The road to Big Joy

Center of literary and political activism for many years, City Lights Bookstore anchors the North Beach scene in San Francisco

A white-haired man skateboarding down the street.

A nun with full beard and hairy legs carrying groceries.

A skinny man with tight jeans, a protruding crotch, knee-high leather boots, a leather jacket and leather hat.

An older woman dressed to the nines walking her dog.

Welcome to San Francisco, the city James Broughton called his home. These sights are commonplace here. I’m on the second of three San Francisco Bay Area shoots planned for the film, Big Joy, a documentary about “following your own weird” using the life and work of James Broughton as a lens.

The Beat Museum is home to art, photos, and history of the Beat Movement; Ferlinghetti was its publisher and 'shopkeeper'

You can feel the West Coast fog and smell the sea that were so important to James. You can feel the creative spirit that still lives in places like City Lights Books, the first paperback bookstore in the U.S. (1953), where we interviewed poet and artist Lawrence Ferlinghetti this week. (I can remember his book of poems A Coney Island of the Mind opening whole chambers in my imagination to possibilities of expression when I was in junior high school. What an honor to interview him in his office at age 90!)

With Ferlinghetti in his office above City Lights Books, Charlie Chaplin silhouetted in the window

I’m so glad to be working with veteran film director Eric Slade, who produced an award-winning documentary about Harry Hay, the father of Gay liberation, called Hope Along the Wind. We interviewed Armistead Maupin, who spoke eloquently about James's poetry, which his partner Christopher read to him when they were courting.

Eric Slade (right) with Armistead Maupin and his partner Christopher Turner at their home in San Francisco after a great interview on Sunday

We started this odyssey last November, at James’s gravestone in Port Townsend, WA, where his epitaph reads, “Adventure Not Predicament.” Making a film is indeed an adventure for this print journalist.

We were thrilled to get an interview with George Kuchar, underground filmmaker who taught with James at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1970s

James was the father of West Coast experimental film, having made his first film, “The Potted Psalm,” in 1946. After that, he made 23 films and published 23 books of poetry.

James Broughton is featured in a display on gay and lesbian writers at the San Francisco Public Library (click on photo to read)

I’m making this film -- and creating the Big Joy website -- for several reasons. For one, I loved James. I met him in 1990 at a Radical Faerie gathering, and we became friends and mutual mentors. For another, I thought he was a master of images – words, visuals, music – and nobody under 40, it seems, has ever heard of him.


Plus, there’s his message to filmmakers and poetic livers: “Follow your own weird.” He goes on to explain: “But this doesn’t mean that all you have to do is turn on the camera and express yourself. Just as talking has nothing to do with creating, self-expression has nothing to do with art. ‘Anything goes’ may be therapy but that is only prelude to the shaping of what has been unloosed. For a painter the frame defines the shape of an image. A filmmaker must work within the fixed rectangle of the camera eye. Ideally this limitation focuses his imagination.”

One of many iconic buildings in the North Beach neighborhood, where James once lived and published books and did readings with people like Anais Nin and Michael McClure

So, the film making adventure moves forward. I realize that as executive producer one of my main roles is to raise money – eek! Not one of my favorite things.

So I’m shamelessly asking my friends, family, and admirers of Broughton to dig into their wallets and imaginations to help make this film happen. I’m convinced it will make a difference.

(If you are interested, please e-mail me at ssilha@comcast.net .)

The Beat Museum in North Beach

Gay Pride and beyond

Who ARE those masked superheroes on rollerblades?

I can't believe it's July already. Half of 2009 is over? Well, I've obviously been out creating a website and shooting a film instead of blogging. But summer's here and the time is right for gardening, filming, dreaming, scheming, and connecting with friends. I've marched in two gay pride parades in the past year, after 10 years of inactivity on the pride parade front. Both were astounding. Last September I marched with the Gay Island Gardeners in the first-ever gay pride parade on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia. And Sunday, I marched solo in Seattle's amazing Pride Parade. I was able to hitchhike and march with Rosehedge, the first AIDS hospice in Seattle, and be a beacon/sentry for the ACLU of Washington. The parade on Salt Spring Island was amazingly diverse -- lots of straight allies, a very joyous community feeling.

At the rally/concert after the Salt Spring Island Gay Pride Parade, everybody connected and many danced

Seattle's parade on Sunday was something else. Instead of a small community feel where everybody knew nearly everybody, it was a large community pageant. Tens of thousands of people. Many -- maybe half -- of the floats and contingents were corporate or commercial -- buy this or join that. Maybe that's why many people stayed away. At the same time, there were many longstanding traditions -- Seattle Men's Chorus, Dykes on Bikes, Bailey-Boushay House. And many political issues and candidates.

It was great to march in front of the ACLU, whose chant of "Be Yourself" went well with "Follow Your Own Weird"

Most amazing was the diversity of people: young, old, gay, straight, transgendered, multicolored. The media's power was on display as it's now obviously "cool" to be gay (in the wake of Will & Grace, Ellen, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy)... to display affection, to dance naked in the International Fountain, to show how affirming church congregations can be. And just when you think it's time to move beyond "gay pride" celebrations, you see rampant homophobia play out in schools, organizations, and communities. Yes, we've come a long way... and there's still lots of work to do.

OK, time to check out Big Joy.org!