Elias McConnell's Confession

Continuing on the Elephant and Vman threads, I wanted to point out a quote from the Elias McConnell feature interview that Brent reminded me about.

"I ask him if having the look has meant that he's had a lot of girlfriends. 'I just broke up with someone,' he says. 'It wasn't a worthwhile relationship.' But yes, he's been in love and had his heart broken. He lost his virginity when he was 15 and talks frankly of that fateful night and several other sexual experiences. Like the fact that he lost his (heterosexual) virginity to two girls in the same night (though not at the same time). Or that he knew what to do because he had already had anal sex with a guy. (He was the top. 'I wouldn't take it. No way.') He never once says that something is off the record, but does he know that perhaps he should?"

The times, they are a changin'.

The Anti-Breakfast Club

Speaking of Elephant, I went and saw it today. It's definitely one of my favorite Gus van Sant films, up there with To Die For and Drugstore Cowboy. But it's an entirely different animal, so to speak. I haven't seen Gerry, and My Own Private Idaho was a bit too affected for me, but this new one's absolutely compelling and will leave you thinking about a lot more than the Columbine killings.

The brilliantly-realized Elephant is not a film about emotions. It is not a documentary. It is a film about time and space, and the movement of objects through it. This time and space cares little about the mother who lovingly cooks pancakes for her child and his friend, and little about the relationship between an alcoholic father and the son who pulls him thoughtfully from behind the wheel. It shrugs at tender high school first loves and adolescent crushes. In Elephant all these relationships are served up as roadkill on the daunting, fatalistic journey that we as individuals must endure as we hurtle through life.

Like the violent video games which are as much a part of the fabric of the killers' lives as Beethoven's piano masterpiece "Fur Elise," the complex human experience (in this case, "an ordinary day") is simplified to a series of obstacles, individual experiences that must be approached on individual terms. As a result, Van Sant makes a statement about the sanitization of violence in entertainment and paints a portrait of the American high school experience that corners you with its emotionless honesty. This "high school" film is the anti-Breakfast Club.

Van Sant shoots the film "arcade-style," following the characters from behind so that they don't even own their own perspectives. They are simply avatars following the trajectory of God's (or van Sant's) joystick. And when van Sant revisits the same scene for the third time from a third point of view, we realize there's little we can do to change what's to come. The world is just a set on which our souls play. The star-crossed result is out of everyone's hands.

Elephant does not preach at you to run home and hug your kids. It doesn't lecture, "Hey gym teacher, you better think twice before forcing the ugly girl to wear shorts to Phys Ed!" It doesn't say that being gay requires you to order guns and shoot up the world that won't accept you. Yet detachment from the world has never seemed so threatening. And isolation has rarely felt so lonely.

V Like It

I'd like to take this moment to salute the new Vman magazine. I've long been a fan of V, the oversized, "ready-to-wear" publication for the faggy and female fashion set, but this new publication fulfills the promise for men that V did for women.

It's a bit (just a bit) rougher around the edges, smaller yet still oversized in its format, and brings a European perspective to men's style. Elias McConnell, from Gus van Sant's new movie, Elephant, is featured on the premiere issue's cover with the accompanying clever double entendre, "A Star is Born: It's a Boy." Stephen Gan's new offspring is wholeheartedly male and stylish as hell.

I interviewed Gan last October, and we talked about his multi-tasking sensibilities. He is the creative director of Harper's Bazaar, in addition to running V and Visionaire, which is a collectible "couture" publication published in limited editions and in unexpected formats. In short, he has the best job(s) in the whole world. Now that he's doing Vman, I really wonder where he finds the time.

The magazine is brimming with gorgeous men. Is Gan, who is openly gay, finally reaching out to his "family" fan base? I don't think he'd ever be that ghetto-oriented. Last year we talked about Tom Ford's nude ad for YSL fragrance he was running and how it appeared to shock the American advertising world. Gan remained unfazed, and clearly excited by its possibility.

He said, "Some people say, 'That's a gay ad,' and I ask, why's it a gay ad? It's a picture of a naked male model that's geared toward attracting male customers. I think the general public isn't so used to seeing overt male beauty, and that may scare some of them into thinking it's a gay image or a gay picture. I think that we should be able to appreciate beauty in whatever form it comes."