Original subtitles

[music playing]

RON PECK: Colm Clifford was cut out of "Nighthawks."

He played a character very much like himself,

and called Colm in the film, written

in as a challenge to the main character,

the school teacher, Jim.

A man much more confident about being gay,

Colm lived communally with other gay people in an empty house

that they'd squatted.

This was the place and these were some of the people

he shared it with.

The house is still there, but turned into private flats now,

someone told me.

When we were editing, there was a lot of argument

about Colm's character, and whether it

should stay in the film or not.

Some people felt it gave the wrong impression of being gay.

It was too alternative, too political, the whole setup

was altogether too weird.

Do yourself and us a favor, they said.

Cut it.

But there were others who argued just as forcefully

that it should stay in.

Its difference was its strength.

Why live alone or like a married couple?

Why not share your life a little more

generously, feel the support of being with your own people?

This school teacher who was living a double life

needed provoking, or he'd never come out of the closet.

Keep it in.

Challenge him.

It was a discussion that went on for weeks.

In the end, the scenes with Colm were cut.

They only seemed to work at full length,

and that threw the rest of the story out of balance,

took it out on too much of a detour.

Though that, of course, was meant

to be part of what the film was about, the detours.

That, for me, was part of the exhilaration of gay life.

The adventurous that started off from leaning at the bar

and talking to strangers.

There was another reason we cut the character.

A feeling that what we'd filmed didn't

strongly enough express what Colm believed in and lived out.

That even at full length, it was somehow inadequate.

It was too constrained by the plot of the basic "Nighthawks"

story.

It just wouldn't fit in.

When I made the decision to cut it,

I didn't feel easy about it.

In fact, I can say I felt damn guilty.

Because Colm was also part of the production team.

He was with us for most of the three years it took us to get

the thing on to the screen.

He wrote letters to try and raise money, found locations.

He went to every gay bar and disco in London,

recruiting extras to be in the club scenes in the film,

and he found most of the school kids for the classrooms.

But more than anything, he was one of the people who

kept the whole effort to make this film going,

who helped keep us going when trying

to raise the money to make it became just too tough.

We felt like throwing in the towel.

And we did, several times.

He had a lot of energy and humor.

He was Irish, a very physical man.

You'd be working till 2:00 in the morning, your back

about to give out and someone would come up behind you

and rub your shoulders to get you through the next half hour,

and more often than not, it was him.

If he saw you were thirsty, he'd come up with a drink.

He watched out for people, that's what I remember.

Everybody liked him.

When the film was finally released,

he came along to some of the screenings,

joined in the discussions.

He was critical of it, but defensive too,

which was probably how we all felt. He stood up for it.

He knew what it had cost to get even that much on a screen.

I lost touch with them after that,

heard he moved on to Barcelona, that he was happy there.

And then last year, 1989, I was told that he'd died of AIDS.

There was a small piece about him

in the gay press, an obituary for a man who couldn't

have been more than 30.

A friend saw a photograph taken of him

a few months before he died.

I wouldn't have recognized him, she said.

He'd lost a lot of weight.

His hair had turned white or gray or fallen out.

I don't know how he faced all that.

He wasn't the kind of man to go down without a fight, that's

for sure.

And he was a fighter.

We've always needed fighters.

In many ways, a braver man than I was.

Because he was out on the streets and he

was insisting on his right to be gay.

He wasn't gonna to be discreet about it.

He wasn't gonna take the abuse, the violence,

being treated as the scum of the earth.

He was out marching with a banner

long before I'd even thought of "Nighthawks."

Whatever confidence I have in being gay now,

I owe partly to people like him.

And so did Jim, the schoolteacher in the film.

When he came out to the school kids at the end of the film,

one reason he stood up for himself,

was because he'd met people like Colm Clifford.

How about, "What's a guy like you

doing in a place like this?"

What's a guy like me doing in a place like this, uh--

What are you doing afterwards?

Oh, what am I doing afterwards?

I'm not doing anything afterwards.

You're going home, alone--

I'm driving--

---to a cold flat.

---alone to my cold flat.

Oh no, we can't have that.

I've got half a bed.

Half a bed?

Yeah.

What's your name?

Colm.

Pardon?

Colm.

Nelson's Column.

Family's fifth column.

You know.

Oh, Colm, Colm.

Yeah.

You?

Jim.

Hi.

Hi.

What do you do?

I teach.

Yeah?

What do you teach?

I teach geography.

Geography.

Where do you live?

I live in Notting Hill.

Where do you live?

Oh, sandy Brixton.

Oh, Brixton.

Yeah.

I know Brixton.

[indistinct chatter]

It's going to be everybody.

They're going everything.

There weren't that many people.

All those places have been done already.

We had three volunteers to go on the door,

and it seems in this present situation,

I think we can just get together this singsong,

because I've arranged with Noel to come

up for rehearsals at 5 o'clock.

Hello.

And these are the songs we're going

to sing again on the demonstration on Saturday.

-Hi, gang. -Hi, Colm.

[chatter]

Don't get me wrong now.

This hunky goes by the name of Jim.

[burp]

Edwin, John, Steve, Terry, Jeff, and yeah, another Jim.

Look.

I mean we've got this-- sorry.

Look, we've got this additional problem, right?

We've got a cabaret to put on tomorrow.

We've got to rehearse it tomorrow--

Since when are you doing a cabaret?

Since today, dear.

I mean, that's how it goes, you know.

I mean, you can't--

-When did you decide that? -Tomorrow night.

We didn't decide.

I mean I mean, I feel like doing anyway.

You're going to play the piano, Steve, though, aren't you?

Yeah. That's different.

OK.

Well if you can meet Noel at 5'oclock.

Wait a minute.

That means that we have to get some money to Alan's

to get the band for Saturday.

Well, I'll fix you up with a check tonight

before I go to bed, because I'm going

to work early tomorrow to--

Did you get him a drink?

Yeah, do you want one?

-I've got one, it's all right. -You got one?

OK.

This is Alice.

Hi, I'm a bit late.

Yeah I know.

Hi.

What have you been doing?

Well, I was counseling tonight right?

I'm really tired, because this guy went really late

and I had to go and see him. -Poor thing.

Well, I mean, it was fine.

Thanks love.

It was fine, it was really positive.

But I mean, like, he was he's he's, had he's had to leave

home, his boyfriend's left him, his parents

have just found out, right?

Found out what?

And, and, that he's gay, and uh, I mean it's OK.

I've sort of talked him through it.

He's not in any really bad situation.

I feel OK about it.

But uh, oh God, the Hope's College turned night

I told him to go and eat shit.

Anyway--

They've got problems too.

Ah, fuck them.

They're, they're the people we really got to reach.

What do you do for a living?

Oh, sorry, Jim's a teacher.

Man info-- Jim's a teacher.

Do you mean that you're one of those persons

with these inclinations?

That are looking at their children?

Like me?

And Steve?

And me?

Um, 11 to 18.

Really?

Oh, wow, a bit older, aren't they?

A lovely age.

It's a bit easier for us.

Mine are a bit older than that.

Jeez, I wish I'd known if, if my teachers

were gay when I was a kid.

Yeah, do your kids know you're gay?

No, they don't.

I mean, I thought to tell them.

Is it difficult?

I mean, I mean, do any of the people

you work with know you're gay? -Yeah.

A few. -Yeah.

I was at the start.

It's quite hard, because I mean, I work with really young kids.

I mean, I'm not a teacher, really.

I work in a children's nursery.

And I've been doing that for about two years.

And it's taking me sort of most of that times, I suppose,

before I'm sort of fairly happy that most people of the people

I work with know that I'm gay.

I mean, the parents of the kids.

I'm not really, terribly, terribly happy

yet that they know I'm gay.

You got to take it slowly, I think.

You know?

I'm really glad they know.

Mine was an awful lot easier, because knowing,

I wasn't going to come out for a couple of months.

I came out screaming, honey.

I went in there with badges and jewels and--

I'm sorry, to get, I'm sorry to get in here,

but I mean, look, I mean like, look, we've got one day.

We've got a demonstration.

I mean, like we've got an awful lot of last-minute details

that we've got to take care of.

And I'm really worried that um, you know,

they haven't been sewn up.

You know.

I mean, we've got to get them together.

Where are you off to?

Buh-bye.

Nice meeting you.

What time do you want breakfast honey?

11:15.

Goodnight.

See ya.

RON PECK: I made "Nighthawks" with Paul Hallam in 1978,

12 years ago.

I'm 42 now.

I was 29 then.

But somehow, that project began back in 1962 when I was 14.

I was at school.

It was summertime.

Exams were over.

I mean, we were just killing time 'til the holidays.

There was a boy in the year above me.

Athletic, good-looking, usually with a grin on his face.

Kind of boy people like to hang around with.

I'd catch sight of him most days in the school playground

and corridors between lessons, coming out of a classroom

as I was going in.

Chance encounters that made my heart pound.

Encounters, I began after a while, to seek out.

His special subject was art, and he would sit around

at the back of the art room, in an open area, that

was set aside for boys to drop into during their free periods.

Once a week, I had an art class in that same room,

painting still lifes to records of classical music.

The boy from the year above would be at the back,

absorbed in his own work.

I'd always try and get a seat that

faced that space at the back, so that I

could look up and see him.

I did it in such a way, that no one noticed.

It was the beginning of the practiced casual glance.

Later, I got bolder.

I'd go to the back of the art room

myself, in my own free periods, hoping he'd be there,

or that he might turn up when I was there, which he did, often.

Sometimes, we'd even exchanged the odd look or word.

I began to get to know where he'd be at certain times,

and I'd find a way to be there.

At morning assembly in the school hall,

I'd try and stand near him.

In the gym changing room, on sports afternoons,

I'd try to find a space next to him.

And when I had a class in the room where he kept his books,

I'd try and sit at his desk, in the seat warmed by his body.

Catching glimpses of him became the high points of the day.

Going into school became, more than anything else,

going in to see him, and coming home was to leave him behind.

Over a period, these feelings towards this boy, a desire

for attachment, for embrace, for shared nudity, for a smile,

a hand on the shoulder, became more and more disturbing.

Nothing had prepared me for them,

and I couldn't give them a name.

And when I was at home with my family,

his absence reinforced those feelings in an opposite sense.

It became equally overwhelming to see him or not to see him.

I would imagine him in my room, in my bed.

I'd dream about him.

The prospect of a long summer holiday without him

became unbearable.

There were just two more weeks of term left.

It was nearly 4 o'clock, and we were both at the back

of the art room.

The bell rang for the end of school, and he packed his bag

and went.

I got up a few seconds later and I

followed him, down the corridor, out into the streets.

What I was doing, I'm sure I didn't know.

It was as if I let my feeling, my desire,

totally determine my movements to their end.

There was a feeling of danger about it, the forbiddeness,

of some kind of unstated rule being broken.

I was nervous, and very afraid.

He got on a bus and I took the same bus, which

went a long way in the opposite direction

to the one I'd normally take home.

I didn't even know the streets the bus was moving along.

When he got off, I also got off.

He walked along the main road, and I followed,

down left and right turns, through suburban side streets,

gardens, trees.

He looked back a couple of times, but carried on.

And then he reached his front gate and stopped.

He was there waiting, facing me, anger in his eyes.

He shouted, what was I doing?

What the fuck did I think I was doing?

I don't remember what I said.

Something about wanting to be his friend,

but I remember the sensation of vertigo, of putting my future

into this boy's hands, of everything else around me,

the whole material world-- past, present,

and future-- disintegrating around my coming out with it.

I don't recall either what his reply was,

but I do remember that when he went into the house

and closed the door, the world around me

became very material again, and the full weight

of what I had done, although in a sense I'd done nothing,

sank in.

That night at home, the phone rang every five minutes.

And another boy's voice, unrecognizable,

reveled in pouring out abuse.

My mother, who answered it, cried hysterically,

then pushed the phone into my hand,

angrily, so that I could hear the words and

the dirty laughter for myself.

Your son's a homo.

Your son's a queer boy.

When my father came home, I was taken up into his bedroom

and looking very serious, he told

me that there had never been anything

like that in the family.

What was going on?

What was all this about?

And being very religious at the time,

I quoted back at him, the story of David and Jonathan,

and showed him the actual pages in the Bible.

It became a battle of the books.

The following evening, on my desk,

I found two booklets, supplied by the doctor

whom one or both of my parents must've consulted.

They were primitive sex education booklets.

One was about the birds and the bees.

And the other was about boys.

It was there, that I was first told what homosexuality was.

It was an adolescent emotion that in normal development,

I would grow out of.

And if I didn't, there were special doctors, psychiatrists.

A little later, in the local reference library,

I found out that obstinate cases could be cured by attaching

electrodes to the genitals.

The current was switched on when you looked at pictures of men,

and switched off when you looked at girly magazines.

The last resort was a scalpel to the brain.

The incident with the boy from the year

above was never talked about at home again,

and luckily, it never became a major school scandal.

Just private whispers of abuse, and smoking looks

from the boy and his friends whenever we crossed paths,

so that I now feared those chance encounters,

avoided them as much as I could.

But all the while they remained at the school,

I dreaded that the whole school would know, that they

would choose their moment, that I would

then, be torn apart publicly.

And when they left a year later, the relief I felt

was indescribable.

I turned myself totally to work after that.

Became a quiet reclusive teenager,

spent a lot in my room.

I started writing: poetry, short stories, a diary.

And I bought a Super 8 camera, through which I watched

the world outside my window.

My escape routes became books and the cinema.

I made greater efforts to find a girlfriend.

I had to have a girlfriend at all costs, and I was lucky.

I met a girl who also liked books and films.

I took her out Saturday nights, and kissed her

against the wall of her house the way

they did it in the movies we saw together.

I thought if I worked at it, I'd become

just like everybody else, and everybody else

had a girlfriend.

On the surface, things were easier.

Parties, back row of the pictures,

discos, we were seen everywhere together.

I was one of the lads.

Yeah, of course I've been to bed with her.

Nothing odd about me.

But inside--

The words "homo" and "queer" never

stopped ringing in my head.

I was alert every time I heard them.

Boys that weren't any good at sport got labeled with them,

but it was in a joking, knockabout way

that never stuck.

They meant something about not being up to it, as a man.

If you could kick a ball, you were OK, part of the team.

The same words turned up in the local paper, the "Merton

and Morden Borough News," delivered to the house

every Friday.

It ran sinister stories about men gathering in parks

and commons at night, hanging around public toilets,

arrests and murders.

Beasts, the paper called them.

It was like some nightmare mirror image of what I thought

I might be, and I turned away from it,

refused it, looked elsewhere.

When I switched on the TV, all I saw

was comedians suddenly changing their bodies into limp wrists,

and telling their jokes through a lisp,

as they picked up a handbag and did a homosexual sketch.

In this hall of mirrors, there was nothing

I could identify with, just something

to laugh at or be scared of.

The face of Dirk Bogarde in "Victim"

brings back that period to me with a vengeance,

though I didn't see the film until I was much older.

It still gives me a cold sweat when I look at it.

In that troubled expression, is somehow

all the tension between 1961, when the film was made,

and 1967, when homosexuality was finally decriminalized

in Britain, an accommodation with the prison that I felt

written to be.

But signals from the outside world slipped past the guards

and into these islands, nonetheless,

and found their way totally by chance into my parents' house.

A bundle of comics and magazines were given to my brother and I

to rummage through.

Amongst them, I found a Physique magazine from America.

It was a new world all right.

These men were different-- confident, proud,

ordinary, good-looking guys.

They were fooling around, wrestling under Colorado skies

with grins on their faces, having fun.

But were they like me?

Nothing in the write-up would confirm that they were.

I just didn't know.

And so this one magazine stayed hidden on my bookshelves,

the names of the men in it learned by heart,

my secret friends, my buddies.

The surge of feeling I'd experienced

for the boy at school, and thought

I'd crushed, revived again.

And if these were photographs, then

they had to be real people in the real world.

And they were.

Marines, pilots, swimming champions, guys on the beach,

the kid next door.

I wanted to meet them, wanted to be one of them.

Wherever they were, it seemed to be better over there.

They came from New York, Chicago,

the Big Sur, and the Rockies.

The idea of America began to mean something to me,

and it connected up with the Hollywood films

I was beginning to run all over London to see.

Something freer, more open, technicolor,

the very opposite of Britain.

A polarity built up in my mind, between

the tight upper-class accents of Britain

and the broad, relaxed accents of America.

Between the bodies we covered up and the bodies they exposed.

Another signal made it to the house

in Merton Park A magazine called "Films and Filming."

It was the first, serious magazine I ever bought.

I wanted to know how to get into films,

but each month's issue communicated something

in addition to news about filmmaking.

I can remember questions being asked at home when

one particular issue came through the letterbox, wrapped

up in the "Merton and Morden Borough News."

It was a serious film magazine, I

said, though it very soon became a magazine

I couldn't take to school.

It directed my attention to films of special interest, that

never hit the film review column of "The Daily Express"

or the roundup of new films on the BBC.

It told me about "Flesh" and Joe Dallesandro.

It was a new American film that was showing in a private club

in a west end basement.

I tore into town to see.

It was a little different to what I

was used to at the local odeum.

It was the homoerotic shock.

Less ambiguous than anything I'd seen before,

but still confusing.

Here was a man, living with a girlfriend, who

had a child, who went out and earned his money having

sex with men, and enjoyed it.

The actor was a model from the Physique magazine

I kept in my bedroom.

Two days after I saw the film, the cinema was raided,

and the film seized by the British police.

It made me angry, as if Joe Dallesandro

body were being pummelled by the truncheon of our boys in blue.

Joe was my secret hero from that moment on.

I went to university after that, and took American studies.

Just as we are told today there are no homosexuals in China,

I thought there were no homosexuals at my school,

none at university.

I didn't even count myself as one.

The law changed in 1967.

For some people, homosexuality was now legal,

but I don't think I even noticed.

I saw nothing around me that suggested anything

was any different.

And I was too busy reading Hemingway,

Faulkner, and Walt Whitman.

And any spare time I had went in watching movies.

French, Italian, American.

"Rebel Without a Cause" for the 10th time.

For a short time, I lived with a woman.

And I felt I had reached the other side just in time.

I was no longer a virgin, and I walked about the streets

with a new confidence.

This time, it seemed to be the real thing.

But the last night we slept together, she suggested that I

try going to bed with men and she even

told me not to worry about it.

The first person who ever said anything positive

about the whole business.

I never had any sex education at school.

Everything I learned about sex came from "Films and Filming,"

the cinema, and my girlfriend.

She sent me out into the world, surer of myself in some ways,

but still troubled.

And where in hell was I going to meet another man?

It was a chance discovery of the Coleherne in Earls

Court that changed things.

A student reunion, a pisser.

It was one of the other students who recognized

the kind of place we were in, and thought

that we better get out.

It's a queer bar, he said.

The next night, I was back like a shot,

though it took a good few pints in a pub across the road

before I could pluck up the courage to go in.

And once through the door, I made straight for the bar, too

nervous to talk to anyone else.

At closing time, I drifted with the crowd out into the streets.

The police were there, breaking up the conversations,

telling people to move on.

Everyone seemed to be walking off in the same direction.

Wherever they were going, I didn't want to be left behind.

I went down some steps, paid some money at a window,

and there it was: a cellar packed with men.

I knew I was home.

I saw a man there that night.

He looked just like the boy in the year above me at school.

I followed him into the corridor behind the dance floor.

This time, he didn't slam the door.

There were no obscene phone calls.

That night was the first time I had touched another man.

I was 22.

The lightning didn't strike, and the earth didn't open.

I felt like life had just begun.

Good morning.

Morning.

Did you get much sleep?

Uh, well, I got some sleep, yeah.

I don't feel too bad now.

Did you want anything for breakfast?

Uh, well, I've got to go home anyway.

I've got to do some marking actually.

Marking? Are you a teacher?

Yeah. Yeah.

I teach geography.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I've got quite a lot to do today as I'm

covering for somebody as well.

Yeah.

Um.

Quite a few things to remember too.

What about you?

What do you do?

Work in the city.

That's very different, actually.

Yeah.

Well, I'm sorry I can't sit much longer,

but I've got to get ready for work.

Oh.

Papers to get ready.

Well, I've got to go anyway really.

So.

I'll probably see you in the club again sometime anyway,

won't I? -OK.

I'm down there on weekends when I'm free.

Yeah.

Take care.

Yeah.

[music playing]

RON PECK: The place was called the catacombs.

I went there regularly after that first night,

two or three times a week.

I moved into the area, and one way or another,

I met a lot of people like myself.

And a lot of people who were not like myself, who knew the scene

and introduced me to other bars and pubs,

as far flung as Richmond in the Surrey Docks.

[music playing]

The map of London began to light up for me at night,

and behind closed doors, we exchange

the stories of our lives.

But when we walked out in the mornings

to our separate jobs and occupations,

we left our homosexuality behind us.

We were normal people, traveling on the buses and the tubes.

Well, what's this then?

A regular seller of investments.

Five and six, two words, five and six.

The first one is-- you ready?

Yeah.

Blank-H-Blank-R-Blank.

Blank-H-Blank-R-H.

-No. -Shareholder.

Blank, the last one.

Shareholder, yeah.

No, no, wait a minute.

And the second word begins with P. P-three blanks-E-Blank.

What's the clue again?

A regular seller of investments.

A regular seller of investments.

RON PECK: It was the common experience, the double life.

Half of it open, the other half secret, furtive, and at night.

It led to lies and deceits, looking and not looking.

There was still that fear of the phone call to the office,

to the wife, to the mother and father.

Keeping quiet about it, living discreetly,

seemed the only way to survive.

I was a film school at the time, working evenings

as a teacher to pay my way.

I certainly couldn't afford to lose my job.

[music playing]

Late night and at weekends, you would have found me

at the Catacombs, getting drunk, increasingly aware

that my world was cleaving in opposite directions,

and that something was wrong with that.

There were no special newspapers or magazines for us

in those days that I was aware of,

and most of the other papers still

wrote about beasts and queers if they I wrote about us at all.

But in the bars, some people started coming around

with a broad sheet, a couple of stenciled pages

stapled together.

It gave way to a newspaper, "Gay News."

I didn't know about this word, "gay."

It seemed a little silly to me.

But I was happy to exchange the words

"homo" and "queer" for it.

Eventually, they sold it to my local news agents,

but I couldn't bring myself to buy it there for a long time.

I stuck to buying it in the bars and hiding it in my jacket

on the bus ride home.

Only when I was behind my own door, did I dare to open it.

But, issue by issue, gay began to mean something.

The gay world began to open up.

There were other places in London I didn't know about.

There were bars and clubs all over Britain.

There were places in Europe, in America,

in South America, Australia.

There was a history, a past, which writers and historians

were recovering and putting back together,

and a future to be aimed at and struggled for.

If the world would not accommodate homosexuals,

we would create our own world, a gay world.

And from the protection of its walls,

search lights were switched on and scrutinize

all representations of things gay.

Defenses were mounted, and attacks made.

All kinds of groups began to organize themselves.

Gay teachers groups, theater groups, legal groups,

gay plumbers and gay writers.

All this gave confidence and it began

to connect people with what felt like a general upsurge

and overturn.

People talk about the '60s, but it

was the '70s when the general dissent began to make

itself felt for many of us.

Britain could not build walls fast enough

to stop the ideas that were bursting in from France,

Germany, and the United States.

And if the national news media would not

report the events that were changing the world,

then our own media would do it.

It was the vigor of a new kind of politics, no longer tied

to old structures of party [inaudible],

but to self-identified groups, directly

defending their interests.

The personal was now the political.

A new black was emerging.

A new woman.

The pressure was on for gays.

There was a new cry.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

But even with rousing revolutionary texts

swirling around your head and demonstrations

parading across the capital with banners flying,

it wasn't so easy.

I can tell you.

It was the big step from which there was no going back.

You needed a strong group around you,

not to feel fear at the possible consequences of that.

There were plenty of stories of people losing their friends,

and family, and job.

But many people took that step.

John Warburton, a geography teacher, came out at school

and was sacked as a consequence.

A group formed around him and campaigned

to get him back his job.

A support structure was being created to try and make

it easier for all of us.

The demonstrations became not merely proud, but angry.

I think it's something most gay people have to face

sooner or later, don't they?

You're gay, are you?

Yes.

And, presumably, you have faced it.

At work, well, pretty well everyone knows.

I mean, how much of a hassle was it for you?

Well, it wasn't.

Yes, but you don't teach in this school.

You don't have kids talking about fucking queers

and lesbians all day, do you?

Maybe if there was some gay kids in the class,

I got through to them.

I don't know.

I just wish I'd been prepared.

Yes, but at least you answered the questions.

I think you did really well.

[indistinct chatter]

Do you have much trouble with customers?

I mean, if you're an electrician,

and you go around wearing those badges.

Um, no, I haven't had much.

Um.

A lot of people sort of try to ignore them.

Yeah.

And, very often, I have to, if I want to,

I have to actually raise the question.

But why, but why do you have to?

Well, because, I'm, I'm gay.

And if I don't make [inaudible] might interest.

And they keep on asking when I'm going to get married

and all that sort of shit.

Shit.

[chatter]

Because you also get hostility, you

know, you get people threatening to beat you up,

tops of buses and things.

-Do you? -Yeah.

Yeah.

I would think that would get really boring, though.

Oh yeah.

It's bluster.

[chatter]

Yeah.

Well I, since I've been wearing badges,

I've been thrown out of more pubs than you could imagine.

How long have you been wearing them?

About three years.

You're life must have changed.

Oh, my life has completely changed

since I got involved in gay liberation

about four or five years ago.

[music playing]

Those fucking queers dancing together.

You know what I'm talking about.

I'm not having that in my front room.

It's our front room.

They are my friends.

Yeah, and that's typical of your attitudes

since you started this bloody job.

You've got so bloody slapdash and all these people

you're bringing into the place.

Now you can just get them out, cause I'm not having it.

I am not going to ask them to leave.

What was wrong with him?

He doesn't like my friends.

Anyway, forget it.

Let's have a dance.

RON PECK: And yet, I still hadn't come out myself.

I made a sideways move.

I was a student at the London Film School,

and I made a film called, "Its Ugly Head."

It was about a gay school teacher

who lived in a prison of his own making, who lived

a lie, who would not come out.

I wanted to make a film about a gay bar,

but I found it tough enough moving this far.

Hello.

Hello.

I haven't seen you in a long, long time.

No, I've been busy.

Still teaching?

Yes.

And writing.

I've-- I'm married now.

All right?

Yes, thank you.

You're very well.

RON PECK: It was the beginning of saying, even

to my fellow students, I'm gay.

And it made it easier then, to take that step

and come out to friends and family.

But it wasn't the film I'd really wanted to make.

Thought I'd take a stroll.

Isn't it cold out?

I don't know.

Is there anything you want?

No.

A bite to eat?

Ovaltine?

Right.

Well.

I'll be off.

Will you be back tonight?

Of course I will.

What do you mean?

I just thought you might not be, that's all.

I'm just going for a stroll.

All right.

RON PECK: In my immediate circles, I was out.

To that extent, the double life was over

and I felt the exhilaration of that.

My difficulties began to be of a different nature.

Being gay was becoming a recognizably

more complex experience.

Don't forget.

We're here every Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday.

And if you can, please take you're empty

glasses downstairs with you as you go.

See you soon.

Why don't you come back?

Uh, I don't think that would be a good idea, Jim.

But why?

It's nice to see you again.

We must keep in touch.

You ready? Old dear.

Yes John.

Yeah.

Where's your coat?

It's okay.

It's outside.

OK.

Yeah.

Come on.

Right, I'll see you again.

Yeah, sure.

-It was nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you.

I'll see you.

Good night.

Please take some empty glasses downstairs.

All right

RON PECK: It was by no means all solidarity and support

in the bars and the clubs.

"Make love not war" the badges said.

But the gay world was itself a battlefield

to love and affection.

Old ideas of finding one man, Mr. Right, were challenged.

Loosen up and enjoy the party.

Liberate yourself.

If you must have a relationship, make it an open one.

See him weekends.

See the world the rest of the week.

Anyone here you fancy?

Yeah, a couple.

Well what about this one here?

Who, the one with the--

Boy Scout with earrings.

Yes, the Dear Monty earrings.

There's a nice one right over there in the corner,

though, look?

Yes, wear jackets and smile.

[laughter]

Did you come on your own?

I think we're better off with the brownies.

There's one in a leather jacket over there I really like.

Yeah, he's really nice.

Yeah.

Made an approach yet?

Mm-mm.

Look him in the eye?

No, he's talking to someone.

I'm trying to wait for him to go.

Well, why don't you just move in?

That'll work.

Oh, look, he's going.

Oh, he's nice.

Here's your big chance.

OK.

Look, I've got to leave in about 20 minutes

to get in the last tube.

I can't afford to get a cab.

OK.

I'll give you ten minutes.

Gives me ten minutes.

Fair?

-OK. -See ya.

See ya.

Ta-da.

I was smoking 20 a day, but I've managed to stop entirely.

Can't handle those things.

Sometimes I feel like one after.

After after?

After a good meal, and, um, after sex.

A few times I feel like a cigarette.

But since I've had mine just now, I'm not too desperate.

But now I'm pissed about it because I missed the last tube.

So you only came down here because you

missed the last tube?

Well, no.

I-- I acted stupidly.

You know how it is.

You go into the pub, and I thought

am I going to get the last tube home

or am I not going to get the last tube home.

For some reason, get impelled down and now

I've missed the last tube home.

[music playing]

RON PECK: The ground moved under my feet.

I felt unstable, emotionally.

Not to attach myself.

I felt at odds with the separating of sex from emotion.

7,000 partners in 10 years.

That was John Ritchie's boast.

He said he was aiming at 10,000.

[music playing]

I joined the party as much as anyone,

but I carried a secret even inside the gay world.

I was searching for Mr Right, perhaps even Mr. America.

And in every face I saw on the dance floors--

I looked for him in every bed.

And when I thought I came close, I

saw another who I thought might take me even closer,

and another, and another.

And many a time, he would give me

the slip after just one night.

Or would refuse the signal of interest

I sent across the dance floor.

Or turn down the offer of a drink or a cigarette

with a smile, before walking away,

as you did yourself, so many times to so many other people.

Where do you live then?

Notting Hill.

Do you live on your own?

Yeah.

Where do you live?

Acton.

Do you want to come back to my place then?

Yeah.

Unless you want to come back to my place, it's nearer.

Well, the only thing is, that, I got to go all the way

back to Acton tomorrow morning.

It's like two tube trains.

And then I've got to go back to center again.

[music playing]

Coffee?

Thank you

-How's your head? -All right.

How's yours?

Still thumping a bit.

Too much red wine.

Your bath's running.

Great thank you.

And I've put a towel out.

And I've got some breakfast on the go as well.

Do you want some toast and eggs?

Mmm, yes please.

All right.

I'll have it ready for you.

Thanks.

Well, you didn't ring, did you?

You didn't ring me.

No, I've been a bit busy.

Yeah, so have I.

Well, you didn't remember about uh, two or three months ago.

We had an arrangement to meet at the Chapstone.

You didn't even have the decency to phone,

phone afterwards either.

I had to wait about three hours.

RON PECK: In those four years in the bar, you had changed.

You were harder, more calculating

in the way you dressed, in the way you talked,

in the way you moved.

Everything became a calculation in a game

that you hoped would checkmate that obscure object

of your desire.

But it narrowed down.

A man was reduced to a coded signal: leather

jacket, Levi's, haircut.

A poster in a bar shows 20 different handkerchiefs stuffed

into the back pockets of 501's.

Each one made it clear what was wanted.

Underneath, it read, "Why waste everybody's time?"

The basis for the new film was clear now.

It was to put up on the screen something of that life

I and others were living.

And the desire to do just that was

all the fiercer, because still, it was

being ignored across the media.

There were a few films in the cinema,

but I found no close identity with any of them.

Some of them were brave and they kept the flame alive.

Television hadn't even lit the match.

And the press, by and large, still smeared

their front pages with lies and covered

endorsements to violence.

And so, like a young man fired by a mission,

by a clear sense of purpose, and fueled

by the energy of the activity around me,

I put together, in the quiet of my room, a plan for a film.

And then I went out with it, to friends and to groups,

and discussed it.

In the light of their comments, I rewrote it several times,

then put it to the British Film Institute

for production finance.

And at the same time, I took the irrevocable step.

I talked to "Gay News" about it.

This newspaper that I was still afraid to buy

from the local news agents, now carried

my picture on its front page.

250 letters followed that article

from gay men and women in every walk of life, all ages,

all over the country.

One of them was Paul Hallam who was to become

my partner in the project.

Over several weeks, I talked to most of the people

who had written in.

It was easier to talk outside of the bars.

Between the letters and the talking,

I heard the stories of many different people's lives,

and my sense of what the gay world was expanded enormously.

A core group emerged from the 250.

One that turned into a discussion group,

an acting troupe, a group of people sharing the work that

might make this film happen.

It survived the first of hundreds of blows.

When the BFI turned down the application,

there was a determination.

We would make the film anyhow.

Fuck the BFI.

All our efforts had to be concentrated

on raising finance.

There was another great wave of response,

from five pound notes in the post to commitments

from established figures in the film

and entertainment business.

Most of them were gay, and they wanted us to make the film.

[piano music]

Allan Stafford was part of the group that met particularly.

At one stage, we considered him for the schoolteacher.

I couldn't believe it when I heard

a year after the film was finished,

that he died in a car crash.

Apart from anything else, he was a pretty good piano player.

But there was no script.

Just an intention, and some basic dramatic ideas

to organize a narrative around, some images,

Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" somehow

connecting to a motorway drive in the dark.

Somehow, the night was everything.

It was Jupiter and beyond the infinite in 2001.

It was the planetarium blackness of "Rebel Without a Cause."

Hopper night, city of night.

A night of film noir.

But within that blackness, to switch on a neon sign,

a bedroom lamp, and bring people together.

We made a start.

We used a video camera to generate

the narrative out of reenactments

of directly felt experience.

We took it into people's homes, and into the bars and clubs.

People improvised for the camera what they knew well

enough from their own lives.

Everything was played back and discussed.

And out of this process, came the material that was

to be the basis of the script.

We spent a year working in this way,

and we suffered many more disappointments in our efforts

to raise finance.

Finally what little money we had raised ran out.

All that remained was the offer of a loan.

Paul Hallam and I called a meeting.

The 20 of us that had stuck together for a year

had to consider for the first time, the possibility

of giving up the project.

People got very emotional, sentimental,

and I think we knew somehow that we couldn't give up.

We decided to risk the loan on making

a pilot film, the opening pages of the script.

Two men making contact in a gay club,

separating in the morning.

The decision attracted further finance,

and the pilot raised the first money

we'd ever had for the script.

This time it was hard money, professional money,

from a man who was to become a major investor in the film.

The new script and the pilot, between them,

finally secured the money we needed to make the film.

It had taken us two and a half years.

There were no professional actors at this stage.

People, to a huge extent, we're invited

to bring themselves into the film, and it was cast for that.

For an abundance and a variety, so that no single stereotype

could hold the field any longer.

It was important to us that the gay characters be

unambiguously played by gays.

This film had to be the real thing.

By this time, there was almost no distinction between

my personal life and the film.

Friends had been pulled in to play parts,

and other people became friends as they were cast.

I think there was real confusion in my mind sometimes, as

to whether people were playing themselves

or acting out characters.

But we didn't have the schoolteacher, the main part.

The character written into every scene

and through whose point of view, everything

was to be experienced.

Who I thought was me, Paul, all of us involved in the film

somehow.

And on this character's shoulders,

the film would stand or fall.

We searched everywhere for him.

It was like looking for Mr. Right all over again.

In two years we haven't found him-- had come close,

but hadn't actually found him.

He had to be in his late '20s, good-looking,

but at the same time ordinary, the man in the street.

Nothing about the way that he looked could tell us

he was gay.

The drama, after all, was about a man everyone

assumed to be straight.

He had to be able to improvise, to act, to know

the world of the film, to be gay himself, to be liked

by the camera, to be everything that would fill that hole,

the center of the film.

We interviewed hundreds of people.

We advertised.

We went to bars and discos, and searched the dance floors

in the cruising corridors.

We got on and off trains when we thought we'd seen him.

Finally, by chance, someone told us about Ken Robertson.

We made a video.

And we cast him.

The Catacombs was re-built for the second time,

and we shot the film.

Same old faces all the time.

It's getting pretty monotonous.

Yeah.

I think once you just try to new places,

and maybe pick the better one.

You know, and then start going to that regularly.

It's all very well, but if you gotta join and all that--

Mmm, yes, the membership can be very high on some of that.

It's too clique-y in this place.

You know, you're sort of, either in a little group,

or you're not, sort of thing, you know?

I know what you mean.

Yes, it's very different though.

A few months since I came in.

For any newcomers, that's for certain.

As I say, It's-- oh it's just-- it's not like it was.

It used to be good, when it first opened,

but um, it's gone flat now.

Yeah.

How about one cup of--

Why, why so early?

It goes on til 3 o'clock in the morning.

It's so late.

I can't be bothered with it.

Is this your room?

[heavy breathing]

Come on.

Suck me.

Come on.

Now let's fuck.

No.

Come on.

No.

Come on.

Yes.

Got to get your ass.

Come on.

[grunt]

Come on.

Come on.

No.

Come on.

No.

What's wrong with you?

No.

I think I better go.

RON PECK: When we cut it together,

we found that we had a 3 and 1/2 hour film.

Whole sections and characters had to go,

but there were loyalties which meant something.

There were people who had supported us

through thick and thin and had finally

done their piece on film.

Cut them?

But sometimes, they were nervous in front of the camera.

It made them vulnerable on screen in a way

they weren't in life.

A certain vitality was lost.

It compounded a downbeatness.

And that became a serious problem,

and not what we'd intended at all.

We had to ask ourselves a fundamental question.

What kind of picture of gay life were we putting across?

Was it positive?

Was it negative?

Was it truthful?

What effect was it going to have?

If this was going to be the first film

about a gay character for several years,

then that was an important question.

This would be so lively if people like you

and me weren't here.

A living anodyne commercial.

Oh, excuse me, I didn't know you were alive.

Friends can me so much in the homosexual world,

don't you think?

Don't you think?

What?

Anything?

About what?

About anything?

Yeah.

Honestly not about me.

Something's preying on your mind.

Mmm.

Mmm.

Well, let me take a guess.

It's not a woman.

Right.

Yes.

Well, that leaves your mother out.

Um, bigger than a bread box?

Animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Animal.

Right, male of the species.

Yeah.

He's here tonight.

No.

No.

Is he a regular?

Yeah.

I'm the manager of this place, maybe I know him.

Maybe you do.

I know all the regulars.

They think of me as a prune, keeping them regular.

What's he called?

Peter.

Peter.

Well that narrows it down to about 4,376.

RON PECK: In the end, we worked from the best of what we had.

And getting the film to work dramatically

became the main criterion behind the cutting,

because the most positive signal this film could send

was that this man was prepared to stand up for himself,

and come out, and begin to make an issue of it.

In 1978, the film was shown on German television,

but it wasn't until the following year

that it opened in the cinema in Britain.

To see the poster of two gay men all over London,

that meant something.

Once the film was public property,

the discussion continued in cinemas around the world,

in the columns of magazines and newspapers.

And the response varied from total condemnation

to celebration.

But above all, it got people talking and arguing,

about the film and beyond the film.

It was a turmoil of reaction, that was

exhilarating and exhausting.

But the film was late.

What had started in 1974 took five years to reach the screen.

The gay world had changed in that time,

the political field was bigger, the commercial gay world

was exploding.

Clubs like the Catacombs were already

closing and being displaced by vast ultra

discos that held 2,000 people.

The film created the possibility of travel,

and that travel opened up even further

the scale of the gay world.

I finally got to America.

It was at that time that gays in California

had organized against Proposition 6,

a piece of legislation intended to bar gays

from the teaching profession.

I was staggered by the forces being vocalized against it,

the scale of the organization, the energy and enthusiasm

and positiveness.

I delayed my return home, to find out what would happen.

The proposition was defeated, overwhelmingly.

And that night, I joined thousands of gay men and women

and danced in the streets.

The following year, I would return again, and join a march

of 4,000 gays down Market Street,

celebrating their existence, demanding their rights.

Anything seemed possible here.

I came back to Britain as many did,

with a confidence that things could

be changed, with energy, with a sense of pride in being gay.

I would play my part.

I would go on making films about gay characters

from different walks of life.

I took "Nighthawks" to the BBC and was told it was amateur,

of no interest whatsoever.

I wrote another script with Paul,

but was told, for God's sake, you've made gay film.

But commercial television took a chance

and made a series called "Gay Life" and that generated

its own controversies.

Not everybody could find themselves in it.

They saw representations they did like.

For some, it was clones, drag queens,

prostitutes, diesel dykes.

It was clear now.

No single character could stand for everyone.

It was too big and diverse a world

But there was a feeling here in the late '70s, of coalitions,

support, more and more interest groups.

And I mean the feel of the thing,

not necessarily how it really happened.

There was the GLC which stood up for all of us,

and recognized our rights as part of a rainbow

coalition, American- style.

If we couldn't produce a Harvey Milk,

well, Ken Livingston would do.

Channel 4 took to the air, which promised to be the GLC

of the television airwaves.

And it bought "Sebastian" and "Nighthawks" for transmission.

The press jumped on it.

And that night, the phone that started

ringing in my parents' house when I was 14,

started ringing again.

Grown men this time, threatening and obscene

enough for me to move out of the house for the night.

Britain had changed.

The year "Nighthawks" came out, Margaret Thatcher

and her conservative government came in.

There was an immediate backlash against the '60s

and the beginnings of the dismantling of all that

supported counter-cultural activities The GLC was

one of the first to go.

Book shops were raided.

A theater director put on trial.

So many civil liberties came under attack.

Government ministers talked of "the enemy within"

and the Battle of Britain was played out again.

It reached its climax in the glorification of carnage

in the Falklands.

The sinking of the Belgrano And the killing of the Argies

was celebrated by those same newspapers

and political figures who attacked all things gay.

The very people who wanted to imprison two men kissing

in the street, cheered as the British bayonets

were plunged into the chests of Argentinian youths.

"Make love, not war" had become "Make war, not love."

The ancient Greeks were struck off the school syllabus

but the Boer War is now compulsory education.

And clause 28 forbids teachers talking about homosexuality

with any enthusiasm.

All this, and AIDS.

Even God, some were pleased to say,

was putting the boot in and visiting the plague upon us.

San Francisco and Los Angeles were now Sodom and Gomorrah.

A friend called recently from California

and told me he'd lost half his friends to it.

Not long ago, I lost another friend myself.

No one knew at first where AIDS came from,

whether they were carrying it.

For a long time, how you got it.

But it was incurable, fatal, and it seemed to be gay.

Across the media, gay now equaled AIDS.

And many a journalist had a Roman holiday

at the expense of those dying in the hospitals.

On TV screens, it meant a parade of men being interviewed,

filmed at home, filmed dying, struggling

with experimental drugs and therapies,

but supported by friends and families,

organizing campaigning, politicking for funds

to find a cure.

We saw gay doctors and medics, professional men,

counselors, support groups.

We saw brave men, grieving lovers,

friends, ordinary people.

Every aspect of our sexual lives became open to discussion,

and then, all sexual lives, for it

was no longer homosexuality per say, but certain

practices that we're not necessarily homosexual at all.

Everyone was being addressed.

There were hoardings in the streets.

A leaflet went through every letterbox in Britain.

It was no longer unusual to see openly

gay people on television.

And the wonder was, that even under such stress,

they no longer look like to Dirk Bogarde in "Victim."

There was no longer one face to find

your identity in, but hundreds of faces, thousands.

And one of them was Rock Hudson.

who might have posed in any muscle magazine in his youth,

and now, dying of AIDS.

Had the public support and friendship

of Ronald Reagan, then, the most powerful man in the world.

Something had held.

Something strong.

In the face of a threat we could never have imagined,

self-affirmation stood firm, impressively.

This time wasn't just a law, a bunch

of bigots, a yellow journalist that had to be dealt with.

It was mortality itself, faced squarely.

And perhaps it resolved us to try harder

to do something with our lives.

Life itself, every second of it, became something to value,

and look after, and fight for, and defend.

And what I begin to see on television now,

and to read about in some of the national newspapers

and magazines, are gay people talking about much more

than AIDS, taking through AIDS, fighting off

the silence with more and more stories

of their lives, our lives.

Struggling with their paintings, their films, their books,

with political committees, with the courts,

talking about everything.

So that in one sense, talking about being gay

is no longer the issue.

It's integrating.

It's sinking in.

Perhaps we could begin to see the day when we can get it out

of the way as something to fight about,

when we can turn our energies elsewhere,

and celebrate childhood's end.

I wonder about a boy who's just turned 14 today.

He falls in love with a boy in the year above,

who might follow him home one summer's afternoon.

I think he could experience things exactly as I

experienced them 28 years ago.

He might see a gay paper on the news stand,

and have all the fears that I had buying it.

He'd be embarrassed at the small ads.

He wouldn't be able to show his parents or take it to school.

But I think he would know that there were many like him,

that there were men he could admire,

men he could identify with.

He would know there was a world he could enter, without shame.

But he would have to play safely now.

He might have to bide his time through school.

He might have to leave the place he was born

and move into the city.

But city connects with city, country with country.

Customs officials can be bypassed by bouncing messages

across the world by satellite.

The walls are breaking down, and the world is becoming one.

Time is on his side.

The world has a great responsibility

to make him welcome.

Help him through it.

Give him confidence.

Don't break him down with dismissive looks.

Don't leave him alone in the corner,

unless he wants to be alone.

Buy him a drink.

Dance with him.

Show him around.

Love him and cherish him.

Don't wait until he's dying before you show him compassion.

Light up his history, his culture, and fight for him.

And by him, I mean that impulse to feel

something for your own sex.

That hated, buried, and twisted, turns itself

into a thrusting of bayonets, the crushing of bodies

under tanks the world over.

Let him go out into the world, confident of who

he is, sure of himself, with the best shot at openness.

[music playing]