Hairy Asses, Conservative Republicans, and the Trouble with ADR

On a gorgeous May day on two coasts (count ‘em – one, two), Buzz of CampBlood.org and 2001 Maniacs writer-director Tim Sullivan sat down to chew the fat and dish about the homo horror zeitgeist. Well, Tim did most of the talking, but that’s what an interview is all about, remember – this ain’t a book club here.

Anyway, after some perfunctory pleasantries and a few fun anecdotes about the making of the wacky splatter flick, things took a turn for the contemplative, resulting in one of the more thoughtful and personal interviews we’ve captured here on the site. Secrets are revealed, punches are thrown, and yoga is discussed.

As if you expected anything less.

Now picture him shaved down to his pink bits.
(Dylan Edrington as Nelson in 2001 Maniacs)

CB: It’s clear the people behind those extreme actions would be of that extreme mindset. What are your thoughts on having gay heroes, instead of just supporting characters? Is there a place?
TS: When it does happen – here my thoughts: it shouldn’t be an issue. I think Richard Donner, believe it or not, said, imagine a movie like Lethal Weapon, only the Mel Gibson character is gay. The only way to make it now would be to make it about a gay cop and a straight cop – that would be the story. I think the day when we’ve finally achieved something will be the day when a main character is gay, but that has nothing to do with the story. You know how in Lethal Weapon, it’s a buddy movie, but you always have to have those scenes where you see – you know, Mel Gibson climbs out of bed naked and there’s some chick lying there just to assure the audience that he is straight? The females have nothing to do with the plot, they’re just there to provide some tits and ass and assure the audience that he’s a “man’s man”. Well, imagine a Lethal Weapon movie that’s the exact same movie only whenever Mel Gibson gets out of bed there’s a guy there in bed with him. And it’s not an issue, it’s not a plot point. Any time that the main character is gay, it’s a plot point.

CB: Can we get to that stage without going through some growing pains?
TS: I think we’re getting there. I’m 42, and growing up in the 80s, I never thought there’d be a magazine like XY Magazine or a show like Queer as Folk – we’re making great strides. Brokeback Mountain, I really enjoyed that movie and appreciate that movie, I think there’s a part of me that says, “What’s the big deal, I’ve been seeing foreign films like this for years,” but it’s the first American mainstream movie with mainstream actors – if we can have Brokeback Mountain get nominated for Best Picture and make more than 3 million dollars – it’s called the Gay 3 – I mean, Brokeback is up to 80 or 90 in America.

It starts with having secondary characters. I tried with Ricky to have a secondary character be gay in the horror genre, where everybody’s usually straight and everybody’s usually on a pussy hunt. Granted, the character was played for laughs and some of the dialogue, I’ll be honest – let me say this once – I’ve actually been really dying to say this, so I appreciate the chance to talk to CampBlood and get this off my chest, if I may segue for a moment..

CB: Of course.
Okay. I’m not trying to stir up any issues – well, maybe I am and maybe I’m not. I created the character of Ricky to be exactly what we’re talking about – a character who is bi or gay where it’s not an issue and it’s actually played straight, pardon the pun. I am very grateful to my producers, but as anyone in this industry knows, when you’re a filmmaker, when you’re a write-director, you ultimately – unless you’re Spielberg – don’t have the final say on the final product. And, you know, when it’s one voice against many – and on this film there was about 10 producers, and I’m not singling out any one of them – let me say it was a collective decision of 10 versus my little old voice, the one bisexual director against 10 straight producers. In the post-production of the film, where something called ADR is done (additional dialogue replacement) when they bring actors in, during that process dialogue was recorded that I did not write, that I did not approve of, that I am actually repulsed by. That counters what I was trying to say with the Ricky character. And I just want to get this out, because as a bisexual man who has tried to make a statement with a character, I was very upset at the finished product, because I think that the very homophobia that I was trying to mock came into play, and I’ll tell you how this happened.

Penguins! Cuuuuuute!
(from Cellar Dweller)

It's rude to point. Oh, alright -- but only because you're rocking that tank-top.
(Jay Gillespie)

TS: Every time a character comes on for the first time in this movie, he has a “moment”. The first time we see the boys, we have a close-up that kind of defines who they are. When we’re at the gas station and the car pulls up with Ricky, Joey, and Kat, which I envisioned as kind of the Wild Things trio – if you watch it, Kat gets out of the car in slow-motion, cut to Cory. Joey gets out of the car in slow-motion, cut to Anderson. And it’s purposely cheesy and it’s purposely heightened, because the joke was, after you cut to the two girls, then we cut to Brian Gross looking over the steering wheel with his black nail polish, and he gives a very sexy smile to Dylan. And then we cut to Dylan, and instead of Dylan’s character being offended, he blushes and looks away. And the joke of that scene is, we’ve seen it a million times, guy meets girl, guy meets girl, and then guy meets guy. But to my displeasure, those two shots were cut out of the movie by my producers, the close up of Ricky and the reaction of Nelson. And what I was trying to say with that was, we are watching the film through the eyes of our three main characters. Dylan, Jay, and Matt. We are seeing through the eyes of those characters, so we watch the film through their reactions. When our hero is flirted with by a male and blushes and looks away, the idea is that the audience should have the same reaction, versus a film like Hostel, where we’re looking at the film through the eyes of characters who are constantly referring to somebody as a faggot, or asking “Are you gay, faggot?” So what happens, first of all, the initial concept of Ricky was that he was playful. But by taking out that shot, you lose all that.

Then, later on, there are a couple of instances where his mouth isn’t on camera but dialogue was said – there’s a line of dialogue after he’s wrestling with Rufus, “winner does the pitchin’ loser does the catchin’”. I find that offensive. It’s direct, it’s not funny, and it’s a straight man’s idea of a gay joke. Then the next morning, someone goes, “Oh, cupid’s arrow shot someone in the ass”, and he goes, “Cupid wasn’t all that was shooting in the ass” – that’s vulgar. And people may say, “Tim you’re a hypocrite, this movie’s crass, this movie’s over the top and you’re offended by that?” But the point is, I’m offended by the fact that as a bisexual filmmaker, I had straight people impose their idea of gay humor on my film. Gay people have constantly responded to me that they were offended by certain aspects – and the very things you were offended by, folks, I was offended by, too. There was another line, Robert Englund says to his son, “One of you boys is gonna have to fall in with that sissy boy.” And in the ADR, they had him say, “one of you has to – ”

CB: “Cornhole that sissy boy.”
TS: Right. And to me that’s mean-spirited. So what happens now, we’re talking about literally two frames of film that were cut, and 3 dialogues that were added – those 4 instances take a character that was conceived to be playful, and make him predatory. Preying upon the straight man’s fear that every gay guy is a predator. And I hated it, hated it, hated it, and there was nothing I could do. There was nothing I could do.

And I’ll be honest – I even went to GLAAD – I said look, I’m a filmmaker on this film, you know, this stuff’s been done to my film and I think it’s offensive, and GLAAD sympathized but they said at the time they felt there was nothing they can do. If it was a big-budget film, I bet they could have done something. We have come so far in terms of civil rights – I can’t imagine in a teen comedy with Lindsay Lohan someone calling another character a “nigger” and it being accepted. It’s okay in a PG film to have one character call another character “gay”, meaning, “you’re weak – you’re stupid, you’re a wimp”. And I can imagine what Hollywood would do if, as a bisexual Catholic – well, ex-Catholic – I made a film where every time I wanted to indicate that a character was cheap, I called them a “Jew”. If anybody did that, there would be a protest a mile long in front of every studio. But it’s okay to in a movie like Hostel or American Pie constantly refer to a character as “faggot – oh, you’re so gay.”

CB: What about the argument that that’s how teenagers talk in real life?
TS: That’s right – that’s how teenagers talk. And why do teenagers talk like that? Because they go to the fucking movies and see characters talk like that, and they imitate what they see.

CB: Exactly.
TS: Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The last accepted slur that’s okay in a movie is to refer to somebody as gay. You know, in an R-rated film, like Pulp Fiction, or even in Maniacs – you know, I was very careful in Maniacs, I crossed the line but I never used the N-word. He might say, “Oh look, it’s the colored boy”, but I never used the N-word, because it’s too direct and it’s a horrible word. Now there’s a difference – I am making fun of stereotypes. I am making fun of the way that bigoted people view other people. I am not saying that I feel that way, I’m mocking the people that feel that way. You have a film like Hostel, where our 3 main characters refer to every woman as something to fuck and every foreigner as a fucking asshole, and every man who might be gay like the guy on the train as a faggot, and what’s the climax of the film? The villain of that film is gay and he tortures boys and the one boy who might be gay and who apologizes to him at the bar ends up getting slaughtered, and at the end of the film the audience cheers when the gay killer has his head literally flushed in a toilet, since that’s where gay guys belong.

CB: Aside from this specific situation, has it been hard being a gay or bi filmmaker in the horror genre?
TS: I think it’s difficult to be a gay anything, to be honest with you. We make a lot of great strides, but you know how it is – everyone assumes that if you’re a gay man, you want to screw anything with a dick. I’m a little more selective than that, you know? When you’re a gay man and you’re making a film where a lot of the actors are teenagers, you gotta be aware of that stuff! Like if you were a straight man and making a film with a bunch of 16-year-old-girls you gotta be careful. It’s tough sometimes, and I’ll tell you – it’s so cynical, but I have this film called Brothers of the Blood, and it’s a metrosexual vampire fable – it’s very gothic and Shakespearian, and it’s a love triangle between an older male vampire, a younger male vampire and a mortal woman, and it’s this whole metaphor for the dark side of the gay milieu. The shadow side of it – it’s taking the vampire parable and using it as a study on the whole Hollywood milieu. I’ve had it for years and I’d show it around and people were like, “Oh, God, that one you gotta put back on your shelf.” But now, because something made money – it’s all about money – Brokeback makes money and suddenly everyone’s like, “This is great – it’s like Brokeback Mountain with fangs!”

CB: So do you have a dream project?
TS: Yes I do – it’s called Brothers of the Blood and I will make it.

CB: That’s it – if someone gave you 5 million right now...
TS: If someone gave me 5 million right now, it would be Brothers of the Blood, because it’s all me – everything I’ve done has been co-written, but Brothers of the Blood is all me.

CB: But right now you’re working on the Maniacs sequel, right?
TS: Yes. There is a sequel to 2001 Maniacs.

CB: Back to Brothers, though – why is it so important?
TS: Back when I was at NYU – and this is the first time I’ve talked about any of this, dude.

CB: Umm....good!

TS: When I was at NYU I was in a screenwriting class and at the time The Hunger was huge. I started writing a story called Brothers of the Blood about a young vampire and an older vampire, male. And at the time I was in my early 20s, and I was closeted and I was aware – I was like Billy Idol at the time, Billy Idol and Simon Lebon’s lovechild –

CB: I’ve seen the photos, yes.
TS: The 80s were so confusing because EVERYBODY looked gay, you have no idea…I mean, guys were wearing makeup whether they were straight or they were gay - thank you, Duran Duran. And I was a Jersey kid, I commuted from Metuchen, New Jersey to NYU, and I was closeted. And so on nights and weekends I’d be the Tim everybody knew, with his flannel shirts and ripped jeans hanging out in New Jersey, but then during the day I’d take the train to New York and I was who I wanted to be. But as a result I started attracting primarily – you know, I didn’t know who to be gay with, for lack of a better phrase, so a lot of my professors would hit on me all the time. And I was very flattered by the attention, but I was also scared by this because the more attention that I got, the more it became obvious to me that I perhaps was bisexual or gay or whatever you want to call it. So what happened was it was the age-old thing where you sort of you flirt because you want the attention and you want to know if somebody can be attracted to you, so you sort of put it out there – but then when you get the attention you freak because it puts a name to you. So it was a sort of vicious cycle that I think every young guy goes through.

Anyway, after reading Brothers of the Blood, my professor said, “Your characters need to come out of the coffin and you need to come out of the closet.” So basically somebody outed me. So instead of just trading in my KISS albums for Madonna and Depeche Mode, I went back into the closet and stayed there until I was 27. And then the only way I was able to come out was by literally moving to California at the age of 27, and I figured, I’m gonna introduce myself as, “Hi I’m Tim and I’m gay”, which is just ridiculous, I mean, you are who you are, but I had spent 27 years in the closet, when I came out to California I just made sure that everybody knew I was gay because I needed to know right off the bat if you had a problem with me being gay and didn’t want to be my friend. Let’s just get this over with right now, because I was so tired of being friends with somebody who then had a problem with me being gay.

And so what happened was, the story stayed with me and then I came out here, and I ran with the Hollywood circle,and you know, you sort of meet these guys and they're wonderful guys, but there's also this sort of Gay Mafia out here I have to say, Pink Mafia, and within that mafia there's a lot of
competition. You know, it’s not like it’s a brotherhood and we all accept each other, it’s not like that at all – as I’m sure you know. And so I found myself being more accepted as the horror geek, not gay or straight, but I found once again – once I did come out – instead of having this whole new social circle, I found that where I really felt comfortable, where I really felt that I was who I wanted to be, was within the horror community. And I find that in the horror community, with a few exceptions, horror fans and gay people have a kindred affection for each other because growing up being a horror geek is very similar to being gay. It’s like the worst thing in the world to be is a gay horror fan because you’ve got two strikes against you. First of all, where everyone else is out there playing football and you’re sitting at home painting monster models reading FANGORIA, forget about it – and after that you’re gay, well why don’t you just go and shoot yourself now?

The cast of Driftwood
(yes, that is Diamond Dallas Page on the left)

Matt, cross your arms! You're ruining our pose!
(Jay Gillespie, Dylan Edrington, and Matt Carey)

But the thing is, all my greatest friends out here are horror fans who have no problem that I’m gay because they know what it was like to be ostracized simply because you preferred Dracula over Pete Rose. Or, you know, you preferred making a Super-8 horror movie over playing a game of football. And so, I’m at home in the horror community where I can be gay and no one has a problem with it. I find that when I play outside, in the non-gay non-horror film community, that’s where I have a problem fitting in. And no matter what anyone says about the arts and being accepted, and Hollywood being accepting of people being gay, that’s bullshit – they say that because it makes good copy. But there is still homophobia rampant in Hollywood. And I’m probably guilty of it too – I mean, I would likely not go to a premiere with a guy and hope I can get to the day where I would. I mean, look at Tom Cruise, the poor guy – he’s married and has kids now because he can’t face reality. You know?

But getting back to Brothers of the Blood, now I’m in my 30’s and I come back to that story, but now I find myself associating with the older gay vampire, with the person who sort of laments for his lost youth. And not that I wish I was a kid again, but what I lament is that I didn’t get to be a gay kid. I never did and it’s something I can’t have back. I didn’t come out until I was 27, so I’ll never know what it was like to be a gay teenager, I’ll never know what it is like to, you know, have had a boyfriend when I was 17, and that is what it is. And I know a lot of people my age or of my generation who went through that same thing. They were closeted, and we found codewords for things, you know, if you liked The Outsiders, if you liked Rocky Horror, you know. So I started rethinking the story through the eyes now of the older vampire – so I’ve been the young vampire and now I’m the older vampire. So now I can tell the story having lived both roles, so to speak.