This picture did that for me when I spotted it on the fantastic blog The Slab. A story began germinating in my head about a shy bloke from a cold city in the winter -- the pale one in the picture -- who takes a business trip to a more exotic, warmer, sun-drenched city where he's seduced before he knows what's happening by a cool, tanned, self-assured stud with a mysterious past.
Rather than audit the company he was supposed to be visiting and helpless with his sudden new infatuation, the shy lad allows himself to be wooed and deflowered whilst lounging around the confident stud's house and pool. His new amour suddenly disappears one morning and, although the home office is cluttering up his cell with increasingly panicked messages, the shy bloke sets off in search of the man who stole his heart. Will he find he's been duped and used as a patsy in a complex criminal scheme or that his one true love really is in danger? And what will the shy lad tell his wife back home?
It's Death in Venice meets Thelma and Louise meets The Usual Suspects. If only we could pitch gay projects at the studios with a hope that they would buy them. Will that day ever come?
I share your sense of frustration and impatience for that day to come. But consider that although Tomasz Mann wrote Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice) in 1912 it took until 1925 for Kenneth Burke to write the English translation; it took another 46 years until Luchino Visconti, who created his film noire masterpiece starring Dirk Bogarde, to obtain studio backing. Not till 1973 did Benjamin Britten think it was safe to compose Death in Venice as his last opera. Only in 2003 did John Neumeier create his ballet of the same name for a sceptical Hamburg audience.
ReplyDeleteThe iconic photo you post from The Slab certainly was evocative of Mann's central charaters Gustav von Aschenbach (Mann based this character on Gustav Mahler) and the beautiful Tadzio (inspired by Baron Wladyslaw Moes who died in 1986). But I encourage you to have hope. In contrast to Death's evolution, we've moved from Will & Grace to Brokeback Mountain to The Single Man and the end of don't ask, don't tell in relative short(albeit agonizing) order. I hold out hope that modern day Manns, Mahlers, & Viscontis can side step major film studios by taking their oeuvres directly to receptive markets via the explosion of all the internet media forums emerging from their infancy. I really enjoyed your reflections. Cheers!