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Ammiano: Baptism by fire
Tom Ammiano's sense of humor reflects
a ribald outrageousness - oftentimes spiked with
angry moments and serious asides. Dubbed the
"mother of gay comedy," Ammiano's wit must
transcend the homophobia of his audiences. He
best described the baptism by fire he
experiences at each performance in an article he
wrote for the January 20,1987 Advocate: "One
time when I was performing in a mainstream
club, a straight comic who went on before me
told the audience that the acts that followed me
had better wipe off the microphone. When I
finished my set, 1 wiped the mike on my butt; I
said, 'This should allay his fears.' The audience
loved it."
1 had the great pleasure of meeting
Ammiano recently in San Francisco. We met at
a friend's apartment, and I enjoyed the pastries
served during our high tea while he talked. And
talked.
Peter Dakutis: How long have you known
you're gay?
Tom Ammiano: Oh, from, I'd say, day one. In
the womb, huh? It's my identity. You have a
lot of identities. The gay identity has always
been diminished and put down as something
bad or weird or whatever - even in yourself.
Yet, it's really been great. It's like a vein
running through a mine...made of gold - gay
gold. (Laughs.)
PD: You do feel that you see throttgh gay
eyes?
TA: Oh, right, it's helped my humor, but, you
know, gay eyes, and another lens is maybe
Italian-American eyes, and then the east. So I
wouldn't say monolithic, but definitely. And to
"B. O. A.”
Directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel JanL'
Starring: Dennis Quad and Meg Ryan
Touchstone Pictures
The new suspense thriller D.O A. is so slickly
derivative it develops a flash all its own. Even
viewers who are finally disappointed by it aren't
likely to feel cheated. Afterwards, you know
you've seen 'something', and you respect the
filmmakers' efforts to work beyond the
conventional story-telling techniques that make
most Hollywood movies seem stale.
The film opens on a busy college campus
spangled in Christmas lights in preparation for
holiday celebrations. But from the first shot a
sense of ominous disjuncture hangs in the air.
Neither the college nor the surrounding town is
named to us, and the residents appear to be
sweltering in a torpid Christmastime heat wave.
The usual order of things has been struck
down. Though practically mid-winter, people's
hair sticks in dump mats against their faces;
glittering paper strips blow idly from grills on
oscillating room fans; and a popular professor
named Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid) wakes
from a night of chaste boozing with an
enchanting female student called Sydney (Meg
Ryan), to news that he has been poisoned with a
glow-in-the-dark toxin that will kill him within
48 hours.
The plot centers cm Dexter and Sydney's
desperate search to uncover who his murderer is
and why. Soon a string of flaky, intense
characters feeds around them, including the
beautiful campus benefactor, Mrs. Fitzwaring
(Charlotte Rampling), her troubled, flighty
daughter Cookie (Robin Johnson), and Dexter's
colleague and drinking companion Hal (Daniel
Stem).
As in David Lynch's great Blue Velvet and
the recent, undervalued A Night in the Life of
Jimmy Reardon, beneath the glassy surface of
social politesse lies a subterfuge of lies,
me it's probably one of my more gifted
parts. Although I think the Italian-
American and the eastern gave me a lot
of expressive skills, which
certainly don't hurt. The
gay stuff gave me a lot
of anger, sharp stuff.
When to be
loose.
Survival.
PD: You do
bill yourself as
a gay comic.
TA: Yes, and a lot
people say, "Doesn't
that sound limiting?" I
think it's also expanding.
Once Richard Pryor was
established they stopped saying,
"Black comic Richard Pryor."
Being out is really where it's at.
Some people say, "What does it
matter?" It matters because it’s not
accepted yet. What is accepted is
stay closeted. You're not going to
get any change from that. I
probably like that part of it,
although I suffer with that part of
it.
I probably like being Frontier
Woman - you know what I mean -
nursing the babies. That's something
in me to dv. But you do suffer from
it.. You're the whistle blower. You
don’t get the rewards. In the Reagan
years, you're not rewarded for
conformity.
But you get a lot
shit, believe me. I'm not
it because I have a mission.
Or even if I did have a mission, it
wouldn't be tunnel vision. I'm
doing it because it gives me a
lot, and I have a lot
with it.
PD: Do you
spend a lot
of time
of fun
TA
ambition, and kept-hidden sex. The
closer Dexter and
Sydney edge to the truth, the more death
begins to accrue around .
them, and their strange finite relationship
becomes their single source of trust.
Based on the 1949 B-picture of the same title,
D.O A. draws on any number of pop sources.
Stylistically both the film and its directors,
Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, are chiefly
indebted to Orson Welles, particularly his A
Touch of Evil (1958). Best known as the
creators of "Max Headroom", Mortal and Jankel
mistakenly believe they’re updating the
conventions of film noir by applying concept
video techniques to the most commercial kind of
Hollywood movie. But what they're really doing
is becoming absorbed in film technology at the
expense of their characters.
Not only do we in the audience experience
this distance, so, apparently do the actors.
Everyone appears to be acting in a different
movie, and at a fevered pitch. Only the drop-
dead sensual Charlotte Rampling manages to
more than hold her own. Veteran of such
hyperbolic atrocities as Visconti's The Damned
and Caviani's The Night Porter, Rampling
commands the screen by her stillness, by
speaking in hushed, even tones like a priest
offering benediction at the end of a funeral mass.
She seems to float in and out of the movie, and
the directors clearly don't know what to do with
her.
Probably their first time out Morton and
Jankel were nervous about going all the way
with this type of material. But updated or not,
the characters and plots in noir movies don't
necessarily have to make good sense. What they
have to be is vivid. The same holds hue for
visual orgy movies, such as Jean-Jacques
Beineix's Diva and The Moon in the Gutter.
Mortal and Jankel have talent, but next time out
I hope they concentrate mae on composition
and character rather than editing and their own
inept video techniques.
- Terry Francis
measuring
how gay
you are?
:No.
PD: Do you ever try to be
more gay?
TA: When it’s appropriate
to a situation. When it
looks like you really want
to hit them over the head
a point.
PD: Why are you
performing comedy?
A: You know, it must
have been sane kind of
need for a long time to
and to have an
arena. I have a mouth.
It took me until I was 40 to
it. I ran fa office (San
school board),
was innervating. I had
to be nice. I could be gay,
but I had to be nice. So this
in comedy, I feel like I can
be more honest or at least more
direct and make
. comments.
I think I probably always would have
been suited to something like that, and I knew
that, but because of the oppression would never
attempt to get up and be out. You know,
"You'll never be President if you're gay, a you
can’t do stand up comedy if you're gay."
Believe it or not, even in San Francisco,
these men and women who do the booking
don't have the sophistication. Cftmcdy in San
Francisco is highly industrialized. There's a lot
of closetedness, and it gets demeaning.
Women and gays are discriminated against
most.
PD: Do you think you'll have difficulties
reaching a wide audience?
TA: I think you can cross over. You do that
with tenacity and...then you do it with tenacity.
(Laughs.) But you also don't try to do it alone.
I try to encourage other gay comics to come
out.
I want change. I’ve seen it work. And
I’ve seen it not work. There are some places
where obviously it would be better for me not
to go, where I'm not invited and they doi't
really know I'm gay.
Yet you prove it can be done, and you
want the chance to grow, and they deny it.
That really drives me nuts - the lack of venues
and lack of opportunities to practice (my
skills).
PD:/.y it easier now to be an openly gay
comic?
TA:The oppression is pulled back one layer at
a time. You get to the point: well, you can be
gay and be a teacher - but na comedy a not
the Olympics. These are sacred cows, and
people like to fool themselves. I'm sorry that
there’s a double standard.
There was a lot of moralistic shit in the
beginning (of the entertainment industry).
Then gays became a joke. Pushing the macho
thing really seemed to have kept women in
their place. It keeps everybody in their place.
I doi't try to take it all on, believe me,
because then you go nuts. Sometimes you do
get tired. If you leave San Francisco you have
to remember. Constantly coming out,
constantly coming out. That could get weary
unless you get stuff back from it.
Continued on Page 14
Dennis Quaid stars as Dexter Cornell, a college professor who unwittingly witnesse
his own murder in the suspense thriller, "D.OA."Photo Copyright MCMLXXXVIII
Touchstone Pictures. All Rights Reserved.