Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/711111
41 Q3 2016 / CINEMONTAGE references to philosophy, history and politics — sometimes all in a single moment. And there's a deep sense of melancholy. Shortbus is known as a comedy with non-simulated sex, but it's really a cathartic ode to broken young people trying to find connection. It's a 9/11 movie; it literally begins over the open wound of Ground Zero and is about damaged people trying to fill each other with something meaningful. Now, that could sound pretentious since it's a movie about literally getting filled, getting permeated — sex — but that connotation is working on a subliminal level. With How to Talk to Girls at Parties, superficially we have a 1977 teen romantic comedy. But if you see it from all angles, it's an ecological parable, a treatise on punk and the limits of anarchy, the invention of a new cosmology, a reinterpretation of '70s sci-fi — which was already a bit post-gender — seen through a 2016 post- gender lens. Heady stuff. But it's all done with a spirit of youth, fun, music and color. It's that combination of lofty philosophy with the silliest, most unpretentious, unfiltered stuff that I absolutely love. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that John had final cut on both films, which is a testament to great producing. CM: You've managed to work on a great deal of queer cinema. How does that identity and voice come into play in your work? BK: I'd say it's about embracing a point-of-view from the margins, and that goes for the queer stuff as well as the African-American history-related films too: Lackawanna Blues, Bessie [2015], Lee Daniels' The Butler [2013] and Oscar's Comeback — an upcoming doc about the legacy of director Oscar Micheaux. And it's in Oppenheimer Strategies, in which Richard Gere plays a classic outsider role: a modern interpretation of the "Court Jew," a mid-level businessman being manipulated by political powers beyond his control. I think I initially realized I was attracted to that kind of oblique perspective when I saw Robert Altman's Three Women [1977] when I was a teenager. It was on WTBS constantly, probably because it was one of the cheapest films the network could afford to play. I knew Altman because I loved Nashville [1975], but Three Women had no mystique or reputation that I was aware of. But I was so into it, and later found that other gay friends of mine had been into it as kids, like Jonathan Caouette, the director of Tarnation.