It’s a drizzly Tuesday afternoon in the Meatpacking
District. I’m waiting outside a hotel suite. It’s just before a junket
interview that will be my last. A film publicist wanders in the hallway, jitters in
her stride. She’s gabbing into her cell, calmly trying to placate a difficult
client who doesn’t realize how difficult he’s being.
Being a journalist, I’m invisible. I’m
the barista or bartender of the media system. I’m considered too dimwitted to
pay attention to the dismal and terrible things that actors and filmmakers sometimes
say. The expectation is that I won’t write about it. The idea here is that I
can’t inquire, lest this prevent future interview opportunities from surfacing
upon my shoals. I truly don’t care who I talk with, so long as there’s a
fun and somewhat enlightening conversation. But this modest goal is incompatible with
what is expected. I’m expected to offer softball questions along the lines of
“Where do you get your ideas?” or “What’s next?” But I
can’t. Just can’t. Don’t have it in me to dumb things down. This
simply isn’t what journalists do. I feel compelled to present a film person
with a goofy or thoughtful inquiry into his craft. Perhaps it’s naivete. But it
worked back in the day for Mike Wallace. But if I do inquire, and I’m just
about to, it’s considered “inappropriate.” No explanation or
specific solecism given.
I’m expected to be dazzled by the limitless
canapes, the endless stream of sandwiches, the food and drink that publicists are
expected to provide, the tab paid by a studio with money to burn. But I don’t
care about any of this. Because I’m a journalist. Not a freeloader. And I want
to do my job.
I don’t know who the client on the phone is, but this
publicist has a difficult task on her hands. I learn that the client has had press.
Regis, a profile in the Los Angeles Times, and numerous other places.
Not bad. But it’s simply not enough. This client wants more.
“I
understand,” says the publicist, “but it’s been difficult to get in
touch with you. You don’t return my calls. And it would help…”
The publicist is interrupted.
I learn that the publicist has been leaving
several voicemails a day. The publicist has been trying to book this client —
who could be an egotistical filmmaker or a self-important actor — on several
shows. But without that pivotal communication on the client’s end, the
all-encompassing media tsunami he demands can’t happen. And even if it can
happen, it simply isn’t enough. The publicist is expected to make this happen
regardless of the client’s recalcitrance. And in this way, the publicist
isn’t all that different from the junket journalist. If an actor detects even
the faintest slight, then it’s the journalist who takes the fall and the
publicist is chewed out by another publicist just higher up the ladder, but all
publicists are equal and just as expendable. The assumption is that the journalist
will continue to dun his nose because he needs the high-profile interviews. I,
however, don’t need or care to dun my nose. Thanks to a spectacularly bitchy
publicist named Betsy Rudnick, a senior account executive at Falco Ink who I
haven’t yet met, but who I learn later doesn’t like me but can’t
tell me why, I’m about to commit unanticipated hari-kari and I don’t know
it.
A film person wants to be on every radio and television show, wants to
grace every newspaper. But the film person abdicates all control to the publicist.
The film person is expected to be placated, taken care of, have his ego massaged, and
who knows what else.
Some New York junket veterans
— like a man named Brad Balfour who I have run into at press screenings and
interviews and who has eyed my audio equipment not so out of bonhomie or curiosity,
but with the hope of discerning some way that he can use me — boast about
having ten minutes with Samuel L. Jackson. I heard Balfour shrieking at the top of
his lungs about a Jackson chat at a screening a few months ago. He had bagged
Jackson. But what kind of sustained inquiry can you have in ten minutes? In the case of Balfour,
the inquiry involves such insipid questions like “What inspired you to do In
Country?” and “How did you prepare for this role?” Questions
that nearly any junket journalist is going to ask.
This take-no-chances
approach goes much further. There’s something called a roundtable interview, in
which multiple junket journalists band together to offer the same questions with the
same answers for the same outlets, where they can then take the same credit for being
the “exclusive” interlocutor.
As a result, quotes from the same
conversation have a magical way of popping up everywhere. You may think that
Balfour got the scoop on Javier Bardem. But wouldn’t you know it? The same quotes —
in particular, observe the “How am I with women?” answer and the specific
references to Woody Allen and Milos Forman — show up in interviews with Coming
Soon’s Edward Douglas, the
Boston Globe’s Michelle Kung, Collider’s Frost
y (a nom de plume for a double-dipping journalist?), and the Sunday Mirror. (And if you
want to have some real fun, Google a quote. You may be surprised by how frequently a
specific phrase appears in interviews. If it doesn’t come from the same
conversation, then it’s likely to be a phrase that a film person latches onto.
An actor, after all, must know his lines. Boilerplate is an amazing thing.)
This fiction of a perceived exclusive allows readers to think that they’re
getting something unique. But when an actor hits New York, “friendly”
interviewers are selected to obtain quotes, and the results are nothing less than a
mass dissemination of the same material. Junket journalists often team up to collect
their work. One group interviews the actor, another a director. The film person
maintains the practice of repeating the same quotes, ad nauseum, to these
“journalists.” It all becomes a journalistic circlejerk.
The
junket has been around longer than you might expect. One of Hollywood’s
earliest moments of junket excess came in 1963, when a then whopping $250,000 was
spent promoting Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Kramer was summoned to defend the crazed financial excess. It set a precedent. Now
nearly every film released by a studio spends a remarkable sum of money on junkets.
And if you think junket journalists are bad, there are other hacks who go
much further. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s ignoble relationship with
Hollywood has the studios picking up the airfare and hotel bill for journalists.
There are sometimes gift bags. Bribery. (For what it’s worth, the HFPA also
oversees the Golden Globes, in the event you actually believed that there was some
integrity.) And then there’s Ain’t It Cool News’s Harry
Knowles, an online “journalist” regularly flown out by studios to
premieres. In 2006, Eric D. Snider revealed more, writing a candid column entitled “I Was a Junket
Whore,” in which he chronicled further indiscretions. Snider remains banned
from Paramount screenings for telling the truth.
* * *
I was at Soho
House to talk with film people behind Santosh Sivan’s film, Before the
Rains. I set up the interview because I had admired Sivan’s 1999 film,
The Terrorist, championing it when it had played during the San Francisco Film
Festival that year. I had intended to talk with Sivan about his stunning visuals. But
the deal was this. I could talk with Sivan, but only if I likewise talked with actors
Linus Roache, Jennifer Ehle, Nandita Das, and Rahul Bose. No problem. I set up a
roundtable conversation. I figured that questions could be bounced off Sivan and the
actors. And all of us would have a fun time. I had set up the interview with an
amicable and adept publicist named Caitlin Speed, a lively woman whom I had booked
previous interviews with, and who simply got the inquisitive intent and nature
of The
Bat Segundo Show. But when I showed up, another publicist asked me who I was and
who I had set up the interview with. I told her. And eventually, Caitlin and I found
each other.
The atmosphere was chaotic. Das was on her way out. Sivan
hadn’t arrived. No reason was given. No problem. I’d carry forth an
impromptu discussion with the remaining actors. And if Sivan showed up later, he
could nudge his way in. This was, after all, the natural flow of conversation.
Actors are, on the whole, very friendly. They are,
after all, people. But there are some who have chips on their shoulders the size of
Montana. And it is these prima donnas who tarnish the profession. I began my
conversation with Bose — easily the best actor in Before the Rains and,
as it turned out, the smartest guy at the table — and Ehle, given a relatively
thankless role as the wife to Roache’s adulterer. Things started off okay, with
Bose claiming to be Ehle and “very sexy.” But when Roache, the
film’s leading man, arrived, flashing his pearly whites, I was expected to
break off my conversation with Bose to acknowledge his presence. (You can hear this
awkward pause in the podcast. I’m presenting the audio file below unedited. I
leave others to make up their minds over whether I went over the line with my
questions or whether the actors I talked with were incapable of working without a
script.) The problem was that I was in the middle of a query with Bose on how Sivan
had placed his character at the top of a cliff, and I was curious to know how
landscape and position affected his performance. And I thought it very rude to break
off this conversation in media res. When Bose was finished with his answer, I
then introduced Roache. Roache was getting fidgety, presumably because he was not the
center of attention.
Me: I should point out that Linus Roache has
just joined us. How are you doing?
Roache: I’m very good. How are
you?
Me: Doing fantastic. I alluded to — I was talking with
Jennifer about the scene with you and Jennifer in the bedroom, where both of you are
positioned in a manner in which — you’re both diagonal to the bed frame.
We were talking about this notion of performance in relation to landscape. And I was
wondering if you had any particular thoughts on how landscape or the environment in
this film — because this is a very environment-specific film — pertains
to your performance. Or working within these limitations.
Roache: Wow!
What a question.
Ehle: I didn’t talk about that at all. Ed was
talking about that. I said I had no idea about the landscape or anything.
Roache: I don’t know how to answer that. Uh….
Bose: I did the mountains. Landscape and the mountains were mine. She said
she did the tea gardens.
Ehle: Yeah.
There was nervous
laughter. And at this point, Roache then shifted into boilerplate.
Roache: I don’t know. I just loved being there. I was just out of my
mind being there. It was just such an incredible environment to make a movie in. I
literally like — I had tears in my eyes when I left. Because I had never been
in such beauty for so long. So I understand why my character didn’t want to
leave there. The way he fell in love with it. So.
Okay. So he wasn’t
getting it. So I thought I’d try a goofier approach to loosen Roache up.
Something predicated upon an observation I had of the film, something I was curious
about, and something he might have some fun with.
Me: There was one
aspect to your character that actually disturbed me. And that was the fact that your
hair does not move — with an exception near the end. There’s a stray
follicle that actually sticks out. But for the most part, your hair is completely
slicked back.
There was a confused look on Roache’s face. Bose tried to
bail him out.
Bose: He was very particular about it. Linus, you know,
I won’t say he’s vain. But there’s definitely a hair thing going on
there. And he just — if his hair would move, he would call for a cut and take
the shot again. He said, “Let me know if my hair ever moves.”
Me: No, but I mean was this an actual plan on your part? Because not even
the wind can knock your hair out of place.
Ehle: Did you enjoy the
movie?
Me: No, serious! It was like a Steven Seagal motif or
something.
Roache: I never noticed that. I’ve got scenes where
I’m covered in water. And I’ve got scenes where my hair’s all over
the place.
Me: Even…really? Because every single time, your hair
is like completely pomaded.
Roache: Well, they did use pomade in 1939.
But yeah.
Me: Well was there any particular Brylcreem thing?
Roache: Yeah, we used hair pomade that they used in 1937.
Me: What research did you do to get the exact nature of Brylcreem right?
Roache remained baffled. He glared at Bose, annoyed that Bose, a mere
supporting actor, was the better wit.
The hair angle seemed right at the
time. Knowing of the mothballs that Marlon Brando had placed into his mouth for Don
Corleone, I was genuinely curious about the question of how slicking back one’s
hair affected an actor’s performance. But I also wanted to have fun with this.
And I can now see how an oversensitive “Serious Actor” might take the
Steven Seagal comparison the wrong way. It is worth observing that Roache’s Gaia Community
profile page has “to help define human relationship beyond ego”
listed as his singular Goal.
I then asked a question to the group about how
Sivan’s color schemes — green devoted to the colonialists, brown devoted
to the tribes, and red foreshadowing a tragic event — might have affected
performance. I wanted these three actors to understand that this was an inquiry.
Roache then burst in with an answer.
Roache: This movie was more about
a kind of creative, you know, rock and roll, jazz fusion situation. Because you had a
creative genius like Santosh Sivan. I mean, there weren’t a lot of huge
decisions being made in this kind of arty level like that. It was more like a
creative process that was unfolding. And some of it was crazy and chaotic. And some
of it was just like following what was there and making the most of it. And
that’s what a genius like Santosh does. So…
Me: Yeah, but
I…
Ehle: If there was anything intellectual about the film, it
was streaming out of Santosh. I don’t think anybody ever sat down. It was a
very unconstipated process.
In other words, any interview was a matter of
parroting the press notes. Any remotely intellectual query was
“constipated” and verboten.
Roache: Yeah, yeah. The script
though was well thought through and multi-layered. In terms of taking a domestic
story, extrapolating that out into something epic. So that’s why you had
structure. That’s where you had structure. But within that, you had this guy
who was like, “No no no, that shot isn’t about you. It’s about an
insect.”
Me: Yeah. Well, landscape is very important. In your
house, in your character’s house, there is this particular color scheme going
on. So as a result, this has to affect your performance on some level. There’s
the red carpet. The red that’s kind of a foreshadowing of what’s going to
happen later on in the particular film. And so when you are dealing with colors that
are this dominant on the set, and in your particular environment, this has to have
some effect upon your performance.
Roache was having none of this. And so I
brought up the way in which his eyebrows had moved up and down as the events unfolded
in the film. Roache mentioned something about training at the “eyebrow
school” and was then ushered away from the table.
The conversation
continued with Bose and Ehle, and there were a few interesting thoughts exchanged
about acting with gesture limitations. But the mood had permanently altered. I had
committed the unpardonable crime of “going after” the leading man. When
the actors left the table, they used a common status exercise to turn their backs to
me and not offer me any kind of eye contact. Ironically enough, I had brought up the
question of eye contact during the course of the interview.
My friend, serving
as a technical assistant, and I left the room to ponder just what had just happened.
She had helped me out with a few other multiple person interviews. And she had
observed another actor run away after I had asked a question about the relationship
between backstory and performance. This interview, she told me, had outdone that.
We then returned to the white room for my turn to talk with Sivan. I had been told
by Caitlin that I would get five minutes. Another woman — the aforementioned
bitchy publicist, Betsy Rudnick, as it turned out — then told me that there was
“no time in his schedule.” I told her that I only needed five minutes and
that I had prepared specific questions, that one of the reasons I had come was to
talk with Sivan. But talking with Sivan was impossible. A phoner was offered. My
friend, who was utterly appalled by the way I was being treated, then said, “We
don’t do phoners….ever.” I then tried to smooth things over by
asking how long Sivan was in town for, suggesting that I could come back the next day
to conduct the interview. Perhaps we could make more of this and have a serious
conversation about the film. Rudnick retreated away.
We waited some more. I
observed Rudnick laying into Caitlin, who stood shell-shocked by the window. I
approached Caitlin and asked what the problem was. She said, “I don’t
understand. The guys from The Signal loved you. So did the Hennegan
brothers.”
I then approached Rudnick and asked again what the deal was
with Sivan.
Rudnick snapped at me, telling me that there would now be no
interview with Sivan. The reasons and conditions were changing by the minute. She
told me that I had made the actors uncomfortable. That my questions were
“inappropriate.”
“What specific questions?” I
asked.
She would not say. So we left without causing a stink.
Out in
the streets, I was overcome with rage. Not for the unprofessional manner in which
Rudnick had handled the Sivan interview, but because I then fully understood how the
junket system was a sham. I was upset by the manner in which Rudnick had said
something terrible to Caitlin, who is a good person, and how all this had presumably
originated from a minor affront to Linus Roache’s ego. He seriously believed
that he could coast by on his generic answers. He seriously expected to be the center
of attention.
I felt compelled to smoke a rare cigarette.
I resolved
then and there never to do a junket interview again. And, at least for the time
being, I do not want to talk with actors. I will have nothing to do with Falco Ink or
any agency that Betsy Rudnick is a part of. I am not interested in being a marketing
tool. I’m interested in inquiry. I’m interested in maintaining the mix of
goofy and intellectual questions that have long been at the center of The Bat Segundo
Show.
Again, I leave the listeners to judge whether my questions were
“inappropriate.” The audio can be listened to at the end of this post.
Yes, there were some tangents involving Roache’s hair and the way that he used
his eyebrows. I suppose that what makes my conversation different from, say, David Letterman interviewing Gwyneth
Paltrow about her knee is that I opted not to stare in awe at Roache’s
middle-aged mien or worship his almighty presence, whereas Letterman’s intent
involves soothing Paltrow. And it says something that James Lipton, the man
considered by many to be the finest actor-oriented interviewer, often has actors
spill their guts out to him on personal matters — most notably, Jack Lemmon
confessing his alcoholism. Curtis White has
identified this tendency to prioritize the personal over the intellectual as
symptomatic of the Middle Mind, represented by interviewers like Terry Gross. Citing
an author whose real-life husband had dropped dead shortly before this author’s
book was published, White observed that “[t]his was the point at which the book
became interesting for Terry. If her poor husband hadn’t dropped dead, Terry
would never have been interested in her or her book for this ’show of
shows.’ ‘What did it feel like to suspect you’d killed your own
husband with your art?’ Fresh Air? How about Lurid Speculations?
It’s like Dr. Laura for people with bachelor’s degrees. Car Talk
has more intellectual content.”
The “inappropriateness” was
the idea that aspects of an actor’s performance were open to playful or even
quasi-intellectual questioning, and that this served in sharp contrast to the lurid
soothing and constant ego-stroking that today’s celebrity interviews require.
It wasn’t as if I had asked Roache what his favorite sexual position was.
Although I suppose that this question would have been more “appropriate”
than trying to query Roache about his acting process.
But if a film
journalist does not play the fool, if he asks an actor to use his brain, or if does
not spend his time assuaging the actor in some way, it is a contumely to the control
that the film industry wishes to maintain. Any trade secrets or insights fort he
public reserved for the DVD commentaries, which generate more money for both the
studios and the paid participants. And the Betsy Rudnicks of our world demand a
climate in which journalists are supplicant sycophants, but the perception of inquiry
is sustained because the interview is framed in a Q&A format predetermined by
unreasonable conditions and unvoiced demands. The film journalism world is as phony
and fabricated as the film world. And from these execrable conditions, self-serving
hacks like Brad Balfour boast and profit.
These people believe that you are
stupid. They believe that you will buy anything they tell you to. And as the film
industry has extended its control over the types of questions and the types of
journalists that actors and directors will talk with, the only spirit of resistance
comes from celebrity gossip reporters determined to dig up any bit of nastiness. And
the public, hoping for one small shred of the truth, laps this up. But despite this,
the pursuit for intellectual truth is abandoned.
Because of this, I have
decided to abandon my brief flirtation with film journalism. I’m sticking with
books, comics, and a few other things. When I wrote about movies in the late
’90’s, there was still the possibility of conducting interviews with
inquiry in mind. But that time has now passed. Conversation has been replaced by the
continual smooching of an actor’s ass. Current film coverage, given what I have
described above, it is not in any true sense journalistic. It also isn’t much
fun. The true sign that it’s over is that opportunist typists like Brad Balfour
seriously believe that they are journalists, and they do not recognize the sad
solipsistic leeches staring back in the mirror.
WIth the the vicious hate crime Jamaica and the Buju
Banton concert coming on its heels, I haven’t taken time until now to blog
about the hate crimes bill
that just passed the House.
By 237 to 180, the House voted to include
crimes spurred by a victim’s “gender, sexual orientation or gender identity”
under the hate-crime designation, which now applies to crimes spurred by the
victim’s race, religion, color or national origin.
“The bill is passed,”
Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is gay, announced to
applause, most of it from Democrats.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, the House
vote to include gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity in existing
legislation, would have effect of (1) giving the federal government the authority to
help investigate bias-motivated attacks based on those three categories, (2) provide
additional resources to state and local agencies to help investigate and prosecute
these crimes, and (3) allow federal authorities to get involved if local and state
authorities fail to or just don’t want to act.
Unfortunately, there
was no veto-proof margin in the House vote, and none expected in the Senate, which
means that the measure will most likely not pass because Bush is already talking
veto.
Under intense pressure from conservative religious organizations
to derail the bill, the White House on Thursday called it “unnecessary and
constitutionally questionable,” issuing the latest in a string of veto threats
aimed at the congressional Democratic majority.
…With Democrats in control,
the bill appears certain to reach Bush. But the White House warned in a statement
that the president’s “senior advisors would recommend that he veto the
bill.”
The statement said state and local laws already covered the
violence addressed in the legislation. “There has been no persuasive
demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent
crime enforcement,” the administration said.
Not surprising from an
administration whose approval ratings are now dipping into the 20s. But what’s
interesting is the veto promise in the context of the reasons Bush’s right wing
support gave for opposing the legislation: They’re afraid they be able to
preach hatred and won’t have anyone left to hate. At least, not anyone that
it’s OK to hate.
Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, bush, crime, culture, current events, gender, hate crimes, politics, race, religion
Some bill opponents also say the measure could stifle
religious expression. They derided the measure as “thought crimes”
legislation, contending that a pastor who preached against homosexuality could be
charged with a hate crime if one of his church members committed a hate crime. The
bill’s supporters dispute that, saying the measure preserves 1st Amendment
rights.
Even less surprising is the news that black ministers were
scrambling to get on board the hate bandwagon.
A coalition of conservative
African American pastors is lobbying Congress to vote against a bill that would
extend federal hate-crimes laws to cover gays, saying they fear it would prevent them
from preaching against homosexuality.
Several pastors last week urged House
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), a sponsor of the bill, and
other members of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the proposed Local
Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
They say it would pin the hate
crime label on their sermons against homosexuality, which they consider a sin.
“This bill will offer a status for gays, lesbians and transgender people
under the equal protection status that can muzzle the black church,” said
Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., pastor of Hope Christian Church in Lanham and founder of
the High Impact Leader Coalition. “This law can be applied in the way that can
keep the church from preaching the Gospel.”
The irony is that the bill
would allow an agency like the FBI to get involved in cases of bias-related crimes
based on gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity if/when state and local
authorities won’t, much like the FBI did when it stepped in to investigate and
prosecute the murders of civil rights workers in the south when local and state
authorities failed or refused to carry out justice. Even if the murderers
weren’t convicted for taking those lives, the federal government could and did
charge them with civil
rights violations.
The FBI investigated what are now called hate crimes
as far back as the 1920s. Our role increased following the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. Before then, the federal government took the position that
protection of civil rights was a local function, not a federal one. However, the
murders of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney,
near Philadelphia, Mississippi, in June 1964 provided the impetus for a visible and
sustained federal effort to protect and foster civil rights for African Americans.
MIBURN, as the case was called (it stood for Mississippi Burning), became the largest
federal investigation ever conducted in Mississippi. On October 20, 1967, seven men
were convicted of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of the slain civil
rights workers. All seven were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to ten
years.
What passed in the house is an extension of the 1969 law, which
covers the following (according to Wik
ipedia).
18 USC 245 (b)(2), enacted in 1969, permits federal prosecution
of people who “by force or threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or
interferes with… any person because of his race, color, religion or national
origin and because he is or has been” attempting to engage in one of six types
of federally protected activities, such as voting or going to school. Penalties for
hate crimes involving firearms are prison terms of up to 10 years, while crimes
involving kidnapping, sexual assault, or murder can bring life terms or the death
penalty.[1]
Nothing in there about preaching. But, essentially, those black
ministers and their white evangelical counterparts want to leave bias-crimes based on
gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity in a post-1964 state. Why, because
they’re afraid the won’t be able preach sermons like this one from D.C.’s own Willie Wilson, or this one from D.C.’s
Alfred Owens. There’s nothing in either piece of legislation that would
cause a minister to be dragged from the pulpit for anti-gay preaching, and anyone who
says otherwise is either deluded or engaged in deliberate deceit.
The
ministers and the rest who oppose the bill, and will likely cheer the
president’s veto don’t have anything more to fear than the Ku Klux Klan,
White Aryan Resistance, or any
other hate group. They’re still free to spout their hatred; as free as they
ever were. There are consequences, as W.A.R and Tom Metzger found out in 1988, if
their words include incitement to violence against a particular group, and those
words lead to actions by those who received them. But, that’s about it.
What this is about, is when and where federal authorities should be restricted
from getting involved when a bias-related crime occurs and local or state authorities
either can’t or won’t investigate and prosecute, like southern sheriffs
and all-white juries often did decades ago. This is about who deserves justice when
they’re attacked or killed because of who they are. It’s about whose
lives are worth the effort to get justice and whose lives aren’t.
Basically, it’s about who its still OK to hate. In which case we have but to
look at previous hate crime victims and their stories.
Victims like little
Ronnie Paris, Jr., whose story I wrote about earlier.
January, 2005, three year old Ronnie Antonio Paris died of
injuries after being beaten by his father, Ronnie Paris, Jr. Ronnie’s father,
Ronnie Paris, Jr., was convicted of second degree murder. News reports give us the
impression Ronnie Antonio Paris’ father was trying to make Ronnie Antonio tough
and to teach him to fight, because he did not want Ronnie Antonio to grow up to be
gay.
The brain trauma Ronnie Antonio received when he was being taught to
fight appears to have been too much for his body. News articles indicate he stopped
eating, wet himself and went into a coma. He died six days later.
Victims
like Steen Keith
Fenrich, killed by his step-father because he was gay.
In an ugly suburban drama somewhat reminiscent of dour moods
in the film, American Beauty, a 36-year old Long Island man, John Fenrich has killed
himself after murdering his 19-year old stepson, Steen Keith Fenrich, and
dismembering the boy’s body. Wanda, the teen’s mother, is black. John,
his homophobic stepfather, was white.
The murdered youth’s severed
skull, found Tuesday, bore racist and anti-gay slurs. It was discovered by a local in
a plastic container in a Queens park, along with a foot and some mashed bone
fragments.
The elder Fenrich had also carved his stepson’s Social
Security number into the boy’s head. Upon hearing that his remains had been
discovered, John Fenrich telephoned a TV station, News12 Long Island, early Wednesday
morning.
Here’s what was left of Steen
Fenrich.
On March 21, 2000, a man walking through Alley Pond Park in
Bayside, Queens, found a big blue plastic tub. He opened it, finding an acid-burned
skull, a foot bone with flesh on it and other crushed body parts. He took with its
grisly contents to stunned Emergency Service Unit officers who happened to be parked
nearby.
The skull was scrawled with a Social Security number and a racist and
anti-gay slur — on his skull in fact was written with a marker “gay
nigger number one”. Police initially suspected the grim find might be the
result of an occult killing because the Social Security number included
“666.”
Victims like Arthur “J.R.”
Warren, killed because he was gay.
Arthur Carl Warren, known as J.R., was murdered on July 4
2000 in Grant Town, Marion County, West Virginia
Brenda Warren remembers the
last time she saw her son, Arthur, as if it were yesterday. J.R., as he was known,
went out around 11:30 p.m. to enjoy the Fourth of July fireworks in Grant Town, a
hamlet of about 700 in the shadow of the Appalachians in northern West Virginia. As
he walked out the door, she reminded him of his 12:30 curfew. When J.R. didn’t
return home by 2:30, she went to bed thinking he must have spent the night at a
friend’s.
Soon after he left home, Warren apparently came across David
Allen Parker and Jared Wilson, 17-year-olds with whom he was acquainted. The boys
drove in Parker’s Camaro to an abandoned Grant Town home and began kicking and
pummeling Warren there. They then drove Warren, who begged to be taken home, to a
deserted stretch of roadway and ran over his body with the car in an attempt to
disguise Warren’s massive injuries as a hit-and-run. In a statement to police,
Wilson charged that Parker was infuriated by rumors that he was having a sexual
relationship with Warren.
Victims like Sakia Gunn,
stabbed to death because she was a lesbian. She was just waiting for a bus.
Sakia was a fifteen-year-old African-American lesbian. Two
months ago Friday, in the early hours of May 11, she was murdered.
That night,
Sakia and her friends traveled from their hometown of Newark, New Jersey to Chelsea
Piers in Manhattan. Scores and young queer people of color spend their weekend nights
there, where they feel safe and part of a community.
After their evening on
the piers, the young group took the train back to Newark. They walked to the bus stop
and waited. A large police booth stood at the corner. It was empty.
A white
station wagon with two men in it pulled up to the curb. According to one of Sakia’s
closest friends, Valencia, the men started harassing the girls and asking them to
come closer. The girls said no, they weren’t interested. They explained they were
gay.
One of the men got out of the car. He attacked the girls, holding one of
them in a choke-hold. Sakia and Valencia started fighting him. Sakia hit him. Then he
stabbed her in the chest.
The man ran back to his car and sped away. The girls
raced to a car that had stopped at a red light and asked the driver to take them to
the hospital. He did. Sakia died in her friend Valencia’s arms in the emergency
room.
Victims like Gwen Aurujo. She was killed by
men who discovered she was transgendered, after having had sex with her.
At the party on (October 3, 2002) it was
discovered, by forced inspection (conducted by a young woman at the party), that
Araujo had male genitalia. In an explosion of activity, the men that she had sexual
relations with became extremely agitated. Once it was discovered that Gwen Araujo was
biologically male, Mike Magidson began choking her in the hallway of the house. At
this point numerous guests left the residence. Jose Merel and Jaron Nabors remained
inside the residence with Mike Magidson. Jason Cazares claimed to go outside at this
point, however he did not leave because he had arrived in Mike Magidson’s
truck. Once everyone left, the three assailants began assaulting Araujo. Jose Merel
struck her over the head with a frying pan and then struck again with a can of
tomatoes, causing a gash to her head which bled profusely. Jaron Nabors struck her
with a barbell weight. Mike Magidson kneed her in the head against the living room
wall. The blow was so forceful that her head caused an indentation in the plaster
wall. After some time in the living room, Araujo was then taken to the garage of the
home, where she was strangled by a rope (stories conflict as to whether Mike Magidson
or Jaron Nabors strangled the victim). Most accounts have Jose Merel cleaning blood
out of the carpet at the time she was strangled. She was then hog-tied, wrapped in a
blanket and placed in the bed of a pick-up truck. The three assailants, plus Jason
Cazares drove her body to parkland in El Dorado County, California, a wooded area in
the foothills of the Sierra Nevada known as Silver Fork, where she was finally buried
in a shallow grave. It is not clear at what point during this sequence of events
Araujo’s death occurred. However the autopsy showed that she died from
strangulation associated with blunt force trauma to the head.
Victims like
Tyra Hunter. She
died as a result of injuries after being in an automobile accident. When EMTs cut
open her close to treat her wounds, and discovered she was transgendered, they stood
back and laughed instead of delivering treatment.
On Aug. 7, a routine car accident in Washington, D.C.,
turned into a demonstration of intolerance and disrespect for human life. Tyra Hunter
was a passenger in a car when it was broadsided by another car at a four-way stop.
When fire department personnel arrived at the scene Tyra and the driver had been
pulled from the car and were lying on the ground. As a crowd gathered, a male
firefighter began treating Tyra for her injuries. That is, until he cut open her
pants leg and noticed she had male genitalia. Tyra was a male-to-female
transsexual.
At that point, according to eye witnesses, the firefighter stood
up and backed away from Tyra, who was semi-conscious and gasping for breath. One
witness quoted him as saying, “this ain’t no bitch,” as he began
joking with the other fire department personnel at the scene. Another witness at the
scene heard one of the firefighters say, “look, it’s got a cock and
balls.” While the firefighters stood around making jokes about her,
Tyra’s treatment was discontinued temporarily.
People at the scene,
frustrated with the firefighters’ behavior, began shouting for them to help
Tyra. Finally, some other firefighters went to work at treating her injuries. She
later was transported to D . C . General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Victims like Brandon Teena beaten,
raped, questioned by an unsympathetic sheriff, and then killed by the two male
acquaintances who’d beaten and raped him.
Teena’s forced outing caused a stir in the small town.
His girlfriend, Lana, however, did not react negatively to the news, and in fact
bailed him out of jail. Nevertheless, some of Lana’s male friends who had
become close to Teena were shocked and angered by the disclosure.
Two of those
friends, 22-year-old John Lotter (an ex-boyfriend of Lana’s) and 21-year-old
Tom Nissen, violently confronted Teena at a Christmas Eve party and pulled down his
pants in order to humiliate him in front of Lana. Later that night, after getting him
alone, Lotter and Nissen raped and severely beat Teena. They also threatened to kill
him if he reported what they had done to him.
After escaping from the two men,
Teena nevertheless immediately made his way to the police and reported the attack.
Lotter and Nissen were brought in for questioning, but subsequently released, with no
arrests having been made.
One week later, on New Year’s Eve, Lotter and
Nissen decided to track Teena down. They discovered him at the remote farmhouse of
Lisa Lambert, with whom he had been staying. Lotter and Nissen murdered Teena by
shooting and stabbing him; they also killed Lambert and another houseguest, Phillip
DeVine.
Victims like Paul
Broussard. He ws 27 years old when he was killed.
On the night of July 4, 1991, Paul Broussard, a 27-year-old
gay banker in Houston, and two of his friends, Cary Anderson and Richard Delaunay,
were assaulted as they traversed a parking lot in the Montrose area. Their assailants
were 10 youths from the Woodlands, an upscale suburb north of Houston. The boys (all
but three were only 17, the eldest was 22) had been cruising the Montrose area
earlier that evening, harassing those they presumed gay by throwing rocks at them.
With their “queer rocks” as they called them, they had already smashed
the windshield of a car and hit a passing man in the mouth. When the attackers
encountered the three men, they began by asking for the directions to Heaven, a
nearby gay nightclub. Upon being told the directions, the boys leapt out of their two
cars and assaulted Broussard and his friends with fists, steel-toed boots,
two-by-fours studded with nails, and at least one knife. Broussard’s two friends,
Delaunay and Anderson, although injured, managed to escape. Broussard, however, was
trapped and subjected to a vicious beating.
As they assaulted Broussard,
according to Delaunay, the boys were cheering and yelling wildly, roaring like the
crowd in a football game. “We were the football,” as Delaunay later said.
In the end Paul Broussard suffered multiple cuts and abrasions, a puncture by a nail
driven through a board, a broken rib, bruised testicles, three stab wounds–and
death. As he lay almost unconscious on the ground with his hand raised as if pleading
for mercy or for help, two of the assailants rifled his pockets and took his comb as
a “souvenir.” Then the boys drove off, still yelling and cheering. As
they returned to the Woodlands going north up I-45, the two carloads of assailants
drove side-by-side down the highway, leaning out of the windows and slapping palms
together in noisy “high-fives.” They capped off the evening with a
pre-dawn breakfast at a Denny’s restaurant. According to later depositions, it was
at the Denny’s that Jon Buice showed a knife to some of the others, and bragged
that with it he had “stuck the queer.”
After being treated by EMS
on the spot, Paul Broussard was transported to St. Joseph’s Hospital. Although
medical and hospital staff did all they could to save his life, in the end the
bleeding from the wounds could not be stemmed. Broussard died in the hospital an
agonizing eight-and-a-half hours later.
Victims like Fred
Martinez, just 16 when he was killed.
On June 21, Fred Martinez, Jr., a 16-year-old, Native
American high school student - who described himself as openly gay and
“two-spirit” - was found beaten to death on June 21st. The badly
decomposed body of 16-year-old Fred Martinez Jr. was found near the sewer ponds south
of Cortez by two young boys who were playing in the area. Martinez’s body had
been there nearly a week. Autopsy results suggest Martinez had been bludgeoned.
Two-Spirit is a term used by some Native Americans to describe a person who
embraces a gender identity that differs from his or her biological sex and/or a
person who is attracted to members of the same sex. The term, which may be defined or
used differently by various Native Americans, stems from a traditional belief that
some people have two spirits, embodying both male and female gender identities.
…Fred Martinez was last seen at his home on June 16 and reportedly had said he
was going to the carnival at the Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo. He never returned
home.
Police did not contact his mother, Pauline Mitchell, until June 25th
despite repeated calls to their office reporting her son missing. On July 3rd, Shaun
Murphy, 18, was arrested and has been charged with second-degree murder and police
were told that Murphy had bragged to a friend that “he had beat up a
fag.”
Victims like Michael
Sandy. Just last year, he was killed while running from an attack by thee men who
were luring gay men in to meeting in order to beat and rob them.
Michael Sandy, 29, logged onto the Internet Sunday night,
Oct. 8, and got lucky—he met someone. A guy who went by the screen name
“Fireyefox” asked him to meet in a parking lot in Plum Beach,
Brooklyn.
Only Sandy wasn’t lucky. It was a setup. A group of young men
allegedly planned to rob Sandy. They beat him and chased him into nearby traffic on
the Belt Parkway, according to reports, where he was struck by a car. The driver did
not stop. And the assailants beat Sandy again along the side of the road.
Sandy, a gay African American, was hospitalized in critical condition until
Friday, Oct. 13, when his family took him off life support and he died.
Victims like Dwan Prince,
who was gay bashed so violently that he remained in a prolonged coma afterwards, and
suffered handicaps related to his beating after recovering from his coma.
The victim of a vicious gay hate crime has been unable to
tell the police about his attack because he remains unconscious. Brooklyn resident
Dwan Prince was severely beaten last week as he was taking out the garbage from his
apartment.
According to published reports and eyewitnesses, three men in a
black sedan car beat Prince. They were apparently yelling anti-gay epithets as they
pummeled him. “It was pretty brutal”, said Clarence Patton, acting executive
director of the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project.
The
attack occurred in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn at the corner of East 94
Street and Kings Highway last Wednesday night. As reported by several news outlets,
Prince was taking the trash out before midnight. The three men jumped from the car
and allegedly started beating him. They left Prince on the ground and returned soon
after to beat him more.
“Nobody saw the first attack,” Anthony David told
the New York Post. “When they came back he was already unconscious on the floor,
then they started kicking and stomping him.”
Witnesses tried to come to
Prince’s aid, but the attackers kept them at bay. They reportedly were calling the
victim a “faggot” as they continued to beat him. After kicking Prince in the
head, the three suspects ran off.
Victims like Billy Jack
Gaither. He was beaten, his throat cut, and his body burned by people he knew.
On February 19, 1999, Billy Jack Gaither, a
thirty-nine-year-old gay man who worked at the Russell Athletics apparel company near
Sylacauga, Alabama, was brutally beaten to death. His throat was cut, and his body
was bludgeoned with an ax handle before being thrown on top of a pile of tires and
set on fire. In the weeks following the killing, two men came forward to police as
the killers: Steven Mullins and Charles Monroe Butler. Butler, the younger of the
two, came forward to police first. He described the night of the murder in great
detail: how he had never heard of Billy Jack Gaither prior to the night of the
killing; how his friend Steve Mullins found him at a bar playing pool and asked him
to take a ride into the woods with himself and Billy Jack; how Billy Jack started
“talking queer stuff” that set off a violent reaction in Butler; and then
how he stood by as Mullins beat Billy Jack to death. In June of 1999, Steven Mullins
pled guilty to capital murder; Butler stood trial and was found guilty of the same
charge by a jury. In August of 1999, both Mullins and Butler were sentenced to life
in prison without parole.
Victims like Barry Winchell.
Barry Winchell fired a .50-caliber machine gun well enough
to be the best marksman in his company. He hoped to someday become an Army helicopter
pilot.
But Winchell’s life ended violently last month, not on a
battlefield somewhere but in his barracks at Fort Campbell, where he was bludgeoned
to death with a baseball bat.
Army prosecutors say he was murdered by a
soldier in his platoon. But gay rights advocates say suggestions that hatred for
homosexuals may have played a role reveals something larger about the military
itself.
“Clearly, anti-gay harassment has been a huge problem with
`don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue,”’ C. Dixon
Osburn, co-executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said
Wednesday. “Each year, the reports of anti-gay harassment from verbal gay
bashing on to death threats have increased.'’
Victims Like Alan Schindler.
Allen R. Schindler Jr., 22, of Chicago Heights, Ill., was
serving as a radioman on the amphibious assault ship “U.S.S. Belleau
Wood,” in the Navy in Okinawa, Japan. He was brutally murdered on October 27,
1992 by two shipmates in a toilet in a park in Sasebo, one being Airman Apprentice
Terry M. Helvey, 21. Helvey beat and stomped Schindler to death because Schindler was
gay. Helvey’s attack was so vicious that he destroyed every organ in
Schindler’s body. Schindler was so badly beaten that he could hardly be
identified afterward. Schindler’s mother, Dorothy Hajdys-Holman, could only
identify her son by the remains of a tattoo on his arm. The medical examiner compared
Schindler’s injuries to those sustained by victims of fatal airplane crashes.
Victims like Danny
Overstreet.
Danny Lee Overstreet had a family that loved him. He had a
poodle named Friday that was his world. And the man with a quick and hearty laugh had
a regular job like many in Roanoke.
Overstreet also had a sexual orientation
that cost him his life.
He was gay.
For that, an angry stranger
sentenced him to death.
A burst of gunfire at a dimly lit Salem Avenue bar
struck seven people.
Overstreet, closest to the gunman, took a bullet in his
chest. The 43-year-old crumpled to the floor of the Backstreet Cafe.
Victims
like Kevin Aviance, who was gay bashed in
New York last year, and had to be hospitalized because of his injuries.
According to a felony complaint filed by prosecutors, the
men followed Aviance, called him derogatory names and threw two garbage bags and a
paint can at the singer before surrounding and attacking him.
Four young men
suspected of beating a recording artist while yelling anti-gay slurs were arraigned
on assault charges, but did not enter a plea.
They are accused of chasing and
jumping Kevin Aviance, 38, at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday in the city’s East
Village.
…Len Evans, Aviance’s publicist, said the singer could hear
passers-by yelling at the attackers to stop.
Aviance suffered a broken jaw,
bruised knee and other injuries, the complaint said.
Victims like James Maestas, another story I blogged earlier.
James Maestas, 21, and his partner Joshua Stockham 24, of
Albuquerque had just finished lunch with several female friends at a Santa Fe
restaurant and had gone outside for a smoke when five men drove into the parking lot.
The men attempted to talk up the girls and at some point got into an argument with
Maestas and Stockham.
A police statement says that the argument escalated
with one of the men calling Maestas and Stockham “faggots” and trying to
provoke a fight.
Stockham, Maestas and the females got into a car and began
driving away. The men then began throwing rocks at the car according to the statement
said.
It didn’t end there. Maestas was severely beaten
and left in a coma.
Maestas apparently was kicked so hard the food in his
stomach came up his throat and went into his lungs, Rosen said. Stomach acid badly
burned his lungs, she said, and he is breathing with the help of a respirator.
He has been running a fever and must be monitored closely, because the risk of
infection is high, Rosen said.
Maestas’ face and mouth are bruised and
swollen, she said. “They haven’t even been able to see if he has all his lower
teeth because his lower lip is so mangled.”
While a brain scan didn’t
reveal any damage, she said, it’s too early to tell for sure. Maestas has not
regained consciousness, and doctors are keeping him sedated, she said.
Doctors
don’t know whether he will suffer permanent damage from the attack if he pulls
through, Rosen said.
Maestas pulled through, but two of his
attackers only got 90 days because the judge didn’t want to
“ruin” them.
State District Judge Michael Vigil declined Friday
to send the two men most culpable in the beating of two gay men last year to the
state penitentiary.
“You both would be ruined if I sent you to
prison,” Vigil told Isaia Medina, 20, and Gabriel Maturin, 21. “I would
be throwing you away. I don’t want to do that.”
Instead, Vigil
sentenced Medina and Maturin to 90 days in the Santa Fe County jail, followed by a
year of house arrest during which they will have to spend weekends in jail. After
that, each man will spend five years on probation and have to perform 500 hours of
community service, which will include completing a curriculum on tolerance, talking
to high school and college students about tolerance and working with the group,
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
Some victims
are nameless and faceless.
The woman said she and the gay man left the
party and had walked halfway down the driveway before the others caught them, knocked
them to the ground and took them to an adjoining yard that contained “several large
barking dogs,” the warrant says. Smith told them they should get ready to be thrown
to the dogs, but instead he and others took them to the camper parked in the mobile
home’s front yard, the warrant states.
While some of the partygoers tied up
the gay man with rope and began hitting him, “Uriah told them that this was a
kidnapping and they were not going to die yet,” according to the warrant. A female
from the party lifted the woman’s head and kicked her in the face, the warrant
says. The woman said she felt her nose break, the warrant says.
“(The woman)
was not tied up, but was held in the camper for most of the night while all of the
male subjects kept hitting, kicking, slapping and knocking (the gay man) down,” the
warrant states. “The male subjects would knock (the gay man) down and if he did not
get up off of the ground within a certain count or if he would make any noise, they
would jump on him, hitting and kicking him.
“This continued all night until
the sun was about to come up.”
And, of course, victims like Matthew Shepard. His murder
is perhaps the most well known example of an anti-gay hate crime, and the first to
come to mind. The bill passed in the House even bears his name. But I wanted to focus
on other stories in this post, to show the breadth and diversity of the victims and
their stories.
Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother, and Joe Solomnese make
a good point that not all crimes are based on hatred.
Every act of violence
is tragic and harmful in its consequences, but not all crime is based on hate. A
bias-motivated crime affects not only the victim and his or her family but an entire
community or category of people and their families.
The current federal
hate-crimes law, enacted nearly 40 years ago, covers only bias attacks based on race,
ethnicity, national origin, and religion. In the case of a hate crime based on sexual
orientation or gender identity, our government’s hands are tied: It doesn’t have
the authority to go after perpetrators of anti-LGBT violent crime. It’s time to
update the law to protect everyone.
How does it affect an entire category of
people? It sends a message much like the one sent by the recent homophobic
violence in Jamaica, and summed up rather effectively by a a commenter on my post
about the beating.
Get this straight. Gay life is not new to Jamaica. What
we will not tolerate is anyone promoting this nastiness as normal. Just as it is not
normal for human beings and animals to mate, the same applies.
There are
several prominent, rich and poor fags in jamaica who have never been beaten all
because they know their place.
We will never accept it as a normal way of
life. Keep your closets in your homes. It is clear that homosexuals dont want kids,
so do not influence my children with your nastiness.
So anyone who flaunts it
then we apply - Batty bwoy fi dead - Memba dat!
It’s a message
effectively delivered by a
Jamaican public defender. In that sense, hate crimes based on gender, sexual
orientation, or gender identity are meant to send a message to entire communities in
the same way the Klan’s “night rides” were meant to intimidate
people and send a message: know your place or this can happen to you too.
And, as was the case 40 years ago and over 200 years ago, if the local and state
authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t go after perpetrators of hate crimes,
there wasn’t much the federal authorities could do. How often did all white
juries acquit obviously guilty defendants for murdering blacks? How often did local
and state law enforcement look the other way until the federal government got the
authority to step in?
What gave them that authority? Civil rights. Federal
authorities are empowered to take on cases in which civil rights are violated. Up
until then, the groups targeted didn’t have any recognized civl rights. They
were less than full citizens, and their lives were less valuable. It wasn’t
necessary to punish perpetrators because it wasn’t necessary to treat the
victim’s lives as though they were equal in worth to those of actual citizens;
citizens who enjoyed legally protected civil rights.
Forty years later, the
Bush White House says it’s not “necessary” to bring the full weight
of justice to bear in the cases of victims I’ve just named.
Under
intense pressure from conservative religious organizations to derail the bill, the
White House on Thursday called it “unnecessary and constitutionally
questionable,” issuing the latest in a string of veto threats aimed at the
congressional Democratic majority.
…The statement said state and local laws
already covered the violence addressed in the legislation. “There has been no
persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of
violent crime enforcement,” the administration said.
Forty years ago,
if state and local authorities chose to ignore state and local laws — say, the next
time a local black was lynched — the federal government’s hands were tied.
Forty years later the Bush administration is preemptively tightening the ropes for
the next (inevitable) time someone is attacked or killed because of their gender,
sexual orientation, or gender identity. So, the federal government’s hands will
remain tied, even if state and local authorities choose to sit on theirs, or use them
to further victimize.
And I’ve said all this to finally ask a few
questions. It only took so long because first I needed to show the victims and tell
their stories before I could ask. Are the crimes committed against these victims any
less hate-motivated than crimes based on race, religion, color or national origin?
Among these victims, whose case should receive less of the full resources of law
enforcement than other victims attacked because of their race, religion, color or
national origin? Among these victims, who is less deserving of justice than victims
attacked because of their race, religion, color or national origin?
Among
these victims, who’s life is worth less than anyone else’s? Among these
victims, whose murder or injury is it OK to ignore?
Among these victims, who
is it OK to hate?
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