California dreaming ...

Cinematographer Ian Hinkle and Director Eric Slade line up the perfect shot of the Pacific Ocean, a spiritual soulguide for James Broughton

Eric Slade and Ian Hinkle and I just finished three days of shooting in Los Angeles! We barely escaped the rains, and had lovely weather and an amazing host.

It’s becoming a tradition in the Big Joy Project to start with a challenging interview. The first time we worked together last April on the Big Joy film, we interviewed James Broughton’s ex-wife Suzanna Hart, a wonderful artist who lives in a senior facility in Mill Valley. She seems to be in a state of permanent memory-lapse, so her answer to the first questions was “I don’t remember.”

After we showed her the “program” she created for her wedding to James in 1962, her memory started to return. By the end of the interview, she was so cogent we looked at each other and said, “This interview was worth the trip to San Francisco!” (Ian lives in Victoria, Eric in Portland, and I near Seattle.)

You can see her in the trailer for the film, which we finally got online after YouTube censored it for nudity. (Go figure – if it were grossly violent they wouldn’t censor it. James’s films were also banned in St. Louis and censured by PBS in the 1980’s.)

Poet Robert Peters' portrait was done by Don Bachardy. When he saw the microphone there, Peters asked "Is he going to talk?"

On this trip, we interviewed the preeminent poet and poetry critic Robert Peters, who did some of the best analysis of James’s poetry in the 1970’s and for years taught at the University of California at Irvine. He’s also suffering from some kind of senile dementia. He’s very jolly, has a great sense of humor, but remembers little. However, when he read James Broughton’s poetry, he did it with rare verve:

Are you willing to go to
your own infinity
Willing to relish a really
fine undoing?
What's wrong with going
all the way
for a bangup crucifixion?

As things are now
everyone is mad
asleep or
on the wrong bus

-- James Broughton

It was fun to see Peters and his life partner poet Paul Trachtenberg watching a scene from James Broughton and Joel Singer’s film Devotions where they are lifting weights and doing intimate athletics together in their back yard.

Don Kilhefner in the living room of Michael G's house in LA

We also had a great interview with Don Kilhefner, a therapist and pioneer of the gay liberation movement who really understands James Broughton’s Jungian analysis and his role as an early leader of the Radical Faeries.

The next day we interviewed Mark Thompson, an author and photographer who knew James better than most and who was responsible for convincing me I needed to make a film about James rather than writing a book. “If you write a book,” he told me in 2008, “it’ll take eight years to do it right, and nobody will read it because who’s heard of James Broughton? If you make a film, and it ‘s good, you’ll have an audience if you still want to do a book.”

Obviously, I took his advice. And look at the fine mess I’ve gotten myself into, as Laurel and Hardy would say.

Not quite Laurel and Hardy: Mark Thompson and Stephen Silha

We also got to interview Mark’s husband Malcolm Boyd, the famous Episcopal priest who wrote the best-selling Are You Running with Me, Jesus? and Take Off the Masks. He coined a new word explaining James in our interview: “quadra-sexual.”

Our host in LA was Michael G, and old friend and surely the host with the most. His home, his cooking, and his repartee ware truly inspired. The only downside was that his dogs ate all my energy bars and tried to eat one of Gordon’s bells. (Actually, he only ate the leather cord and the bronze ‘This is It” bell is still for sale at a bargain price on the Big Joy website!)

We also had a wonderful dinner at Vermont, a restaurant which Michael and his partner Manuel created and re-created.

We then drove to Santa Barbara where we interviewed one of my favorite practitioners of Big Joy, the author and poet Michael Hathaway. He’s truly “The Gardener of Eden,” and we got to shoot him in his garden and on the beach.

Michael Hathaway

Michael, Ian and Eric in Michael's garden of eden

More from California coming soon.

Stephen and Ian on the beach at Santa Barbara: messages from the sea coming in