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Art stopper >> John Maybury brings Francis Bacon to life in Love Is the Devil
by MATTHEW HAYS
The British art establishment, it seems, was not enjoying the idea that the highly influential late artist Bacon might actually be depicted as gay. "Which is truly bizarre," says the bright-eyed Maybury. "He was extremely open about his homosexuality at a time when it wasn't really okay to do so. At this point, the only way I could have damaged his reputation would be to suggest he had a wife and two kids." Maybury, who also penned the screenplay, delves deeply into the twisted psychology between Bacon (played by Sir Derek Jacobi) and his working-class lover, George Dyer (Daniel Craig). The two met when Bacon caught Dyer trying to burgle his home; after this meeting the two embarked on a long and tortured S/M affair, until Dyer, apparently under extreme duress, took his own life with a combination of pills and booze in 1971. Immediately side-stepping the charges of inaccuracy which plague biopics, Maybury has always contended that Love Is the Devil would be fictional biography. "Those homoerotic images he painted, I connected with them. Through that I created the story, based on real events. But the fictional aspects of the story are drawn from my truth. "Eleven years ago my boyfriend died of a drug overdose. I could smell my boyfriend on the pillow after he'd died. I told Derek about that experience in detail. So when Derek Jacobi smells the pillow, that's me he's recreating, not Francis." After dealing with arty types, Maybury then had to contend with criticism from some factions of the gay audience when he travelled with the film on the fest circuit. "I found it quite shocking in L.A. People asked why it was such a negative relationship. In the last decade I've seen a dozen really close friends die of AIDS, and dozens and dozens of acquaintances die of AIDS. What's positive about that? They want us to depict muscle Marys wearing preppie clothes. That's not my reality at all. And to try to impose that reality on Bacon is even more absurd. "People want us to be the same now. But for me, the most exciting thing about being queer is the decadence, the deviance, the wrongness of it all." Maybury learned the cinematic ropes from the late Derek Jarman, the demigod of queer cinema. In fact, Jarman gave Maybury his first Super 8 camera when he was 18. "It's hard to say what the main thing Jarman taught me was. You worked with Derek, not for him. He taught collaboration. He had a tremendous generosity of spirit. "I guess I have followed in his footsteps, in a way. I'm good at getting on people's nerves, just the way Derek used to."
Love Is the Devil opens Friday, May 28 at the Cinéma du Parc. See repertory listings for showtimes |
Though it was a hit on the festival circuit last year, Brit filmmaker John Maybury says his Francis Bacon biopic Love Is the Devil did not please everyone in the art world.