AIDS
(aquiring) "I'm prepared for the ultimate
to happen...more people die on the roads than from AIDS. But if
I should die of the disease, that's fine. I'm 46, I've made six
films and had lots of fun times - I'm not feeling sorry for myself.
If I should die tomorrow I wouldn't think my life had been cut short."
Daily Mail, 24/10/87, p.16
"As long as AIDS affected homosexuals
and a few hopeless drug addicts, they were perfectly happy to do
nothing about it. I have felt such anger over the last 4 years.
Two of my friends have died of this hideous disease...I can't afford
another 6 years. No metropolitan gay man can be sure he will be
alive in 6 years time." Observer Magazine, 22/02/87, p.19-20.
British Cinema
"It's unhealthy that our cinema is
USA orientated. The Germans, Italians and French fortunately do
not share a common language with the Americans which is why they
still have a good cinema." Standard, 08/02/84, P.6
"I believe that we need a cinema that
includes more of what is called 'self-indulgent' and less of theory.
We would have a much more vibrant cinema if people actually explored
who they were. Marxism Today, Oct 1987, P.40-41
Britishness
"I'm certainly fed up with the British
habit of reticence and fear of offending anyone. You have to something
of a monster to get anything on the screen with the complexity of
Caravaggio". New Musical Express, 26/04/86, p.16-17
Caravaggio
"He burnt away decorum and the ideal...knocked
the saints out of the sky and onto the streets...his St John pictures
are a succession of male nudes - straight forward physique photographs."
Guardian, to Nicholas de Jongh, 17/04/86, p.13
Censorship
"The structures of censorship in this
country are not definable in the way they are in the Soviet Union.
Here it's censorship by money, they ask 'is it commercial?'. The idea
of freedom within those structures is a myth. When I talk to film
students, the impression I get is that they don't seem to think 'what
do I want to do?', but 'what can I do that will be funded by Channel
4?'" Scotsman, 8/5/86, P.9
David Hockney
"He talked of little except his deafness
- said he had got used to the idea of living in silence, would only
miss the music. He seemed resigned to his unhappiness. When he left
I felt alive and rather well." The Guardian Weekend, 17th. June,
2000, p.10-14.
Dungeness Powerstation
"It's horribly secret but it just happens
to be the best place in England. It looks great at night lit up like
the emerald city. The lights reminded me of the New York skyline...I
only like it for the view, not for what it represents...I wish it
could be given a different function - just as long as they keep the
lights." London Evening Standard, 01/10/87, P.3
Elizabeth I
"Elizabeth I is a symbol. She is firmly
embedded in the English National Dream of expansion, capitol, the
New Learning of Shakespeare and the Elizabethens." Guardian,
to Nicholas de Jongh, 17/04/86, p.13
Fassbinder
"If Fassbinder was a Brit he would still
be making home movies." Saturday review, BBC2, 16/11/85
Filmmakers Co-Op
"I never really felt comfortable at the
Co-op...the gulf between myself and the people there was that they
knew about filmmaking and were interested in the semantics of film,
and that was the primary objective of the films that I tended to see
in that period...the films of Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol were already
of another decade, they were already historic, but I loved those films."
NFT Film Notes, interview with Clive Hodgson, 1981
Francis Bacon
"Francis said he was 'optimistic of nothing'."
"Richard said Bacon once pulled a mirror from his pocket and
stared at himself muttering: 'So unhappy, so unhappy'." The Guardian
Weekend, 17th. June, 2000, p. 10-14
Homosexuality
"The heterosexual world is always
complaining that homosexuals were obsessed with sex and they can't
understand it. But they would understand it if their sex lives were
outlawed and unspeakable. If gay people aren't obsessed with sex,
there's something wrong with them." Guardian, to Nicholas De
Jongh, 17/04/86, p13
"It is hard to establish 'Home' being
a gay man. My home movies therefore reported a very different world
to that presented by my grandfather and my father. They presented
a way through the ceremonies of heterosexual life: marriages and
honeymoons." Marxism Today, Oct 1987, p.40-41
Hugh Hudson
Interviewer: "How do you feel about
the fact that you've got £400,000 to make your film (Caravaggio)
and Hugh Hudson got four million?"
Derek Jarman: "Fortunately, I'm a hundred times more intellegent
than Hugh Hudson, so it doesn't matter." New Musical Express,
26/04/86, p16-17
Ian McKellen
"Almost everyone I knew was out by the
end of the 60s. McKellen came out in 1988." The Guardian Weekend,
17th. June, 2000, p. 10-14
Incest
"Ive always loved the idea of brothers
being in love or a father being in love with his son and this love
being extended into actual physical contact." Gay News 21/02/79
Mary Whitehouse
"She isn't in the film (Jubilee) because...she
would contaminate it. She represents death in our culture. Second
hand opinions in a watered down world". Gay News 23/02/79
"What would Mary Whitehouse do without
Jubilee? She'd be out of a job." New Musical Express, 26/04/86
Marx
"Marx said that religion was the opium
of the masses and now we've reached the stage where progress itself
is the opium." Guardian, 21/02/78
Middle Classness
"The great thing about being middle class
is that if you've got any sense you realise very early that it's dreadful
but sometimes it's difficult to communicate that to people who haven't
had those comforts. Suburban London is a complete wasteland."
New Musical Express, 26/04/86, p16-17
National Front
"Like Mary Whitehouse, the National Front
is best ignored. I trust that we have got enough historical perspective
to know who they are and where they lead. If they do win inspite of
that then we'll have to take up our Molotov Cocktails. What else can
you do? The enemy is within our midst and there may come a time when
one may have to take a more militant stnad in ones own life. It hasn't
happened to me yet because the National Front hasn't infringed apon
me...i live in a safe protected world" Gay News, 23/02/79
Nudity
"because of Sebastiane, most people assume
that everyone wanders around in my films stark naked. They don't take
into consideration that in The Tempest most of them were clothed.
But I've always made my films much less extreme on celuloid than they
were on paper, party because I don't want to put people through hell
on set." Sunday Times, 20/04/86
Politics
"Politics has had it, old-fashioned
politics like Marxism, Capitalism and Socialism. They're all part
of a great ant-heap. They're all building the same materialist commercial
culture. Yet they all pretend like they've got the blueprint
or that they provide the freedom...the world is now waiting
for a complete new look at everything because the twentieth-century
has completely failed. All the Utopian ideologies have led to concentration
camps or barbed wire." Gay News 23/02/79
...and Art
"I'm not interested in doing agit-prop
art, it's just a different form of advertising. I did do a painting
of called Margaret Thatcher With Blood On Her Hands after the Falklands,
but I haven't put it in any exhibitions, it seemed to obvious."
New Musical Express, 26/04/86, p16-17
Punk
"(Punk) became the fashion and then
it had it. For one brief moment it was an art form, and expression
of vitality." Evening News, 06/07/79
"a collective phemomenon, touching deep
into a lot of peoples psychies."
"Punk has scrambled political ideologies. You see the punks
with a swastika pinned next to a Karl Marx badge." Guardian,
to Nicholas De Jonge, 21/02/78
Rudolf Nureyev
"He was determined that you would fall
for him, actually insisted that you did. I felt he was a bit of a
prat." The Guardian Weekend, 17th. June, 2000, p. 10-14
Sex
"The family is a great law enforcer.
It's the thing that keeps the banks in place. If suburbia went mad
and had a massive orgy everything would fall to pieces and no one
would get the eight o'clock train. I'm all for total promiscuity.
People say they like monogamy these days, but I'm sure thats all rubbish.
I'm not going to say that it's great that relationships have been
re-established, because it's under duress. AIDS is a sword of Damocles
over us all. But I do think with all it's disadvantages, being gay
is a privilege in a sense...I do fall in love...for a night or two."
New Musical Express, 26/04/86, p16-17
Tariq Ali
"Tariq's family had a house in Natia
Gulls [Nathiagali], he spent an idyllic childhood holiday there. He
said the Pathans were gay almost to a man, perhaps they learnt that
from Alexander. He recalled his mother warning him about them as they
sometimes kidnapped good-looking young men." The Guardian Weekend,
17th. June, 2000, p. 10-14.
T.V
"We're brainwashed by T.V: we're receiving
information but not putting it to effect. A monk burns himself to
death on TV news and thats followed by a series of advertisments.
It's led to a trivialisation of existence...I'm deeply suspicious
of control of peoples lives and the modern world is controlling
more and more of them from a distance." Guardian, 21/02/78
"It's the soap opera at the end of the world. The complete
removal of content for form...all those new directors have worked
in advertising, so they know the techniques of manipulating audiences."
New Musical Express, 1985
Women
"as a gay man I can understand something
of a womans frustrations and the discrimination against them."
Gay News 23/02/79
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