FILM SUMMARY: Silverlake Life: The View From Here (1993)

Dir. Tom Joslin and Peter Friedman

 

1.         0.11    A montage of images, played against a melancholy melody.  Close shot of Mark asleep on the sofa.  Camera moves to the right to show a monitor (Tom Joslin talking on it).  “The thing I remember about Tom is the way he feels like.”  We see Mark talking to the filmmaker Peter Friedman.  He recalls times when he was affectionate with Tom.   “I can’t do that anymore.”  Shot of pills, exterior from window shows sunset in super-fast motion, fade to black, dark shot of someone holding a flashlight in front of him, television monitor (shows close shot of Tom with “The End” written on the screen,  close shot of ashes in an urn, wider shot of the urn holding the ashes.  Mark, on camera: “It was scary to look at him, the first time after he died.  And then I wanted to close his eyes, because it’s strange to see a dead person staring, and I tried--just like in the movies--to close his eyes.  But they popped back open!  I said to Tom, I apologize--life isn’t like the movies.”  Then someone holding the camera opens a door.  Inside we see boxes of film cans and videotapes.  Narrator (Peter Friedman): “Tom Joslin was my film teacher back in college in the mid 70’s.  He was my mentor.  He and his lover, Mark Massi, became two of my closest friends.  When they were both diagnosed with AIDS, Tom decided to shoot a video diary.  He asked me to finish it--if he couldn’t.”  The filmmaker inserts an 8mm video cassette into a 1/2” VHS adapter and pushes “play.” 

            We see Tom on the monitor: “How’s this?  This is the first footage from the first tape.  The message to Mark is going to be clear.”  Suddenly a graphic shows on the closeup of Tom, who is shown within a large heart: “Mark, I love you.”   Title up, shown in front of a silhouette of Tom’s head, which looks shrunken and emaciated in shadow. 

 

2.         3.53     Tom Joslin at a clinic.  He is undergoing an MRI test.  Various angles on him as he lies on the table. 

            5.19     Tom sitting in the car outside a store.  He is exhausted, but he wants to go inside to pick up some medication from the pharmacy.  He walks in, holding the camera to show the way.  He stoops down and tries to pry apart a plastic wastebasket from a stack of six or seven.  But he isn’t strong enough to separate them.  He looks around, as if embarrassed, then gives up.   Camera back in the car--looking up through the windshield.  Tom’s voiceover: “It’s so tough.  The simplest five minute task.  I have to put the seat back and rest and catch my breath.  Camera on Tom.  “What a way to live.  Ha.  What a way to die.”

 

3.         6.53   Mark (he’s the one with the beard)  lying on a table as a woman performs a healing ceremony on him.  She walks all around his body and chants continuously as she holds her hands out to redirect the energy to restore his strength.    She wears a white and orange work-out suit and a long necklace.  A yellow banner behind Tom reads, “Lois Black Hill. . . Miracle Manor.”   As she moves about Mark she shakes her head continuously.  She speaks briefly about the power of some entity who channels through her so that others can be healed.   She talks to the spirit an tells him that Mark is present.  She asks the spirit to “bless” Mark--and suddenly she talks in another voice--it must be the spirit--and the blessing on Mark is performed. 

 

4.         8.53     Tom helps two women set up the video cameras at his house.  We see Tom sit with his legs crossed on the sofa.  He seems frail, weak.  He talks about the discovery he had AIDS.  He and Mark have been together for 22 years.  He was diagnosed HIV-Positive six years ago.  He recalls being struck by a meningitis, described by his doctor as “bats hanging from the back of your brain stem and slowly eating their way out.”  He recalls that Mark had to tell his parents he had AIDS. 

            10.40   Then Mark talks about how difficult it was to tell friends about their AIDS.  He notes that when someone learns you have AIDS, suddenly you are treated differently, as if you are  a person who soon will die.   Two years ago he was diagnosed as having AIDS, and Tom began telling their friends. 

5.         11.38   Wide shot of monitor.  We can see a close shot of Tom and Mark lying next to each other on a bed.  They are looking toward another monitor.  Then Mark turns and looks right into the camera on them.  “Let’s look forward into the void,” Tom says.  Later, the same shot of the monitor with Tom and Mark on it.  “What a composition,” Tom smiles.  Cut to the close shot (no monitor on screen).  Tom slips his hand under the pillow and into Mark’s hand.  They continue to watch the other monitor.  Mark smiles.  Suddenly Tom notices a lesion on Mark’s eyelid.  Both express concern about this physical change--yet their concern is leavened with a wry humor and constant ironic tone.

 

CHAPTER  2

 

6.         13.30   Shot from interior of plane after takeoff.  Tom and Mark are flying from Los Angeles to the East Coast to see Tom’s family.  Tom relates a near-death experience in the summer--then he set a goal to live until Christmas, and now they are celebrating that achievement with the trip.  “Seemed to be some tension about this trip to New Hampshire.”  Tom films himself using some makeup to cover lesions on his face.  Fifteen years earlier he made a movie about growing up gay. 

            15.04  We see scenes from that film.  Tom is filmed outside, not far from his home in New Hampshire, and he tells the story of finding secret notes between two gay lovers.   He added a note to them in the cache, and one of them left a “dirty magazine” (with male nudes) for him at the spot.  “Every mother finds dirty magazines their kids have, but not dirty male magazines.”  Then he talks about the way gays learn to “socialize with women” and hide their identities.  “In the end it’s all a lie.”  Cut to a close shot of Mark (fifteen years ago).  He is wearing a beard then too.  “My name is Mark Massi and I’m your lover.”  As he tells his story, we see old photographs of Tom teaching, working with students.  Mark says, “It took a year of me pulling out my hair and being suicidal before you fell in love with me.”

 

7.         17.37  Cut to a gradual zoom back from Tom’s image (showing him behind the camera)  in a mirror to reveal a shot of his mother, a stately-looking woman with silver hair, sitting in a chair and staring at her son filming the scene.  She announces who she is.  Tom: “Are you nervous?”  Mother: “Not very.”  Cut to a graphic on the screen: “I don’t believe it.”  She remembers vividly the first time Tom told her he was gay.  She describes the scene as if it had occurred fifteen minutes ago.

            Cut to Tom’s father.  “I don’t even like to think about it.   I think it’s awful.  We must have done something wrong for you to get that way.  I don’t think in this movie you should even mention it.  It would be as embarrassing as hell to me.”

            Back to his mother.  She expresses disappointment that Tom would never have a family.  He asks her about Mark.  “I don’t know how frank I should be about this, Tom. “

            Cut to the father: “There are two or three things against Mark.  First is his looks.  He looks like he’s going to fall over, like he’s got TB.”  He laughs about Tom’s “married life.”  He says, “It doesn’t seem quite normal to us, to the normal people.”  He says a bit more about Mark and concludes, “He isn’t the type I would pick out for a friend.  We think in different ways, in different circles.” 

            Tom’s mother: “We don’t think alike.  We don’t live alike.  I think he resents me, and I  resent him.” 

            20.32  Mark interviewed in this fifteen-year-old film: “She’s a typical liberal.  She feels sort of sorry for us that we can’t live like the rest of the world.  These kinds of things, when you build them up on a larger scale, makes homosexuals commit suicide.”

            Low angle shot of Mark sitting on the roof of a cabin.  He is filmed against the blue sky.  He reads from an academic study about the meaning of the words “gay” and “homosexual.”  “This society is a multicultural one, but in reality it recognizes only one culture.  The others are under genocidal attack.  The personal, the political, the economic--gay is the revolution.”  Cut to graphic flashing on the screen: “Right on!” 

 

CHAPTER   3

 

8.         22.20   Arrival at the airport in New Hampshire.  We see his mother, a little grayer, a little frailer after fifteen years.   At home in the kitchen: there is the father, grayer and yet still controlling.  Then father pretends to feed his wife--like a dog.  Everyone laughs.  Cut to a scene from the film from fifteen years ago--introducing a tennis-playing Whitey Joslin, Tom’s older brother.  Then we see him at the house on this visit.  He sits next to his wife.  Whitey talks about their response to learning Tom had AIDS.  “It wasn’t that we didn’t expect it.”  His wife recalls how Tom’s father only visited his brother, who died of cancer, one time--”it was just too painful.”  She recalls the phone call from Tom to his parents.  He kept asking, “Do you really understand what this AIDS thing means?”  They realized Tom wanted his parents to visit, to be supportive of him at that time.  But his father couldn’t do it.  “Your Mother and Dad are dealing with it on the level of--it doesn’t exist.”

 

9.         25.30   Christmas morning scenes.  Everyone is happy, laughing, holding up presents.  Cut to shot from an ambulance, rushing to the hospital.  Then shot of Tom lying on a bed in the emergency room on January 1--four days before Mark and he were scheduled to leave.  “They always say what you’re doing on the first day of the year is what you will do the rest of your life.  Well, here we are.”  Doctor examines Tom.   Later, the doctor explains a drug regimen to Tom. 

            Return to Los Angeles.  Tom’s voiceover: “By the time we finished, I was sick, exhausted, unhappy with my family, and never so glad to get away.” 

 

CHAPTER   4 

 

10.       28.10   Shots of Los Angeles.  Close shots of brilliantly colored flowers.  Then we see Mark being examined  in a clinic.  Several shots of herbal medicines being ground together for Mark. 

            31.17   Tom waiting in the car (while Mark gets the herbal medicines).  He talks into the camera.  He begins to narrate the events of the day.  He got tired and waited in the car while Mark had lunch.  “I didn’t have lunch, BECAUSE WE WERE GOING TO GO RIGHT HOME!”  His voice breaks--he is almost in tears.  “So what happens next?  I say, Go ahead and do the food shopping.  And then we’re almost home, and he decides to stop at the health food store.  “WHICH IS NOT ON THE WAY HOME!  So we go and I try to sit in the car and sleep and can’t.  He comes back and says there’s only one more stop.  I’ve got to get something at the grocery store.  I’ve got to protect my health.  WELL I HAVEN’T HAD FUCKING DINNER--I HAVEN’T HAD ANY--JESUS!  I TRY TO BE HELPFUL--GETTING SCREWED TIME AND TIME AGAIN!  I HATE BEING A NICE GUY!”

            32.50   Back home, Mark prepares the herbal medicine.  Tom’s voiceover: “Of course, it wasn’t really Mark’s fault.  It was just the anger with my incapacity to do normal things.”   After Mark finishes preparing the medication, Tom asks him to say something on tape.  Close shot of Mark.  He says, “About loving you?  I just know I do.  I love you.  You asked me how much?  I said it hurts.  I can’t stand seeing you sick.  It drives me crazy.  Some times it hurts because I can’t do anything for you.  Sometimes it scares me. 

            34.19   Mark leans over and kisses Tom on the forehead, then on the lips, on both cheeks.  After a few more kisses, they laugh, and Tom turns to the camera ands says, “Now that’s a good night kiss.  I bet you people don’t get those.”

           

11.       34.36   Tom sitting up late at night.  He can’t sleep.  He holds a flashlight to illuminate his face.  He notes they plan to go to the auto show tomorrow morning--the first thing this week that isn’t a doctor’s visit.   “I don’t think I have the energy to go.”  He fears the hassle of taking along a wheelchair. 

            The next morning, Tom sitting in the car.  He announces that they decided to go to the record store instead.  Interior of store.  Scene at home later, shows Mark dancing to the music.  The chorus of the rock song is “Take my heart away.”  Tom dances about as if lost in his own world.

            Tom and Mark at a restaurant.

 

CHAPTER  5

 

12.       38.57   Close shot of Mark’s arm--he is getting strontium-90 radiation doses on his lesions.   A close shot of Mark’s chart shows a series of photographs showing the progress of the lesions over time.  As the nurse takes updated photos, Mark mugs, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” 

            39.47   Meanwhile, Tom is shown taking part in a pulmonary function test--breathing through an atomizer before the next breath test. 

            40.27   Tom and Mark at their psychologist.  They sit next to each other on a sofa.  The therapist listens.  Soon Mark is disagreeing with Tom’s version of events.  “To me there’s a problem there.  If you’re supposed to take it every half hour, and you ‘forget,” that’s more than forgetting.  But for me to say, I can’t do this anymore--you do it, in another situation I could do that.  But the fact that we both have AIDS, I have the added fear that if he dies, that leaves me alone by myself to die with AIDS.”  Tom listens, but he seems uncomfortable.  “Part of me says I do take all my medicine.  But I don’t take all of it.”  Then he admits, “I’m a doomsday AIDS-er.  It seems to have its arc, and I’m pretty far down the arc.  I do feel the wall is not that far away.”  Note the reactions from Mark as he sits there.  The therapist comments on the different ways each man responds to the disease.  “Mark, you’re trying to lower the threat.  Tom, you’re  trying to make the most out of what you have.” 

 

CHAPTER  6

 

13.       43.31   Back home.  Tom shows the world around him in the room.  He sounds weaker.  Suddenly Mark walks in on camera.  He mugs, “Here I am, Helga, with the laundry.  All of our little undies.”  He smiles.  “Thank you, Helga.” 

            44.41   Lengthy scene showing the running of a marathon.  We hear Tom on the scene, taping some of the action.  He asks one runner, “Are you going to make it all the way?”  She says she will.  Graphic on screen: “Do you think you’ll make it all the way?”  Answer: “With all the wonderful people and the entertainment, I’ll make it all the way.” 

 

ENDS 46.47

           

SIDE TWO       SIDE TWO       SIDE TWO       SIDE TWO       SIDE TWO       SIDE TWO       SIDE TWO

 

CHAPTER 7

 

14.       0.00     Tom lying in bed.  He speaks into the camera.  He has been sick for more than two weeks.  “During that time I got severely depressed.  I would have been happy to have died.”  He felt he had “lost the steam of life.”  He adds, “I know you’re supposed to roll on toward something.  I know it’s old wisdom.  But I feel so empty.   I have such a hard time thinking of something good I’ve done.  As if that brings value to my life.  I don’t know.  We’ll see.”  He looks right into the camera and smiles broadly.   “I know the real story is you get what you get.  If you lead a happy life, you’ve led a happy life.  If you lead a tormented life, then that’s the life you will have lived.”

            2.05     Tom and Mark go on an outing to Huntington Gardens.  They walk through a desert landscape.  Montage music.  The camera follows Tom.  He looks thin, frail.  He notes the big challenge--either stop and sit in a chair or walk on to the next one.  He jokes about the “brave effort of physical dynamism.”  He smiles into the camera as they walk by the chair.  “And I love you, Mark--so much!” 

            3.27     At a motel in the desert.  “We’re here,” Mark mugs for the camera.  Montage music continues.  Tom gets into the pool.  His arms are thin, his legs bony.  He swims about.  Then we see Mark in the whirlpool.  He mugs for the camera.  Suddenly the owner of the place, “Miracle Manor,” stops by to say hello.   (She is the same woman we saw earlier performing a healing ceremony with Mark.)  

            Later, sitting outside the pool, Mark says, “She would like me to keep my shirt on so I don’t freak out any of the people.”  He talks about being self-conscious about the appearance of his body.  “I’m proud that I’ve been alive this long.  It’s like, Screw you!  I’m living.  I’m not dead.”

            We watch Mark crawl into an enclosed part of the pool--so that he can swim with his shirt off.  He “flashes” Tom his back--spotted with KS lesions. 

            6.40     Tom getting a massage later.  Soothing music plays as the masseuse works on Tom.

CHAPTER   8

 

15.       8.00     Tom’s voiceover.  “What is this that passes before my eyes every day?”  We see images of the street from his point of view.  He refers to himself as a “distant viewer.”  Silver Lake Blvd. is right outside his window.  “I’m not much of a participant in life anymore.”  He comments on the world going on outside his window.  “This civilization is so strange.  I’ve never felt much a part of it.  I think being gay separates you a little.  Being a walking-dead separates one from the everyday world.”  He films the shadows his hand makes on the sidewalk.  A gray cat approaches him up steps.  “I don’t know what anybody could ask for more.”

 

CHAPTER    9

 

16.       10.08   Tom lying in bed under blankets.  He looks frailer than ever before.  He notes that the doctor suggested he move into a hospice.  The average stay in a hospice is two months.  “It was startling to hear.  I didn’t think I was that sick.”  He notes that many people are coming to visit--now that he is soon to die.  Mark asks him about his response to Sue’s visit.  “You had more trouble than I did?”  Mark says, “You take the camera”--and passes it to him.  Tom composes the shot.  “You probably slept through most of Sue’s visit.  It was very helpful.  She got me through a lot of bad times.  But Sue is into, Tom is dying of AIDS.  She stayed away from you the last few days because you were going through, quote-unquote, a period of acceptance and withdrawal.  It was taxing because it was like a barrage of death notices.”

            Later scene: June 1.  Tom still is in bed.  Mark says, “You made it another month--we made it another month.”  Tom seems confused about the date.  “It’s June first, dear,” Mark says.  Tom seems even weaker than before.  “My mind’s been getting vague lately.” 

            14.58   Tom sitting on the deck.  He has a white bicycle hat on his head and wears his bathrobe.  He is eating a chocolate shake.  Mark teases him about being on a Mediterranean cruise.  Tom talks about their journey--”shorter than we thought it would be.  But then, that’s life.”

 

CHAPTER   10

 

17.       15.54   Close shot of a hummingbird at a feeder near the deck.  Then we see a woman visiting them.  She is a photographer who took a picture of Mark and Tom 18 months ago--on their 20th anniversary.   She brings it to the bed, where Tom is lying.  The picture is framed, and she places it on the pillow next to Tom.   Notice that there are sores on both sides of Tom’s nose.  Lesions on his right eye have left it swollen shut.  Camera in for a tight shot of Tom lying next to the photograph.  Mark says, “There we are!”  Reaction shot of Mark and the friend--they are looking at the scene in front of them. 

            Mark goes through the names of all the family and friends who are going to visit in the next few days and weeks.  Mark says, “Do you love me?”  Tom smiles, “Yes, I love you.”  “You like me videotaping you?”  “Yes.”

            Scene of Mark preparing Tom’s breakfast.  Back to Tom lying in bed.  He looks extremely weak.  Shots of Mark feeding him a spoonful at a time.  The swelling on his nose is purple in color.  Wide shot of Tom.  He waves to the camera.  Mark says, “I love you!  You look like Queen Elizabeth.”  Close shot of a writing tablet.  On it Tom has scrawled, “I love you, Tom.”  Mark notes that Tom wrote this to his mother. 

            Later, Mark summarizes the fate of several friends and others who are gay and who have tested positive for AIDS.  

            20.53   Another woman friend talks to Mark on camera.  She notes that in the three weeks since she last saw Tom, he has declined significantly.   A man with her says, “He was skinnier than I have ever seen him.”    Shot of Tom lying in bed.  Camera pans right to show Tom’s mother sitting nearby.  She watches him closely.   Mark feeds Tom by spoon.  Tom  seems to stare vacantly as he eats the turkey and rice mixture.  The sores on his nose have increased.  “It’s a lot like baby food,” Tom says weakly. 

 

CHAPTER   11

 

18.       22.33   Mark, Tom’s mother, and another woman occupy themselves reading or doing crosswords.  

            23.10  Mark holds extensive paperwork relating to Medi-Cal benefits for Tom.  Close shots of the forms as Mark goes over the complications of the bureaucracy.

            24.10   Tom’s mother sits next to his bed.  She reaches under the covers and takes his hand.  Mark announces a friend and he are going to Huntington Gardens.  “Is that what we’re doing,” Tom asks.  It’s difficult to understand him now.  Mother says she is going there too.

            25.17   Mark and friends at the Gardens.  Montage of music with shots of the desert plants and then a dinner table--everyone is gathered around.

            25.44   Close shot of Tom lying in bed.  He has no shirt on or covers over his upper torso.  Mark announces it is June 25.  “Tom’s lying in bed here, all nice and cool.”  Mark pulls the covers back to show his diaper is loosened so that he can be cooler.  Tom looks skeletal, semi-conscious.  Mark holds back the tears: “I haven’t done any taping for a few days--because I felt really bad--I gave Tom some food that didn’t settle well--and it made him throw up all night--”  As he says this, he holds on a close shot of Tom.  “And I was just ashamed that I had done that.  And I was afraid to turn on the camera!  --if anybody had seen that he was weaker again!  I love him so much! 

            26.39   A close shot of the lesions on Tom’s right eye.  The eyelid, with a KS lesion on it, is swollen, dark purple and brown, the eyelid shut.   He pulls the lid down.  Tom says he suffers pain from this lesion.  THIS IS DIFFICULT TO WATCH--the camera pans to show his other eye--it has no lesions, but Tom’s stare seems vacant, empty of response from this eye. 

            27.16   Close shot of Tom in bed.  He wears his glasses.   His facial hair has grown into a scrawny beard.  “Okay, tell the camera how you feel.”  Tom struggles to talk.  “I feel pretty bad,” he gasps.  “I’m not feeling chipper.”  Then his response become unintelligible.  He seems to whisper, “I feel good.”

 

CHAPTER   12

 

19.       27.54   Close shot of Tom.  He is dead.  Mark’s voiceover: “OHH!  THIS IS THE FIRST OF JULY!  AND TOMMY’S JUST DIED!  AND I SANG TO HIM--YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE--MY ONLY SUNSHINE--YOU MAKE ME HAPPY--WHEN SKIES ARE GRAY!  YOU’LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR, HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU!  PLEASE DON’T TAKE, MY SUNSHINE AWAY!”  The camera shakes on this closeup as Mark says these words.  “Isn’t he beautiful!” Mark says.  He widens the shot.  “He’s so beautiful!   This is for you, Tommy!  All of us will finish the tape for you!  We promise!  Bye!  Bye, Tom! 

 

CHAPTER  13

 

            29.01   The coroner in the bedroom.  The coroner pulls down the cover, and Mark explains that he crossed his arms over his stomach after he died.  “I’m going to cover you up again, Tom!”  Tom’s left eye remains open in death.  The coroner takes down the vital statistics to fill out the death certificate.  “We’re going to use you as the next of kin,” he says.  Tome’s mother is sitting in the room. 

            30-.16  Tom’s body is fitted inside a plastic body bag for removal from the house.  We watch this process. 

 

CHAPTER 14

 

20.       32.06  Close shots of beautiful flowers.  Then we see Mark sitting in the house and reading from a book called “How to Survive a Loss of a Love.”  He says, “I’ve been laughing a lot at the book today.  I’m in the anger phase.”  He refers to poems on one side of the page.  “There’s one called, What Loss Feels Like--as if I don’t know.”  Although he mocks some of the contents, he realizes that the essence of the advice is sound.  “You can expect to be in shock for a while.  This emotional numbness may be frightening.”  He sneaks a smile at the camera.  He realizes that he is struggling to believe what happened--and finds that a difficult struggle.  “Recognize that a loss has taken place.”  He concludes (with a strong sense of humor and irony)--”This self-help book will definitely get me through my depression.”  He tells the videographer, “This is day two after Tom died.  And there was a dramatic change this morning--all the pain and tension in my gut--that’s gone--and it is replaced with anger, which is much more comical and easy to deal with.

            34.34   Mark opens a box from the mortuary.  Inside is a tin filled  with Tom’s ashes.  Mark cuts himself trying to pry open a tin box.   Inside the tin is a plastic bag that holds the ashes.  Some of the ashes spill on the floor when Mark lifts the bag out of the tin.  More spill when he tries to pour the contents of the bag into a ceramic urn.  “You’re all over the place, Tom.”  He sweeps the spilled ashes into a dustpan.  Close shot of the ashes inside the urn. 

 

CHAPTER   15

 

            The urn sits on a side table in the house.  Behind the urn is Mark and Tom’s 20th anniversary photograph.  Close shot of Tom’s glasses next to the urn.

           

21.       38.17   Memorial service for Tom.  The minister notes that AIDS is a disease, not something sent to gays because they are evil.  “Bad things happen to good people,” he says.  “Jesus loves people with AIDS.  Jesus loves any sick person.  Jesus loves well people.  Jesus loves gay people.”  Then some remembrances from friends.  One man says, “These two characters really shaped my life.   They showed me their relationship.  They showed me art and the price of being grownups.  Now they have shown me even more about illness and loss, about giving up and growing, about the boundaries of love.”  Another man connects Tom’s death to the body counts of the Vietnam War era.  “It seems that our society wants to attach importance to a situation by keeping score.”  Close shot of the anniversary photograph.  “Now the count marches on in this battle.  But we are faced with a dilemma in our war with AIDS.  There are no enemy dead to count this time.  We can only count the dead among our loved ones.    Then Tom’s brother, Whitey, speaks.  “My brother had a dream and he had the guts to dare to be different to follow his dream.  My brother Tom left us a legacy.  He bequeathed us his unfulfilled dream, Silverlake Life: The View from Here.  Perhaps it was Tom’s destiny to die in order to create the full impact of Silverlake Life.”

 

CHAPTER   16

 

22.       40.57   Shot through the window  inside a plane.  Peter Friedman’s voiceover: “Before Silverlake Life could have any impact, it had to be completed.”  Friedman returns from France to visit Mark and film an ending.  Exterior of Mark and Tom’s house: “We talked about everything that had happened.”

            41.21   Interior of house.  Mark seated on the sofa.  Friedman asks, “What about Tom’s parents?”  Mark describes the family thinking about when to come out to visit Tom.  He recalls Tom’s father, Charlie, who said, “Would it do any good to come out?”  Mark says, “Good didn’t make any difference.  Did you want to see you son one last time before he dies.”  Mark describes Tom’s father wanting to rush people out of the room when Tom died--so that they wouldn’t be in pain in this experience.  Mark yelled at Charlie and said, “Leave her alone!  This is going to be the last time she’s alone with her son!” 

            Cut to close shot of Tom’s mother.  She is embracing a cat.  Mark’s voiceover: “That whole experience between Tom’s mother and me changed her opinion of me even more.  I’ve been adopted pretty much as a son to her because we both went through something together.  Only she and I went through this.”

            Back to shot of Mark.  “This whole experience has really made us close.”  Friedman says, “It seems like there’s more than a little bit of irony in this situation.”  Mark nods, “Oh, yes.  The fact that Tom had to die for her to see how much I really did love him.”  Then Friedman asks, “What about your father?”  We see a few photographs of Mark’s father.  “We’ve never gotten along very well.  When Tom died I sent him a letter and told him about it.”  Back to Mark on the sofa.  “He wrote me a letter back.”  He reads the letter: “This is THE only letter I have ever gotten from my Father.  Hi, Mark.  I have never written you, but I am now.   I know you have a problem, but take it one day at a time.  I had to make the best of it.  I had to take care of the two of you.”  [We see a photograph of the Father and his two small boys.]  “I did tell both of you, If you’re gay, just don’t tell the world.  Hey, I told you about gays after me, and you told me, I might like it.  Well, I had a gay come to my apartment.  WOW!  Keep up the faith.  It will all work out.”  He looks up from the letter.  “This is a very weird letter.  This is a surreal letter.  I think in that letter my father does recognize that Tom and I were a couple, a family.”

            Close shot of the death certificate.  Friedman asks, “How long did you and Tom live together?”  Mark says, almost twenty-two years.”  Camera on close shot--blank on Marital Status filled out, “Never married.”

 

 

23.       44.33  Friedman: Tell me about life now.”  Mark: “Life now?  [He looks away.]  “Life now is very confusing.  [pause]  “I mean, it’s even hard to organize thoughts in my head to talk about it.  I’m in horrendous physical pain all the time because of my RECTAL problems.  I’m on lots of pain killers.  I have my own AIDS, my own falling t-cell count.  I’m just really beat.”

            45.19   Mark visits a clinic.  The doctor examines the ks-lesions on his back.  There are more of them, and they are more pronounced.  The doctor pokes and prods and comments on the lesions. 

            46.17   Back home; the camera pans from the view from the deck back to the chair on the deck where we saw Tom earlier [on their Mediterranean cruise!].  Now the chair is empty.  Close shot of the hummingbird feeder.  It’s dry and no longer attracting birds.  Wide shot of Mark asleep on the sofa.  He holds a large teddy bear in his arms.  Mark’s voiceover: “I figure that dying is just the end, and it’s a long black boring void afterwards.  Then we see Mark sitting up on the sofa and speaking on camera.  “Some part of me never believed there was anything else--until Tom came back.  All of a sudden, ZOOM--Tom always comes from up here, standing behind the chair, and leaning into me, and with his head resting on my shoulder.  He stayed there for the longest time.  It’s a strange energy, not really attached to the world we live in.  One conversation I had with him I was telling him it was really nice to have him around, because it was hard to live day to day without him.”  [Close shot of the urn and the favorite anniversary picture.]  “I said, If it’s your time to go, don’t hang around here for me.  I’ll survive.  And I got this very clear message that said, “You idiot!  I’ve got nothing else to do!  He doesn’t have anything else to do.  He’s free!  He’s come and visited me three or four times now.”

            Friedman asks, “Why doesn’t he just hang around all the time?”  Mark says, “I can only guess.  I think it would be bad for me.  I could get on with my life.  And he’s gone.  He’s dead.  He is somewhere else.  I can’t go there, and he can’t come here all that often.  He’s dead, so he’s not like stuck here.” 

 

24.       48.49   Music up, a dance beat.  Close shots of two arms (one from the left, one from the right), with fingers snapping to the beat of the song, “I Met Him on a Sunday.”  Camera pulls back to show a scene from Tom’s earlier documentary fifteen years ago--shows Tom and Mark dancing to the music, side by side.  Camera in closer.  They turn to each other, still dancing, and kiss a lingering kiss.  Then they turn back to back and dance, as if each is in his own world.  Then they turn and dance face to face.  Tom smiles broadly.  Then Tom asks, “Could you tell me what Gertrude Stein’s last words to Alice B. Toklas were?”  Mark answers, “Alice turned to Gertrude on her death bed and said, Gertrude, what’s the answer?”  Tom: “And what did Gertrude reply?”  Mark: “What’s the question?”  The song ends, and Mark and Tom stop dancing, turn to the camera, and stare into it.   Music up with the credits.   “Goodbye Sadness,” sung by Yoko Ono.  

 

Summary written by Robert E. Yahnke

Professor, General College, Univ. of Minnesota

Copyright by Robert E. Yahnke, © 2001

Permission granted for reprinting for educational use only