Scrutinizing The Gay Subtext In Hudson's Films

The only movie that's playing at both of this week's Northwest gay film festivals is Mark Rappaport's "Rock Hudson's Home Movies."

It turns up as part of the annual Northwest International Lesbian Gay Film Festival, at 11 a.m. tomorrow at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, and as part of the Neptune's 16-day gay series, at 5:50, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Monday.

The hour-long 1992 film is an attempt to use Hudson's movies to demonstrate that his on-screen career had a homosexual subtext. Whenever the words "gay" or "camp" turn up in Hudson's films, or he exchanges meaningful looks with another actor, or the character he's playing announces that "I live with my sister," Rappaport can be counted on to isolate that split-second of celluloid, analyze it, magnify it, then do everything but write a thesis around it.

Yet while his movie starts off as a series of cheap shots and out-of-context quotes, it ultimately wears you down with its steady accumulation of evidence that Hudson was expressing heavily coded sexual anxieties of the period. Particularly in the lengthier scenes between Hudson and Tony Randall, Hudson and Vittorio de Sica, and Hudson and Burl Ives, the obsessive repressiveness of studio movies in the 1950s and early 1960s becomes glaringly obvious. The use of "Pillow Talk" as a sexually ambiguous hall of mirrors is especially apt.

In addition to the clips, Rappaport has a Hudson impersonator, Eric Farr, pretend to deliver commentary from the grave. "When I died of AIDS in 1985," Farr begins one section, sounding like the deceased screenwriter who narrates "Sunset Boulevard."

Rappaport goes on to mix Hudson's complaints as a hypochondriac from "Send Me No Flowers" with the tortured dying man he played in "Seconds," plus tacky inspirational moments from his religious epics, "Battle Hymn" and "The Spiral Road." The result may flirt with tastelessness, but it's also quite eerie.

Also on the Neptune's Monday program is "Home Stories," a similar eight-minute short that constructs its own abstract suspense scenario out of film clips of Lana Turner, Audrey Hepburn, Sandra Dee, Doris Day and other terrorized late 1950s/early 1960s heroines. Like "Rock Hudson's Home Movies," it's a film editor's tour-de-force.

Tuesday through Thursday, Rappaport's film will also be the Neptune's 10:45 p.m. late show, following prime-time screenings of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's latest documentary, "Where Are We? Our Trip Through America."

Although Epstein and Friedman are personal and professional partners (they won an Oscar for "Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt"), this sweet-natured documentary isn't strictly a gay film. It was conceived as a PBS on-the-road movie, and the interviewees include not only gay Marines just back from Desert Storm, but the heterosexual creator of Vegas World, a newly divorced father, a homeless mother and a couple of 19-year-old Mississippi pot smokers who refer to their peers as "a generation of swine."

Among the highlights this weekend at the Olympia festival at Evergreen: "Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker" (11 a.m. tomorrow), "Framing Identities" (8 p.m. tomorrow), "Three Bewildered People in the Night" (11 a.m. Sunday), "Silverlake Life: The View From Here" (4 p.m. Sunday) and "Last Call at Maud's" (6 p.m. Sunday). For information, call 206-866-6000, Ext. 6542.

AROUND TOWN: "Danny Plotnick and the Kings of Super 8" is the title of tonight's 8 o'clock program at 911 Media Arts Center, 117 Yale Ave. N. The Detroit filmmaker will present a program of Super 8 shorts, including Jim Sikora's "Love, After the Walls Close In," which is based on a short story by Charles Bukowski. At 8 p.m. next Friday, 911 will resume its "Documentaries Northwest" series with the world premiere of Bobbie Birleffi's "Coming 2," which focuses on five Seattle teenagers who transform their experiences with addiction into theater, then perform their stories in schools. Tickets are $3 for 911 members, $5 for others . . . At 7:30 and 9:30 tonight, the Pike St. Cinema (Pike and Boren) is screening a collection of Bruce Bickford's clay-animation shorts, including the astonishingly creative "Prometheus' Garden." Luis Bunuel's much-banned first feature-length film, "L'Age D'Or," plays at 7:30, 9:30 and 11:30 p.m. tomorrow. G.W. Pabst's 1931 film about a mining disaster, "Kameradschaft," is scheduled at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $5. The Bickford program is presented in conjunction with Backtrack Cinema Society . . . The Seattle Art Museum continues its spring series, "The Genius of Fred Astaire," at 7:30 p.m. Thursday with a 35mm print of the 1938 Rogers-and-Astaire musical, "Carefree" . . . Shining Moment Productions' series, "Art/Director: The Baroque Science Fiction of William Cameron Menzies," concludes with a 3-D presentation of "The Maze," at 7 and 9 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at the Jewel Box Theater in the Rendezvous Restaurant. Tickets are $4 . . . Back this weekend is Nomad Video, which is screening a new program of shorts at 8 p.m. tomorrow at the OK Hotel, 212 Alaska Way S. Tickets are $4.

OUT OF TOWN: The Rialto Film Guild is screening last year's film of the Marguerite Duras novel, "The Lover," at 5:15 and 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts in Tacoma. Tickets are $5. The remarkable Italian film, "Stolen Children," which has ended its Seattle run, is also in Tacoma at Cineplex Odeon's Tacoma Central Cinemas .

FUTURE FILE: Competing children's film festivals will open May 15. "A Nordic Children's Film Festival" will be presented free at 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at the Nordic Heritage Museum. "The Children's Museum Film Festival" is part of the Seattle International Film Festival and will be presented Saturday and Sunday afternoons through June 6 at the Egyptian and Harvard Exit theaters. The Nordic series runs throughout the summer and begins with Ari Kristinsson's 1991 film, "Paper Peter." Admission will be charged for the Capitol Hill series, which starts May 15 with the Canadian film, "The Clean Machine". . . Laszlo Pal is holding another of his two-day filmmaking workshops, May 15-16 at the University of Washington. For information, call 543-2320.