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(left page) denise gough stars as missy and keira knightley as colette (right above) actors eleanor tomlinson and keira knightley with director wash westmoreland


(right below) dickie beau stars as wague and (ctr) keira knightley as colette photography by robert viglasky for bleecker street


In between New York and L.A. I lived in New Orleans.


I heard of an underground sex ring in New Orleans, called Squishy Good Porno and heard something really interesting could be happening. So, I made a film and it got into the Berlin film festival. Then I got invited to L.A. to work on a Bruce LaBruce film called Hustler White and it became a huge cult success. It was an amazing baptism by fire coming to L.A. and working on that film and experiencing an indie for the first time. I made some contacts in the adult industry and I thought, “Well, no one else is gonna pay me to have a camera in my hand.” (Laughs) It was great to be in a place where I could be paid to make films. It was too late to go to film school and I had a real drive to make stuff. I wasn’t really interested in the whole world of pornography, but in a way, I wanted to make my own films within that genre. With ‘70s gay porn too, there’s a lot of traditions around liberation, and I took inspira- tion from filmmakers like Jack Devoe and Wakefield Poole... it was my ‘90s “blue period.” (Laughs) What drew you to the story of Colette? Did you know of Sidonie-Gabrielle from her books, or did you connect with the stories through her biography? With Colette it was essentially that she was


in a heterosexual marriage that evolves in an unexpected way. With her husband’s support she explores a completely queer experience while still married... a great way to satisfy curiosity. (Laughs) It’s all set at the beginning of the modern age, the Eiffel tower had only just been built, people were inventing cars, inventing telephones, society was changing very rapidly and new sexual definitions were just coming into focus. Colette was someone who grew up in the country


and was very tied to the idea of what felt natural to her and that overran any sort of consideration for the moral constraints of society. She did have affairs with women and formed a relationship with the Marquis de Belbeuf, who was very much a gender nonconforming person. She always dressed as a man and adopted a lot of male attitudes, for the time it was like a quiet rebellion against class. You have taken on some great lesbian characters in your films withCarol and now withColette. They are stories that haven’t been told as often and I’m really heartened to see it. Was that part of what you were hoping to do in taking on these projects? The story of Colette’s marriage in heterosexual


terms is interesting in its own right and for us as queer filmmakers, the appeal of Colette’s exploration enters into it as well. The fact that she performed in public on the Moulin Rouge stage with her girlfriend and


caused a riot, spoke to us as queer activists. This was 100 years ago, and it should be celebrated. That was definitely a huge part of the appeal, also characters like Georges Wague, a gay man who taught Colette how to pantomime. She did this very radical play with him calledFlesh, where she would come on stage and reveal her left breast. This was at a time when women were still debating whether to even show an ankle or not. Parisian gay men, or “homo- sexuals” as they would’ve been called at the time, loved Colette as well, because she was very strong and highly opinionated. She was fearless in the way she lived and an inspiration to everyone who wanted to do it in their own lives. The relationship she shared with her husband fascinates me, how it freed her and at the same time how oppressive it became. And, the fact she credited him with teaching her to be a writer. The dichotomy of their connection is very interesting. He definitely mentored her, but then he com-


pletely exploited her. His whole literary ego was really bloated by the authorship of theClaudine novels, which were bestsellers in France at the time. He was incredibly threatened by her demand for recognition as an author and there really are so many parallels in that in what is happening in society today. It’s one of the favorite things about doing this job, I get to have wonderful conversations and the thing that comes up often is that once morays have changed, it’s very hard to erase that progress. Though we can’t take anything for granted. I never take our freedom for granted as queer people. We always have to be vigilant to the attempts to take away our advances: It’s happening with trans people in the military, the right to religious freedom and with politicians and homophobia. That’s why we can’t ever relax. We must always be aware of what can change and how quickly. The queer community, in the same way immigrants are targeted now, has a way of arousing the passion of right-wing bigots. I think it’s one of the great gifts of the arts, music and filmmaking, in particular films likeColette are important because it presents a viewpoint without having to argue its morality. Exposure can often change a person’s perspective, simply by seeing another’s. Exactly. The LGBTQ marriage decision a few years


ago, the seeds of that were planted in the ‘90s. I remember watchingWill & Grace and how those ideas got into people’s minds and formed their viewpoint about the world. People recognize the truth in our stories and embrace them. It’s why the younger generation is so much more open to social change, they experienced different stimulus from these stories.


I had no idea that Colette had written the book that the Lerner and Loewe musical,Gigi was based on. It was an interesting reflection of Colette’s life story on some level too, as a young woman. I didn’t really realize that there’s so many reflections of her life in that right. That was a bit later in life that she wroteGigi. The


story is supported very much from Gigi’s point of view and there’s very little of Gaston’s point of view. When it became a musical, they used more of a male framework with the Maurice Chavalier character as the centerpiece. The book is more personal, it’s about a teenage girl who doesn’t want to follow the path that society has laid out for her. That was very much like Colette in theClaudine novels, which we deal with in the film. Sort of the idea of a modern teenager for the first time. A young woman in her pigtails and a little school uniform, but has all the smarts to deal with the other world. She has full knowledge of how the world was working, especially about her own sexuality and the sensual exploration she wanted to have in her life, but in the voice of a teenage girl. That was the revolutionary thing that Colette voiced, a cultural touchstone for the modern age. A lot of young women felt she was them and identified with this archetype that Colette had written. A story about the power of media, similar to what we were discussing before, it’s all about representation. I mean this is what Colette did, not worry about


the conventions of accessibility. Action goes beyond that and that’s what Colette’s example was. You know, in my own work that’s what I aspire to.


Coletteopens nationwide on Friday, September 21, check your local listings for showtimes. For more information about the film, go to bleeckerstreetmedia.com/colette.


SEPTEMBER 2018 | RAGE monthly 27


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