Outfest UCLA Legacy Project I Ron Athey, Zackary Drucker, Catherine Gund

and I have an extra ticket to bring you to Mexico it was excellent and actually props to UCLA which was supportive of the film by wanting to create as part of the archive about Ron a really coherent long-form interview and so it was UCLA that commissioned me to do the interview that you see of Ron throughout the film and then they took me to Mexico and then we went to by then we were ice across keep saying this you know so the whole sort of ball rolling through town it was really funny I kept trying to film the people we were walking by because they were all just like what's going so I think the first time actually that I saw Ron was with my friend Sarah Pettit we went and saw him at PS 122 remember and Julie and you got that huge hematoma on your head that night it came in and I was like that's not how it's supposed to go and it was a really big but it was my honor and my pleasure I could listen to Ron all day yeah what was the majority of the footage of the performance documentation from that show in Mexico that was another well we did obviously the deliverance part was all in Croatia which was at the very end there is some archival so pig in the Triangle in the pyramid there's two versions of that so you see we tried to make the first part martyrs and saints look like it wasn't in Mexico and then four scenes look like it was and then deliverance it was in Croatia but Mexico was extraordinary because they did they hosted the entire thing and they put during as they said in the intermission part of deliverance was performed in that I mean that was an amazing place it was like a six hour night it was a really long night yeah all right Papa Ron I know I feel like it was too much work to say I'm well hey that's my I mean that's really where I wanted to start I know that like is a creator of anything your subject position is constantly moving forward right and when you revisit a piece of your past it always looks different it looks different every time the story continues to change so how did it feel watching it tonight like what bumped you what stuck out I think the immediacy of how we responding to aids and also that everybody was dying so fast and a lot of people are dead that are in that story and I think after we did film vessels with this there was this period where I had so much emptiness from death that I didn't want to think about this I kind of embraced the post AIDS period AIDS over everyone's dead only line people live through it just sometimes I would be that harsh but I'd it's hard to understand missing pieces and your psyche because too many people have been taken away and this there's also other things like these kind of intense times form communities that are so close-knit nothing would hold those communities that close together when you're not right in the middle of that so I feel like some of us also never got over holding people that close and being so acting out emotionally in public with padding and touching and I think the sexual energy was also in response to the morbidity of that time that it was a hyper sexual time as well because it was at the extremes and one of the things that I was just struck by and I'm just warming the thoughts as they speak the multiplicity like within this group you know the fact that it was various types of I was thinking about just gender subversion within that it was the kind of like pre trans movement I was thinking about trans communities today I've kind of really distinguished themselves you know like a separate entity and I was wondering if you know a group of dykes and [ __ ] and genders murders could come together under these kinds of practices like there's an arc of polymorphously perverse where we all come together and then separate again I I do believe it's high time for another time of mixed play yes that idea of how extreme we were talking about at a dinner and how extreme we were and how extremely active and what we said and what we did and how we looked and and it was in reaction to there was like a it was a void on the other side it was like living on a flat earth and it was just the edge of it it was so close to us and I mean people were dying every day it was it's impossible to communicate it somebody who hasn't been through something like that um either from being old you know my mother has that now so she's got friends died all the time and she's like this is like you but I remember that at the time she was so hyper protective and she was so upset and and inexperienced with how to help a 20 year old deal with the fact that all my people were dying and I think that that is you know when you say we just watched this you know encyclopedic film about everything Ron did like there's a film now I forgot it's called a young baby who's sick it's a game play me you're saying but it's this animated game that a dad made when his son was born with the terminal illness and he talks about wanting to film everything and I think I felt like that like I'm just gonna film it all because then it won't ever disappear you know in the little bits that we had of cliff I mean think about it we probably have all the footage there is of cliff is in that 15 seconds because people just didn't have footage of themselves and so in that way you know at the beginning I thought alright there's a really long film I wonder if everybody's your relationship documentation I know that you know with live performance there's always kind of like question what do you want documented how do you because you have this amazing experience and then look at this like early 90s really flat gray video but I learned to kind of work with it you know like to to see how to correct things but also I noticed sometimes the gaze of the camera is harsher than the live experience especially in those big tableaux pieces you could look at whatever you want to but the camera person would only look at the most grotesque moments not actually something in multiples people can choose who to settle on but I remember part of the close-ups was because in the first when they put up martyrs and saints in the X today so it was a in a long each part was done in a different part of the church and this was in that long long room and so they were afraid that people wouldn't be able to see all the stuff the nurses were doing from the back so we put monitors throughout yeah and so I would while I was filming and recording they were actually projecting which is why I have all those real close-ups on pigs mouth and each of the cutting open but also remember I fell off the stage that was my dramatic contribution and yeah I mean cross walk to the edge sure that you you go in and you sort of pick what to look at if we were doing it today it would be a virtual terrific virtual reality experience um Catherine I was so impressed with your incredible cannon of films especially predating 1996 I mean it seems like hallelujah was kind of a turning point within your Oprah but for you know 15 years before that you were so dedicated to you know AIDS activism and kind of really creating awareness campaigns through film making how do you see you know the kind you're kind of like relationship to activism in art making I'd say I mean I asked myself that question every day because I you know and I just fall back on this idea that the video camera really functions as my journal and there was a new article that Donna mankiewicz just wrote about the original article she wrote in the Village Voice about the murder of Brandon Teena and she is the one who wrote the thing about how Brandon had been abused as a child and therefore had turned to being a lesbian or didn't want to be a lesbian didn't wanna be there was just this way this sort of convoluted way that she had tried to make sense at the time and Richard Goldstein was her editor at the voice and she wrote this I felt pretty interesting piece last week about how she really got it wrong and there wasn't a language at that time for talking and one of the films that I'd made before hallelujah was called cousins boy and it was just me and my roommate's and my lover talking about the brandon teena case and it you know i was on your website yeah is if you can stream it yeah i think so yeah i mean i'm sure it's cuz they did a few in england and scotland recently they did these retrospectives of those early short pieces which people don't usually ask about they talk about the Civello are born to fly or something but um so it was cool to see it again and to see this language it's like this and you asking Trane's in this or even with chabela people saying if she were alive today would she have been trans which I thought was such an odd question because you can't just take people out of their history and put them into a different place and have it be any kind of meaningful so but I think it's just that and it was just recording and recording and not thinking there was going to be any reason to make a long film or to make a film for anybody outside of us when we started and act up you know there weren't very many cameras the mainstream media was doing that isolating thing like here they are all alone so sad so skinny so dead and we were like wait look at all of us we're we're happy and together and sad and skinny and living and dying and all these things and you know look let's let's just make it we literally made our first act up videos for people and act up to take home with them during the holidays to Nebraska or wherever they were from and show their families what their lives were like because if you turn on the TV you wouldn't have seen it and that was the act of New York landscape like here in Los Angeles when queer nation overlapped with Club [ __ ] I always felt like a criminal like what am I gonna go press protests for I'm gonna lower the tone when I go out there just out of jail I don't know never felt good as a digit so I had a different kind of activist I went to a few protests but I'd never felt like I was valuable on the street I think it was always more on a personal level you know and I looked even in the early 80s I was walking around Pomona getting bottles thrown out of me out of cars I paid the [ __ ] price again it goes back to the mortality though that everyone was dying there's nothing to lose reason to be polite and then this gift of jouissance really was embracing pleasure in the middle of activism in the middle of dying in the middle of pain and pleasure you know and we had of course the bob flanagan and sherry rose in our midst during those times - how is the thumb received when it came out what was the life of the film in the immediate well I remember the New York Times review it did what they do when they don't want to criticize a film so they just describe it you know they don't want to give you any adjectives that you can quote from so the headline was like flogging branding cutting it was literally like six gerunds like I was like well that's what the film has it did play on Mexican television which we were totally blown away and I thought it was instructive - when Mario says that you know in Croatia people are so used to death that to them it translated like what deliverance was about it didn't matter how people were dying it was this is true we had a lot of feedback from people judge there were still peacekeepers holding peace you know at that point a few years earlier when the war actually was still on to set that up and could barely get in so yeah there were much older man like in their 70s crying over just lost like in a general way which I found I liked that expansion you know not the center of the universe in this I never saw aids it's the only thing going on I could see and still see see bigger than that yeah so that was the first time though that it was really outside of that because we had a strange kind of split and audience with with some crossover of GLBT AIDS activists and then just gnarly tattoo dudes yeah we also got though I I was always amazed at the people who were raised in evangelical religions and across the board and I still have friends who I find out they were then we talked about this film and then they borrow it and they love it and they don't have any tattoos and they're you know whatever but I think people can identify with that [ __ ] Billy and know she and you were talking about it what is it if it's not God and you have to come up with some way to make sense and you can do that in a lot of different ways minister so so it's interesting for me just to look at still how much I talk about religion in this piece and and tried to in a different way move away from it into something more generic like mysticism but then came back in a theological way and have participated on queer theology conferences in different places and and taught at a religious school in Shreveport I fit in I love it I don't mind Southern Christians hug it out get a drive-thru daiquiri at 11 p.m. in the parking lot of the casino and drink it we premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival that was a lot of fun and we did have a theatrical release but it was pretty limited mix mix Brazil tour with the film Kiba and Paulo I mean so it went around and then it was available on DVD and you could buy it it it was um Kim's video carried it until I go to Kim's and take off the VHS what happened the revival happened can we make it happen we felt broken and moved to two different countries we all just show her that clip and try to relight the fire just wasn't time right then yeah America needs revivals how about Ronnie I always have a headache from producing thing don't we nacho me and not to have an event on Sunday the Lord s Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows if you want to see something good at 7 p.m. where is it gonna be and how can people find out about it the vortex and restless nights calm as the ticket info yearning flirtation pictures needs to make a link online for no I think I think you can stream it I think you can stream it there's a little pay wall probably 4 bucks there's like but oven pictures calm AUB eye and pictures calm and Catherine a table and pictures calm if you can't find it you can remind me because I'll have to check it was 21 years ago I think it's available we definitely still sell the DVDs and after things like this everybody in the office is like what happened because we're out of hallelujah DVDs so something will happen in England and suddenly we'll get you know orders for 30 different DVDs in England we know that somebody showed it yeah and the DVD has this incredible director's commentary as well so since there is not a blu-ray yet you should do one and have you both commentary just an idea but you said that there's there was CCTV cameras which and you obviously did this on 35 it was some of it was video we printed it on 35 okay so yeah that was a print but there's some super 8 I shot in Mexico you can see it I've done my super 8 sound so I'm curious if there's any like footage blu-ray well as a matter of fact there's all the extra footage is at the UCLA archive and to my understanding you can go there and watch it is that do we have an answer from UCLA okay and that would be everything not just the interview but they then I gave them all the footage to archive so that's like everything I shot in Mexico they would have everything so we could basically get the full well you probably couldn't take it but you can watch it blu-ray though thanks okay director's cut could you actually for a minute how could you tell us about the other ronny the-- work I think they have everything yeah okay there's some my question has to do with kind of what Pigpen says at the end when Pigman says you know before Ron dies and this kind of sense of urgency that takes place that you kind of feel throughout the film and and your express desire to get this body of work done before you died was there a moment where something clicked or you know how did what was the sort of timeline of of trying to get this work done before you're sort of inevitable death that you're talking about sort of a realization that you were going to keep working and and how does that 1996 to 1997 the the three therapy suddenly we were not funerals or hospitals anymore so it actually really was like this line where it just stopped and that's when I started working on the solar anus let me do something intellectual now with my whole emotional intellectual whole I don't know I I was weary of it by then you know that that's a long time to like push yourself into a symbol of that kind of I don't know philosophical angst and also travelling with ten people all the time like being pop all the time they're getting crabby I also had never done solo work so this suicide bed where I put all the needles in my arm that's actually on the moment so I saw that on video and I understood sometimes when you peel things away it becomes stronger so I was also just curious to work in a different form that wasn't in a theatre company form it's scarier more fabric and more people even if it's awful it's like the [ __ ] or something but to strip it down even like the the pathos is mono you know you're responsible for that so they I think that sent me in a direction which I kind of go back and forth because it's you know that's also not interesting enough for me but it was also because nobody in the States would let him put up a show anymore Walker was properly blacklisted for ten years I would self-produced to do a work in progress but I would not pay to play also they wouldn't even want me to cuz the Walker didn't use money it's just that the venue is sponsored by anyway there's such a thin premise they come after you everyone was Nellie and then I thought why am i defending the NEA and the Walker if they're afraid to show anything maybe they should close well what they hold on to that little bit of money that eventually pinched off to nothing and not think of alternatives and and sink the space with you know management that won't evolve to change and that was worried to be in the middle of that because I didn't consider myself in the caliber of the NEA for I had never applied for a grant I had never come out of the Academy you know I didn't come out of a group of artists it but when I collaborated with people I learned you know I learned so much from Julie I learned so much from various types of technicians with special effects SM people I learned things properly would happen if I put this dirty water in my nutsack you know wasn't that stupid I think I got good advice it's funny that I'm you mentioned the suicide scene because it was like in my seat if that was the I remember shooting that like I never nothing ever bothered me having the camera between me like I was wide open eyes I could watch anything nothing hurt set that scene and it still did tonight like there was and maybe these because you're alone or because I know what it what a turning point that was or that you're doing to yourself and all those needles all at once but even tonight watching it and that scene is hard to watch even through the camera lens actually by the scores was it based on an MRI machine some of that was there was a there was a MRI and also I refer a lot to EE G's I had monthly EE G's through my childhood so there's this thing when you have these kind of needles in your head and the things and grinding sounds and the hallucinogenic goggles on yeah I was deeply involved in neurological treatment to maintain a valium prescription when I was it kid four times a day but just to go further about music as I also worked with this a series of musician some a lot of them died from the early ones in a band called trance but also worked with um Barry Adamson always with that violinist Julie fouls you know and then later and the zero zero started actually working with opera and classical people were you able to travel I guess before you you left Los Angeles and tore some of your work so how long did you do that for and what's it like to be back in LA Oh about about traveling to work you mean yeah I didn't start traveling at all I never left like LA County until you know Southern California until I was in my early 20s so it's kind of late too late to traveling so um I think because of having a reason to travel always made travel more exciting to me than thinking you have to see the Eiffel Tower cuz you're in Paris like you have a host that show you the properly dodgy dark rooms and and rivers and things that are nice to see I found places like um I don't know I adapted well like the first time I went to Croatia I could hardly get in in the early 90s and um there was nothing to eat except synthetic gelato like absolutely nothing else three balls cry babying about it cuz I wasn't smart enough to bring a suitcase full of nuts I dunno I just you know same thing in Slovenia I just had different kinds of experiences in those places and was fairly addicted to it if I was home for three months I was like rocking myself because it wasn't stimulating enough England always was a home away from home and the work was received almost parallel the way it was received in LA and so it was kind of a natural move for me when I did move there and lived there for six years and and came back three years ago basically I couldn't live in a miserable [ __ ] place you know I miss happy stupid people and remembering like a different LA with cheap brat where you could just like be hot and walk around and panties and a spray bottle in the Sun and everyone had a lot of free time now I think I'm still deciding like god this like power [ __ ] New York I don't know I mean la turned into New York I don't know if I like it no it has any time everyone it's like bend over backwards to play rent on a hole yeah anyway the place has changed but I feel that a dilemma about what's next like where I want to I always want to like take an hour and a half to drive across town I feel like I'm gonna [ __ ] scream I'll be 57 in December [ __ ] this but it was amazing how everywhere you went you picked up people like they would come and join the group and then show up at the next performance they'd come across States and be like here I am I'm ready kochia and that guy the end of it those are those fun like art families like international art families you know I still see a lot of those people if we go to Madrid people come over from nearby also I you have something but does the mic want to go up there um while you're walking up there I was gonna say hi to divinity who's here with us you can stand divinity still works with me we just worked on gifts of the spirit opera so we're both in that and so we worked with a lot of singers and then with with you know the core people well so I check her public catalogue the only other title I can find that Ron has a credit on in our public catalog as hustler white which we should go some point but we had been when are you showing out there's a third to pass or white what is that night July 12th oh this this does that used to be the Tomcat that used to be the Pussycat everything thinking about another question though I mean as an artist you have to be creating you have to be thinking about your next work you have to be thinking about where the funding is from that work and so oftentimes the last thing maybe on your list is documenting and archiving your own career and how much of that has been something you've taken on and and how are you perceiving with that process sometimes that's a lot the thing I dropped the ball on because it can barely get the project together by the deadline and all sudden you know and I have a long history of experiences with people I don't ever want to photograph my work and try to sell it back to me or take control of the footage and make a lame-ass project out of it or you know it sounds something exploitive you know people even you do like a nice photo shoot with a they serve you're like googoo eyes one two tabloid press so I guess yeah I'd love to be a control freak and control every element of it but I actually moved through work faster than that so I'm not I'm not that precious I archived everything almost on accident it was just because I had a massive garage that actually was too shallow to park the car in so everything and I was in the same house from 90 so it's just like pack it in pack it in and then only a year ago was evicted from that house so that so that without archivists being shaped up into a show that'll be at I see a la 20/20 sometimes so that's a massive job to look at all that work and you're also in the process of transitioning much of it the Getty tell no one I also it's it's interesting I think doing the book pleading in the blood with Dominic Johnson this is one of the things I did when I lived in England is when I started pulling pieces of archive that had been missing things that have been borrowed stolen things that were locked up in garages like begging people to dig for the film even back to 1980 you know it just got 80s are almost impossible it's just like a little handful stuff and even the first half of the 90s the quality of things or the amount of things started picking up and then I was sitting with self obliteration and the later mm Olsen I've like 90,000 pictures of the same performance and I'm a really bad editor so just look at it I could never do to video myself I can't look at it that long drives me crazy obliterate was so when I was approaching turning 50 it's like [ __ ] you 50 50 [ __ ] 50 I'm not gonna put it away I'm not gonna say anything positive [Laughter] Mike person so great seeing the film is the first time I've seen it so in the film Bob Flanagan and sherry Rose are mentioned and then you mentioned them a little bit earlier and since I have a little bit of a personal connection that Matt was surprised no I just I just thought I would ask you about the early days with them a little bit and maybe how you mentioned them in you've been in the midst of them and maybe how you were influenced by them and maybe how they were influenced by you okay before you answer because my answer is tiny and meaningless um the sicko came out right sick sick sorry I know that's a different film totally different totally different Oh sick came out what I meant was sick Oh came out right right before this one and it was and it was so well-received I thought like and and I and I loved it and all these people were watching it and I thought people can handle this and you know so that's the only influence was making me feel like this movie could be made audiences for it I would run into your mother at kink events and sure however her camera before I knew Bob and Bob worked out the gauntlet so I knew them and in different places then nice I started hearing you know through the beyond Baroque series I know Bob did readings but when he joined the readings to the physical actions and also have comedic genius so he narrated his own situation yeah it was it was a turn-on also the release of the book modern primitives which is that's what changed the face of how everyone looked but Bob performed nailed there at olio I don't even know what horrible coffee shop is there on Sunset next to what used to be lebar Seto used to be bass coach used to be tabasco's like two doors down anyway that was guy named Julian had this gallery hardly ever used and like bobbed about there than the next year the actress Karen black sang these show tunes that had psychosexual hidden meanings tears streaming down her face really amazing anyway um we were definitely in cahoots you know I was in New York when I did sick room at the at the new Museum and of course out in Santa Monica here and and then intersected with Nine Inch Nails in them and in that period as well so yeah we're in that time but I I saw cherry also this documentary role from from really early leather parties you know back quite early actually thanks and we're getting the time signal from the back sympathy you have any last thoughts are gonna have to express them privately to patio [Applause]