An Interview With Julian Schnabel
by Loren King
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Julian Schnabel isn't gay and he isn't Cuban. No matter. Critics are
hailing his Before Night Falls -- about the late Cuban
writer/gay activist Reinaldo Arenas -- as a lyrical portrait of the artist
persecuted by Castro's regime for his poetic writing as well as for his
homosexuality.
Schnabel, a renowned painter himself who made his film debut in 1996 with
Basquiat, about abstract painter Jean-Michel Basquiat and the New York art
scene of the 1980s (it co-starred David Bowie as Andy Warhol), pursued the
story of Arenas for years after reading the writer's memoir Before Night
Falls in 1993, three years after Arenas's death from AIDS-related
complications.
Fluent in Spanish and an aficionado of Cuban music (the soundtrack to
Schnabel's film is rich with the brilliant work of exiled Cuban musicians),
Schnabel was captivated by Arenas's story. Born into poverty in rural Cuba in
1943, Arenas's first novel, Singing From the Well, was published when he was
20 and won a National Book Award. But eight other novels, poems, and short
stories were all subsequently banned in Cuba under Castro. Before he fled
Cuba in 1980 to live in exile in the U.S., Arenas spent two years in Cuba's
notorious El Morro prison for being a political dissident, an intellectual,
an artist, and for being openly gay.
In an interview to promote his latest movie, which earned top awards
at the Venice Film Festival and which has generated Oscar buzz as it rides
high-profile berths on national critics' year-end "best" lists, Schnabel said
he felt an immediate connection to Arenas when he read Before Night Falls.
"I'm going to become the patron saint of homosexuals," laughs Schnabel.
"But I can't separate myself from [Arenas's] life, somehow. The guy is like
Walt Whitman." Schnabel says what pleases him most about the attention
the film is getting is that it will interest audiences in Arenas's
prolific body of work.
"People now will hear his voice," says Schnabel. "That's why I'm sitting
here in this room. I don't want to be a traveling salesman."
Telling the story of this important artist, he adds, was both a privilege
and a responsibility. "What are we here for? It's not just telling the story.
What Reinaldo gave me [was] the possibility of images that could exist
in the film, a way of telling this story and inventing a movie that was
personal to me; obviously, there must have been a connection. ... When I read
[his words], I saw the shots. ... Reinaldo wrote me into the text, in a way.
His relationship to death, his whole race against death, is something that
speaks to me. When he is sitting in that room at the end, with his hands on
his knees. ... It's so personal to me. I didn't just pick a subject and make a
movie. ... I can't give you a logical reason why I felt such a connection [to
him]," says Schnabel.
Before Night Falls, which was shot in Mexico, features a Oscar-worthy
performance by Spanish actor Javier Bardem as Arenas, and a supporting cast
led by Johnny Depp, who plays a transvestite friend of Arenas's named Bon Bon
who helps him smuggle manuscripts out of the prison. Depp also has another
role in the film as a sinister, homophobic prison guard.
One of the strongest aspects of Schnabel's film is that it depicts gay
male sexuality as liberating for Arenas, but as much of a threat to the
totalitarian regime as his writing. "Growing up Jewish, I once heard my
parents calling someone a faygeleh. ... They weren't being mean, they just
didn't understand. With all of these homophobic and AIDS-phobic pogroms, it
is a time for compassion. The movie is against totalitarianism and
censorship. ... Every totalitarian government has tried to eradicate its gay
people. They are the soil, a natural resource in Cuba. They have made life
bearable there. ... Femininity is a wonderful quality in a man."
Through bold, expressionistic scenes and occasional voice-overs of
Bardem reciting Arenas's poetry, Schnabel tries to get at the heart and spirit
of the artist. It is an undertaking that captures the very essence of
Schnabel the artist-as-filmmaker.
"It's funny how calling somebody an artist is a compliment, but if you
say a movie is artistic it's a pejorative term; it means it's not
commercial," he says. "Art is a dirty word in film, but all these people [in
the movie industry] talk about being artists. It's fake. It's bullshit. What
is art anyway? They are technicians. The difference is the level of
responsibility in making art. The artist is responsible for what they put
into the world. It's not about making money. It is about a value system."
"In this film, instead of being told the story about an artist, you start
living in his shoes. ... These things are happening to you."
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