JASON AND
SHIRLEY LAYS BARE THE TORTURED SOUL OF AN EMOTIONALLY HAMPERED GENIUS
Reviewed by
Dwight Casimere
Theatrical
Premiere: The Museum of Modern Art, October 19, 2015
Jason and Shirley is a cinematic recreation by NYC-based
filmmaker Stephen Winter (Chocolate Babies). Based on Oscar-winning avant garde filmmaker and director
Shirley Clarke’s groundbreaking documentary, Portrait of Jason, released in
1967 and premiered at the New York Film Festival that same year, winter’s
version shows all of the stuff that may or may not have happened behind the
scenes while the camera was rolling. It’s an intriguing concept that takes the
old ‘fly on the wall’ concept to new heights.
Jason
Holliday, the central character, is black and gay at a time when the legitimacy
of both hung in the national balance.
At times hilarious, and alternately desperate and heartbreaking, the
film is a brilliant reincarnation.
Veteran downtown New York actor and filmmaker Jack Waters is superbly
cast as Jason and renowned writer and activist Sarah Schulman is spot-on as
director and sometime adversary Shirley
Clarke (we later learn in the film that her real name is Sarah Brimberg. That
her father was a manufacturing scion, and that she grew up on Park Avenue in
the lap of luxury).
Shirley Clarke was an anomaly of her time and was on the
short list of groundbreaking female directors working in the 1960s ; Ida
Lupino, an actress (often with husband Howard Duff) and pioneer of the ‘film
noir’ genre, Mai Zetterling, another actress-turned-director, Sara Aldredge, an
innovator in experimental film, and Carolee Schneemann, who pioneered films
dealing with the issues of sexuality, power and gender. Clarke won
an Academy Award in 1963 for Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel With the World,
and was co-nominee for Skyscraper (1960). Clarke made Skyscraper
with two other documentary filmmakers. In 1964, The Cool World
became the first independently-made film to be screened at the Venice
International Film Festival.
The genesis of Jason and Shirley is
almost worthy of its own atmospheric film, evoking the free-wheeling era of the
1960s. The original documentary was filmed on the evening of Saturday, December 3, 1966. Director
Shirley Clarke and her crew, consisting of her unwilling son, Nico, who needed
the practical experience for film school ( she filmed Jason for twelve straight
hours. The shoot started at 9pm. To say that it was exhaustive is an
understatement). I saw the restoration of the original at the IFC film center
in the Village last spring. In it, the only person you see on-camera is Jason
Holliday (who we learn is actually named Aaron Payne (1924-1998) of Trenton,
New Jersey). This was the ‘60s. Yet, in spite of The Beatles, Martin Luther
King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, free love, drugs and the Hippie
Culture, it was still a time when it was illegal to be gay in the US.
In the original film, we hear the
director and others commenting off camera, but we never see them. Here,
director Winter fills in all the blanks and fleshes out the imagined drama
behind the scenes, which is only hinted at in the original film.
The film is set primarily in the
claustrophobic world of Clarke’s penthouse apartment in the Hotel Chelsea.
Before you get too carried away with an image of unbridled lavishness and
wealth, consider that the ‘penthouse’ has beaded curtain room dividers between
the living room and the kitchen (a totally hippy-ish glamour touch) and, by her
own admission, wrinkled bed sheets on a pull-out bed covered with Madras-print
pillows in the living room. The nicest thing in whole apartment is the faux
fireplace mantle with its fake lilacs in a vase and an African mask on the
wall.
A director friend who loaned her
the camera equipment, who turns out to be a virulent racist and homophobe, first
suggests throwing it all out, but once he learns the drill, feels the tacky
backdrop may be just right. Too bad he couldn’t stick around, he might have
made an excellent source of running conflict throughout the film, but the
tension between Jack and Shirley proves to be enough.
Early on, the director has to
practically beg her son and boom mike operator, Nico, to straighten up the
place (played with appropriate reluctant uneasiness by Eamon Fahey, who is, at
times, the queasy object of Jason’s wandering gay eye “Ohh! You cookin’ up some
juicy chicken meat up in here!” he declares upon entering Clarke’s apartment
and spying her young son).
Bryan Webster is absolutely
delightful as the dope dealer friend Candy Man, whose long-awaited arrival
propels the film to its denouement. He does his best to look like a barefoot
Ray Charles, delivering the much-demanded dope that Jason says he needs in
order to relax and ‘be real’ on-camera.
In the film, Jason, in his
exaggerated manner of speaking through his alcohol and drug fueled haze, spins
extraordinary tales about his a career as a quasi-drag nightclub entertainer, which
appear to be more imaginary (especially when he’s high) than real. In real life, there’s only one known
performance of his cabaret act in a one-night-only performance in the theatre
district.
His confrontations with his father;
growing up in Trenton is at the center of his internal conflicts. He describes
in creepy detail one encounter with his father as a toddler that may or may not
reveal the origins of his sexual preferences. He is similarly vague about the
sexual encounters that occurred later in life when he was arrested and
imprisoned at Rikers Island and was, presumably, raped and driven to the point
of attempted suicide.
The one thing he is perfectly clear
about is that he is a hustler, who is not above sex play-for-pay and who
willingly lowers himself to work as a sex slave/servant to wealthy white women
who are thirsting for companionship.
“We’re all ‘niggers’ Jason declares
more than once, taunting director Clarke because of her Jewish heritage and
wealth. In his derision, he also makes his point about the role-playing and
masquerading that everyone does in one way or another to keep the grist in
their mill.
Along the way, he reveals some
harsh truths by way of raw, entirely classless humor. “What do you call a
nigger whose been shot 14 times?! A botched suicide attempt!” presciently referencing the present
day ‘black lives matter’ protests over the unlawful killings of young black
men.
Another ‘Bon Mot;’ ‘Niggers are
constantly in pain. They won’t open an aspirin bottle because they refuse to
once again pick cotton,” referring to the cotton ball enclosures in aspirin
bottles of the time. In it’s own way, the comment makes a sort of lame social
statement.
Jason repeatedly avoids director
Shirley Clarke’s probing questions. “Tell me about your old man,” she asks
repeatedly, asking him to address his obviously rocky relationship with his
father. He finally remits, after his good friend and dope dealer Carl Lee, a fellow
would-be actor caught up in his own snake-pit of sexual identity and drug
addiction belatedly arrives on the scene.
When he finally arrives on the
scene, Clarke enlists his help in breaking Jason down to finally reveal his
true self, sans the posturing and the bullshit. Even when Jason finally
crumbles in tears at Lee’s incessant prodding, we still wonder if he’s is
leveling with us, or just embarking on another of his charades.
Sadly, Jason Holliday died a pauper in 1998 at the age
of 74. He was cremated and there was no funeral service or memorial and no
relatives of record. His burial place is unknown.
Jason and Shirley is, as was the original, an important film
in the LGBT film lexicon. The brilliant acting and meticulous recreation of
historic and psychological time and place alone make it worthy of attention.
Director Stephen Winter does a masterful job of recreating
the shoot-from-the-hip style of the original, groundbreaking documentary by the
Oscar-winning Shirley Clarke, with terrific performances by Jack Waters in the
title role and Sarah Schulman as director, Clarke. It’s a short, but highly
engrossing film.
There’s a lot packed into its slight 79 minutes and the
viewer isforced to pay attention to every spoken word and nuance of
meaning. Jason/Waters provides
plenty of quotable lines, all laced with dry humor and a hint of simmering
rage. I’ll leave you with one of the more delectable ones. “I’m tri-sexual.
Which means I’ll try anything!” And there you have Jason Holliday and the
lingering impression of Jason and Shirley in a nutshell.
MOMA PRESENTS
JASON AND SHIRLEY.A NEW FILM BY STEPHEN WINTER
DRAMA, COMEDY, HISTORICAL RE-IMAGINATION
79 MINUTES
PREMIERE ENGAGEMENT-NEW YORK MUSEUM OF MODERN ART OCTOBER 19-27 CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR
FUTURE DATES AND THEATRE LOCATIONS NATIONWIDE
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