that’s what produced tens of thousands of people around the world banding together.

The three Paradise Lost films are given a lot of credit for getting these guys out of prison but it was the combination of the films and tens of thousands of people banding together saying, “We’ve got to do something about that.” And you evoke that response only by giving your audience the intelligence they deserve to come to their own conclusion. When interviewing the people who represent the opinion that the Armenian Genocide didn’t happen, I felt I had to treat them with respect and give them the dignity of expressing their beliefs.

So, I fully expect some people to watch Intent to Destroy and say, “Well, there’s still a debate, I’m not sure there was a genocide.” That’s the price you pay for treating an audience with respect. But hopefully most people will come away from it feeling like this is an injustice that needs to be made right.

“Intent to Destroy” movie poster

J3: As an artist how do you protect your works?

JB: Luckily, I’ve never been in a position where my films are not shown.

J3: But you had problems with Chevron with your film Crude.

JB: Chevron wasn’t trying to stop me from showing Crude. Chevron wanted access to footage from it because it is about the lawsuit against them by the Ecuadorian Amazon Indigenous people–they were suing Chevron for oil pollution damage. I was making a film about that underlying lawsuit and they subpoenaed my footage to help their defense against the lawsuit that I was making a film about. I as an artist felt I had an obligation to my profession and to my subject to fight that subpoena. I ultimately lost and had to turn my footage over, but my film is still in release. I guess as an artist the answer to your question is: Crude cost 1.2 million dollars to make and the lawsuit cost me 1.3 million dollars to defend my footage–fortunately, I had support to help me pay for that. I’ve taken on corrupt prosecutors in Paradise Lost, I’ve taken on morally ambiguous decisions by the Department of Justice in Whitey: United States v James J. Bulger, and I’ve taken on this project. I don’t shrink from controversy. If you’re going to tackle controversial subjects you have to be prepared to put up a fight.

J2: You’ve covered a wide variety of subjects. You’ve also done both feature films and long form and digital and Netflix. For up and coming filmmakers, what advice do you have in term of how do you decide if a particular story should be a long film or short film?

JB: We could do a seminar on that. Whether something should be for long form or short form is all about good characters and good storytelling. It’s so basic but a lot of young filmmakers decide to make a film about a subject as opposed to finding a character with a story or situation that reflects on some universal theme. That’s what I always look for. I find everything is never what it appears to be. That’s the link between all of my films so I don’t think they’re so far afield. From the start, it’s been: the truth is never what it appears to be not, life is much more complex than black and white. And I’ve loved to blow up stereotypes. It might be the smelly old farm brothers in Brother’s Keeper who you think you don’t want to spend time with but by the end of the film you’ve come to love. In Paradise Lost, we see that if a guy dresses in black and listens to heavy metal music, he must be a killer. That’s a stereotype. My thing is to turn conventional wisdom on its head. I think if you figure out what you want to express and you find a good character and a story that allows you to get emotionally engaged with your subject but is importantly a window into a much larger world, the length of the film will figure itself out.

J2: Looking at the burying of history in Intent to Destroy and the events in the world today, including in America with its race issues and persecution of the LGBT community, what do you think is happening right now that in 20, 50, or 100 years folks will look back on and wonder why nobody did anything about it?

JB: These are very perilous times with rising nationalism, growing xenophobia, growing protectionist policies. That Donald trump is our president says a lot. There’s going to be a lot to look back on and say: “Why didn’t we take stronger action?” That’s why I think Intent to Destroy, even though it’s a historical subject, has relevance because it expresses a need for people to accept historical responsibility and own up to the truth. We’re living in times when people are so overwhelmed with a multiplicity of opinions that they are are paralyzed with inaction. I think we’re going to regret that in the future.

DP: Take note that on Saturday November 11 at 6:45 p.m. at the IFC Center, with Joe Berlinger present, Doc NYC will present the first two parts of the director’s Sundance Channel’s docuseries, Cold-Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders. Also worth seeking out at the country’s top documentary festival are Barbara Kopple’s A Murder in Mansfield; Asud Faruqi and Geeta Gandbhir’s Armed with Faith; Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s One of Us; Sonja Sohn’s Baltimore Rising; Laura Poitras’s Risk; Sam Pollard’s Maynard; Julia Bacha’s Naila and the Uprising; Mariam Shaar’s Sky & Ground; and Errol Morris’s Wormwood.

Danny Peary has published 25 books on film and sports, including Cult Movies and Jackie Robinson in Quotes.

Danny Peary Talks to… ‘Tom of Finland’ Director and Cast

Playing in Theaters

Danny Peary Talks to… ‘Tom of Finland’ Director and Cast

(from DansPapers.com 10/12/17)

SCENE FROM "TOM OF FINLAND"

OCTOBER 12, 2017 BY DANNY PEARY

Surely since the beginning of the sexual revolution in America in the 1970s, almost every adult has come across the bold, ultra-masculine, ground-breaking homoerotic fetish art of Finnish illustrator Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), better known as Tom of Finland. But unless you’ve taken a tour of the Tom of Finland House in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles or attended recent exhibitions of his work in Berlin, it’s unlikely that you know his entire story.

There’s no better way to learn about this iconic LGBT pioneer than to see Finnish director Dome Karukosi’s faithful, heartfelt, and splendidly acted Tom of Finland. The film opens this Friday in New York at the Quad on West 13^th Street, and next Friday in L.A., Berkeley and San Francisco, before having a multi-city release. Also, this Sunday it will play at the in Huntington. It is Finland’s official submission to the Oscars in 2018.

The synopsis: “Touko Laaksonen (Pekka Strang), a decorated officer returns home to live with his sister Kaija (Jessica Grabowsky) after a harrowing and heroic experience serving his country in World War II. But life in Finland during peacetime proves equally distressing. He finds postwar Helsinki rampant with homophobic persecution….Touko finds refuge in his liberating art: homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. But it is only when an American [Seumas Sargent as Doug] sees them, has them published, and invites Touko to visit the West Coast that his life early takes a turn. Finally able to walk free and proud in Los Angeles, Touko dives head first into the sexual revolution, becoming an icon and a rallying point.”

Karukosi’s Director’s Statement: “This is the story of a man ahead of his time, bravely standing up against a world virulently against his right to be who he was—a homosexual man with homosexual fantasies. Story shows how literally one person can create change in the world even with something as simple as an artist’s tools….Touko Laaksonen truly lived an incredible life worth sharing with the world.”

The trailer:

In April, during the Tribeca Film Festival, I was able to have the following conversation about Tom of Finland with Dome Karukosi (a rising star who is slated to direct a biopic of J.R.R. Tolkien), and his enthusiastic cast members, Pekka Strang, Jessica Grabowsky and Seumas Sargent.

Seumas Sargent, Pekka Strang, Dome Karukoski and Jessica Grabowsky of “Tom of Finland,” Photo: Danny Peary

Danny Peary: I was looking at Wikipedia this morning and was actually surprised that Touko Laaksonen—Tom of Finland—was listed among the famous people who are from Finland. Did you always know about him?

Dome Karukoski: When I was a boy, from 12 to 14, someone in our “gang” found or stole one of his comic books from somewhere. And we were giggling, thinking someone from America had visited Finland and been inspired by something here and had taken “Tom of Finland” as his alias. We didn’t really know he was Finnish until his death a couple of years later, in 1991. Even after, in the nineties, there was a silent period about him because it was still illegal to promote gay material in Finland.

Pekka Strang: Until 1999.

DK: Yes. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1971 but it was considered a sickness until 1981, and the law against the promotion of gay material—the same law they have in Russia now—lasted until 1999. So Tom of Finland’s art couldn’t be made visible until then. In the new millennium we could see his material slowly popping up in Finland.

PS: There are actually two parts to him: the Tom of Finland brand and the artist behind the images. I never knew anything about the artist. I think that’s the case with most people in Finland—they know only the brand. We’re starting to be proud of the brand but we’re still asking, “Who was the artist behind it?” That’s what this movie is about.

DP: When you say “brand,” is that mostly fashion and homoerotic products?

PS: All kinds of things, even coffee.

Jessica Grabowsky: The stamps were a huge thing. I was working in Sweden when they were issued, and people were asking me, “Can you get me those stamps, please?” That was one of the first things with the Tom of Holland brand.

DP: That was in 2014 and I think that was the first time there was erotic imagery on stamps.

PS: It wasn’t the most hardcore, of course.

DK: However, there was an image of a man’s ass, so there was the funny idea of you licking a man’s ass when you put that stamp on an envelope. So there was a double entendre! That stamp was bought all over the world, in over 150 countries. It was probably the stamp that sold out quickest in Finnish postal history. They did a test of its popularity by sending seven packages of Tom of Finland stamps into Russia. Five arrived and what happened to the other two is still a mystery.

DP: Pekka, did Dome tell you about Touka, or did you have time to do research?

PS: When I was called for casting, I started to read about him and learned about him being in the war. And I met a few of his friends. The problem was that Tom died in 1991 so those people were quite old and knew him just in the seventies and eighties. So we didn’t have first-hand material from the forties, fifties and sixties. Still, meeting his friends was helpful in my making an interpretation of who he was.

DP: Did the people you talked to think of him as someone they loved or someone who was strange or something else?

PS: It was like this: He was funny, he was really nice, he was a beloved uncle, he was good at work, he was a good soldier. He was successful at everything he did. What I was told by Durk Dehner of the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles was: “You must understand that Tom was a Nordic god.” I said, “Okay.”

DP: It’s interesting that Tom of Finland’s road to fame started in California, when Doug, Seumas’s character, started promoting his art and getting it published, and it became huge in the homosexual community there, particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

DK: We had to keep the film tight and not have too many characters, so we combined a few and altered their names. The character of Doug is actually the combination of two real people. The young Doug is taken from one person and the older Doug is taken from Durk Dehner.

Seumas Sargent: And I play Doug. It was a late casting process for me.

JG: It was like two days before!

SS: Right, so I didn’t really have time to do research, and it was a little disarming knowing I was going to be playing a living person who I wanted to give respect. I had the pleasure of meeting the real Doug—Durk—at our premiere in Helsinki. I turned around and we recognized each other. I said, “I hope I did you justice,” and he gave me a big hug. That was quite rewarding.

DP: I am curious about Durk Dehner’s foundation, which is located in the two-story house where Tom lived and worked in Echo Park in L.A, beginning in the seventies. Does it have a large amount of Tom of Finland material in addition to the illustrations?

DK: From the time we started doing research for this film in 2011, the foundation provided us with the most help in formulating his character and all the characters around him. Once we secured the licensing rights to the art in 2015, we started our collaboration with the foundation and it opened its archives to us. Over the years, it had collected all of Tom’s letters, the photographs he took, and the photographs taken of him. Having never met him in person, it was important for us to learn about him from stories and anecdotes we came across, from the people who knew him. That really generated the character in the film.

DP: Did he write an autobiography or are there good biographies about him?

DK: There are a couple of books about him and a couple that he was involved in, based on interviews. And also there is a documentary in which he is interviewed, but that was in 1991 so it was the older version of Tom. As Petta said, the difficulty we had was finding the 20 and 30-year-old Tom, and we found that in the letters and the subjects he was interested in photographing. There is an interesting history. Tom was ill for a long time and he was afraid that if his art remained in Finland, it would be destroyed. So he started smuggling his work—all that is in Tom House in Echo Park—out of the country during his visits to Los Angeles. He didn’t trust his family or his sister to preserve it. In the film, Tom and Kaija have a love/hate relationship and she was upset by his art.

Pekka Strang in Tom of Finland

DP: So he really cared about his legacy.

DK: As most artists do.

DP: Jessica, what is Kaija’s role in the movie, her function in the script?

JG: Maybe her role is to mirror the thoughts of that time, to show that even someone who loves Tom doesn’t appreciate his art.

DP: To me she also represents good, regular people who still can’t move over to his side.

JG: You have to put her in context of a time when his homoerotic art was illegal in Finland.

PS: Also, she represents the silence regarding such art and other things that weren’t talked about in Finland. Just like don’t ask, don’t tell.

SS: There’s acknowledgment and denial and more acknowledgment and denial, and so much built-up tension in the relationship between Tom and Kaija.

JG: I don’t think it’s just denial. It’s also protection because Tom is her brother and she loves him a great deal. She wants what is best for him and thinks he’s safer if he doesn’t exhibit that kind of art.

DK: Again, in Finland, homosexuality was considered a sickness then, so people like Kaija assumed Tom and other homosexuals could heal and become heterosexual. I was always touched by the story of Kaija. There are all these pictures of her with Tom and Veli [his lover played by Lauri Tilkanen] when they traveled in Germany and became like a threesome. Then Kaija denied Tom’s art. Two times. Once when he was living, when she told him that he wasn’t allowed to use their name Laaksonen or have exhibitions in Finland—Durk was actually present at that meeting. And when Durk called Kaija in 2006 to congratulate her because her brother’s art had been accepted by MOMA—and she said, “What are they thinking?”

DP: There is a scene in the movie in which Tom says that it is not a matter of being cured. Do you think Touko realized on his own when he was a teenager that homosexuality was not a sickness?

PS: He was actually younger. He was 10 years old when he started looking at lumberjacks and bus drivers. I don’t think he thought he was doing anything wrong. He never had that crisis with himself. But of course, he understood society so he lived a double life to protect his family from scandal. That’s at least what I learned.

DP: I’d think that he was in the minority among gay men at that time in thinking that there was no cure and that it was okay.

PS: I can’t claim with certainty that I’m correct, but I believe it’s a true picture of his philosophy in life. If you look at his illustrations, you see men who are proud and happy and enjoying each other. He couldn’t not acknowledge being gay and do those drawings. He drew them at night and they were his fantasies and his utopia.

DP: Dome, there is such structure to this film—and Tom’s life—that my guess is that when you were working with your scriptwriter, Aleksi Bardy, you were you setting up the story as Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, etc.?

DK: We did, thank you for noticing. We divided it into five segments. We were trying to find time spans of about five years each, but we couldn’t because his transformation as a character and his transformation as an artist and his influence happened during each of four decades. So we had to have all four decades in the film. So we divided the film into five sections that we felt were important emotionally to Tom and started building the script from that. We came up with the segments based on listening to him in his interviews. The war, the first section, was obviously important. You see the influence of uniforms on his art. Everything that happened during the war stayed with him until the end of his life, and I think he experienced several “wars,” including the AIDS war. I say that because it must have felt to him like he was again waging war against an enemy and young men were dying around him.

DP: The section of the film that takes place after World War II is extremely tense. You film both Tom’s smuggling of his art by train into Germany and his homosexual hookups—with people meeting clandestinely and the vigilante police looking to arrest them—almost as if you were making an espionage movie. Was that your intention?

DK: I believe that he felt that time in his life was like that. He was smuggling his art on trains and he had to photograph it so it was small enough to fit into a small envelope and look like a letter. A big envelope would arouse suspicion. He had to think up ways of doing things without being arrested and his actions inspired the thriller element in the movie. I could have done a whole movie about that alone.

DP: If viewers just saw that scene where he is being interrogated, they’d think he was possibly a spy, as he was accused of being by German authorities, rather than an artist trying to smuggle his own homoerotic art. Because according to the laws, they were both serious crimes.

DK: It was a different era and there were laws in place against homosexuality dating back to the Nazis. He was actually interrogated for three days about being a spy. It was Berlin, Cold War, Tom was trying to acquire a passport.

DP: Seumas, do you think Doug is totally altruistic about promoting Tom’s art, or is he also thinking about making money?

SS: I think he has a completely altruistic standpoint. He loves the art and is fascinated by the idea of these leaked publications. He becomes pen pals with Tom and a pivotal moment is when he brings the art into California. In the film’s portrayal of the gay guys at the pool with Doug, you see how free we can actually be in this setting as opposed to the dark undercurrent of suspicion and threat the pervades the first part of the film that Tom is in. Doug takes this whole trip from publisher to publisher to get Tom’s art published so it can be seen, to the point where he comes to Z in the alphabet. He wouldn’t do that if it was just about making money. So I would say, yeah, he’s completely altruistic.

DK: Durk, the real-life person, has committed his life to Tom’s art. As in the film, he wrote Tom and invited him to come to California and he arranged the first exhibitions in New York and San Francisco. After that he became Tom’s partner and manager and later on the head of the Tom of Finland Foundation. So he dedicated his whole life to Tom and his art. Tom, of course, is his biggest inspiration.

DP: How much of what you have in the film was true about the art being published by the last house Doug came to and it being a small Jewish house?

DK: At a time even liberals in L.A. were accusing Tom of promoting the sex that was causing the AIDS epidemic, Moishe was saying, “Of course, I’ll publish him, no problem.” All the crazy things in the film with Moishe, his daughter Hava, and even the bunny that is smuggled into the hospital and escapes and causes chaos really happened!

DP: Tom of Finland’s art is always super-masculine, with huge, muscular bodies and leather, so was he ever criticized by gays who didn’t see themselves as that way?

DK: For a time, Tom was not cool with everyone. You often hear heterosexuals stupidly ask, “What do gays think?” as if all gays are of one type. Tom’s depicting hyper-masculinity was liberating for many gays. They thought, “Yes, I can be like that.” For instance, a high school quarterback might tell himself, “I can’t be gay because all gays are feminine,” but Tom’s art told him, “I am allowed to be gay and be the way I am. I can put my leather jacket on and move to Los Angeles.” Of course, it caused a counter-response during that time. Now I think the LGBT community sees his art as a good thing.

JG: I think at first there was criticism because gays felt pressure to look like the men in Tom’s art and wear black leather.

SS: If those people who are aware of Tom only for being a slightly pornographic artist actually saw his real artwork with uber-masculine superhero figures, they’d realize that it’s a stand-alone, exceptional genre of art. It isn’t just semi-pornographic images in a magazine that you flip through, but something that is truly substantial and remarkable. The stamps, the coffee—the artwork is fascinating and not just because it’s sexual and risqué. When I saw the original art for the first time is was when it really hit me what I was doing and what the movie is about. That art is outstandingly good.

DP: Pekka, what do you admire most about Tom?

PS: His courage. He was 21 when he was fighting in the war and seeing people die around him, and after that experience his focus on life is different from our own today. He realized after that, that life can end at any point and there is no reason to be afraid anymore.

DP: Jessica, Kaija is peripheral to Tom’s story and it could be told with Kaija being just a minor player because we never see her life outside of her relationship with him. But it’s your strong performance that makes her a major character. Were you ever afraid that she would get lost in the movie?

JG: I didn’t think about that. I was afraid that she’d be kind of black-and-white and just be the bitch that everyone would hate. That was my main focus.

DK: I will confirm that we were so focused on building Tom’s character that Kaija was a black-and-white character in the script. What you see in the film is very much different because Jessica came along and we started talking about and rebuilding the character. It is very much due to her that her character has such substance.

DP: What is the importance of Tom of Finland coming out now, in 2017?

PS: I know they’d been planning it for years and were supposed to shoot it earlier when I wasn’t involved, so I’m happy it took so long. The world has changed a lot. There is the rise of conservative and nationalistic movements, so it’s really important to tell our history so we never go back to that time. With all respect to the United States, there are some bad things happening here also. So I’m hopeful that we can bring some humanity to the world. The most positive reaction by the LGBT community in Finland to the movie is the realization that this is probably our first movie in which the lead character is gay but it isn’t an issue. I’ve read several columns about how we have a gay lead character and audiences don’t question his sexuality.

DP: That’s because he doesn’t.

PS: He doesn’t. We tried to focus on that.

SS: This movie is a gift. I told Dome that as an actor you don’t often engage to this extent with the work that you do. There are wonderful moments, but they’re often fleeting. This is a project all of us are so wholeheartedly invested in because it has clout, it has weight, it is so significant. So being part of this movie and being with it at Tribeca, apropos the times we are living in, is a gift.

DP: And what about getting Touko’s name out there?

DK: I think he’d be really proud. He would accept any way of getting his art out there. Any coffee, any stamp, any movie. He wouldn’t want to be in the spotlight and stand in front of people talking into a microphone—the rumor is that they had to drug him to get him to do that because he was so nervous—but he’d be very happy to get his art out there at this time in history. Without shame. Without fear. And as a way to fight oppression.

Danny Peary has published 25 books on film and sports, including Cult Movies and Jackie Robinson in Quotes.

Danny Peary Talks To… ‘The Misogynists’ Writer-Director Onur Tukel

Playing in Theaters

Danny Peary Talks To… ‘The Misogynists’ Writer-Director Onur Tukel

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(from DansPapers.com 10/5/17)

DYLAN BAKER AND JAMIE BLOCK AS CAMERON AND BAXTER.

OCTOBER 5, 2017 BY DANNY PEARY

It is becoming an increasingly frequent ritual for me to champion one of the independent cinema’s most idiosyncratic, passionate, and hilarious filmmakers, Onur Tukel. Not only has the 45-year-old Turkish American writer, director and sometimes actor been prolific, but he also he has been punctual, churning out difficult films with shocking regularity: the slightly mad and very chatty philosophical comedy/drama Richard’s Wedding in 2012; the gruesome comic vampire film, Summer of Blood in 2014; the delightful black comedy Applesauce in 2016; and the wild and controversial futuristic satire/revenge tale, Catfight, in which Anne Heche and Sandra Oh engage in three knockdown, no-punches-pulled physical encounters, in early 2017. He has other projects ready for release, but the good news is that he was so incensed by Donald Trump’s victory last November that he has squeezed in another film in this calendar year, just in time for the Hamptons International Film Festival. The Misogynists.

This scathing, decadent satire that showcases an array of amusing characters, brilliant and daring performances, and sizzling dialogue may be his best film yet and even corral him a mainstream audience for the first time, despite some XXX-language. The synopsis from the press notes: Cameron (Dylan Baker) is a lonely businessman and Trump supporter who has recently separated from his wife of 35 years. Now living on his own in a hotel room, he celebrates Election Night with his sad-sack protégé Baxter (Jamie Block), who is experiencing marital woes of his own. As the night progresses, the two men find their beliefs, motivations and identities challenged. And since all Tukel’s films are about characters who are experiencing escalated downward spirals, with situations going from bad to abominable, be prepared to fasten your seat belts, as Margo Channing would say, because it’s going to be a bumpy night. Last week I had this conversation with Tukel about his new movie and the political views that inspired it, and as always he wasn’t at a loss for words. I was, as when I last interviewed Tukel, amazed how he can digress from a topic and go off on a seemingly unrelated tangent yet somehow circle back and tie in what he’s been saying to what we were first talking about. You’ll see! Like me, he is excited that The Misogynists has been chosen for this weekend’s film festival, and that he will no longer be a secret.

Onur Tukel. Photo: Danny Peary

Danny Peary: When we talked just prior to the release of Catfight, you told me you were soon going to make this film. Was it already written and ready to shoot?

Onur Tukel: When we talked in March of 2017, I think I was on the fifth or sixth draft of the script. I did nine drafts total.

DP: Did you start writing The Misogynists on election night?

OT: I started writing it the next day. I copyrighted the first draft of the script on November 17th, 2016, less than 10 days after the election, and then I spent seven months rewriting the movie before we shot it this spring.

DP: What was your frame of mind when Trump won? Did you know you’d have to make a movie about it?

OT: Well, I was shocked. And then, you know, I was angry. And I had the same smug reaction as a lot of liberals: “How could these idiots vote for Trump?” But then, my anger turned toward the liberals who didn’t go out and vote for Hillary Clinton. This is what fueled my writing. It became very therapeutic. I also found a defense mechanism to deal with the defeat. I thought back to how I felt when George W. Bush got re-elected in 2004. I was really devastated that night. And I kept thinking about how collectively insane the country was during that time, which I refer to as the “Decade of Defeat” in America. And when Trump won, I told myself, “Things may seem crazy now, but are they as crazy as they were then?”  The answer was “No.” I told myself, “Trump hasn’t started a war. And until he does, I’m going to give him a chance.” But EVERYTHING annoyed me after the election. I remember walking near Columbus Circle a few days later and there was a parade of protestors screeching some vapid platitudes through a megaphone.   It was shrill and annoying. In the wake of a contentious year, during which the election has oozed itself into every pore of the culture, we were right back where we started on November the 9th! For a while in my twenties, I trained to be a boxer. And I remember hitting that fucking punching bag, just unleashing my rage, it felt so good. And man, writing this script kind of felt the same way. I just unleashed my anger onto the page. It’s kept me relatively sane.

DP: From what I understood, the film was going to be about two Trump supporters in a hotel room on election night. But was it ever going to be just two characters?

OT: No, it was always designed with various characters venturing in and out of the room.

DP: Talk about the collection of people who populate your film.

OT: You have Cameron, a middle-aged man with a great salary. He’s been married for over 35 years but has recently separated from his wife. There’s Baxter, his obsequious protégé, who’s keeping him company on election night. Baxter’s wife, Alice, is at home, trying her best not to lose her mind at the thought of Donald Trump being President—she thinks the sky is falling. An ex-colleague at work, Grant, stops by to imbibe with Cameron and Baxter. He and Alice are the liberal voices of the film. There’s Francis and Don, an interracial couple staying in the hotel room next door, annoyed that Cameron is making too much noise for them to sleep. There’s Miguel, the Mexican who delivers room service and is surprisingly indifferent about the election results. And the sex workers, Sasha and Amber, who have their own mini-adventure before meeting Baxter and Cameron, including getting into an existential argument with a Muslim cab driver. The movie is very much about how divisive the year 2016 was. I think that’s one of the reasons election night was so traumatizing for some. It was an exhausting year. Many people were just ready for the vitriol to end. Trump’s election was devastating because he was so contentious. We all just wanted to stop hearing about him. Anti-anxiety medication sales must be through the roof. Luckily for me, writing is therapy. So, I was able to purge a lot of my frustrations through the script. The great thing about a hotel room set is that I got to focus more on philosophy and less on story.

DP: I kind of pictured you making this film with you and someone noone ever heard of as the leads. When did Dylan Baker come into the picture—and though he played a small part in Catfight, were you startled that he would agree to play the lead without your making his character, Cameron, less vulgar?

OT: I had planned on casting an unknown as Cameron but that didn’t work out. He got cold feet and dropped out of the production. So we pushed production back two weeks and I offered Dylan the role, thinking he wouldn’t want to do it. But he read it and embraced every word. He learned all of his lines in about a week. It’s hard to believe. I could tell you that we workshopped the script like a play, then we spent six months in rehearsals and explored and analyzed every syllable. It certainly feels like we spent that kind of time on it but it’s just not the case. The production came together very quickly.   Dylan dived into this character with an energy that was so inspiring. He’s so funny and warm, and his character is so cynical and at times, disgusting; and he also had to sympathize with his character, who is in great pain. But this is what great actors do. They embrace characters that are so different from their personalities. Dylan’s performance is as devastating as it is electrifying and we were all in awe watching him work.

DP: The dialogue is so sharp that I would guess you sat down at the computer and it just poured out of your mind as you typed. Right or wrong?

OT: I’ve always been really self-deprecating. I love myself. I hate myself. One day, I beat myself up for being a talented hack. Another day, I’m bragging to my girlfriend about what a genius I am. Self-importance is really destructive, so it’s nice to have a self-aware, pseudo-irony to the whole thing. Art is important. But anyone can do it. And it’s also fleeting and inconsequential. And if you do it when you’re anxious or angry, like I do, it can be very therapeutic. So, yes, this thing poured out of me very quickly. Most of my first drafts are written quickly but this one came even faster because I wasn’t so focused on story. It was more about a feeling. What was the general mood of the country that night? It was like a bomb going off! People were shocked. People compared it to 9/11.   And culturally the climate hasn’t changed much.   Uncertainty is everywhere. Uneasiness. Anxiety. But, you know, that’s the American way. A culture of capitalism demands an anxious populace, so it can be easily exploited. At least, that’s how I see it. The hospitals want you to think you’re sick. The news channels want you to think everyone’s going to drown in the hurricane. We live in a diseased culture. Binge-watching is the new cure-all for all the dread. We’re living in Brave New World. I’m looking forward to working on the next script. Every day, there’s something new to be angry or anxious about.   It’s a great time to be a filmmaker. There’s so much to say about this overwhelming nothingness. That said, I rewrote the fuck out of the initial script for The Misogynists. As I said, nine drafts in seven months. Again, therapy.

DP: Talk about the title. By calling your film The Misogynists, you are highlighting one aspect of a great many Trump voters, but pushing into the background equally bad ones, some political.

Trump supporters Cameron (Dylan Baker) and Baxter (Jamie Block) celebrate the macho new president.

OT: Well, the title isn’t just reserved for misogynistic Trump voters. It also fits the mother who tells her daughter she can’t be president. It’s also for the sex worker who complains of sexism while selling her body to the highest bidder.   And look, who was more of a misogynist–George W. Bush or Bill Clinton?   Locker room talk works both ways. And I have been part of many conversations between men that are insanely misogynistic. In college, if one of my friends had sex with a woman, I wanted to hear all the details. Is this worse than shooting a porno film? Is it worse than grabbing a woman without her permission? Of course not. It’s a conversation. It’s freedom of speech. There are terrible people who voted for Trump and terrible people who voted for Hillary and terrible people who didn’t vote at all. I don’t think a majority of voters picked Trump because they hated women. They just hated Hillary, and it’s unfortunate because she was clearly more qualified for the job. But I had a feeling Trump was going to win after hearing the final question of the second debate. He sounded like a human being instead of a politician. I think there’s a way to reach Trump if liberals would just show him a little compassion. He’s all alone and he’s terrified. If you coddle his ego, he can be manipulated. If everybody on Twitter just sent him a nice tweet, instead of a hateful one, he would glow. If you launch a nuclear bomb, he’s going to launch one back. Maybe win him over with love. Now, I’m methodically adopting this attitude for a couple of reasons. I have to have compassion for my main character. He’s my creation, I have to stand up for him.   But he’s also incredibly negative and I have to be better than he is. So as I talk about this movie on the festival circuit, I want to shy away from negativity, which means NOT criticizing Trump or his supporters. Look around at what we’ve become. Trump says something hateful and it’s like firing a cannon on a snowy mountaintop. An avalanche of hateful tweets comes from the left. This causes Trump to load another cannonball. Back and forth. Back and forth. I’ve made the decision to empathize with those I disagree with. I want to find some common ground with those I disagree with. It actually takes a lot of bravery to do that.

DP: Obviously, Cameron is a blatant misogynist but—and you just mentioned a few candidates–what other character qualifies so that the word is plural in the title? Baxter is afraid of women but I can’t tell if he despises them.

OT: Again, The Misogynists could be Cameron, Baxter, the sex workers, the mother, even the outspoken liberal who defends Hillary yet voted for Bernie. We’re all misogynists because we participate in a consumer culture that sexualizes and exploits women.   We’re all misogynists because we watch mass media news channels that NEVER feature thoughtful authors like Naomi Klein or Christopher Hedges. The network news stations never encourage reading. NEVER! They never encourage consumers to be independent thinkers. Most everything on television is geared toward making you feel ugly or fat or unworthy or broken. And by the end of this movie, when the language is at its most vulgar, you can argue that our male characters still, AREN’T misogynists. They are merely describing what they’re going to do to the sex workers. How is this misogynistic? If being a sex worker is form of feminism, then being a literal sex object is a feminist act. Language is just another form of sex play. When men talk about “fucking prostitutes,” I would argue that the words can’t be misogynistic. These words have no power. The body as “sex object,” contradicts this notion that misogyny can exist in language. It can’t. Not in the context of the movie. I’m looking forward to the festivals Q&As with this movie. I’m think there are going to be some very interesting discussions.

DP: Cameron says two reasons for Trump’s victory were that people think he will bring stability (in a bad way) to America and that he recognized people are tribal. Almost a year after election night, could you list many more reasons?

OT: I think Donald Trump’s behavior is moving conservatives to the left.   On the other side, I think PC culture and safe spaces are moving liberals to the right. Maybe I’m old, maybe too set in my ways, but harsh language doesn’t offend me. And the idea of forcing people to be “less offensive” is nauseating to me.   I don’t like being told what to say. And having freedom of speech is hands down the greatest right we have as Americans. And this works both ways. If Donald Trump wants to call someone a “son-of-a-bitch,” well, it doesn’t bother me. Is it racist? It could be? Is he racist? Sure, he could be. But you know what? Son-of-a-bitch” ain’t the N-word, no matter how you slice it. You can rationalize anything you want. We live in nation of bullshit and faux outrage. I think about Turkey, where journalists and professors are locked up for criticizing their politicians. Now, they have something to complain about. But they can’t! Lebron James can call Trump a bum in America and that’s a beautiful thing. Trump has every right to fire back. Is it sad? Yes, it is. Donald Trump’s behavior isn’t appropriate for a President. He’s acting like a petulant child. And you know what, so are the masses. We live in a diseased culture.   And the American empire is on its last legs, just as Morris Berman predicted.

DP: At first I assumed Cameron was thrilled with Trump’s victories because of his vicious policies but after he exclaims how he and others are free to not be PC anymore, I started to see a larger reason. Do you think he’s so pleased with the election because he despises people and thinks they are getting the monster they deserve?

OT: It’s all there in his dialogue. Cameron is a believer in Darwinism. That’s why he proudly owns a gun. He doesn’t see the value of compassion in a world of anarchy. He believes there will be chaos in the streets very soon. People will be looting supermarkets. The one with the gun gets the loaf of bread. When he talks briefly about Vietnam, he’s pointing out a bleak time in American history. A Democrat got us into the war. Republicans kept us there. This is the world we live in. When he talks about the American Indian, it’s as if they don’t even exist. They’ve been literally wiped off the map.   He’s a realist. America was built on principles of absolute selfishness. Having a leader like Donald Trump was inevitable, because he is the product of a diseased culture. Every man for himself. Might makes right. It’s the American way. We are not a nation of Christians, despite what people claim. Jesus wouldn’t have wiped out the Indians. Jesus wouldn’t be on twitter saying hurtful things. Jesus would have compassion for Trump. He would match his hate with love.

DP: I was reminded of Platoon, in which Charlie Sheen is pulled in one direction by the moral Willem Dafoe and the other by macho Tom Berenger in a fight for his soul. Here Baxter feels safer with Cameron than at home with his very moral, politically liberal wife, Alice. Is that how you see it?

OT: I like that comparison. I think there’s a nobility to being in the middle, trying to hear out and understand both sides. Obama was like that. Bill Clinton was like that. But there’s a cowardice there, too, because you’re not really taking a stand. You know, Baxter is actually responsible. He has a family, he takes care of them. He wants to do the right thing, to put his family first, but he’s also tempted to be selfish. But there’s the contradiction. Putting your family first IS a form of selfishness. The family becomes an extension of you.

DP: Is it Baxter’s weakness that makes him want to hang out with Cameron?

OT: He hangs out with Cameron for several reasons. He wants to please his boss and he wants to avoid his wife. Hanging out with “the boys” is a beautiful thing. I’m a stubborn, out-spoken, flawed, often out-of-touch and sometimes self-aware human being. I like drinking with men. Locker room talk IS a real thing. And if you have a sense of humor about it, it’s harmless. There’s a childish superiority to it. AS Cameron says, “Women do it, too. They have their book clubs, their “Margarita Wednesdays.” The world is governed by secret meetings and clandestine conversations. Those who speak in secret aren’t evil. It’s the spies who are evil.

DP: And is it Baxter’s weakness that makes Cameron want to hang out with him?

OT: Cameron’s just lonely and afraid. If it’s not Baxter, it’s Grant. If it’s not Grant, it’s Sasha. When Miguel delivers the food, he’s quick to invite him to have a drink, some blow, a slice of pizza. Cameron, in a lot of ways, is a man of the people.

DP: Did you choose the name Baxter for the harmless but ineffectual character because it fits the definition of a Baxter?

OT: Hmmm, you know what? I never thought about that. Didn’t Michael Showalter direct and star in a movie called The Baxter? I don’t even know what that word means. What’s a Baxter? I’ll look it up. I did write the role for the musician Jamie Block, who does a brilliant job in this. And I guess he just looks liked a Baxter to me.

DP: One of Cameron’s verbal targets is Hollywood. I know you hate Hollywood elitism and phoniness so was he speaking words you might say?

OT: Hollywood is NOT a liberal place. It’s conservative. I could launch into a long-winded monologue about how I really feel about the Hollywood one-percenters and celebrities and the creative choices they make, but my publicist would never approve. Still, if I had a chance to direct a bloated, 50-million dollar film, I’d leap at the chance. If I could afford a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, I’d probably buy one. But being ignored, broke, and angry keeps me prolific.

DP: In the great Joseph McCarthy-era western, Johnny Guitar, every character represents something politically. What about in this film? Is Cameron meant to be Trump-like and that hotel room is like the Oval Office, with an array of people coming and going?

OT: It could be. Cameron, like Trump, is very isolated. He wants Trump to build a wall around America. He doesn’t want Syrian refugees in the country. He looks down at the streets from his hotel room and imagines chaos and anarchy. He’s totally paranoid. In a lot of ways, he’s a prisoner. He talks about freedom but he’s not free at all. By the end, you see who he really is. He’s afraid. He’s lonely. He’s a small child. All his bombast was just an act. Outside the hotel room is the rest of America, terrified at what he might do next. I’m over-explaining things, which is supposedly a big no-no for a director. “Never explain.” But that’s also the point of the movie. Who’s to say what you should and shouldn’t do as a director. I can do whatever I want. It’s my movie. And Cameron says something similar early in the film. “I can say what I want, I can do what I want,” as he bounces up and down on the bed like a child. We’ve put a child in the Oval House. But outside of the Oval Office, the behavior is just as obnoxious.

DP: Cameron may be a 100% jerk but I don’t think any of your characters are without flaws, except perhaps the hotel manager who is in just one scene. In my opinion the worst person of all is the cheeriest and perhaps the most likable, the room service worker, Miguel, who brings Cameron and Baxter food and stays to snort lines of cocaine. He is of Mexican heritage and thinks having a female president would be cool but like many students didn’t bother to vote. And he’s on academic scholarship!

OT: One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Miguel, Cameron and Baxter do a shot of tequila. Cameron has just made a speech about white people being superior to blacks, Jews, Asians, Mexicans and Arabs. He goes on to talk about tribalism and the societal acceptance of genocide. My co-editor Martin, who was assembling the footage during the shoot, hadn’t cracked a smile for the first five days of production. When he started synching Miguel’s footage, it was the first time I saw him laugh. He said the subject matter was so insanely dark that he couldn’t help but laugh at it.   When I wrote this, I was really reaching for the darkest shit I could find. It actually reminded me of the paintings I created for a movie called Septien, several years ago. I occasionally act in indie films and I play a disturbed painter in that movie. I really am an artist, and the director, Michael Tully, wanted me to paint the most deranged things I could think of. It was very easy for me, almost cathartic.   And writing for Cameron was cathartic as well. With Miguel, I wanted to resist making him obvious, which would have meant having him be anti-Trump and anti-wall and pro-immigration.   Instead, I just made him aloof, and that seemed to be the right way to go. I think a lot of people have Miguel’s attitude, which is why they didn’t vote.

Sex workers Sasha (Ivana Milecevik) and Amber (Trieste Kelly Dunn) discuss Trump’s victory and going to see Cameron and Baxter

DP: I picture a Netflix series with Sasha and Amber! Great characters, a comedy team. It’s interesting that you introduce them late in the film and then give them so much time, breaking conventions. Did you write their scenes together, before they come to the hotel, as you wrote the script chronologically, or at the end?

OT: I’d love to do a movie with these characters every year. We could see how their opinions change with each year that Trump is in office. Regarding these two sex workers, I was having a lot of trouble with the first three or four drafts of the script. It wasn’t until I decided to give Amber and Sasha their own act outside of the hotel room that everything really clicked for me. In the initial drafts, Sasha and Amber show up at the hotel room and the four characters continue talking politics. We never see Sasha and Amber on their own. We discover that Sasha comes from a rich family in Serbia and hates Bill Clinton and thus, hates Hillary and blah-blah-blah–it was more of the same stuff that we get in the first act. I had a reading with the initial cast and I realized that the third act needed to be less about politics and more about Baxter betraying his wife. By the fifth draft, I found that I had a really interesting structure for the script. Act one is Cameron and Baxter in the hotel room, drinking and talking politics. Act two is Amber and Sasha on their way to the hotel room, talking about sex work and their own role in creating Trump. Act three is broken up into two parts—Cameron, Baxter, Amber, and Sasha partying together; and Cameron all alone, hitting rock bottom. I always wanted the movie to feel bigger than a hotel room with energetic performances and the multiple characters venturing in and out of the room. Zoe White’s cinematography really opens it up.   But this diversion with Sasha and Amber is a bold structural move. It feels innovative. By the end, there are probably ten locations throughout the movie–the hotel room, the hallways, the elevator, the lobby, the bar, the rooftop and the various streets of New York. But when Amber and Sasha enter the picture, I think it’s really going to throw audiences for a loop. Suddenly, the point-of-view changes and it’s like we’re in a completely different movie.

DP: Trieste Kelly Dunn, who is terrific as Amber, has played a lead for you before. Did she have to explain to Ivana Milecevik, who had just a minor, straight part in Catfight, or anyone else about how you work and that a bit of insane humor is to be expected?

OT: I worked with Trieste on Applesauce so we get each other. We’ve both got connections in North Carolina, so our senses of humor are very similar. I met her one day in a Laundromat in Greenpoint and I fell in love with her instantly. She’s one of my favorite people and she might be my favorite actor working today. She’s the perfect mix of sophisticated and goofy. Trieste and Ivana are good friends. They worked on a popular TV show called Banshee for four years or so, so they were excited about reuniting on screen. They have such incredible chemistry in this. Ivana has an incredible sense of humor, too, and they’re really funny without ever winking at the camera.   I hope I get to make many movies with these two. They’re so brilliant.

DP: How much of this film is about hypocrisy?

OT: You could fan out the pages of the script like a deck of cards and say, “Pick a page, any page” and you’d find hypocrisy. Cameron brags about Trump being a truthful President yet admits that he’s lied his ass off.   You’ve got the self-righteous African American who stands up to Cameron but calls him racial epithets behind his back. You’ve got the liberal blowhard who defends Hillary yet voted for Jill Stein. There’s the sex workers who talk about female empowerment as they head to a hotel room to satisfy the libidos of a couple of rich men. A Muslim cab driver tries to lecture Amber and Sasha on how to behave while forcing his wife to cover her head. Baxter talks of being responsible while doing coke with his boss in a hotel room. Then there are the contradictions of language in the movie. We all want to be free. We all celebrate our freedom of speech. But the left tries to police what we can and cannot say.   A lot of Cameron’s vitriol is a reaction to PC culture. That’s one of the reasons he adores Trump. Trump has no problem hurting feelings. He says what he wants.

DP: When we see all the pain Cameron keeps inside because his wife Julia rejected him, do you want us viewers to feel empathy?

OT: When Cameron delivers the monologue about the last time he and his wife made love, it’s supposed to give us a glimpse of his humanity. I don’t think it’s enough to make us feel empathy toward him, but it would be nice if that were the case. No one has a lot of compassion for Trump at the moment and it’s really unfortunate.   I’m trying to open my heart to the guy. He’s a human being and like it or not, he’s our President. And any liberal who claims he’s “Not my president” needs to check themselves. That’s a fucking smug attitude. He most certainly is our President. We own him. And it’s our responsibility to make sure he doesn’t do anything catastrophic. I can tell you this much, barraging him with hateful insults on Twitter isn’t noble or patriotic. It’s the equivalent of bullying an outcast at school. Sooner or later, that outcast is going to get fed up and go on a killing spree.

DP: Where did you get the idea of the TV in the hotel room turning itself on and running backwards?

OT: That wasn’t in the original script but when we found the hotel room and Estee Braverman, the production designer, started transforming the space, I knew that something would have to be playing on the TV. I didn’t want to see this big black rectangle in the middle of our shots. Philosophically, the idea was a no-brainer. I’m sick of screens. They’re everywhere and they’ve taken over our lives. So the idea of a sentient television screen that pops on and off on its own, distracting the characters, mesmerizing the characters, felt like the right thing to do. It’s another example of the diseased culture we live in. Everyone’s complaining about how horrible Trump is. Everyone’s screaming about the environment and human rights. But they’re not so upset that they can’t binge-watch twenty hours of television a week. Most moral outrage is reactionary and insincere.

DP: You tend to get nervous about audience reactions to your films since they tend to go over all kinds of boundaries. Did you feel with this film that everything was falling into place and that the shoot was easier than expected?

OT: The shoot wasn’t easy because we shot at night, from 6pm to 6am. And the budget and schedule were super tight. But everything fell into place because I was surrounded by an amazing cast and crew.   Because the subject matter is so closely connected to what’s happening in the world, it feels strangely ahead-of-its-time. This might be the kind of movie you see made years after Trump leaves office. That’s why I’m excited about getting it out there early.

DP: Talk about working with Dylan Baker, especially your early conversations. Were you thrilled that he was willing to be as brave as you?

OT: Dylan Baker starred in Happiness. If you’ve seen it and his performance, you’ll know that he’s one of the bravest actors working today. But he’s also one of the most underrated. And he owns this movie! He’s on fire from the first frame to the last. He made everyone better. He inspired all of us. His performance has nothing to do with bravery, its artistry. This is the kind of performance you expect from a great actor.

DP: So you got a prestigious Broadway veteran to be in your film. And The Misogynists will be playing at the prestigious Hamptons International Film Festival. As a “madman of the cinema,” are you shocked and delighted that it has come to this?

OT: I’ve been making indie movies for 20 years now. I moved to New York on Halloween in 2010. I never dreamed I’d be making New York films with the elite of New York, yet here I am, seven years later, and this is the best thing I’ve ever made. Delighted? No question. Shocked? No. This is the kind of movie that is supposed to play at great film festivals. It’s brave and beautifully made. And Dylan Baker’s performance is a tour de force. The rest of the cast and crew are artists. I’m really proud of what we’ve made.

Danny Peary has published 25 books on film and sports, including Cult Movies and Jackie Robinson in Quotes.