Candy Says
Candy and Jeremiah
I love London's Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. In fact, are cities truly places if they don't have a yearly LGBT film festival? All I know is that spring's approach is all the more sweeter when you have queer films to see in one of the best venues in London, then the walk home afterwards alongside the Thames. I've mentioned before how great it is to be under the same cinematic roof with other queers - made me think last night that part of the reason extremist don't like us is because we are a family far more interesting and varied than them. Typically, I got tons of tickets for the festival this year, especially because they have a buy-four-ticktes-get-fifth free deal. Last night was our first one: Beautiful Darling, The Life and Times of Candy Darling. Her best friend Jeremiah was there to introduce it and then speak a little about her after the film, as well as the director, who was also someone who knew her in childhood.
Beautiful Darling is one of those straight forward documentaries, in terms of technique, where archive material is edited alongside interviews with people who were there or who were influenced by Candy. It's not meant to be groundbreaking but, strangely enough, it is a reminder of how ahead of her time she was. You can see echoes of her style in many people today (e.g. Courtney Love), her name dropped in songs by Lou Reed (now ironically played in Wal-Mart, as Jeremiah said) and the path she cleared for people in the gay community like Rupaul. In photographs she was beautiful and iconic like the Hollywood stars she aspired to be, but in footage she was a lost child that created her own reality to escape a hard life. Some of my favourite passages in the documentary were Chloë Sevigny's reading of her diaries and the photos of her childhood.
I've been thinking lately about America's decadence, especially after seeing a documentary on the BBC about the rise and fall of Detroit (Requiem for Detroit). Not that Candy Darling was decadent - far from it, she was a survivor of the decadence around her - but she came along during a time when New York was an oddball cesspit that didn't fit into America's cookie cutter Midwest mold. Before yuppies, Regan and Giuliani. But New York was never America's soul, and will never be - it's just a gateway. I'm starting to think that Detroit is America's soul - home of the cars that cut through that Heartland, home of Motown. And now it has a population of 800,000 where 2 million can fit - a dying, ghost metropolis that mirrors America's decline this century. Requiem for Detroit made me feel hopeful for America because there are people there reclaiming the city again through urban environmentalism, farming and even art. Is the next Candy Darling going to emerge from there? Or is she hiding in Iran, where to be gay means to be dead? Recording herself and then burying the tapes under the floorboard in fear of the religious police. Time capsules for when Iran finally goes green.
The socially unacceptable make the best lovers because they are so sensitive.
- Candy Darling