Posts by David Herkt
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Yes, the Squeeze locations... Well-spotted with regard to Brooklyn, Russell. It also includes scenes shot at 27 Birdwood Crescent (bedroom & lounge). The scenes shot at Backstage are also interesting because there are very very few photographs of that club in existence. Stan Gordon, who owned the club along with Lew Pryme, lost his whole photographic archive in a fire and it was a time when cameras were seldom in evidence, particularly at night. So finding an image of Auckland's biggest gay club in the late 1970s is nearly impossible.
And yes, Jose. Squeeze, as I tried to say, came from nowhere in that regard. It was originally called Night Moves before it was retitled Squeeze. We'd never really had a nocturnal NZ before. And the movie was just so urban compared to other film versions of us. I think basically it was shot nearly entirely within 2 kilometers of the Auckland GPO. The last wrap-scene was the final shot at dawn in Myer's park, sort of appropriate for such a night-time production.
It's cast of extras also deserves mention. Often they were the people who would have been in the location anyway. I enjoy scanning crowd scenes for individuals. The Auckland band Proud Scum play the gay-baiting roughs, which amuses me.
The initial version of the script finished with a gay wedding where 'people dressed in multi-coloured clothing stream down a hill'. I thought at the time the prospect was ridiculous. I was wrong. Still I do like that dawn scene in Myers Park as the closing music comes up.
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Notes & Queries: Nightingales/Bombs/Beethoven, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
Exactly, Chris. I really want to get distracted by Shirley Temple, Wee Willy Winkie (I even once had a theatre poster for it) and Greene's summation of that hookerish child-charm, but I won't. And I'll ignore the horror of Shirley Temple double competitions. I'll keep an eye out for the New Zealand Memories story.
But, yes, these leads and lines through the mass have really been fascinating me. I've tried to find a word for them but the best I can come up is 'infodules' - small, revealing, and linked fragments of information, but it doesn't get the lance-like aspect, or quite nail the necessary concept of connection. It might be jewelish (in pronunciation, anyway) but it doesn't quite snap the thing.
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Lovely evocation of the E Years, Russell.You reminded me of many things. Sometimes I get the feel of things again through a bit of a track and I suddenly remember the dancing, the heat, the smear, and the surges of things. Wouldn't have missed it for the world...
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Notes & Queries: Confessions Of A Sleepwalker, in reply to Martin Brown,
Yes, Martin, it is a nightmare… In retrospect I can (just slightly appreciate) the debate whether one covers ones’ genitals with a hand, or wanders out insouciantly without hand-cover…
After the writing the piece above there were a number of things I also wanted to say.
The major thing that is weird for me, is the number of times it has happened versus the number of times THAT I DON’T KNOW ABOUT… I don’t always wake. And the number of unexplained remnants in my head are fairly high, those small flashes of place I described. The road in Sandringham is a fairly vivid example – I’m 100% sure I must have been a couple of hundred meters away from the house. There are also things like the remnants of grass clippings in the bottom of the bed you find the next day. I went through a minor stage of locking things a lot but my sleepy self seems to be able to negotiate locks and deadlocks fairly well, although as I said, doors are somehow a feature of things recalled. They obviously present themselves as an annoying obstacle. I suspect they are an irritant which has to be dealt with and the mind has to change track for a second to deal with the problem.
I don’t tend to be social in these things. I do have empathy with people who claim the sleep-walking defense in a sexual assault case. I do know someone that has happened to – finding themselves in someone else’s bed – but it was taken in good-humour by the bed-owner.
As I said as I finished the piece, the weird thing is the after-memories, when there are actually any memory-remains of the event. They are really odd nocturnal visions of streets and lawns, but it is like looking at them with different eyes, The rotary clothesline in the moonlight, that I remember from one, is such a strange picture because the emotional and intellectual apprehension one has for it in real life is REALLY different compared to the sleep-walk version…
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Notes & Queries: The Rejected Selfie, in reply to Islander,
Yep, to both Islander and Dave. You can see the magic of pools, right there. You can see why pools were always more than just bodies of water. But they weren’t exactly portable. You didn’t live with them. They were near magical reflective instances. They weren’t quite part and parcel of who you were, like mirrors.
I also should have included many instances, like the time I saw a TV interviewer applying her lipstick while looking into a TV camera lens with the camera mini-monitor swiveled her way. I was impressed, actually, by that one. It is, I think, a fascinating subject. I always had a sneaking fondness for Lacan’s essay “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience”. I don’t know of a decent study of mirrors and human being, though I’d like to find one. I do think they are, as Lacan’s title suggests, “formative”. It is always fascinating watching animals deal with mirrors…
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Notes & Queries: The Rejected Selfie, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Where is the 'like' button when I want it, Robyn.
Yes.
The Rolling Stone image is a great one, because of the response to it. The response sort of requires that we loathe the magazine for publishing it instead of publishing an image of him as a crazed mullah. Note the surreptitiously released images with the laser-red in the middle of his forehead.
Its like the 21st Century is a battle of images, maybe it always was. But I think more so. And the selfie has a role there - as psychology, as cultural artifact, probably as politics.
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Well, that's another whew! Thanks for your thoughts. I should be used to the fact that knowing Paul means 'the hard stuff' comes with it, but I forget...
I agree, it is a complex business. I started off from the beginning of not wanting to pathologise Paul, make him a client, treat him with kid gloves, isolate him, or make him special. Therefore I found aspects of Philip's written response hard to deal with - sometimes Philip wanted it both ways, to berate me, while simultaneously giving me the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes in the one paragraph. Sometimes his obvious lack of the facts just bugged me (and his assumptions about the ones he had) but then I obviously did not write it well enough in the beginning. My only excuse is if I'd have explained everything it would have taken me much longer than the 3,000 words it took.
This misreading of things came in many ways - including about the conference call scenario. That and Paul's sexual life seem to have got all the reaction. I wouldn't have chosen to give Paul the Conferencing calls that he had, because I am probably a cautious person. Paul however enjoyed them. They were nothing much different (in mechanics) from the sex-line calls he voluntarily involves himself. He knows the routines. If they had just subjected Paul to abuse he wouldn't have countenanced them. They are generally good calls. I'm not party to them all. I sometimes hear about them. People, with the few exceptions I outlined, are generally very good. To be frank the calls aren't of much importance to Paul. They do stimulate him. They give him a bit of contact with the world. I do think that people are very willing to think ill, to imagine nastiness, when none exists. One thing I didn't emphasize enough was Paul's charm. He really is engaging and fun. He is as interested in you as you are in him.
The key thing, for me, is the fact that some of the responses here want to return Paul to a world where he is not the one in control. Paul has fought very long and hard to be himself - to live by himself, to control his world. I feel a number of responses here want to return Paul to somewhere he doesn't want to be.
I want to emphasize again I am not official. I am simply Paul's friend, as he is mine. Philip's list of problems that he found in my text just made me really glad that I do not belong to that world of 'official contact', and that I can act as a probably-flawed human being outside it. Outside it we can have friendship, respect, pleasure, drama, laughter, and all the human things.
Lots of things have happened to Paul in the time that I've known him. Some good, some bad. But like us all, he chooses to deal with them. He's the agent in his life. With his freedom comes responsibility but he deals with it. Some of you wanted me to draw lines where, for one or another reason, I had to be aware or make allowances or not do something. I don't do any of those things. I don't do it with my other friends - I don't do it with Paul.
I can only help, if asked. I can only fulfill a human function. I am there to talk with. I am there to talk. We share stuff in the complex world of Being. You’d have to ask Paul his opinion, but I suspect he’d say that it works. He’s ‘fired’ me. I’ve ‘fired’ him. We’ve had dramas like you wouldn’t believe. But we are still here and we like each other.
I agree it can be frustrating. And I think your frustrations mirror mine, at least sometimes. Paul, however, is living his life. I have to deal with it, so should you.
I wasn't advocating a programme or a strategy. I was simply telling the story of something which is for me a valued thing. I hope I'm not soppy about it and I like to think Paul has taught me some practical lessons in life. If anything I'd like it to be considered realistic.
And to go back to where I started, I’m not fond of caged birds.
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Whew! This is a mixed bag of things. I'm going to address them all in one bunch instead of point-by-point to the owners.
I wrote the piece out of admiration for Paul, and pride in Paul, respect for Paul, and a huge, huge regard for Paul. He drives me nuts sometimes and to my shame my reactions have sometimes not been good ones. I can only be human with him. I do my best but I am not a saint. I also think being human is one of the best things one can do in this situation - I'm not an employee, an abstract 'carer', I'm a person. Paul is my friend. The friendship has survived through thick and thin for 14 years. I've actually just got off the phone with him (ceiling insulation was the unexpected primary topic).
I understand the discomfort that some people might feel. Honestly, I feel it all the time. I have this quasi-official role with Paul that hasn't got a job-description. I usually just stick with 'friend'. I have a couple of official roles and I'm listed on a few official forms, but Paul has 'fired' me so often now, so I forget quite what they are... ['firing' is Paul's term for it, by the way, and it is his way of asserting who he is and the fact he has power over his world]... Often my role, apart from the friendship and the company, is just being this weird interface who can fix things sometimes.
Now, in as far as Paul's consent goes. Right, Paul knows I write. I have told him I wrote something about him and it is on the internet. Paul doesn't know what the Internet is, really. Sometimes I wish I had a bit more money and get him a tablet, just to see what happens, but he can't really write. He can't really read.He's good with phone numbers and he can write his name. But the Internet is not something that means much to him. So telling him that the story is here on Public Address and people read it is not something that means anything to him.
I kept his real first name in the piece for the simple reason I am very proud of him. I experimented with 'Peter' and others but I thought 'why?'. In some small way I wanted to salute him personally for everything. So it stayed... It was pride in who he is. Pride in the fact that he battles confusions and forces and poverty and environment and abandonment like most of us never realise and has kept it together. I doubt anyone could find him unless they already knew him. And if you know him there are no revelations in what I've said.
Paul telling his own story is a good idea. He delights me. I'm sure he'd be good 'talent'. I'm not sure he'd be good talent for unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar environment. But in an odd way, while I might have described him, I was really describing not so much him, but my experience of him. It was filtered through me. You didn't get Paul, you got my experience of him. Paul is much, much richer than I made him.
I realise I might have pushed a few boundaries in terms of people's discomfort - and possibly about sex. One of the great Paul moments was early on, when I was trying to get a range of official services for him (and official now usually means private organisations contracted to government) so Paul was being interviewed by some official 'ladies' from a religious organisation. It didn't work for Paul. He didn't like them or their smile-and-nod attitude to him and his 'disabilty'. He told them he was gay, wandered off to the bedroom, came back and dumped an explicit gay magazine on the table to prove it... and they didn't return. The gay part of Paul is just another layering, another thing to deal with, that makes him such a rich human-being. Sometimes in the style of that Vodafone ad, I want to go "Double Rainbow! So intense!"
I'm pleased though that people have considered their own relationships to other human beings who are too often pushed out of sight. The great range of being human is frequently made narrow and mean. We are bigger than what we usually see. Being human is a wider range than is represented. Selfishly, Paul has made me a better person and for that I thank him.
I think both Paul and I and my partner John (the unacknowledged saint in all of this - he puts up with both Paul AND I) are all pretty happy with the way its turned out. I know Paul's happier than when I first met him. That's all I can say, really.
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Speaker: Queen City: A Secret History of…, in reply to TracyMac,
Thanks, TracyMac. I’ve bound your extra info into the bigger copy. Much appreciated.
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Speaker: Queen City: A Secret History of…, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Thanks, Simon. I recall it very fondly as well, from the burning clothing on the clothes-line to the party that Chris Knox invited the whole Windsor Castle to...and, let's face it, you and I had the two best rooms in the house...
I think of Backstage quite a bit when in the vicinity too. I'm still extraordinarily impressed with the music we danced to, which was odd given NZ was so far down the music supply-line in the late 1970s - and currency-restrictions on how much could be imported...
The Backstage set-up with the $7 covercharge paying for a whole night of drinks was also fun. When I worked there we carried buckets around when we ran out of glasses because there was no impetus for people to keep track of their drinks and they'd just get another... So I know exactly the colour fifty barely-touched glasses of alcohol makes when poured in a bucket. And one of the enduring memories I have (besides trying to sweep the floors at 5am while tripping once) is the fashion for 'Brown Cows' (kahlua and milk) amongst young gay men then and Stan having to unpack pints and pints of milk to satisfy demand.. "Fucking milk!" ...
I have tried to source pics of Backstage for everything from Queer Nation to express to JACK magazine, and they don't seem to exist. Stan lost his photos in a fire and I've never heard of anyone who has one...