SK Multi-Hyphenate

Spy Stories

Started teaching a two-week winter-session course on spy stories at Rutgers today. We meet every weekday through Friday, January 13th, for four and a half hours a day. Course description and syllabus here (second listing).

I read at KGB Bar last night. Pretty cool.

Details and registration here.

Susan Youssef on 'Habibi'

The following is an interview I did with Susan Youssef about her debut feature Habibi, which world-premieres in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival on September 4th. Susan is an old friend, and I serve as the media consultant for the film. This interview will be used in Habibi press materials and can also be read as a PDF at the film's site here. 

Based on the ancient Arabic romance of Majnun Layla, Habibi tells the story of young Gazan lovers who are prevented from seeing each other by family, social tradition, and politics. The idea came to writer-director Susan Youssef while shooting Forbidden to Wander in 2002, a documentary that recounts her own romance with a theater director in Gaza. Nine years and numerous grants later, Habibi is set to seduce audiences worldwide. Youssef, a New Yorker, talked about the film by phone from Amsterdam, where she lives part of the year.

Why use Majnun Layla as your source material? You could’ve written the script from scratch.

Susan Youssef: There were two advantages. One, it gave me a structure that had been working for centuries. Two, I was completely enchanted by this idea of a poet who existed in the seventh century and whose name other writers for centuries have used to author their own love poetry. There’s an argument that the Majnun Layla poems aren’t by the original poet Qays ibn-al Mulawwah. I felt I could connect to that tradition of hiding behind his poetry.

But why choose a romance to tell a story about Gaza?

SY: It was easy to make it a romance because my only link to the Gaza Strip was my own personal romance. And Gaza is an incredibly romantic place. The landscape is beautiful: there’s the beach, the tropical climate, fruit, palm trees. Then there’s the heroism of everyone that lives there. The landscape and the nature of the people living there and surviving seemed very romantic.

This is your second film set in Gaza. You’re Arab-American, but your father’s Lebanese and your mother’s Syrian. What draws you specifically to Gaza?

SY: My first screenplays were almost identically linked to me: one was an Arab-American screenplay that I wrote as my thesis when I was an undergraduate, and one was set in Lebanon when I was a journalist in Beirut. I felt like I didn’t have the distance in order to give my characters the truth of their existence; I ended up telling the stories too much as myself, which does not make for very good narrative. I’m much more honest when I’m telling the story through another setting. Gaza, Palestine—it’s still the Levant, we’re still Semitic people. It’s almost what I know, but there’s a little bit more distance.

What was the process of making Habibi?

SY: I fell in love in Gaza and the idea was just handed to me: I saw children acting out Majnun Layla in a gymnasium in Khan Younis. I found the poems at the New York Public Library. I went to Gaza in 2005 to shoot sample scenes. People were very willing to support the production. Across political positions they were really excited.

But you didn’t end up shooting the film in Gaza. Why?

SY: In 2007, I wasn’t allowed back into Gaza. I waited in the West Bank not knowing what I was going to do. But Palestinians are very innovative people, and very hospitable and helpful. I met people from Gaza who were living in the West Bank—they suggested I try to fake Gaza there. But I delayed. Part of the reason it took me until 2009 to shoot was my belief that I’d get back into Gaza. When we filmed in the West Bank it was so painful, because there was a limitation on what we could film. How could I fake Gaza while shooting the West Bank landscape, with mountains in the distance? We couldn’t have wide shots—but that worked to create the suffocating feeling of Gaza. We had many other obstacles—I’m deeply grateful that I was able to find a way to tell the story.

What was the shoot itself like?

SY: Because I’d been so adamant about shooting in Gaza for so long, I closed a lot of doors financially, in terms of being able to find producers, investment… The film had an extremely limited budget. That limited the number of people we could have on the crew. But I believe the camaraderie and intimate nature of the film set resulted in a film made out of love. I’m very superstitious: I believe the kind of energy that goes into a film goes a long way.

What’s your ultimate objective with Habibi?

SY: I love the idea of bringing this poetry back to the mainstream. So that’s one goal, to share how amazing I find my heritage to be. And I believe in the hope of collective consciousness: that greater understanding of the situation in Gaza will somehow improve things there. This film is part of a continuum. I look to the U.S. civil rights and gay rights movements--much of their success has to do with collective consciousness coming through media, culture.

You were born and raised in New York City. How did you end up in Amsterdam?

SY: Well, Mohammed in Gaza, with whom I had the relationship, advised me to go to the Netherlands—it was one of the countries he knew was funding theater in Gaza. It was ironic because in 2002, on the way to Gaza, I was detained at Schipol by Israeli security for interrogation. I applied for a Fulbright fellowship to the Netherlands and it worked out. I found a mentor my first week, Dr. Ihab Saloul, a scholar of comparative literature. He knew the Majnun Layla poetry, was from the Gaza Strip, but he also lived in the Netherlands and understood what was needed to culturally translate the story.

And what about Mohammed?

SY: Things with Mohammed ended up not working out. Instead, in my last month of my Fulbright fellowship, I met my husband, Man Kit Lam, who edited the film with me. So I came to Holland out of love and I stayed in Holland out of love. [Laughs.] I have to thank this film and I have to thank the Gaza Strip because it’s completely defined my life through love.

Postcards From the Eastern Mediterranean, No. 1

 

My parents went on an 11-night eastern Mediterranean cruise earlier this month that sailed from Rome to Istanbul and back again. They sent me postcards from each of the six ports of call. Above is the first, along with its stamp and postmark.

Bachmann Glittered: 5 Reasons It's a Good Thing

1. Glitter satirizes her hyper-femininity, a key cause of her popularity.

2. Glitter has become a decidedly queer object. Deployed by queer activists upon a decidedly anti-queer figure, Bachmann's anti-queer record and discourse are exposed—and visually so, which yields maximum media impact.

3. A glittered Bachmann is a queered Bachmann. Via crafty activist sleight-of-hand, Bachmann becomes the figure of her ire for a moment—nay, permanently, given the visual evidence.

4. The glitter action shows that the Republican 2012 presidential field can't escape their anti-queer records and discourse—indeed, that the electorate will be reminded of their hateful positions and speech.

5. Glitter is fun!

Other reasons why a beglittered Bachmann is a good thing? Post them in the comments!

The Hotcakes at Mercury Lounge

The Hotcakes's website.

'Boyfriend 101': Essential Tips

While procrastinatingly excavating clutter from around my apartment today, I found Jim Sullivan's classic Boyfriend 101, subtitled A Gay Guy's Guide to Dating, Romance, and Finding True Love. I totally forgot I ever consulted such a thing, although my first thought was that I must have just skimmed it. But, no, I actually annotated the book, up till page 23; after that the marginalia disappears.

Here's some of what I marked up when I read the book four or five years ago. These tips may be useful to you singletons out there (a category that no longer, natch, includes me).

• "But dating is more than a means to an end. It can be an end in itself. It's a process that I ask you—and you should ask yourself—to be open to." (xi)
• "I had to tell him it can sometimes take more than a few dates to feel sexual attraction. Besides...he should not close himself off to the possibility of meeting men who might become friends." (xii)
• "Sex is a wonderful thing, but a must for the conscious dater is to get to know a man before having sex." (xv)
• "You're having a date when you meet a guy at a specified place and time in pursuit of the possibility of future romantic involvement. The operative words are possibility and future; throw the notion of immediate gratification out the window, because delayed gratification is part of the new paradigm." (Emphasis Sullivan's, 4)
• "The inner teenager is the playful, shy, sexy, seductive self-conscious, scared, and romantic part of us that wants to go out on dates, but may not possess the social and emotional skills to do it." (5)
• "If you're waiting for your prince to come, the length of the wait may surprise you. Ninety percent of men are not going to approach you—you're going to have to approach them. Even gorgeous guys need to make the first move." (12)
• "Of course, rejection takes on added weight when we've been intimate—have shared a deep part of ourselves—and then get that awful call: 'I like you but I don't think there's a match.' This can cause anyone to go temporarily insane." (16)
• "Ultimately, though, the best answer to rejection is a four-letter word: 'Next!'" (16)
• "You can keep dating fun by not focusing on the outcome—'Will he or won't he be my future husband?'—and, instead, staying 'in the moment' with your date. Suggest to your date fun places to go (an amusement park, a wrestling competition) and do (drive to the ocean, go horseback riding). Stop seeing a date as a talkathon in which each man spills his guts for an hour or two! You can talk and have fun at the same time." (17)
• "'Being' with someone, as opposed to 'being seen' with someone, takes precedence." (23)

Indeed, boys, it does—it really does. Apparently this last tip was the most impactful for me, because I didn't make another check mark in the margins for the remainder of the book. Who knows if I even read to the end? But if you'd like to, let me know—I'll give you the book for free. After all, as Sullivan observes, "Carl Jung said that when we take an action, there must be some positive payoff down the line or the subconscious will sabotage future action" (12). In other words, let me let you help yourself and snag that man!

Oh, the Places You'll Go!