HBO – Rogueslayer0's Blog

So, I’m realizing these are less reviews and more how these shows/films/video games/books made me feel, and I’m just going to stick with it.

A friend and I watched Looking back when it first aired. We’d meet up once a week at his place, watch the episode and then discuss. I LOVED the first season. The series really spoke to me for a few reasons. First, the series that really helped me on my journey to coming out was Queer As Folk (US), and I’ll likely re-watch it in the near future and write something about it. Looking reminded me a lot of QAF and made me feel how I felt when I watched QAF (more on that in a bit.) Second, I had set my plan to move to Los Angeles, and seeing gays living in a big city in California resonated with me.

The second season, I still loved the show, but I was really upset with the characters, especially Patrick. Patrick is the one I identify with the most, though I feel far removed from any of the characters, also Jonathan Groff is adorably hot (which I feel is a rare find, being adorable and hot at the same time.) With QAF, I identified most with Michael, and he is the Michael, in my opinion, of the series. I loved him and Richie, and I hated him and Kevin.

Going through the series a second time, I feel a bit differently. I still love Patrick/Richie and hate Patrick/Kevin, but I could understand Patrick’s decisions a bit more. I don’t know if having been in Los Angeles almost two years (officially two years in 16 days… how crazy) made me think differently about things (or how it would.) I finally watched the film too. I just finished watching it, and it moved me so much.

When I would critique the series, up to about yesterday, actually, I would say the thing that bugged me about the characters was they were making mistakes I felt people in their early 20s would make, not people in their late 20s and 30s. Yet, I feel completely different about it now. The mistakes they were making were relationship mistakes, and those have no age limit. Though I think Patrick shouldn’t have been a homewrecker.

I remember being more critical of the show when it first aired, and I think my friend still has this opinion, because it shows a very promiscuous and drug-friendly side of the community that I couldn’t relate to, though I was happy it had more diversity than I saw in QAF. However, I started watching before I took my LGBTV (LGBT Television) course and learned that minorities tend to be more critical (and if I’m anything, I’m critical) of portrayals they see in media, as there is less representation. Example: You can see a junkie who is white in a show/film, and that can be the only junkie, and most people will not have a problem. However, if you have one black character in a show/film and they are a junkie, that is problematic.

So, I have less issue with the sex and the drugs than I did before, because though that is not my experience, I know that is the experience of gay men out there. If you don’t believe me, by all means hit up The Chapel on a Sunday night, the dance floor is like a mini circuit party.

The movie makes me wish I’d done more to support the show so it would have continued. I don’t know what I could have done, maybe watched it more, posted more about it, I could have written this two, three years ago?

My friend felt all the characters, except Richie and Doris, were terrible people. I agree less now. I think now that they were just navigating through life, and it isn’t always going to be right or even remotely perfect.

Now onto how it made me feel. I remember the first time I watched Latter Days, I was 20 and somehow stumbled upon it in my quest to find more gay cinema. I cried like a baby at the end. It was a touching moment, but for me, it was the moment when I finally admitted to myself that I was gay, and I finally admitted to myself that one day I wanted to be in love. Watching shows like QAF and Looking remind me of that.

The end of the film made me so happy (I won’t spoil it, in case you, like me, didn’t watch it when it originally came out,) and it reminded me of that longing I have. I’m aware I stand in my own way though (when you want to be a writer, you kind of have to be self-aware). I keep people at a distant, and those who get too close I push away, so I still have some learning and growing to do, work out my inner demons and childhood traumas and such.

I feel like a cliché sometimes. It’s crazy, because even before I was out or would admit to myself that I was gay, I’d have this fantasy, and it would recur all the time. I lived in this apartment that had a front porch and a guy would walk me to my door after some date (the fantasy never included the actual date) and he’d kiss me goodnight. I was 18, and I’m 29 now (I’ll be 30 in seven months) and it has yet to happen… and now I don’t even have a damn front porch…

I feel like an anomaly among my gay friends. I don’t hook up. The last (official) date I can remember being on happened back in… 2013 or 2014… I think? Which is why I don’t relate to the characters in many gay films/shows (not that I’m actively seeking to change any of this.) I’ve been told many times throughout my life that I’m an old soul. From a young age, even before I knew I was gay, I knew what I wanted.

I don’t just want a boyfriend, I want a boyfriend that will become a husband. I want monogamy, the house, the kids, the whole nine yards, just that hetreonormative life, I suppose, and maybe I shouldn’t want it, but I do. I don’t judge anyone living differently, and I’m not saving myself for marriage or anything. I just, I don’t know, I find sex to be very intimate, so I’m not good at trying to do it casually, and part of me, which some may find very stupid, is saving myself for a relationship. I obviously can’t expect a future boyfriend/partner to do the same for me, but I find something about it to be rather romantic on my part.

I’m aware of the whole love yourself before you love somebody else thing, and I’m still working on the first part, so I’m in no rush to find someone or for someone to find me. But scenes in the show and the film pulled at my heartstrings. I couldn’t help but think, oh, that would be nice when I’d see the flirting, the hand holding, the relationship in bloom. So. Freaking. Charming.

This was definitely a series that was gone way before its time.

I’ve written about this film before, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. I can’t explain how or why I stumbled across the film or even the name Gia Carangi, but somehow I did. Back in the day (as in probably around 2010 or so), I’d find myself on Wikipedia clicking links within articles and start off one place and end somewhere totally different. Though, I’ve always had a strange obsession with drug addiction, so I’m not too surprised I found my way to this film. I imagine I watched it around the time I was binge watching seasons (not episodes… seasons) of Intervention on Netflix and Amazon Prime, back in the good ol’ days when they had them.

It stars Angelina Jolie as Gia (with Mila Kunis playing her as a child) and I was instantly in love. Basically, she is one of the first “supermodels” (as there are several models who claim to be the first). She wasn’t like other girls in the industry at the time, and she was bisexual (maybe exclusively lesbian), and was inspired by Bowe’s look, so she could give a masculine look, a feminine look, or a blend of them. Not to mention she was wild and crazy and would do things other models wouldn’t do.

Unfortunately, she fell into drugs. First coke, then heroin, and at first she wouldn’t shoot up, but eventually she started that and her career started to nosedive. After watching the first time, I started to do more research because I wanted to know more about Gia. The film makes it clear that the industry knew about her drug use, but they didn’t care. Some reports claim they would even supply her with coke and heroin and argue that she started (or perhaps helped bring in) the heroin chic look.

Several times she tried to get clean, but would end up relapsing, and then she ended up contracting AIDS. This was the mid-80s, so no one really knew what it was yet, and she died shortly after discovering she had it. She had since left the fashion world, so a lot of people she’d worked with didn’t even know she was dead until months later.

I just find it really sad. I obviously didn’t know her or anything about her, she died about a year and a half before I was born, but I… relate to her? (I don’t know if relate is the right word.) When I watch the film and I read about her, I get her loneliness and I can understand why and how one would want some escape from that. I think a part of me envies and maybe resents how everyone seemed to love her, yet she still felt so lonely. Another part of me sees it as a cautionary tale not to squander my gifts and talents, because one day it will all be over and I want something to show for it.

I was reading more about Angelina Jolie the other night, as I didn’t realize Gia was one of her breakout roles. I didn’t know it before reading it, but she’d had her own demons when it came to drugs and self harm, which may be part of why when I think of Gia, I think of Angelina.

I hate how the industry chewed her up and spat her out, I mean, I suppose one could argue the drug use did that, but the industry and constantly working and partying didn’t help. The film starts with Gia walking down this beautiful catwalk, there is some dance music playing and she is in this gorgeous white wedding dress. She works the catwalk and all the people love her. It is my favorite scene in the film, because it tells you so much, but you don’t realize it until the end of the film.

You see this same scene again towards the end of the film (and the end of her career and her life), but now you have a different perspective. The first time you see it, she is full of life and having so much fun. When you see it the second time, you realize she is high, and this scene extends to her crashing, then she goes back stage because she needs another fix. The thing I hate about this scene is one of the guys, I assume the designer, is clapping and telling her how great she is, and as soon as she is out of earshot, he starts saying how she is finished and she’ll never work again.

She goes in the bathroom to shoot up, and has this disgusting open wound on her hand that she shoots into ( I loved the juxtaposition of the red and the white, pure, wedding dress), and one of the girls from the line of models goes back to get her and help her to her feet. The girl that helps her, Stephanie, I think her name was, is a girl that Gia meets when she first started modeling, and they started partying together. I just thought it was a sweet moment that she didn’t turn her back on Gia like everyone else.

Once upon a time, I read, and now I can’t find where I read it, that upon learning she had AIDS, and knowing she was going to die, Gia took all the money she had and when to get one last score, essentially to overdose, and when she goes to her dealer, he must sense she is trying to OD, and he and his guys just rob her and rape her (the film tells this as well). I know it is a horrible thing to say, but I hope the man (or men) who raped her contracted the virus when he/they raped her.

It’s weird. I’ve watched a lot of shows about drug addiction and I’ve watched a lot of films about people who died before their time, but I can’t example why this one touches me in a different, more personal, way. Maybe she reminds me of someone I knew when I was growing up (I can think of one person in particular, and I never found out what ended up happening to her or if she turned her life around)? I probably sound like one of those crazy fans or something, but I feel a connection I can’t explain. Maybe we are kindred spirits? Who knows.