All language subtitles for Chris & Don. A Love Story (Tina Mascara, Guido Santi, 2007) [ENGLISH]

[Man]
The night of the day he died,

without any preliminary decision,

almost, uh, unconsciously,

I went straight to his diary.

[Michael York As Isherwood]
That spring I realized
that I had fallen deeply in love...

with a boy whom I'd known
for only a short while--

Don Bachardy.

The 30-year difference in our ages
shocked some of those who knew us.

I, myself, didn't feel guilty about this,

but I did feel awed by the emotional
intensity of our relationship...

right from the beginning.

The strange sense
of a fated, mutual discovery.

I knew that this time
I had really committed myself.

Don might leave me,
but I couldn't possibly leave him...

unless he ceased to need me.

This sense of responsibility,
which was almost fatherly,

made me anxious but full of joy.

And Chris knew exactly
what to do with me. Yes.

His role could be described...

as that of the arch villain.

He took this young boy,
and he warped him to his mold.

He taught him
all kinds of wicked things.

It was exactly
what the boy wanted,

and, um, he flourished.

Well, I mean, the idea
of this middle-aged man,

um, deflowering this young boy.

And also what Chris was doing
to his own reputation.

I don't even think
that a lot of queers...

would have considered me
ripe enough yet.

Chris told me
I was very sophisticated for my age.

And, of course,
that just enchanted me.

Chris was against
having an animal, a pet.

And his reason was...

that he felt that
when two people live together...

who had an animal,

an awful lot of affection would
be siphoned off by that animal,

which otherwise would go
between the two people.

And, of course,
he was absolutely right.

The, uh, result was that
we became each other's animals.

I became the cat,
and Chris was an old horse,

an old dobbin.

On birthday cards,

he would always do
a little drawing of a dobbin...

in some act of homage to Kitty.

Kitty often rode the old dobbin.

We devised stories
about Kitty and Dobbin.

And they had all kinds of adventures,

which, uh, were just--

[Chuckles]
full of symbolic meaning.

This is Chris's workroom,

where I've been sleeping for,

oh, eight
or nine months now.

And, uh, I moved
his day bed into the corner...

under the windows.

At night I can lie down
and look up at the stars in the sky,

and also I see the full moon
coming through the other window...

around 2:00 or 3:00
in the morning.

The Hockney print,

which is a variation
on the painting he did of the two of us.

In the painting,
Chris is on the right in profile.

Here he is full-faced in the chair
that I'm sitting in in the painting.

And that was a piece
of Indian corn...

that Elsa Lanchester gave Chris.

They're no longer there, because we once
had a rat living in the house.

To force him out,
we locked up all the food cupboards,

and he was so desperate one night,
he ate the kernels.

He cleaned almost entirely both cobs.

And this is ancient corn.

It had to be
something like 50 years old.

Imagine being so hungry.
[Laughing]

And finally we drove him out.

We didn't want to catch him in a trap,
but we did drive him out.

There was nothing left to eat.
[Chuckling]

And these are watercolors...

by Chris's father.

This one down here too.

This was by a professional
painter of houses in England.

And this is of the house
that Chris was born in--

Wyberslegh Hall.

Chris was born in Cheshire, England...

to an upper-class family in 1904..

His mother, Kathleen,
was a dominant figure in his life.

And he often spoke more fondly
of his nanny than he did of her.

He and Kathleen were adversaries.

They couldn't help but be,
because Kathleen had very clear ideas...

what she wanted,
what she expected of Chris.

She wanted him to be a don--
a teacher-- and, uh--

and that wasn't
his intention at all.

His father, Frank, was an officer
in the British army.

And he was killed
in the First World War...

when Chris was just a young boy.

He later received a scholarship
to study history at Cambridge.

But Chris was rebellious...

and felt manipulated by the way
history was being taught at Cambridge.

[Woman]
He did fine in his first year exams,

and then in the second year,

he deliberately wrote joke answers.

Wrote about the decoration of
the examining rooms, mocked the examiners.

And shortly after wards,
he was called back to school from London,

where he'd gone
for the summer holidays.

And got expelled,
because he wanted to be,

and I think because he wanted
to disappoint Kathleen...

and make it perfectly clear...

that he wasn't going to do her bidding.

Isherwood was searching for a place
where he could live...

and explore, I think,
among other things, his sexuality.

He was beginning to realize
that he was gay.

England was a place
of confinement and strictures...

that made it hard
fora gay man to pursue that life,

if not openly, at least in a satisfying
and complete kind of way.

Also his very good friend, W. H. Auden,

one of the foremost poets
of the 20th century, had gone to Berlin.

He was writing letters back to Isherwood,
urging him to come to Berlin.

[Isherwood]
I was looking for a sort of homeland,

for somewhere where I could function
in a way where I would feel freer...

than I felt in England
at that particular time...

under the particular circumstances
I was living in.

I think it was partly a class thing,

but, of course, it was inextricably
mixed up with my homosexuality,

because, um,

what I in fact started to encounter...

was the German working class.

[York]
To Christopher, Berlin meant boys.

At school, Christopher
had fallen in love with many boys...

and been yearningly romantic
about them.

At college, he had at last managed
to get into bed with one of them.

Others experiences followed,

all of them enjoyable,
but none entirely satisfying.

This was because Christopher
was suffering from an inhibition...

then not unusual
among upper-class homosexuals.

He couldn't relax sexually
with a member of his own class or nation.

He needed a working-class foreigner.

Isherwood just happened to be
at one of the most important spots to be in...

in the 20th century.

And that was in Germany
in the late 1920s, the early 1930s.

This was the place
in which Nazism was developing,

emerging as an important force.

This was where Hitler's Germany
was on the rise.

[Bachardy]
Chris was observing everything
that was going on there...

and formulating ideas...

that would later go
into his two books about Berlin--

one a novel
and the other a collection of stories--

that really put him on the map
as an author.

The success ofthose two books
led to a play, I Am a Camera,

and a movie of the play
and eventually Cabaret,

which was quite
a success on Broadway,

and then, of course,
the movie version with Liza Minnelli.

Ladies und Gents,
fraulein Sally Bowles!

Isherwood did not love
the way the movie was done.

He thought
Liza Minnelli was too good.

He made a funny comment
in interviews about, if--

if she opens her mouth
and she's every bit Judy Garland's daughter...

and that there's no way a club in Berlin
could have housed such a talent.

♪ Life is a cabaret ♪

[Bachardy]
Five minutes after
Liza Minnelli had been on screen,

Chris leaned towards me and said,
"She's no good. "[Laughs]

That's him.
[Laughing Continues]

He liked Michael York very much.
He thought he was just right for it.

But how could he like Liza Minnelli?

Because, um--

with her personality and talent,

she destroyed
the character of Sally Bowles.

Because if Sally Bowles isn't an amateur,
she isn't Sally Bowles.

I think Christopher Isherwood
enjoyed the film. I think he would say,

"Well, that's not what it was like."

But it was a point of view.

And when you write a piece,
you have to be prepared
for all kinds of points of view.

And, um, he liked
that people liked it so much.

[Hodson]
Cabaret put him on the map
for the world at large,

for the general public.

People who didn't read much
or may not have known
about Isherwood as an author--

Cabaret was really the ticket to fame.

[Train Whistle Toots]

Isherwood had to leave Berlin in 1933,
as so many people did.

And throughout the 1930s,
he'd wandered in Europe,

looking for a country
where he could settle...

with his German boyfriend,
Heinz Neddermeyer.

There were problems
about passports, papers, visas.

Heinz eventually was arrested
by the Gestapo...

and first served a prison sentence
and then went into the army.

This was very distressing.
This was a boy to whom, at the time,
he felt very committed.

[Hodson]
I think for both Isherwood and Auden,

they could see that there was
a war on the horizon in Europe,
without any doubt at all.

And they recognized that they had no part
in that, because they were pacifists.

So he and Auden turned
their backs on Europe.

They decided to emigrate
to the United States.

And they arrived in New York City
in January, 1939.

[Bachardy]
Chris didn't like the cold.
He didn't like the grime of New York.

He didn't like the bustle,
and he longed for the West.

He had a romantic vision of the West,

which he got from John Ford movies.

[Hodson]
So he headed out across country...

and ended up in Southern California.

Los Angeles offered a tremendously
varied cultural atmosphere...

for someone like Isherwood
to drop into the center.

There were the expatriates,

the artists, the musicians,
the actors, the directors--

a great boiling pot...

for all sorts of cultural
and artistic life and creativity.

He fit in beautifully.

Because he had something to offer,
they had something to offer him.

He's one of the few writers
who will admit...

that writing for Hollywood
made him a better writer.

He learned an economy of language.
He learned how to use dialogue,

how to set something up visually
in a paragraph...

rather than in pages and pages.

When he abandoned England...

and came to this place
where there were no rules,

he also abandoned
the methodology...

and structures and styles
of traditional novel writing.

He wrote with this camera eye,
if you like,

influenced by the cinema.

[York As Isherwood]
I am a camera with its shutter open,

quite passive,
recording, not thinking.

Someday, all this will
have to be developed,

carefully printed, fixed.

Pulling up roots from England,
coming to this country,

was an outward manifestation...

of a spiritual crisis in his life.

The impending war
was getting him down,

and he really was in need
of some kind of guidance.

And he certainly couldn't have got it
from the Church of England,

because he'd learned to, uh, loathe...

all that official religion in England.

[Man]
He met Aldous Huxley,

who in turn introduced him
to Swami Prabhavananda,

who had started the Vedanta Society
in Southern California.

And Isherwood studied Vedanta,
a branch of Hindu philosophy,

with Prabhavananda,
for the rest of his life, really.

Chris immediately told him
he was homosexual,

and Prabhavananda didn't regard that...

as an insurmountable obstacle.

He became such a devout follower
of Vedanta and of the Swami...

that he did seriously
consider becoming a monk.

But there were two things
that stopped him.

He recognized in himself
that he wanted to have...

a longtime personal commitment
to a serious relationship with a partner.

The second thing he knew
is that he needed to continue writing,

that he could not give that up.

Um, these are
my mother's own scrapbooks.

Um--

Joan Bennett, um--

I think this is Nancy Carroll.

Oh, Louise Brooks.
She had Louise Brooks here.

Look at the trouble.
It's beautifully done.

How carefully all these things
are put in.

Imagine cutting out that so carefully.

I must get my orderliness
from my mother.

My parents were attracted
to the glamour of Hollywood,

especially my mother,
who loved movies and movie stars.

So as soon as they were married,
they traveled across country by car...

and settled in Los Angeles.

And soon my mother gave birth
to my brother Ted.

I was born four years later in 1934..

It was during World War II
when we were growing up,

and there was a big demand
on my father to work long hours,

because he worked
in the aerospace industry.

So while my father
was working overtime,

my mother would take Ted and me
downtown by streetcar to the movies.

This is one of the key theaters
I remember.

I think it's the first one
I remember being brought to--

to see a Joan Crawford movie
called My Shining Hour.

Um, I was four.

[Man]
His mother would take his brother
out of school even,

and they would go to movies
during the day.

Then Don would even go on his own.
When he was--

When he was very young, he would go.

He wasn't old enough
to actually get a ticket,

and he would get someone to buy the ticket
for him to get into the theater.

At the theater, he was looking up close
at these big images of these movie stars.

[Laughing]

[Bachardy]
We started as ordinary fans,

sitting in the bleachers
outside the theater with our mother.

And eventually,
Ted and I had the idea--

when going to a premiere--

to put on our best jacket
and trousers and ties...

and try to look as though
we belonged there.

And we also brought our camera with us,

and we started taking pictures
of ourselves with the movie stars.

[Woman]
I met Don Bachardy all by himself.

Round cheeks and bright eyes.

And he was one of those young kids
who would ask you to sign an autograph,

come next to you and--while you sign--
and his friend would take the picture.

And years and years later, he found
the photograph and gave me a copy of it,

which is wonderful.

[Bachardy]
Ted and I went to the beach every weekend.

Ted mysteriously at first...

always wanted to walk us
about a mile and a half...

to Will Rogers State Beach...

for us to lay out our beach blanket.

I soon discovered that that was because
it was the queer beach in Santa Monica.

This is more or less the area of the beach...

where I met Chris,

and that would have been
when I was probably 16.

He was so friendly.

He had such a charming smile
and sparkling eyes.

Eyes that had such energy.

Eyes that ate you up.

Sometimes Chris and I would just
wave to each other in the distance.

And sometimes he would
come up to our blanket...

and engage us in conversation.

A t that time, I was only interested
in actors and actresses.

Writers were
an unknown quantity to me.

So I wasn't impressed by Chris as a writer.

And at the time, he was really
only interested in my brother Ted.

I knew they had slept together
a couple of times.

[Men Laughing, Chattering]

The first time I can say
that I met Chris socially...

was in October of 1952
when I was 18.

Ted and I
were invited for drinks...

by a couple of, uh,
queer men we knew.

And they'd had Chris for dinner.

And I think Ted and I
were invited for dessert.
[Laughing]

Dessert for them and for Chris.

It was one of the first times
that I got drunk,

and I was very unused to drinking
and had too much to drink.

And Chris had been there
since before dinner,

so he was fairly drunk too.

And we found ourselves standing up
in the dining room, kissing.

We lost our balance
and fell against a big window,

which was all panes of glass--
[Glass Breaking]

and we broke one of the glass panes.

That sound of glass breaking
brought me out of my alcoholic haze,

and I suddenly said
I had to go home.

I didn't see Chris again
until the following February.

We were going to the beach
when, in the middle of the drive,

Ted said,
"Why don't we stop and see Chris?"

He was in the middle of work
when Ted and I arrived.

I remember he made us scrambled eggs,

with mushrooms from a can.

Mushrooms were one of the few things...

I found disgusting to eat,

particularly ones from a can.

I didn't much like
the breakfast he prepared,

but I did like Chris.

Our morning encounter
was such a success...

that Chris decided to come
to the beach with Ted and me.

When we parted
at the end of the evening,

we made plans to do the same thing
the following weekend.

And the following weekend
provided the first night...

Chris and I spent alone together.

[Beeping]

Ted?

Uh, I'm nearly dressed.
Are you ready?

The film goes on at 1:00.

So I'll pick you up in half an hour?

Okay. Bye-bye.

Not long after that first night
Chris and I spent together,

Ted began to go into another
of his nervous breakdowns.

They'd begun
when he was 15 and I was 11.

This was maybe the third one.

Of course it was devastating for me,

because he was really the key person
in my life at the time.

And suddenly
he wasn't available to me.

[Man Muttering, Groaning]

He had several series
of shock treatments.

That was the standard therapy
in the '50s,

which permanently
changed him, I think.

[Electrical Buzzing]
[Groaning]

Chris was concerned about me,

because he guessed
how important Ted was to me.

And he started
asking me out to dinner,

the ballet and the theater,

Just as a means of showing support.

[York As Isherwood]
I feel a special kind of love for Don.

I suppose I'm just
another frustrated father.

But this feeling exists
at a very deep level,

beneath names for things
or their appearances.

We're just back from a trip
to Palm Springs together,

which was one of those rare experiences
of nearly pure joy.

There's a brilliant wide-openness
about his mouse-face,

with its brown eyes and tooth-gap
and bristling crew cut,

which affects everybody who sees him.

If one could still be like that at 40,
one would be a saint.

[Bachardy]
The official mental diagnosis for Ted...

was a manic-depressive schizophrenic,

and, indeed, he fills the bill.

He's being medicated by the people
who run the building he lives in.

You know, if he gets too obstreperous,

um, they medicate him down.

Hi.
[Ted]
Hi.

Guido's here with me.
You're right on time.

He's filming.

I never know quite
what state he's going to be in.

You know who Josh Hartnett is?

Of course.
We've seen his movies together.

[TV]
Here we come.
Oh, is that he?

Yeah.

Look at all of 'em.

Oh, that's
a great picture of him.

Yeah, that's just terrific.

Charlize Theron.

Uh, yeah. Well, you know
what I think of her.

You don't like her.
You know I don't.

I don't dislike her.
I'm just not interested in her.

I don't understand
why you don't think she's pretty.

Um, pretty in a kind
of vacuous way.

And he's still, at 75,
having manic phases.

I know right away...

when he's going
into his other persona.

It really wrecked his life.

[Man Narrating]
Yes, this is the land of the rainbow's end,

where out door pageantry
enraptures the soul.

[Bucknell]
In the early '50s
when Don and Chris first met,

obviously it was, let's say,
a squarer time than now, even in California.

Isherwood had just done over
and moved into
a lovely little garden house...

on the property
of his close friend, Evelyn Hooker.

She was a psychologist...

who spent most of her career
studying the gay community in Los Angeles,

and she published
the first research suggesting...

that homosexuals were as well-adjusted
psychologically as heterosexuals.

Even Evelyn Hooker and her husband,
who were pretty liberal-minded--

and obviously she was engaged
in studying the behavior of gay people--
didn't feel comfortable...

when this very young-looking boy
moved into their garden house.

They said to Isherwood
that it couldn't go on.

Isherwood decided
that he would move out.

Don was more important to him
than the garden house.

- They found another place to live.
- [Vehicle Engine Starts]

[Bachardy]
Our honeymoon trip was on
my Easter vacation from college.

Chris was waiting for me
on the street outside.

His plan was to drive us
to Monument Valley.

He was sitting in the sun
and smiling at me.

And, um, I was so pleased
to step into the passenger seat.

And we drove off right then.

There weren't even roads
into Monument Valley then.

Paved roads didn't exist.

But we made it.
We arrived in this bunkhouse.

Nothing but men sitting...

at this ranch-type table,

at the head of which was John Ford,
and it was all his crewmen.

And, of course,
they all had to be, um, macho types.

And here were
this small Englishman...

and his very
young-looking boyfriend.

And maybe they assumed
we were father and son.

[Ship Whistle Blows]

[York As Isherwood] Yesterday at noon
when the great ship thundered good-bye
to the echoing towers of Manhattan,

I could hardly hold back my tears.

It was so beautiful.

The Hudson full off us sing tugboats...

and brimming with silver light.

The thought
that it was Don's first voyage,

never to be quite duplicated for him--

[Bachardy]
Chris and I were making our first trip...

to Europe together,

uh, in 1956...

when I was 21 and he was 51.

We were on an Italian ship,

and it docked at Gibraltar.

It occurred to Chris that,
Gibraltar being so near to Tangier,

we might get off the ship
for a weekend...

and pop around to Tangier
and see Paul Bowles.

I never had any drugs in my life.

I simply didn't know what I was in for.

And here we were, uh-- um--

uh, smoking the finest keif...

and eating majoon.

It was so delicious.

Oh! Little did we know
what we were in for.

We were offered the hashish
in a very elaborate pipe...

with all kinds of bangles
coming down from it,

and it seemed very exotic
and mysterious.

It took us both a long time
to have any reaction.

And then little by little...

I began to get very scared
and very paranoid.

Paul Bowles suddenly seemed to me
a very sinister character.

I felt that there was
a situation developing...

in which Paul was trying...

to isolate me from Chris.

And I said to Chris--
[Whispers]
"We've got to get out of here."

We got to our hotel,

and by that time, I was really
deep into the experience...

and scared like I'd never been
before in my life.

This was real, real terror.

I thought I was insane...

and that I would never find
my way back to sanity.

I thought, "Ah, I'm like Ted.

I'm going down the same drain."

And I was just scared out of my wits.

And I know that Chris was scared too.

But he never left my side.

He never stopped reassuring me.

We were clinging
to each other for dear life.

[York As Isherwood]
I now realize what I should have known
from the start--

that I ought never to have
let Don take the stuff,

because the whole Ted problem
now came up to the surface.

And yet, in another way,
it was good that he did take it,

because he passed
through the experience...

and, to some degree, overcame it.

I feel that a new and very strong bond
exists between Don and myself.

This is a tremendous
experience we've shared.

[Bachardy]
I think we crossed a barrier for the first time
and really became trustful...

and sure of each other...

in a way that we hadn't been before.

[Bell Tolling]

Well, Don as a man
was entirely formed by Chris.

And I can't remember
what his accent was...

or his voice was like
when he was a young boy.

But he came to have the same voice
and the same accent and mannerisms...

as if he'd been raised in Oxford.

Isherwood had succeeded
in cloning himself in some curious way,

because their mannerisms,
their speech patterns were so similar.

I had the impression that Don
had actually gained access...

to Chris's genetic code...

and had gobbled it up
and reproduced himself.

Before we went out anywhere,
I remember very clearly...

I would always show him
what I was wearing...

and say, "What do you think?
Is this right?"

And if he said, "Oh, I think
another jacket or another tie"...

or maybe a whole other ensemble,

I would change.

Don had this British accent,
and we're both Los Angeles boys.

Don should essentially
be talking like I talk.

I'm from Montebello.
He's from Glendale.

Really Atwater, I know.

And I never spoke to him about it,
but it's very noticeable.

And I've heard people say,
"Where did you grow up in England?"

And he always said,
"No, I'm from Los Angeles."

[Bachardy]
The English accent showed up
after less than a year.

People who knew me before
thought I was putting on the dog,

giving myself airs.

I couldn't help it.
I'm an unconscious impersonator.

Chris said how important it was
to stand up straight,

hold my head up.

And he gave me as an example...

a young revolutionary
on his way to the gallows.

The whole town was watching,

and I was walking down
the middle of the street, proud, defiant.

[No Audible Dialogue]

Don Bachardy must have been
absolutely bowled over...

by suddenly, through
his relationship with Isherwood,

meeting the huge big-name people...

that were friends of Isherwood.

Authors like Tennessee Williams,
Truman Capote,

composers like Igor Stravinsky.

And all of a sudden,
here is this very young man,

thrown into social settings.

It must have been
enormously intimidating.

[York As Isherwood]
Floods of tears from Don this evening.

Don feels left out of everything,
ignored, overlooked, slighted.

And what am I to say? It's true.

That's how the world treats young people,
and it hasn't changed since I was 20.

[Bachardy]
I was feeling incredibly insecure.

I wanted people to like me
for who I really was,

but I wasn't sure myself who I was.

What would it feel like
to be 25 or 22 years old...

and be sitting down to dinner
with Somerset Maugham
or E. M. Forster--

all of these famous people--

and you're just this handsome young man?

But Don did it.

He experienced it, I think,
in the best way...

because he listened to them,
learned from them,

interacted with them...

and then went home
and complained to Chris...

about how he felt
and how he was treated.

On the one hand, you're so flattered
that you're with these people.

On the other hand,
how can they view you in your finest...

when you haven't developed
who you are yet?

♪♪ [Dramatic]
[Actor On TV]

[Bachardy]
The profession that I dreamed of...

when I was a kid
was being an actor,

and by "actor," of course,
I meant movie star.

So I was quite excited
when Chris was invited to Key West...

by Tennessee Williams
for the filming of The Rose Tattoo...

with Anna Magnani
and Burt Lancaster.

And Anna Magnani provided me, also,
with a very key experience...

in regard to movie stars.

She was the first movie star
and the only one...

that I actually saw and heard fart.

A t the tender age of 19,
I had never acknowledged...

that real movie stars ever farted.

I also got a part
as an extra in the movie.

It's at the moment
when a little coupe...

drives up to Marisa Pavan's house
to pick her up.

The four people in the car
are supposed to be young friends of hers,

and I was one of the two
in the backseat.

It was an awful,
humiliating experience.

Like all extras,
the four of us were treated like cattle.

But it was a useful experience,

because I never again yearned
to be a star of the cinema.

The only thing that I knew
I was clearly good at was drawing people,

and Chris realized very early on
that I had a flair for it.

In fact, the very first drawing
I did from life was of Chris,

and I still have it.

He was urging me to find out
whether or not I might want to be an artist...

and kept prodding me
to try art school.

It was about three years
before I did, in fact, enroll...

for a summer term at an art school.

It was an immediate success.

I was a dedicated
and inexhaustible art student...

for the next four years.

He was totally responsible
for my being an artist,

because he not only paid
for all of my schooling,

but far more importantly,
he was there when I came home...

and said,
"Let me see what you did today. "

And that, of course,
means more than anything.

When you're doubtful
about yourself...

and trying to be confident
about what you're doing,

to have somebody give you
that kind of support is golden.

But my father, you know, he--
he not only never encouraged me,

he actively tried to discourage me.

He was unreceptive
to my being an artist,

made it clear
he hated my queerness.

And when I came to dinner with them,
I was instructed--

not by him, because he was too cowardly,
but my mother had to tell me--

that Chris was not to be mentioned.

Well, I should never have agreed
to such a restriction.

How dare they?

Hi.
Hi. You're Dan. I'm Don.

Great to meet you.
Pleased to meet you.

Would you come and sit--

[Bachardy]
Once I found my vocation,

I was then indefatigable;
nothing would stop me.

I wouldn't take no for an answer.
I would draw anybody in any situation.

In the very early weeks
of our getting to know each other,

Chris took me to an Italian restaurant
on Gower Street.

We were in the restaurant
about 10 minutes...

when the door opened,
and in came Montgomery Clift.

I said, "Chris,
Montgomery Clift just came in."

And I was thrilled.

And I was watching him,

and, um, he came closer
and closer and closer,

until finally he was right at our table,
and he said, "Hello, Chris."

Well, I nearly fainted.

I had no idea.
I mean, here was this major hot star.

And I saw him
from the very first moment he came in,

and imagine his coming
right up to the table.

And of course,
Chris instantly introduced me.

Well, I was just--
[Chuckles]
undone.

And when he realized
that was a way to thrill me,

he charmed every movie star we met.

He would go
to all kinds of occasions...

that couldn't have
interested him in the least,

except that he might meet someone
who happened to be somebody...

from my pantheon
of most favorite favorites.

And that's the way I'd gotten
many celebrities to sit for me.

If I were forced to work
from a photograph,

I probably wouldn't paint.

But then, if I accepted the limitation,

I would choose
a very bad photograph,

because at least
that would force my imagination.

[York As Isherwood]
Coming back at 10:45 from supper--

the nice smell of redwood
as I lifted the garage door...

and the feeling of impotence,
or what it really amounts to:

lack of inclination to cope
with a constructed, invented plot.

Why not write about one's experiences
from day to day?

And then, as I slid my door back,

this sinking,
sick feeling of love for Don--

somehow connected
with the torn shorts--

and the reality of that, so far more...

than all this tiresome fiction.

Why invent
when life is so prodigious?

Perhaps I'll never write another novel
or anything invented...

except, of course, for money.

[Woman]
What are you famous for?
I'm a painter. I paint people.

Why don't you paint me?
[Laughs]

I've got a nice face.
A good question. Yeah.

Because I only see you once a week,
and I expect you're busy.

Well, yeah, but I can always
rearrange my schedule
to get painted.

Well, thank you very much.
Thank you.

Have a good one.

Hi, Don.
Hi.

[Bachardy]
My first one-man show...

was in October of 1961 in London...

at the Redfern Gallery.

This was my official introduction...

to my identity as an artist.

[York As Isherwood]
I'm so proud of Don sometimes
that I could burst.

Don was interviewed
and photographed by the press,

while I kept away in a corner,
nearly splitting with pride.

I put on a rather disparaging expression,
like a parent who fears to show his pride.

Of course, I know it's the most
monstrous egotism on my part to be proud,

to claim any part
of what he has made of himself.

Just the same, I do.

[Bachardy]
He often said he'd never been denied...

any of the pleasures
and satisfactions of a parent,

because he'd met me...

when I was young enough
that he could still have...

an enormous influence on my development,

and this was
a crowning achievement.

Like this?
If I could--And--

Yeah, I'm flexible,
you know.

I had finally
established myself as an artist.

I had my own persona, as it were,
and I could function independently.

The question was,
did I want to go on with the old life--

which had brought me to this point--

or did I want to go on to fresher fields?

The thought crossed my mind
that I might think of leaving Chris.

All kinds of very real problems
between us...

could be so effectively dealt with...

in our animal personas.

Because I could give voice...

to my feelings--
[Meowing]

of being deprived
of this or that experience...

because of my life with Chris--

my life with somebody
so much older than myself--

[Meows]
I could voice it in terms
of a poor little kitten...

struggling against
insurmountable odds,

and how brave that little cat was,

and how dear and deep his love...

that, despite everything
that he was giving up,

he could still take care
of that old horse.

Chris had been open with me
about his past--

all his lovers,
all his adventures.

I took the obvious position:

"Well, how can you deny me...

such adventures, such freedom?"

[Man Singing Rhythm And Blues]
♪ Hello there, hi ♪

♪ You know you really turn me on ♪♪
I would go out "mousing. "
That was the term we used for it.

Next morning-- or that night
when I came home, if he was still up--

he would ask me,
"How was the mouse tonight?"

And I'd say, "Plump one,"

or, "A disappointingly skinny one. "

And I also insisted
that he have his affairs too,

just because I didn't want
to always feel like the guilty one.

I didn't like it so much
when he found really quite attractive,

intelligent people.

That wasn't quite what I had in mind.
[Laughing]

I suppose I imagined his choosing
somebody of his own age,

which was, of course, out of the question.

[Freeman]
They tried to set rules, I think,
and tried to be pretty true to those.

But Chris did not like it
if Don didn't spend the night at their house.

And he didn't like the secrecy,

and so I think he was
more interested in disclosure--

you know, who's doing what
and with whom.

I'm going to stop this.
Thank you very much.

Oh, the eyes are intense in that one.
That's a good one.

Did I forget your ears,
or could I not see them?
I don't know. Let's see.

I forgot them. Just--

[Bachardy]
1962, 1963 was our bumpiest period.

And that's really what prompted him...

to write A Single Man,

which is all based on the supposition
of a man of his age...

losing his lover in an automobile accident,
and what does he do?

And Chris was seriously contemplating...

what kind of life he would lead
without me.

I got involved with somebody, sort of.

I thought maybe I might even want
to break it up with Chris. I--

It made Chris miserable to know...

that I was pondering such a decision.

He went away to San Francisco
to teach up there...

for, oh, at least a couple of months.

And I was in the house alone here,

and it wasn't really any better.

"Dear Horse,
Old Cat is coming out of a deep sulk,

"one that any horse
would thank his stars for having missed.

I need you terribly sometimes.
It shocks me how much. "

[Whinnies]
"I don't want to need you.

"I want to be able to rely on myself.

"I don't like depressing you with all my woes.

"I must do this alone.

"I must get through by myself.

"And I try hard to love you
instead of just needing you.

Your Overwrought Pussy. "

[Bucknell]
Don felt a huge obligation to Isherwood...

that was almost unbearable--
that he'd been given so much.

At one time he said,
"I want to get really rich...

"so that I can no longer
be beholden to you...

and I can somehow pay it back. "

And freedom is just not necessarily
being given everything.

Freedom is something
you need to get for yourself.

Isherwood by then was
a mature and experienced person...

who used every ounce
of his self-control and knowledge...

not to allow
this thing to break altogether.

[York As Isherwood]
Own Sweetest Fur,

got the dear letter yesterday.

I do hope Black Puss
will scat for a while and let you work.

The Bay is significantly beautiful.

I lie on the roof when I can
and sun.

Also, I walk all over the area,

and I'm learning its geography at last.

Kitty would have clapped his paws
and laughed from the bottom of his furry heart...

to see Drub hopelessly stuck...

on a vertical bit of Jones Street
high up on Russian Hill...

and trying to cling
to the passing houses with his hooves.

Think of his dear so very much,
and sends thoughts of love...

and prays that Kitty
will find a way out of his sadness.

[Bachardy]
I adored his drawings...

because he had absolutely
no technical skill whatsoever,

and that made them
all the more wonderful.

[Chuckling]

Yes, and they made me cry.

Of course, the effect of Chris's
leaving the house for three months...

was that it immediately put
the other relationship into perspective,

and I realized
I wasn't nearly as involved...

as maybe I thought I was.

[Bucknell]
We have, in this record of the diaries,

the true account of how bad
and how good a relationship can be.

I came across a passage
in the 1967 diary.

He's writing about
how could love be profane...

if it was really love.

He talks about that idea
of sacred and profane love...

and then observes
that Don has become...

his path to spiritual enlightenment.

Chris and Don were never apologetic
about being a couple,

and there were lots of reasons
that they could have been--

the age difference thing,
the difference in status...

at the beginning
of their relationship, in particular--
but they never were.

They would go to Hollywood parties
when closeted people
were surrounding them,

and they were a couple.

[Bachardy]
Joseph Cotten was very rude to me
in front of a lot of people...

at a party
at David and Jennifer Selznick's.

He talked in a loud voice
about "half men"...

and how disgusting they were.

He wouldn't dare talk like that
within earshot of Chris.

He would pick a moment
when I was by myself.

Even the homophobes could usually
bring themselves to be polite to Chris,

because they knew
he was a distinguished writer.

But who was I? I was just this little
upstart faggot from their point of view.

[Freeman]
They were friends
with Anthony Perkins, the star of Psycho,

who wrestled and struggled
with his sexuality all his life...

and who, of course,
died of AIDS complications.

He would come
to Chris and Don's house,

having just spent the entire day in therapy
trying to not be gay.

And I think they looked upon that
with much sadness,

because they were
so comfortable in their lives.

Christopher never took a woman
with him to a function
so that it would appear he was straight.

Don never did.
They went to parties together.
They went as a couple,

and there would be men
that they had had sex with
in the room with their wives.

[Bucknell]
Part of Isherwood's
whole endeavor as a novelist...

involved emerging from the "closet,"
for want of a better word.

There are obviously
some homosexual characters
in his early books,

but there's always a kind
of covertness and a coded quality
to how he talks about it.

For example, in The Berlin Stories,

if you read it very, very carefully,

you can pretty much guess
that the narrator, the protagonist, is gay.

But you don't know that.
It's not a big thing in the story.

And as Isherwood remarked later on,
he didn't dare make it a big thing,

because if he had,
it would have been the whole story.

I t was very i mportant that this observer
should have been rather sexless--

at least how it seemed
to me at that time:

rather unobtrusive,

just a kind of a straight man to take--
I mean no pun here--

a straight man to take the-- to pick up
the other people's jokes, you know?

Later he told that story--
the story of a gay man in Berlin,
openly gay--

he told that story
in Christopher and His Kind.

[Isherwood]
"Christopher had taken longer than Wystan...

"to become aware
of his own change of attitude...

"because he was embarrassed
by its basic cause:

"his homosexuality.

"As a homosexual, he had been wavering...

"between embarrassment and defiance.

"He became embarrassed
when he felt that he was making...

"a selfish demand
for his individual rights...

"at a time
when only group action mattered.

"And he became defiant...

"when he made the treatment
of the homosexual...

"a test by which every political party
and government...

"must be judged.

"He must never again
give way to embarrassment,

"never deny the rights ofhis tribe,

"never apologize for its existence,

"never think of sacrificing himself
masochistically...

"on the altar of that false god
of the proletarians:

"the greatest good
of the greatest number,

"whose priests are alone empowered...

to decide what "good' is. "

[Bucknell]
Christopher and His Kind sold faster
than any book he ever published.

And when he went to this--
I think it was the Oscar Wilde Bookshop
in the Village to sign copies--

and he saw young men lined up
around the block...

wanting to meet him
and have him sign their copy.

And he was absolutely thrilled about that.

[Bachardy]
I stopped driving
because I had my license taken away.

I was considered responsible
for an accident I was in...

in which nobody was hurt.

My revenge was to give up driving.

I ride my bike everywhere,
all over Santa Monica.

I ride it into Beverly Hills.
I had lunch just last week in Beverly Hills.

And it was fun,
and I got good exercise.

Well, now, here's this letter
from Oliver.

He wants us to go to this party.
What will we do about it?

[Bachardy] Well, do you want to go or not?
Well, he says we have to go
in armor, you know,

and mine's terribly rusted
to start off with.

[Bachardy]
From 1968 until the late '70s,

we collaborated
and wrote six or seven scripts together.

Uh, Dr. Frankenstein.

It's the only one of the screenplays
we wrote together that got produced.

I still have such clear memories
of working on it.

Chris made it such fun.

We were very pleased with our idea,

which nobody else had thought of--

of the creature as being created...

and being such a success--
that he was a beautiful young man.

You are beautiful.

Beautiful.

[Bachardy]
Eventually, the creature deteriorates...

and becomes scary-looking.

- [Hisses]
- And it's much more poignant,

because he started out beautiful,
and then loses his beauty,

and like all of us, minds it terribly.

These three, four, five drawers
are all pictures of Chris.

Oh, these are-- are some nudes.

This is end of June, uh--

uh, '85.

Wow. Um--

Yes, they bring back
those days...

and very much his mood...

and what it was like
being with him.

[York As Isherwood]
I look at my body with its wrinkles
and slackness of the skin...

and other imperfections
which can never be set right anymore now.

It is wearing out, tiring,

getting ready,
whether it likes it or not, to die.

I am getting ready to die.

All very well to say I'm not my body
and even believe this.

Still, it is a parting.

All very well to say that my whole life
has been dying...

and saying good-bye to the past.

This will be different.

Even if it is quite painless,
it will be different.

And there is saying good-bye to Don.

Nobody who has ever loved anyone
as I love Don...

can seriously pretend that--
that it won't be painful.

[Bachardy]
Oh, in 1981,

they discovered cancer
in his prostate.

It was helpful to me
to have a pretty good four years...

to accustom myself
to the idea of losing him.

But no matter how much preparation
one thinks one has...

about losing a loved one,

you can't real ly be prepared.

[Caron]
About a year before Chris died,

some close friends called me and said,

"Leslie, if you want to see Chris a last time,
you better come quickly.

He's very ill. "

So we had this dinner
i n a Japanese restaurant.

And I found Chris rosy, plump,

just absolutely--

the expression, "in the pink. "

And I said to him,
"Chris, I was told you were near death.

Look at you. You look fantastic,
and you're so full of pep. "

And he said, "Oh, well, I know.

"I was in a very bad way,

but I decided
it wasn't the right time. "

And I said, "Why?

You hadn't finished a book?"

And he said, "No, it's"--
and he pointed to Don.

And he said,
"He isn't ready."

He was always upbeat
about my life after he was gone,

and I was always, uh--

uh, describing scenes...

of wandering
the hideous byways, uh,

mewing outside a door
that never opened.

[Laughing]

Yes, we laughed a lot about that.

Finally the last six months
of his life,

I gave up working with anybody else
and worked with--

I only worked with Chris.

And we usually
did something every day,

and sometimes,
I would do as many as, um--

uh, nine, 10 pictures of him.

[White]
He was so profoundly affected...

by the fact that he was dying,
and he knew he was dying,

and that Don was there
taking care of him to such an extent.

Because they were together
all the time,

and Don was painting him
and drawing him all the time.

Chris said over and over and over...

how much he loved Don
and how much it meant to him.

Chris, as he was dying,
going through this period--

there was a kind of ecstasy
that he was going through--

that aspect of it--
his feelings of his love...

being manifested with Don
and Don taking care of him.

He was in great pain,
and it was a terrible situation,
what he was going through.

But I think what made
the situation bearable for him...

was his realization
that this love was manifested,

and that it was still his to the very end.

[Bachardy]
Of course, it's my instinct--

Always when I work, I identify.

So I was in my artist mode,

but I was also identifying with Chris.

So in a way,
it became more and more...

like something
that we were doing together.

Here I was being an artist,

and at the same time,
I was dying with Chris.

And even when it was an effort for him,

I excused myself
by saying to myself,

"Well, it serves him right...

"for being responsible
for making me an artist in the first place,

"that I should devote myself
to this daily task...

of working with him. "

In the later months,

he wasn't well enough even to sit up.

And sometimes he was restless,

sometimes he was in a state
of half-sleeping, half-waking,

and moving a great deal.

Some of the pictures I did
were done in just a few minutes.

It was hard on him.

And, uh, he would--
[Chuckles]
moan and--

and be so weary of it.

But he would go on,
and so would I.

And a lot of our sittings...

began to take place at night
by artificial light.

And sometimes
I would look later at the pictures...

and be shocked...

that I could do
such a stark picture of Chris.

We're getting very close
to the end.

This is the first
of the drawings I did...

after he was dead.

It was a Saturday morning...

and we were completely alone
in the house.

And I spent the rest of the day, um--

uh, drawing his corpse.

I'd been drawing him steadily,
uh, every day.

I hadn't missed a day in--
in several weeks.

I continued that day.
I wasn't sure I'd have the courage to do it.

And one of the things
that spurred me on...

was my belief that he--

he would have been cheering me on,

that he would say,

"Yes, uh, that's
what an artist would do."

And that's what an artist did do.

[Voice Breaking]
Yes, I know he would have been...

proud of me.

[Boorman]
I was so impressed when Chris died,

and Don said,
"I'm reading his diaries now.

I'm starting from the present.
I'm working backwards."

And he said, "I just can't wait
to come to the point at which we met. "

So he would then have
Isherwood's account of their first meeting.

[Water Running]

[Bachardy]
In a way, I've managed to satisfy
my acting ambitions,

because what I'm really doing
is impersonating my sitter when I'm painting.

Every face has to be important.

Every face.

And when you think,
each individual...

is showing me a face...

that he is living his entire life with.

So it has to be
of immense importance.