This is the not so brief story of two English girls’ excellent adventure to the big city, to see Gale in Particles of Truth when it came to London for one performance only, on Monday, 4th October, 2004.
Our Excellent Adventure
When I awoke at around 6.00 a.m. on Monday morning, I was faced with the sight of torrential rain and gale-force(?) winds!! How appropriate you may well be saying, but my heart sank. Julia, the friend I was going with, now had to get across the fattest part of England from West to East in adverse weather conditions to enable us to go and see Gale. Thankfully she made it and we made it, after a short train journey and a very entertaining black cab ride! Say what you will about London, but there is no species on earth comparable with "London Cab drivers" for entertainment value!
We found the cinema without too much trouble, just around the corner from Leicester Square, which, for anyone who doesn’t know, is supposed to be the entertainment centre of London. In anticipation of the crowds I expected at the first showing of one of Gale's films, I had pre-booked the tickets so we didn't end up in an enormous queue (you have heard the rumours about the English and queuing, well it is all completely true, if someone here sees a line of people we just cannot resist joining the end of it, even if we don't know what the bloody queue is for, lol!). Anyway having got our tickets we wandered off to wait to be allowed in (we had arrived... er... fairly early (!!) to avoid the rush) so we settled down in the foyer and Julia bought us both a bud. We had about an hour to wait so we continued with the billionth chat about how wonderful Gale's body, face, personality, acting abilities, tongue's abilities, hand abilities, fucking abilities, abilities in general are! You must agree that you cannot have enough wondrous conversations of this nature!
Anyway, anticipating the rush and wanting to make sure we were more or less first in; we got up early and proceeded to harass the poor man who was standing guard stopping people entering the main part of the cinema! I think, purely for self-preservation purposes, after I had approached him for roughly the 10th time, he gave in and allowed us in! To my great shock Julia immediately made a beeline for the front row!! Now, call me old-fashioned if you like, but I have always been a back row kind of girl, if you know what I mean?? I am talking about a better view! Absolutely nothing else! Anyway, her actions took me somewhat by surprise! I only met Julia a few months ago through our mutual love of all things QaF, especially Brian coupled with Justin, but in those few short months I have come to love her (purely platonically of course) and let her have her way without causing a stir! So there we were in the front row in the dead centre of said row looking up at this enormous screen! Enquiring minds needed to know the reason for her choosing these particular seats so I asked her that question. It turns out that Julia, like me, is a little blind, but apparently unlike me, she does not like wearing glasses and/or contact lenses. Now when I go out I do try to make an effort and therefore I had removed my glasses for the evening and had in my contact lenses. Now if I had realised quite how near I would be sitting to the screen, I may well have opted for the glasses, which could easily be removed should the view of a huge Gale (yum) completely overwhelm me!
Okay, so back to the plot! Having secured the best seats in the house (as far as Julia was concerned anyway) we settled down to wait for Gale to appear in the first, and perhaps only, film to be shown in a cinema near you (or in this case us)! Behind us we heard others coming in and taking their seats and after a short time, when all became relatively quiet again, I chanced a look behind to see for myself how many others had turned up to support Gale and/or the film. Just imagine the scene; the place we were in was a "multiplex", now we are all familiar with these, different rooms for different films, each probably holding a few hundred people. I scanned this room and without counting individuals, guesstimated only a dozen others who were here to see (a) the film, (b) anything by Jennifer Elster or (c) (like us) anything with Gale in it. Now the disappointment I felt was kind of all-encompassing. Out of the whole country and all the English people who profess to love Gale and support his career, the chances that it was more than just Julia and I who turned up in support of Gale, are remote!
So the house lights dimmed, the screen flickered and the film started, this was a momentous occasion, until this moment I had only viewed Gale in the privacy of my own home, small screen. The film had a weird start, but nothing that frightened me, I am a bit of a fan of small-budget, handheld camera type films, but don't get me wrong I am not really the artsy type, just have a few kinks were alternative film/music/lifestyles are concerned. So it progressed and I was slowly getting into the story and working out what the hell was going on when it happened, there he was, a 10 foot (maybe bigger) image of Gale's face... it was overwhelming, me sitting there, as I was, in the front-row, looking up and staring into the “face of god”! Can I just say "fuck me"!! My reactions were sort of peculiar, I had a piece of gum in my mouth at the time, I was so very dry, when Gale appeared I found myself chewing furiously on this piece of gum, I'm not entirely sure, but I think my mouth was just trying to get a taste of what my brain was seeing on screen! LOL Anyway on with my thoughts about the film.
First off, can I just say, that for all of my extolling the virtues of Gale's beeeaaaauuutiful body, gorgeous face/teeth/arse/legs/hands/back/front/ top/bottom/cock (if only), I have always said that I think he is a pretty wonderful actor too. This film amazed me, remembering that I have been obsessed with Gale/Brian for four years, well two, because it came to England in 2002, but it feels like four talking to you lot, watching “Particles of Truth” was not like watching “Brian” in something else! He was Morrison, not Brian. Of course, there were similarities, things that I now know must be totally Gale and not the way Brian is written and/or acted by Gale, some facial expressions I have always associated with Brian are obviously the “real” Gale. From this perspective I found the film absolutely fascinating. The other thing which I found fascinating was the role-reversal of the film, Gale/Morrison was the one who had to do the chasing of the Jennifer Elster/Lilli character, and believe me she was a bitch to him in places! The thing I missed was the sex, now don't misunderstand me I am not just a voyeur, sex is not the be all and end all of it for me, but I was just very curious to feel my reaction, being a straight female, when confronted, after all this time, by the image of Gale actually snogging and/or shagging a girl, and although there was a kiss between them, and you could see that Gale was about to do his usual “open wide and devour your co-star type kiss”, you know, the ones with lots of tongue that I, and I know you, love, it was cut short and she ran off to the bathroom, retched into the toilet, came out and left him standing there! Poor, poor Morrison, when that happened, how I wanted to be the person who gives comfort (especially a comfort fuck). LOL!
One of the other things I did find fascinating was the fact, mirroring QaF, that in this film Morrison is the son of another very fucked up family, he is supposed to be a published author, with a semi-doting mother and a father who has not even read his son's published book! Gale plays the son in this fucked-up family to perfection, he is very shy, very vulnerable, practically lives in his car, he is obsessed with cleanliness, scrubbing his face with copious amounts of bubbly soap which he takes right inside his mouth! By the way, have you ever imagined that it was possible for someone to actually look beautiful in one of those plastic bath caps! Well, Gale manages to. Is there anything on this whole earth that would make that man look ugly - I don't think so!
Anyway after much soul-searching, the death of her father from an aids-related disease and a near rape, Lilli, along with her excessively dirty nails - presumably this is how Jennifer Elster instills realism into her films, LOL - finally realises what a lovely bloke Morrison is (albeit as fucked-up as her). Meantime, Morrison has been searching for her, even though she ran out on him during their almost-love scene, going down on to the subway, a traumatic experience no doubt as in an earlier scene he had told her that there was no way he would ever venture on to the subway (because of the germs)! So after much angst he turns up at the gallery where the first showing of her paintings is being held (now where have I heard that storyline before I wonder??). He shows up, clean-shaven, handsome as fuck, all suited and booted, and they come together outside the gallery. Funnily and sweetly enough they seem to be exactly what the other needs, and are able to give each other the confidence to overcome all the obstacles their complex personalities throw in front of them. Jennifer Elster is a very talented woman, I don't know how well-known she is in her field in America, but I was impressed. (My lj friend took an instant dislike to her because of the aforementioned filthy nails, LOL). I would recommend anyone to see this film; Gale is wonderful in it, (lj friend: “Gale stole the film”), showing what a talented actor he really is. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Both Julia and I would have loved to see the film again, but alas that was the one and only showing!
I must just mention, as an addendum to my guesstimation of how many of us out of the dozen or so watching the film were there either for Gale or the film, or both. There were so many seats and so few arses actually plonked on them, everyone was in couples and we had a row to each couple, with plenty left over. Now I don't consider myself naive in any way, but I didn't until that night realise that these smaller artsy-type films are a Mecca for couples who just want to get off in a dark cinema! The noises from behind us, although not loud, didn't seem to leave much of an impression on Julia, but then she is totally in love with Gale, I, on the other hand, although also in love with Gale, am an insatiably nosy bitch and having heard noises couldn’t rest until I understood what those noises were! When our particular row of seats began to move, seemingly of its own volition, backwards and forwards, only very slightly I’ll admit, I could only image a pair of feet using the back of our particular row for leverage. I won’t go on, but you can see from this that we definitely weren't all there for Gale or the “art”!! When we stood up to leave at the end of the film, there were plenty of couples in the process of adjusting their clothes! LOL
On Tuesday when ploughing through my emails, there was one from the organisers of the Toronto Convention in January, informing those of us who are going that on the Friday evening they have arranged a special showing of “Wake”, compliments of John Howard of Echelon Entertainment. I cannot tell you how bloody thrilled I am about this! LOL
cu, bye.
