Pioneers of Queer Cinema: Parting Glances | Kathy Kinney

[Applause] i sound so good on paper don't i well um there were a number of special thanks that rolled by at the end of the film and i noted one name in there peggy ryski who is here tonight the director of the film trevor which screened previously in this series and is the reason that kathy is here tonight actually because when peggy was there uh with her with her film a couple of weeks ago we mentioned that we were screening parting glances and she was like oh well kathy's one of my oldest friends i'm just gonna call her and in the courtyard out here peggy hands me her phone and i get on the phone with kathy and uh start the gear is in motion for you to be here and now you're here so thank you peggy again for your contributions to this film and to bringing kathy here tonight so um i wanted to get started by taking a little tour of your career up to this moment up to the moment that uh that you met bill sherwood um before you know when this film was just sort of a twinkle in his eye tell us a little bit about your path leading up to this dull it was very dull i um you know i had where peggy and i are both from wisconsin and uh i had no intention of being an actress and that that was the thing i really do owe my career to bill sherwood because i think not since the oldest son has been forced into the family business did anyone have less choice than i did because he really really pushed me you know i was sort of like well i didn't i really absolutely did not intend on being any kind of performer but bill was one of those people and i've always said this either you really liked him or you didn't you know he was just that kind of guy i mean i happen to really like him we were both uh only children and we sort of got along in that way but he was very controlling and i ended up knowing him because uh my friend cindy ratzlaff who's my writing partner hated to do anything by herself so she always made people hire me wherever she worked she just didn't want to be there by herself even though i had absolutely no skills as a secretary or an assistant of any kind we worked at the american psychiatric association i mean we ran the new york county district branch of the american psychiatric association the mental health of new york city two women in bib overalls you know and um and then cindy moved to wcbs tv and she made them hire me i was a statistical typist again one five six like that and um bill sure would work there they we needed a temp they hired him and it was the three of us and basically we ran that place and that's and that was where we were working when first he wrote another movie um for me and uh quentin crisp if anyone remembers him and quentin was already i mean what a great and amazing individual but he his memory was sort of he just really didn't want to learn any lines and it just didn't and uh so bill decided that wasn't going to work and then he wrote parting glances and while we were working there at cbs and i was teaching improvisational comedy with my friend cindy again because she didn't want to do that by herself and that was the start of my career and parting glances was the first movie that i ever did so when um did you talk to bill as he was writing the script did he write joan with you in mind was it based on someone he knew someone else he knew what tell us about the development of her as a character i i think that it the entire movie was really about his life and um i mean we're all from the midwest he was from battle creek michigan and he was a musician and uh that's why you've seen the credits that he directed and all the music was everything that he chose and he every part of that movie was that characters were part of him and with joan i don't really know why he wrote it and who he wrote it i mean he wrote it for me but i i really don't know what i had to do with it other than he just wrote it and i remember one day he said to me how do you feel about joan being gay and i was like she's not gay you know and he was like that you know and obviously she was gay and you know so i don't know one day he's he was directing this classic bill sherwood he said to me could you be more ambiguous and i said no could you you know it was that that kind of situation and uh he just he was an amazing man he had that one movie in him and he did it and you know i i'm so grateful that it's uh still around that it's it's here that it could be that shining moment for him and for everybody in it where i watched it we were like nine years old it was very very odd to watch yeah uh i mean for those in the audience who don't know i don't think we really mentioned this in the um introduction but in the program um notes it does mention that this was bill's only film and uh this has an 85 1985 copyright mark but this premiered at the 1986 sundance film festival and then four years later i believe he died in 1990 right so this when you say this is the one film he added him you know that i i would hope that he was wanting to make more and there's a great interview with him uh that i found online it's just like a press junket thing with a journalist and he's talking about um other films that other people are making and he's like yeah i'm available hire me you know like he seemed eager to work yeah that wasn't true i was just when you were saying that i remember that um i had uh i moved out here from new york and uh he came out here they had hired him to direct an episode of 30 something and um so he came out here and i drove him around and he bought me this really expensive pair of sunglasses and i said you know you didn't have to do that and he said you know i i'm not married i don't have any children and i don't have anything else to do with my money just take them and i said well if you're going to be so gracious about it all right you know and um he only lasted out here about maybe two weeks and then he he said that's it i don't i don't want to do this this is not the kind of thing i want to direct and he went back to new york and he never did direct anything after that he was very much you know i mentioned that he was an only child because that that was really the thing that defined him uh you know you just he i told him you know if if he wanted me in the movie he had to come and take some improvisational comedy classes and um so he did and but his idea of being in a scene you know where you say yes and and you don't argue and you always agree was to grab you by the shirt and go and now we're going over here you know and it was just he he always made me laugh he was so funny classic bill sherwood the very first time um he asked me to go to a party with him and he lived on the upper west side and i lived midtown and so we were going down the village the the woman who played liesel uh you know angela was having a party and downtown so i went to get on the subway i was meeting him down there and there he was he was sitting right there on the car that i got on and i was like oh my god i can't believe that you know this is the car that i got on of all the cars and you're here and i'm here and he goes it happens all the time just get over it you know and i was like oh okay and that was you know i mean that was bill sherwood and uh so so creative and so controlling you know but and you could see it in in the movie but he was um such a funny guy you know i mean entertaining and charming and completely obsessed with mtv when it came out he just watched it for hours it's great that it makes its way into the film with with uh steve gusemi's character being obsessed with seeing himself on it yeah yeah so you tell us a little bit more about the party scene which is so i forget every time i watch this how long it is it's like oh half of the movie is in this party scene which is really fabulous to spend so much time with all of these characters and see all of this nuance of this very specific scene um talk a little bit about what he was like directing that scene and how because there's so much going on and it feels so natural i think first of all it was about 300 degrees in there unbelievably hot and um all those people were some part of bill's life they'd either gone to school with him like uh ted the german who was playing the piano was he and bill had this love-hate relationship they had been competitive in the music academy or whatever it was called the conservatory that they had gone to and they really right up until the end they just hated each other loved hated each other it was amazing but i i looked around in that party scene i had forgotten every single person that was in there either uh knew bill or they knew somebody else they'd all gone to circle in the square or whatever but at the end of the the whole thing when we were finally done shooting there which was a loft i think in brooklyn that were friends of bills i remember everybody saying to themselves never rent your home to a film crew because we destroyed that place totally i mean totally because everybody was just green as grass we would you know you were like throwing stuff around or whatever the the people were i think i don't think they were ever friends with bill again and um but that i don't know how long it took us to shoot that forever and ever but each one of those characters was so amazing there were people that i met there while shooting that that i'm still friends with uh it was just so interesting uh to see all those that you know the guy is like i've got a you know a box in paris and a blah blah blah blah you know he's just so brilliant and bill was the kind of guy that he would walk down the street and he would see you and he would go are you an actor do you want to be in a movie i'm no i really am i'm directing i'm running do you want to be in a movie and nine times out of ten they go yeah you know everybody is an actor in new york but they go yeah there was something about him that they wanted to be in his movie and they all were and you either were in the movie or you invested money in the movie and then you got to be in the movie anyway so interesting guy yeah and it sounds like a big part of the at least the way that christine sort of described it is that it was shooting and fits and starts because he would raise some money here and then friends would give him some money and then you know he'd it was very piecemeal like almost like a kickstarter of its own day but like kickstarter of like asking friends and family for money so was that is that your memory of it that was kind of fits and starts and catches catch can when he when we started filming the parts that i were in we just did it i mean it seemed like it went on and what would i remember and the irony is uh after we were done with the or was it before this was the thing about growing older you know he'd actually wrote a bunch of little skits that he called fits and starts and we put it on on the upper west side and it was just it was him getting ready i think to do the movie um it's sick i'm sure you asked me something important but i was i think that's so i i i wasn't start i was just asking about the you know just the the very low budget nature and how yeah here's how low budget it was okay if you remember the guy from the party he's kind of a shaved head long ponytail just flopping over that was franco he was the makeup guy and he didn't feel like showing up most of the time and so i would do everybody's makeup at the party scene and then franco would show up and he would do mine and by the time he got there he was so angry because it took him so long that just that hurts a little bit you know ow ow you know he just it was it was that kind of thing i remember being there when uh and helping to be an assistant director if you were there you were part of it you took on whatever role was needed and and i think the person that most uh epitomizes that was dan hoy who cast it and also played the you know the guy in the knights thing saying we're whispering because you know and i he was just brilliant and he really did everything that needed to be done and more and everybody did it and they did for bill because like i said you either liked him you know a lot or you didn't and even some of the people who didn't like him were in the movie but he just inspired a certain kind of loyalty yeah and did anybody catch christine in the party scene i did it's very quick yeah um what was it like working with you have such a sweet sweet relationship with richard in this film michael's character or the guy who plays michael um talk a little bit about working with him and and what your memories are of that i didn't uh i didn't know him before he was a student at circle in the square and like i said then and a lot of people were but we were both from wisconsin and he did end up back in wisconsin and i haven't talked to him for a few years but um so i didn't know him very well and you know just like with all filmmaking often you're just thrown into something and i don't think you know like i said i didn't plan on being an actress so you know you find yourself in these situations and you're like how do you act how do you act like somebody else who likes somebody else you know it's just was and and try to be more ambiguous as you do it you know but um i i think we shot this uh the really intense scenes of our friendship in this room that was kind of all built off in this loft and literally it was 300 degrees in there and so you just you you're not really uh acting you're just sort of sweating and hoping that the scene will end soon but i remember you know really liking richard and seeing um his eagerness to be alive and to be as good as he could be and i know that we were both trying to do that and actually the the person that i knew was steve buscemi and um i didn't have any scenes with him so bill said oh just improv something you know i'm like oh okay so he did and i've you know i think at that time i really had a crush on steve he was still and i think it i see that when i see that scene because i like i couldn't even look at him you know i just thought that he was just i i had taken bill downtown to um see steve perform we always used to perform at a uh it used to be called folk city probably might still be i don't know but there was no longer folk music it was comedy and i did improvisational comedy down there with uh some people and then steve and his comedy partner mark boone jr would do some of the funniest funniest things little skits that i'd ever seen so i took bill down there to see steve because he'd been recommended by uh vicky uh to that he was perfect for it and then it just all fell into place and he really was so perfect for it and again i just i love seeing how young he looks in there and all all the people everybody's just so young except for ted who evidently was always old and nobody liked him like i said but it was really uh an interesting the whole thing was just interesting because it was knit together in this little tiny way and then presented as this whole thing it's always every time i see it i'm like well how does this end i don't don't remember until i see it steve is really so striking in this movie yeah um and so when when the film premiered at sundance were you there for that uh no i didn't even i don't know where i was maybe i'd moved out here by that time yeah but the so the film won we don't want to get this right it's the special jury recognition in 1986 and um we just had gus van sant here with melanoche which premiered the same year and he said on this stage that malinoche did not get into sundance that year because parting glances was the gay movie that year desert hearts also screened also won an award but that was the lesbian movie that year so they were you know just filling these very small boxes there um but what outside of you know so it premiered at sundance and then it had this rollout across the country in different major cities and smaller cities what was the reception like at the time what did what do you remember the reaction being when people you knew saw it i think that and to this day i've had so many people say to me so many men uh say to me this was the movie who made that made me feel that i could have a life this was the movie that uh impressed me that i was normal and i i think that that was the reception more than anything i know that there was also that movie my beautiful launderette but this was really one of the first movies about with a character that had aids or that whole the whole life uh that whole group that tight-knit group of friends that bill had and it was so important because it's that thing you know if you can if you see it you can be it and i think he knew that even then and so i've always felt that that was the most important thing about it was that that it gave so many people hope that it was okay that they were okay and though the film you know doesn't explicitly like christine said the word aids is never uttered in this film hiv is never said in this film oh he says it once okay just once um but that was an intentional choice um and i think it's so um kind of devastating to think about the fact that five i think it's like five months half a year before this film came out was the first time infamously that reagan said the word aids ever like just five months before this movie came out so just the impact of that like i think it it has that you know sort of gravity toward it or or about it um and so yeah i i don't know if you have anything else to say about like the where am i going here sort of the the importance of that as being just a lived part of life as someone who can live a full life while also you know having aids is that something that that you were all talking about or thinking about i think it was pretty early on although everybody in new york was talking about it and knew about it and uh and bill already knew that he had aids but he didn't really he didn't tell anybody and you know i'm sure the movie kind of hastened the illness for him because he didn't really he worked so hard on it he didn't really take care of himself and you often see him walking down the street going to an editing studio with a giant like two quarts of diet coke dangling from his hand that's how he he just drank it until he was almost crazy you know i mean diet coke will do that to you i guess but um it was uh i think every time i see it i'm i'm struck more and more again you know you go okay what what am i supposed to do in life and for bill that movie was it it was uh you know if you only had one movie in you then that was the movie and because it's just been so important i i'll never even know how important it was and i remember after i'd moved here and finally you know i mean again with because bill just pushed me pushed me to be an actor and after i'd lived here for about 15 years i guess you know i thought well maybe i'm supposed to leave maybe i'm not supposed to be an actress maybe i'm supposed to you know go back somewhere else and that night i had a dream and for some reason the dream took place in vancouver i don't know but i was waiting for a bus and looking around thinking yeah i gotta go and then across the way was bill sherwood going just stay there just stay there right stay there and i was like stay oh okay and i thought you know he never did anything uh sweetly or nicely even in my dream he's just yelling at me and um i woke up and it just it just made me laugh he you know you all hope always hope that you can leave a little part of yourself that moves on that stays in the world and he did and uh you know i'm happy to have met him happy to have known him to have called him a friend i think that his creativity whether he knew what he was doing if he just wanted to show this huge slice of his life or if he knew that how important it was to show that uh you know we're all more alike than different that we're all just friends who want friends who want to be loved you know i i don't know if i could get credit him with that but he certainly um did a good thing i did want to leave time for a couple of audience questions just in case anyone has one blue my favorite color we have a microphone coming to you yeah hi um first thing like loved you in the movie love doing the role um this is actually my second time seeing this movie the first time i was really stricken by uh you know before watching the movie me and my friend we were just kind of like chatting about gay [ __ ] you know as you do and we were talking about you know just kind of like um you know we're about in our 30s we were talking about you know younger generations etc and then we watched the movie and what really struck me was just how much i saw like my own friend group in the movie and also the scene where steve buscemi like asked that kid like what are you a republican like just after me my friend had complained about like some younger kid you know so it's all really it just really struck me how lived in and like how much my experience was reflected in the film um so that's just me raining praise on you guys but my question is you mentioned that um you had done uh improv improvisational comedy i'm sorry could just talk a little louder i'm so old yeah sorry my my mask i think is blocking it too the question is about improvisational comedy yeah um so you had done improvisational comedy um and in the film a lot of the dialogue is just very naturalistic was that all um on bill's part or was there also a lot of improvisation allowed no he he really impressed on me and coming from the background of improvisation that a writer uh works very hard with each word and you need to get every single word the way i wrote it and you know and it terrorized me for the rest of my career to tell you the truth you know but um the only the only scene that was improvised was that scene between steve and i where he's like gonna beat him up i'm gonna beat you up i'm gonna you know that was the only one and i don't and i still don't know why he did that why he actually said oh just improv something which was you know in the in hindsight it was incredible honor because he was so controlling and of course he could have just cut the whole thing out but he but he let us have that and uh that was good but yeah and then it went on to billions of years of improvisational comedy across the world so but nope this is all that's that's the thing that's the knack so i should thank you because that's the knack of acting you want it to look uh like you're just making it up right then but know every word so thanks awesome you did great and everyone involved with the movie i mean again thank you all so much i really i mean the movie really blasted me by like just showing you know again my experience like that was the first movie i really saw where it was like oh like this is actually a group of queer friends and it really it really meant a lot so thank you again other questions from the audience yeah we have a mic coming to you um as an artist um this is my first movie of his that i've seen obviously the only one now that i know that um okay i will speak up apologies i'm a little nervous um i liked the underlying theme at least at least this is what i picked up of just the artist and the struggle of that yeah and even that like little bit i suppose about michael um you know i gotta buy me a computer right and like it's going to be four grand and he's like it's too much i'm not gonna do that and he's like just try paper you know so for me like to see um steve's room like i wanted to ask i guess how much of those little quirks right like the cockroach frequency like the tvs like every detail of that set was just unbelievable and it felt like for me it felt like i'm allowed to be messy you know it's like i saw that i've been criticized for that my whole life and it's like you know what that looked like the coolest room i've ever [ __ ] seen you know and so just i don't know if he meant to or i don't know if he struggled at all during the process but it came together so beautifully but i also loved those moments of of hardship right because art is hard um yeah that's i mean that's where he came from that's everybody that was there came from some kind of uh arts background that we're all struggling and what what was fun for me this time was that that was everything except for the party was shot in bill's apartment and then the the dinner party was shot somewhere else with cecil and you know uh that was some some other apartment that probably he lost those friends as well i imagine you know but um everything else steve's apartment and uh michael and robert's apartment were all shot in bill's apartment he had this huge pre-war multi-room department on the upper west side that was just it was gorgeous and it was painted terracotta which was you know a fascinating color at that time to me anyway but um he everything that you saw there was came from some part of him either it was part of his creativity or someone uh he'd seen it someplace else but the tvs the the cigarettes covering the money that was all his all the all the artwork like when i saw that whack thing i was like oh my god i'd forgotten about all all of those things they were in his apartment and he just used them his visual his ear his hearing of the whole movie and the dialogue and the music and then his visual what he wanted was just so exact but it was his life completely about his life and his friends lives art i think i i just wanted to kind of come to a close here because i'm just so thrilled one that you know to work for an institution that has restored this film i feel very honored to be part of it you know such a place that is honoring this work and that print looked beautiful oh my gosh i mean we're so lucky to have seen that on 35 millimeter um and i just love what a time capsule it is in certain ways i mean from my fa this terra cotta is one thing but the blue office is like so that would be in like a like you know a catalog today it's amazing um but i did just want to like kind of bring it back around to the series and the fact that we're including this in the pioneers of queer cinema series and i think that part of what makes this film so memorable and so indelible for so many of us here for me as a straight person for some of the folks here in the room who might be straight too i just wanted to end with a quote from harvey fierstein about the movie if you don't mind um when people say to me your work is not really gay work which this film has been accused of right it's everyone said this is universal which i can kind of agree with uh i say up yours it's gay and you can take it and translate it for your own life and that's very nice but at last i don't have to do the translating you do and i think that's something about this film that's so special and unique and i'm so glad that you were part of this film and that you were here to share your experience with us and to let us learn a bit a little bit more um about bill through you so thank you so much for being here kathy this is really great thank you [Applause]