12-14 August Locarno

The film festival ended for me with more of a whimper. The best two films were both tangential: Hard Eight by P.T. Anderson was screened as an honor to John Reilly and Conte d’Eté by Eric Rohmer was a nod to one of the festival judges, who acted in it. They managed to be better than competition films about alien jellyfish forcing the US to build huge walls to keep them out, a Canadian comedy about Jazz Chess, an offensive portrait of a derided Italian man with a mental disability who eventually had too much and killed his tormenters, and a wordless Kazakstani film about a rape avenged by a shaman. Other than the jellyfish thing, none of them were awful, but none were really good either.

One morning a student dropped her tray in the cafeteria and a glass shattered and shards stuck in her ankles. I pulled them out and disinfected the tiny wounds. It was my first taste of action in my role, and the dawning of my realization that I am actually a nurse. I have zero medical ability, but I can speak the language and am calm and reassuring.

On our last afternoon in Locarno, Jaimey and I went to visit Marianne and Wälle – his last time this year. But, like bad rappen, we keep coming back.

11 August Locarno and Longmore

I tried to get into the Rialto again without success so I drove home in exasperation. I checked my email and discovered Paul Longmore had died on 9 August in the night – maybe some 24 hours prior. I was in shock and spent the day as if sleepwalking. I stayed at La Perla and wrote about Paul the next morning.

Paul Longmore changed my life. He came to visit Stanford in the fall of 1989. The director of the Disability Resource Center had been telling us disabled students that this great disabled historian was coming to check the place out prior to being installed as a visiting professor the following winter.

I had never met a disability rights activist before, and the time couldn’t be more ripe for me. I was just beginning to articulate the marginalization that myself and my disabled peers had faced by using the language and ideas of other civil rights movements. Paul came at the right time to support me on my course and to challenge me to go further.

During one meeting of the disabled students group that I had helped to start, I had carelessly used the words “devaluation” and “oppression” as if we all understood those terms the same. The backlash from my peers was intense and immediate. I recall the meeting breaking in disarray. I felt awful and a failure as a leader. Paul consoled me afterwards. “They’re just not ready for those words yet. You’re 100% right, but just be careful how you handle that language.”

Paul and I quickly became friends. I’d like to think we would have been close even without our common disability experience – but that is such a big part of both of us, it’s impossible to say. My favorite thing about him was his sense of humor. It could be ridiculously corny, playing off the most asinine puns. He’d look at me expectantly, out of the corner of his mischievous eye. If I didn’t respond right away – I didn’t want to incent his bad humor - he might kick me gently. But Paul’s deeper humor was his sense of irony. He could laugh at the most painful, tragic, gross or macabre things. “We have to,” he would tell me. “An ironic sense of humor is the cornerstone of disability culture.” I tested this over the years and time and time again found him to be right.

He theorized that due to our oppression we clearly see the duality of how things seem and what they are really like. When you can simultaneously see how others deem your life not worth living and know that your life is magnificent, humor seems a good response. Laughing outright is defensive or fake, and becoming despondent isn’t productive. The bittersweet chuckle with a lump in your throat is the crippled response.

I can’t go back to that time and do it all again so I’ll never know what I would have sorted out on my own or what Paul taught me. I know for sure that he hasted the process immeasurably. When I was 20, seeing Paul was like looking in the future and having a huge part of my identity reflected back. I suppose we can all do this to some extent with out parents, but it was different with Paul. He was like me in a way no one else was. And our common ground was the area I most wanted to explore and the terrain society said was least valuable about me. Boy is society stupid.

In my senior year, I took Paul’s history class. I knew most of the stuff informally from hanging around with him. As an activist professor, Paul was nothing if not holistic in his mentorship of young people with disabilities. At State I’d often see his mentees around and I would nod to myself, knowing what a privileged ride they were on. Paul had already changed my life and yet I had never even set foot in his classroom.

Speaking of classrooms, I remember trying to organize Stanford to build an electric door opener for him at History Corner. This was before the ADA came into effect – not that Stanford shouldn’t have been adhering to 504 or state laws. We got the door opener but the department did it begrudgingly with great hemming and hawing. This infuriated me, but not Paul. I learned a lot about pragmatic activism. “Look Mark, I don’t give a shit if they like it, at least now I can get in the damn door.”

After Paul’s class, I had to write my senior thesis. Of course it was going to be largely about disability. I never thought twice about having Paul as my advisor. I feel old now, but this was in 1992 so there really wasn’t much in the way of “disability studies” per se. It was just me and Paul discussing disability identity formation and Shakespeare. A student of mine just asked me a few days ago about my thesis, and even 18 years later, I was stunned at how important those themes Paul and I explored still are to me now.

After college, I took jobs in and out of the disability rights movement. When I needed a wise word, Paul was always there. In fact, I chuckle as I recall most of our phone calls starting like this: “Hi Paul, it’s Mark.” “Oh hi Mark, how are you? What do you need?” It was never testy, just simply him opening up the door. He always seemed to have time, or would call me right back.

In 2005 I think it was that Paul received the Henry B. Betts award for his activism. He asked me to be one of his three presenters. I was so honored to go on videotape to talk about the man whom I admired. Looking back now, I realize this was the only time I really ever thanked him. I wish I had said and done more, but that’s probably just for me. Paul, I believe, was proud of me, and this was enough for him. He was proud of who I had become as a man, as a person with a disability, as a leader, as an intellectual, and as an activist. And I was honored to make him proud. In fact, that’s the only thanks I can give him.

Some times I only talked to Paul maybe once a year. Other times it might have been every couple weeks. Recently we had been working together again. I’ve been working on a film that’s partly derived from my experiences coming to understand my disability. Paul, of course, had been intellectually, emotionally, and politically supportive. And I don’t think it was just altruism on his part. I know he loved me and wanted to support me, but we were also largely political allies. We’re both in the same movement, believing the same things, reaching for the same goals. He believed in my film and thought it will make a difference in the world. His passion and enthusiasm meant a lot to me and kicked my project into the next gear. It is with deep regret that I imagine Paul not seeing the project come to fruition. But I know that if I succeed in helping people to understand disability differently in their lives, it will mostly be due to Paul helping me to see mine differently.

Thank you Paul.

Mark

9-10 August Locarno and Claudia

One highlight of the film festival is Claudia. She is, bar none, the best MC I have ever seen. Every year, she hosts the Locarno Film Festival. I have no idea who she is, but I know why she has the job. She might be a news anchorperson (although I have never seen her) or some sort of celebrity. But she may also be a professional MC.

She is poised, she always says the right things, and she is not hard to look at – which is critical during interminable award ceremonies – and someone gets some award each night at the Piazza Grande, along with their cast, crew, and everyone they ever met in their life. Unlike the Oscars, at Locarno they don’t just thank the people, they bring them up on stage. And Claudia marshals this whole clusterfuck with ease and grace, cutting off people politely and ensuring things move on as expeditiously as decorum (which is thick in Ticino) allows.

But Claudia’s main skill is her ridiculous facility with languages. We’re pretty sure Italian is her mother tongue, but she’s so good it’s hard to tell. Her French seems equally perfect. She definitely has an accent in German and English, but she speaks them both fluently. Essentially, she is the perfect hostess who manages to interpret flawlessly in front of a crowd of 8000.

The irony is that she doesn’t really need to translate. She speaks so clearly I swear I could understand her fine if she broke into Polish. My Italian and French comprehension skills aren’t that great, but I understand every word she says. By the time she gets to English or German, I’m glad she’s abridged the speech because I got it the first two times. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could speak with plants and animals.

My life began shifting a bit this week. Unfortunately, at the festival, the third time they show films, they project them in a small auditorium. Thus my strategy was backfiring. By the time I heard a film was worthy, so had many others and the small Rialto auditoria were crowded, often to the point that I couldn’t enter; Pardo pass or not. Also, as I spent more time working on La Perla, the more my questions led to more questions.

I had three main projects: property taxes, getting Luciano inspected, and figuring out how the property next door was deeded. I have learned in my Swiss adventure that understanding these processes involve the most frustrating elements of bureaucracy and cultural difference. Invariably, what starts as a simple question gets quite complicated before it makes sense again. But then again, sometimes people can just be turkeys.

Let’s take the woman at the comune for example. In the past two weeks, I had called her five times to learn more about the property next door. She claimed that I needed to speak to a “tecnico” and this guy was only around for about two hours each day. At first, she didn’t even tell me that. She’d simply say that the tecnico was out. I’d ask when I might try him and she’d give me two hours the next day. Those two hours may or may not coincide with when I could get home to place a phone call. Eventually I got this guy’s schedule for the whole week and arranged my days accordingly. However, I called him many times during these hours and he was still out. On the sixth call, the woman, and it was always the same woman, asked me what I needed again. I told her. She said she could mail me a copy of the local ordinance that specified how the property could be developed along with a map of the plot. So I had rearranged by schedule four days to make these phone calls to hunt down this information she had at her fingertips the whole time. Swiss efficiency.

Sunday 8 August – Locarno

Jaimey and I decided to spend most of the day at La Perla, because, frankly, it’s nicer than the youth hostel. And we both just wanted to get work done.

We had bought an internet stick to get work done at the hostel but it was a bit rough as there was only one and we had to pass it back and forth all day.

In the evening we had dinner with Marianne and Wälle. If you have been, you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t, then one would wonder why not. It certainly isn’t lack of invitation. You can look forward to excellent food, this time highlighted by Wälle’s grilling – the most tender, juicy and hearty meat you could ever hope for. He is my grilling hero. If they made a video game called Grill Hero, he’d be on the cover.

Then you’d also be missing some fine wine or peach wine (according to your taste and the sophistication level of your palate) – I’m a fine Pescafrizz person myself. Then you would miss our scintillating conversation – featuring our favorite topic: “how and why does the US suck and how and why is Europe stupidly following?” You’ll have to read my next journal entry to get the answers. I give you a clue: it has to do with people being stupid and setting up bad systems that favor ego and greed.

The conversation is better with Jaimey there because we can switch fully into German. That way Wälle can participate equally. He tends to zone out, understandably, if it’s in English.

Saturday 7 August – Locarno

This was a major work day as it was the first day for my new property manager, Lora. I oriented her and we cleaned the apartment together, taking inventory and thinking of improvements. It may not sound like much, but it takes all day.

In the evening, I saw what might have been my favorite new film of the festival: Fourth Portrait, about a young boy in Taiwan trying to find his place in the world.

John C. Reilly was an honoree of the festival this year. He was around to collect an award, usher in the European premiere of Cyrus (I had seen the West Coast premiere at the SF Film Festival in April), and generally to be celebrated. He held a press conference and our students starred in the video about it:

http://www.youtube.com/thepardochannel#p/u/12/77bVh4yovnQ

Almost all the young people featured, 6-8 women, are all part of our gang. Go team!

(I prefer to believe it was more the insight of the questions asked than any sexism on the part of the editor)

4 August Locarno

In the morning we had an official tour of Locarno with a guide named Marina. She was phenomenal, a former board member on the tourist bureau. She explained how the colors of the Ticinese flag represent the different ideologies of the two halves of Ticino: Sotto and Sopraceneri. Sottoceneri is more forward-looking in Lugano, and Sopraceneri (around Lago Maggiore) is much more interested in preserving tradition. Hence the high rise apartments and development in Lugano that doesn’t really exist in Locarno. I believe the blue part of the flag is Sopra.

Marina was full of fun facts, but I also found it fascinating that the arcades along the north edge of the Piazza Grande were originally for docking boats since the lake used to be that high. If you’ve been to Locarno, you are scratching your chin and nodding, marveling at this fact. If you’ve never been to Locarno, you are slapping your head asking why you’re such a loser.

My work at La Perla continued to call me across the lake and I spent much of the next two weeks at home. There was no free lunch at the hostel and far fewer films in the middle of the day, so it was easy to go home for some amazing bread, salami, pickles and mozzarella. Unfortunately, La Perla is one of those projects where the more time you spend there, the more work there is to do.

I returned to Locarno each evening for dinner and films. Opening night at the Piazza is a special event – and a first for these students. I had been to the Piazza each of the last two years with Jaimey and prior groups. The film, Au Fond du Bois, was decent but politically problematic. One of those where the aristocratic girl falls in love with her animalistic homeless rapist in the 19^th Century in France type flicks.

When we got back to the hostel, I overheard the students next door to me complaining about the heat. One of them claimed to be working on getting the air conditioning working. I burst into laughter seeing him fiddle with the radiator. I asked him where he was from. He stared at me: “LA, why?” I recovered quickly. “You know, a few years ago, I probably would have done the exact same things. We just don’t have radiators in California.”

5-6 August Locarno, LA Zombie

The next day was rainy – one of the rare ones. Jaimey and I used it to run some errands: making copies, buying tickets for the students, etc. Then I had to run more errands for La Perla, buying exciting things like sink plugs and a tree for drying laundry. The night concluded with a film in the Piazza about eclectic, dysfunctional people living in a trailer park in Iceland. I had seen one other Icelandic film before – also at the Piazza, two years ago. Unfortunately both films confirmed my suspicions: Iceland is cold and bleak and the people drink, smoke a lot of pot and listen to Bjørk. It turns out that Icelandic is related to Swedish as I seem strangely to follow it fairly well.

Friday was the day I lost my film festival innocence. Maybe I was raped by an alien zombie? The fact is that the film festival isn’t that great. For a variety of political reasons that Jaimey explained to me and the students at great length, a film festival isn’t necessarily about presenting good films. It’s about jockeying for prestige, national identity, and relationships between industry wonks.

My disillusionment came in the form of two films: Ellen At Her Age and L.A. Zombie. Ellen is about a German air hostess who grows disillusioned with her job and lack of connection with others – much like Up In the Air or whatever that Clooney film last winter was called. Anyway, Ellen flops around in existential angst for 80 minutes and then suddenly decides to move to Africa to work with people trying to limit poaching. That solves it right up. Unfortunately, the film guide and the artistic director, Olivier Pere, claimed it was the “film of the decade.” I never figured out which decade to which they were referring since maybe this will obviate my efforts to make any films for ten years. I agree only so far as to say it was certainly the film of the day.

L.A. Zombie is easy to summarize. It’s about an alien zombie who fucks dead people back to life. And it’s worse than it sounds.

As you might imagine, the inclusion of this film in the concorso internationale or competition caused great controversy. It had been banned from other festivals. But, as many students pledged, “No way am I going to miss that!!” So we all saw it.

Of course it sounded awful, but I believed that Olivier (as we called him even though I think only one student met him) must have seen something in the film. I figured symbolically maybe the alien zombie was a harbinger of the end of American decadence or that it had some deeper social or aesthetic points to make. Unfortunately, I was (un)dead wrong and Olivier is either an idiot or trying to stir up some controversy.

With all humility I submit that Hillcrest is better in every single phase: acting, writing, directing, lighting, cinematography, sound . . . . I knew from the first shot, a pan across the ocean where the camera clearly stuck on the cheap tripod (things you’d know if you’ve used crappy $80 tripods from the drug store), that this was going to be worse than god-awful. Forget the prosthetic penis thrusting inside a bloody chest wound, the acting was cringe-worthy, it was poorly lit and not color-corrected.

I suppose it was supposed to be campy, but it failed at that. I’m no connoisseur of gay porn, but it seemed to fail at that as well. The acting and production value was as bad as porn, but there were too many pretensions at art (all of which failed in every way) to keep the porn fan entertained.

The climax (narratively – otherwise the fifth zombie climax) involved a group of super good-looking guys in leather getting ready for some sort of orgy / film shoot. Suddenly these two gangsters showed up and spat out some nonsensical and unconvincing lines and began shooting all the leather bound guys. Blood splattered everywhere. I mean there was a guy behind the camera throwing buckets of red water all over the place. Maybe two guys. Before our hero, the alien zombie, could arrive, the camera lingered on the “corpses.” I guess in the actors’ defense, it must be hard to stop breathing and keeping your erection still while pretending to be dead.

I think the director, who was on hand, must have busted a gut when he learned he got accepted. That was clearly the best spent $200 and day of his life he spent shooting this utter rubbish.

From this day forward, I only saw films that were either convenient or recommended by many people. Luckily, I had 25 budding film critics upon whose opinions I could avail myself. Thus, I was always in the know.

Lest you not trust my assessment of LA Zombie, here’s a reputable internet article Jaimey sent me. I also heard a radio review in my car and the Ticinese critic said about the same: ridiculous waste of time.

Unless I’m missing something, the miraculous potential of a giant undead penis in Bruce LaBruce’s “L.A. Zombie” is a definite first for film history. Banned from the Melbourne Film Festival and bound to inspire heated debate wherever it plays next, the wordless, hour-long portrait of a walking corpse waking the dead with his regenerative sexual powers will grab more headlines than viewers. A purely experimental exercise in the cinema of the body, the movie overstates LaBruce’s gay-porn-as-art routine in an extreme fashion even by his own standards.

An introductory scene shows the zombie in question (porn star and model Francois Sagat) emerging from the waves, then dives right into the conceptual mayhem: The figure grabs a ride into town, but the car crashes and the driver lies dead on the side of the road. His passenger quickly gets to work, whipping out his zombified manhood and fucking the deceased body’s torn chest cavity until his heart starts beating again. In a bizarre update to contemporary zombie mythology, black semen apparently doubles as miracle juice, and Sagat turns back into a living human post-coitus. Even George Romero may scratch his head at that deviation, but then “L.A. Zombie” isn’t exactly pitched at his target audience.

The avant-garde counterpart to LaBruce’s 2008 gay zombie narrative “Otto, or Up with Dead People,” his latest project has been touted by the director as “a movie that reaffirms life,” although its thematic depth only intermittently meshes with the porn factor. The “no dialogue” tag is actually a misnomer, but the instances where dialogue does seep into the soundtrack—the usual cheesy situational chatter typical of story-driven porn—form the weakest link. As the zombie wanders around downtown Los Angeles, he preys on a diverse selection of its residents, including murdered criminals and homeless junkies. The set-up for each resurrection scene begins to grow redundant once LaBruce makes his intent clear, and then you’re either with him or no longer watching.

In 63 minutes, “L.A. Zombie” features five sexual encounters that inspire laughter at first, followed by fatigue. LaBruce has prepared a softcore version for the festival circuit, and promises a hardcore cut available on DVD for those interested in such a thing. Regardless of its explicit nature, the sex (in the softcore version I’ve seen, anyway) hardly approaches the mad provocations of his more ambitious projects. (A skinhead ejaculates on “Mein Kampf” in “Skin Gang,” which makes the chest cavity bit in “L.A. Zombie” look relatively tame.)