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Fluxion

Fluxion

issue issue
44
The cinematic obsessions of a class clown.
By Bruce Wright
When I met him in 1978, Bill Holslag was All the surrounding buildings had been track. The train glides through the top
a wisecracking, fast-talking guy who lived demolished to make way for an elevated half of the double-hung window; the
for three things: smoking pot, having train track. Radiators groaned on winter bottom half reveals nothing but mottled
sex, and making movies. It all added up nights, but most of the heat escaped gray sky. Train and sky are obscured by
to a very attractive package—but it was through the ceiling to the apartment grime on the panes, as though behind a
the making movies part that clinched his upstairs. Ice formed in the toilet bowl. scrim. Bill added a muffled whistle to the
appeal. I had never seen any of them, so The nights I stayed at his place, we slept soundtrack. The shot serves as a transi-
I didn’t know yet if the movies were any high up in the top half of a bunkbed—as tion to indicate the passing of time.
good, but it didn’t really matter. He was far as possible from the ferret-sized rats That was 25 years ago. Bill had recently
witty, irreverent, impulsive, and pledged that prowled the kitchen in the dark. The graduated from Emerson College with
to his obsessions. To me he was a late bed was rocked every forty minutes or so a film major. Now he was working as a
’70s version of a bohemian artist, with a as a train passed by. waiter and making this little movie. His
little stand-up comic thrown in. I found The trains became a leitmotif in the tips provided all the funding that was
the combination irresistible. film Bill was making then. In one quick, available. The film starred a venomous
Bill fulfilled the living-in-a-garret stereo- surreal shot taken through his apartment drag queen and a woman of Botero-
type with a flat in an old rowhouse in window, a chugging train appears to esque proportions who was a fixture
Boston’s North End. The building stood float in mid-air. The camera is positioned in Boston’s gay bar scene. He called
by itself in a field of broken concrete. so the window sash hides the elevated it Straight to Hell, years before Alex
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