Undead and loving it

Bruce LaBruce makes the first queer zombie
film, Otto; or, Up With Dead People

GAY OF THE DEAD: Jey Crisfar as Otto

by MATTHEW HAYS

Those in love with filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s off-kilter universe will be titillated by his love letter to zombie movies, Otto; or, Up With Dead People. Since its premiere at Sundance last January, the film has been shaking up audiences on the international film fest circuit.

In the film, a young zombie named Otto (Jey Crisfar), a despondent and lonely outsider, wanders the streets of Berlin. He auditions for the radical lesbian director of a low-budget zombie film, in the hopes of hiding his zombie status from the rest of the world. Otto assumes that if he’s playing a zombie in a movie, no one will catch on that he really is one.

Given that gay filmmakers have a long history with the horror genre—from James Whale to Clive Barker to Chucky creator Don Mancini—and the fact that much of the gay community has been consumed by a blood-borne epidemic for close to 30 years, it’s a wonder a gay zombie film hasn’t come along before. But LaBruce says his inspiration had less to do with HIV infection and more to do with that staple theme of the zombie sub-genre, consumerism in a postmodern state.

“Vampires were the go-to metaphor for AIDS in the ’80s,” notes LaBruce. “Films like The Hunger were big. I like the idea of zombies, because they just wander around aimlessly, their souls gone, mindless consumers. And gays can be very zombie-like when it comes to sex. They wander the halls of bathhouses like zombies and cruise parks at night like the living dead.”

LaBruce, the filmmaker behind such “porn punk” films as Hustler White and Skin Flick, says part of the inspiration also came from a former boyfriend who’s a Shia Muslim. “They are a very lugubrious bunch, the Shia. Very death-obsessed. My ex said that his imam told everyone in the mosque, no matter what age, to go and pick out their shroud. My ex also said he thought he was dead all the time. So I thought this would make a fun movie.”

His main zombie influence is the master, George A. Romero. “It’s hard for me to choose between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.” But LaBruce, who constantly references other films in his own work, says much of the cultural nods here will be to more whimsical films, in particular Carnival of Souls (1962), about a woman who finds herself lost in a mysterious town after a car accident, and Night Tide, the 1961 Curtis Harrington movie in which a young man (Dennis Hopper) realizes the woman he’s in love with is a homicidal mermaid.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVILS

Mainstream movie audiences have had a long-running love affair with zombies on the big screen. In 2002, British director Danny Boyle would return to his gritty, low-budget filmmaking roots with 28 Days Later, which would lead to a zombie renaissance: a Dawn of the Dead remake (2004) and the comedies Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Fido (2006), as well as a formidable sequel, last year’s 28 Weeks Later. Last December, I Am Legend, the latest adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel, broke box-office records in its opening weekend.

With Otto, LaBruce hopes to take a different perspective than the mainstream one. “In those movies, the zombies are entirely unsympathetic. I like the idea of the zombies being these rebels and outsiders who actually have some legitimacy. More recently, the need to hate the Other, to have the bad guys painted with one broad brush, has been great. If you look back at Frankenstein (1931), in that film, the monster becomes a very sympathetic figure. It’s the townsfolk, an angry, thoughtless mob, who are portrayed quite negatively.”

LaBruce is aware that some audiences may be zombied out. But being queer gives his Otto an edge. “There have been a lot of zombie movies, so when people hear ‘gay zombie film’ they either get totally excited or are totally jaded about it. Some people think they’re played out, others think they’re ripe for a comeback. But I’m trying to do something entirely different with this movie. I’ve made a melancholy gay zombie film.”

OTTO; OR, UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE
WILL HAVE ITS MONTREAL PREMIERE
AT THE IMAGE+NATION FILM FESTIVAL,
WHICH SCREENS FROM NOV.
20–30. THE MIRROR’S OWN MATTHEW
HAYS WILL MODERATE A MASTER
CLASS WITH LABRUCE ON NOV. 29.
INFO: WWW.IMAGE-NATION.ORG

So gay Best of the fest at Image+Nation 2008 PERSIAN PERSECUTION: Be Like Others by MATTHEW HAYS Legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz’s life and work will come into greater focus at this year’s Image+Nation with Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens, the feature-length documentary made by her kid sister, Barbara Leibovitz. And it would take a relative to make such a film, I suspect, as the photog—famous for her portraits in Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone—has been so notoriously protective of her own privacy. Much was made of the fact that she was the life partner of the late Susan Sontag, and that Sontag refused to discuss her own lesbianism, despite the fact that she had penned the definitive essay on camp. Leibovitz touches on a number of these issues here, and watching the film, you might actually think you’re in the midst of a Vanity Fair shoot; interviewees include Yoko Ono, Hillary Clinton, Patti Smith and Gloria Steinem. And the Leibovitz doc won’t be the only examined life at the fest; other portraits include Patti Smith: Dream of Life, The Universe of Keith Haring and Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker? Documentaries that explore queer life abroad will be screened, in particular two about life in the Middle East that are intensely powerful. In The Beirut Apt, a group of Italian filmmakers ventured to Lebanon to hear about the lives of gay and lesbian residents. They set up a camera in an apartment and let queer Lebanese discuss what their daily existences are like. In Be Like Others, filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian shows us the Iranian policy on gays: pay for them all to have sex changes. Pretty devastating stuff. And the fiction film All My Life, which is being touted as the first gay Egyptian film, features a 26-year-old accountant who must try to come to terms with his own sexuality in a country that still routinely arrests men for homosexual conduct. It was Sigmund Freud who suggested we were all innately bisexual, and Woody Allen who quipped that he wished he were (as it would double his chances for a date on a Saturday night). In Bi the Way, filmmakers Brittany Blockman and Josephine Decker take a road trip across America and explore the myths surrounding bisexuality, and also attempt to figure out if indeed more and more people are identifying as bi. And in Out Late, directors Beatrice Alda and Jennifer Brooke interview several people who came out of the closet a wee bit later than high school. One of those interviewed came out at the ripe age of 79. There are times when you just need outright silliness on the big screen. No shortage of it here: in particular, I’d direct you towards Todd Stephens’ Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild!, in which our lovably slutty trio head off to Fort Lauderdale, Florida at spring break to see who can bed and/or bang the most men. Those looking for cerebral stimulation need not attend. IMAGE+NATION RUNS NOV. 20–30. INFO: WWW.IMAGE-NATION.ORG