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"Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex."
That's GOP loudmouth Paul Weyrich, commenting two weeks ago on Rep. Mark Foley's inconvenient page-boy problems on NPR's All Things Considered. And he's right: homosexuals are preoccupied with sex. So are heterosexuals. So are bisexuals. So are pansexuals, asexuals and even non-sexuals. We're alive, and for that we obsesse the body electric. Amen.
But as a society we Americans prefer to play it dumb. It's splashed across our favorite magazines; it's soaked so thoroughly into our programs that you can't watch "Sesame Street" without smelling crotch. Yet outwardly, sexuality is hear no evil, see no evil, suck no evil. The only people we publicly acknowledge to be fixated on sex are Bill Clinton, the heathens and nice, healthy couples. We do it, certainly. But just as certainly we aren't allowed to be preoccupied with our sex. Not publicly. Not without censure.
Enter the Short Bus, a penetrating look into the lives of the sexually obsessed.
John Cameron Mitchell's Short Bus pulls into theaters near you with a load of freaks ready to titillate and entertain. You remember Mitchell, right? In '01 he put his face on the map with the cheeky and unreservedly gender bending Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He's back with another film that dispenses with pretenses, but instead of bright lights and fantasy rock stars, Short Bus lays bare the private but proud, healthy but seemingly festering world of sexuality that we seldom admit exists behind closed doors.
The film chronicles the half-fictional lives of a handful of New York 30-somethings who stumble, poke and prod their way through life and through love. Short Bus is not a documentary, but it does capture the feel and forensic nature of anthropology by inviting cast members to pretty much play themselves. And what they play becomes real as rain.
The roles themselves are convincingly comfortable and authentic to a degree that leaves only the details of the script in question, not the faithfulness of their execution. With a screenplay as unassuming as the people portrayed, the whole thing comes off as a cleverly choreographed exposition on your average, everyday, sex-crazy homo sapiens. Sometimes dysfunctional, sometimes demented, but always sexy - these characters meander and cross in a multiplicity of subplots that over and again bring lives and loins into intimate contact with each other. And the contact is hot. Through the frayed kinetics of social congress these characters melt the screen. Through the friction of skin they generate enough heat to snuff the lights of NYC. Only the power of the reproductive urge and its attendant affections can safely secure the city.
It's important to understand what Mitchell has done here. The sex portrayed comes full-frontal naked in all its raunchy, sweat-crevice glory. There are no convenient, fade-to-fireplace niceties to spare the sensitive among you, so don't bother coming if you can't stand the heat. With one hand clutching a stash of ecstasy, the other groping for a bottle of Viagra, Short Bus is a ride like no other. Fudging, wedging - the romper room cast of characters offer a cinematographic, scratch-and-sniff version of a drunken Kinsey report. In case I haven't been graphic enough: At the top of this there are genitals, and they get used. Well.
But Short bus is far, far more than porno with a plot. To call it provocative commits a felony of understatement, yes. And the graphic rawness of the sex is surely alarming (apocalyptic?) to conservative sensibilities. But the angels are in the details.
Masterful editing and an allegiance to character/story development empties the sex of pornotropic gratuity. The film delivers instead a selection of naturalized, vegetable lovemaking that grows organically from the seeds of human passion. Despite the parade of penae and the occasional flaming vagina, Short bus remains at heart a story about the heart. And Mitchell shows well that he knows how to story tell because at the bottom of this Short Bus is not about pumping; it's about connection. And because we all need to connect, all need to make love, Mitchell champions what would otherwise fall into a showcase for depravity and unrestrained license.
We do need to connect. We do need to make love. At least we all feel like we do - sometimes desperately so. Unpretentious, Short Bus rolls as a vehicle for carrying us through and to these needs without apology. The movie aims to bring us closer to the places we'd rather not talk about because such places cash out as too revealing, too socially unacceptable. At the last stop the film reveals us all as charged, wonderfully sexualized creatures, no matter how much our world tries to sponge that away. To some degree then we all are made to ride the short bus. The only question remaining is how long are you willing to ride before you're to get off.
Short Bus is playing now at the Landmark Mayan Theatre on 1st and Broadway. For ticket prices, show times and all other information, please call (303) 352-1992 or visit their website at www.landmarktheatres.com. Raincoats are discouraged.
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