by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor
Hello everybody! It’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything, and I’m excited to present a bunch of queer cinema this month. I love Ben’s pieces on queer cinema, and it kicked me in the pants to start plotting my own series. The thought of only having a straight person celebrating Pride at The Film Experience of all places - we can’t have it! Ahead of whatever I’ll be reviewing this month, let’s just define “queer” along some fairly broad lines. We got films explicitly focused on queer subject matter, films with queer people in notable roles on- and/or off-screen, subtextual queens, camp queens, objects that have become ensconced in queer culture for one reason or another regardless of their sexuality, and stuff my gay friends really like!
I’ll be kicking things off with Shirley Clarke’s seminal 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason . . . .
Our subject is Jason Holliday (nee Aaron Payne), a cabaret performer and hustler who’s lived plenty of life in his forty years and is happy to share it for the camera. Clarke, her camera operator/then-boyfriend Carl Lee, and their small crew interviewed Jason in Clarke’s NYC penthouse apartment over 12 grueling hours. As the night goes on, booze, marijuana, and exhaustion taking their toll on Holliday and his audience, leading to some indelibly acidic interactions in the last half hour. The final film condenses this half-day into a rangy 105 minutes, giving the impression of a ribald night queening out souring before our very eyes.
It’s a complicated experience, one that opens itself quite easily to accusations of directorial manipulation and unmotivated filmmaking. Clarke has talked about how she originally set out to make a documentary solely about Jason, only to realize in the editing room the real meat of the footage is the dynamic between Jason and the crew. Jason’s reminiscences of his performative behaviors and tales of exploitation - of being used and using others in return - become the film’s dramatic thesis as the camera and crew shift from indulging to interrogating him.
Initially, Portrait of Jason is content to actively observe its title subject. The silvery, monochromatic lensing follows him with the roving attention of a bar patron watching their companion, zooming and panning as he gets up to mix another drink or finds a new place to sit as he tells story after story after story. The visual intrigue this generates largely comes down to making space for Jason’s star power. If this sounds visually uninteresting, then so be it, and I can’t say Portrait doesn’t risk a certain amount of bored spectatorship around Jason’s soliloquies. We’re playing second banana to a professional barfly fluttering around a very handsome living space.
Yet, every so often, the image purposefully loses focus, its movements abstracting the man completely, while the voices of Jason and his spectators staying as clear as they’ve ever been. It becomes a question of Portrait’s intentions whether the film seeks to dissolve him completely, or submit him to the camera’s gaze. Thankfully, Jason Holliday is too active a participant and too charismatic a figure to be subsumed. He exerts a potent hold on our attention, unabashedly trying to craft his own narrative and shove aside the filmmaker’s attempts to steer the ship in any other direction.
Even as Jason becomes increasingly intoxicated, he remains fully in control of his wits, and as the questions lobbed his way turn openly venomous, his reactions are far more fascinating than mere self-victimization. He performs hurt and betrayal with expert timing, his extroverted carapace giving way to an affronted, slightly dazed quality after Lee calls out his crocodile tears. As with so many standout sequences in Frank Simon’s The Queen the next year, this interaction feels foundational to a reality television apparatus that hadn’t yet been conceived.
It shouldn’t totally alleviate the question of exploitation, though Clarke problematizes this dynamic on a metatextual lens. A good portion of Portrait’s second half features Clarke and Lee asking Jason about topics he’d refused to answer earlier, which he answers with his typical eloquence. Was this a purposeful strategy by the filmmakers to get him to open up on pricklier topics? Does Jason know this? Does he care enough to avoid the trap, or would he rather slug it out with Clarke over who’s really in charge?
Clarke is deeply aware of this, and she ensures Portrait of Jason is as much about her act of documentary filmmaking as it is Jason. Hell, it’s arguably about their attempts to fight over control of the film. Jason does not paint a flattering portrait of Clarke and Lee as he becomes more agitated, and the two of them match him every step of the way. Yet the editing and framing ensure Clarke’s off-screen role is never neutralized. The many strategies she uses to pry open Jason’s facade, as well as the very documentary apparatus that provides her the necessary framework for her to operate, are all interrogated through her self-ironized gaze. None of these questions are resolved, but Clarke ensures the good spirits and lacerating recriminations are thrown in every direction.
Portrait of Jason is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel as part of their LGBTQ+ Favorites series and is available to rent or stream on most major digital platforms.