honey to the people in the ball world. The ruth is that, once we are able to get the noney that we’re owed, give some away 0 the ball world, and pay our debts with ome, we’re still not going to be able to ive well, and the money for the next pro- ects will have to come from other sources. can’t deny that the film has been great or me, because it will enable me, I think, 0 go on and make other films. It’s certain- y not about being rich. JITM: If you were making the film again, vould you do anything differently? lennie: Well, that’s an impossible ques- ion to answer because I think the film vorked. Within its own demands, it vorks. There was a time when the dailies tad just come back that I wished there veie more drama in the film. Most of the lrama of the film comes either from the erformances in the balls themselves, or rom storytelling, from someone talking to he or telling me something. You are ei- her captivated by it or you aren’t, but ba- ically the people in the film are very good torytellers. But there’s not that kind of cinema) verite. Rather, it’s somebody tell- ng you people get kicked out of their LOUSCS because they’re gay. You don’t see nyone being yelled at by his mom and old to get out. I think at one point I felt, here’s not enough direct engagement with vents outside of the ball world. I think hat is a criticism of the film I would riake. But I worked with very limited re- ources. And although I planned to get more verité, when it came down to shoot- _rig the film, my response to those limita- ions was “Well, you’re working with peo- ale who you know are really articulate. You know you can get them to tell a sto- y.” If I sit down with Dorian for four ours, I know I’m going to get hours and ours _of brilliant stories. Whereas if I hang m with Dorian or Venus or anybody for Dur days, waiting for something to hap- en, well, it might happen and it might not. And I will have used a lot more of my valuable film. OITM: What kinds of reactions has the film had from the gay world, from Af- rican-Americans, African-American gay people? How have the different com- mqunities reflected in the movie reacted to it. Jennie: Well, early on before I finished the movie, I showed some footage to gay men of African descent in New York, who were really positive about it. The re- viewers fnom that community who have reviewed it have been really really pos- itive. I know that from talking to Willi (Ninja — one of the men in the film) that there is a segment of the black gay com- munity who feel like it makes people look bad, that it’s airing dirty linen, essentially, that shouldn’t be aired. So I know that there’s that reaction. I guess I’ve been lucky in that the reviewers who have writ- ten don’t at all agree with that. I actually was kind of astounded that this person who keeps badmouthing the film is this African-American straight scholar, a fem- inist scholar named bell hooks, who wrote a really angry, sort of yucky review in Z magazine. I think she feels like it pretends to be radical and isn’t. But I also think there’s real homophobia there, almost like, “How dare does this white woman do something on the black gay com- munity?” And I feel like that kind of divi- sion is really destructive. It’s like Marlon Riggs doing his film saying, “Am I black or arii I gay? Because in the gay com- munity they’re racist and in the black community they’re homophobic.” I think it’s time for all of us on the left and on the fringe not to make those barriers. Anyone can say, “I don’t like Paris is Burning. It’s not a good film,” or “It’s not as rad- ical as I’d like it to be.” But certainly in terms of putting out a pro-gay, pro-black message in the mainstream, no other film in 1991 did that. And someone may not February 1992 like it, but can acknowledge that this is on the side of good, rather than the side of evil. Because I think the right wing is just scary and it gets scarier. In the year after Anita Hill and the Gulf War and the Wil- liam Kennedy Smith trial, and all of these things, I feel like we on the left have just got to stop saying, “You’re not good enough, and you’re not good enough.’ Be- cause it’s so divisive, and we’re never go- ing to form a winning coalition. I’m sorry. That was a diatribe. OITM: In your work in general, what are the kinds of issues that you try to confront and how do you get at them? Jennie: Well, in a way it all comes down to something that a lot of women writers, like Virginia Woolf and Jeannette Winter- son, write about What is it like to have one body, as opposed to another? You look at your body and you say, “That’s my body.” And you have this little mortal thing that’s your body. And so, in a way, what the work is about is what it’s like to have a certain kind of body. For example, there’s this guy, and he wants to be fa- mous and he wants to be a fashion de- signer, but he’s got this black skin, his body doesn’t own a lot of money, and he’s got this penis, but maybe he really feels uncomfortable about it. He would rather be a woman. It’s really the question of identity and how identity can clash with the social reality that’s outside of that identity, that self-perceived identity. And more specifically, that boils down to, how do we deal with sexism and racism and classism as they affect us? And how does the media, how does living in a media so- ciety affect that sense of identity and affect that reality? Because we’re just bom- barded with these images of what we should be or who’s better. And that’s sort of what the photographs were about and certainly what Paris is Burning is about, and pretty much what this next film I’m writing is about. V Ofifltalrl BOARDING Q @ ~ 0% GROOMING _ TRAINING Animal lnn Carol Skon Claudia Cook R.D.l BOX 1980 Fairfax.Vt.05454 802~524~4574 Green Mountain Feminist Counseling Service Caro1'E. Cohen M.S.W._ - Life and Career Crises -Troubled Relationships - Substance Abuse -Lesbian anqGay Positive Individuals, Couples. Groups Burlington. 864-5595 - Sliding Fee