by Alan Cumming
FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN 2016 BY:
Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
300 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010
www.rizzoliusa.com
© 2016 Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
Text © 2016 Alan Cumming
Photographs © 2016 Alan Cumming
For Rizzoli
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This ebook edition © 2016 Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
This ebook edition text © 2016 Alan Cumming
This ebook edition photographs © 2016 Alan Cumming
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of the publisher.
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-8478-4901-7
v3.1
FOR GRANT SHAFFER.
I GOT THE BIGGEST DREAM.
Grant and Jerry, home, 2015.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT
LUSTROUS PINNACLE
CROCS
PAGE SIX
TRAVELS WITH HONEY
GRANT
SNOW MAN
POOL BOY
AFTER DARK
MURRAY (KING OF THE) HILL
JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL
TRAVIS AND HIS FRIEND
22ND STREET
CHEST PEACE
SUMMER KNEE JERK
GLENN CLOSE’S BACK
IRIS APFEL’S HAND
BODY PARTS
FLESHBOT
I AM WRITING THIS BECAUSE GORE VIDAL TOLD ME TO
SECRETS AND LIES
DIDDY
FASHION FEET FORWARD
NATALIE MERCHANT’S SHOES
GETTING TO NOMI
YOU GOTTA GET BIGGER DREAMS!
KYLIE
KITTEN
IMAN
HEAD DOWN, EYES UP
SHONA AND KERRY
LEON
LIFE IS A GAME
SELF-PORTRAIT, MARRAKECH
CAITLIN’S KITCHEN
MANDATORY SELFIES
YES!
PRIESTS TEXTING
SWEET LIZA
WELCOME TO ACTION MOVIES
I ONCE SANG AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL
JET LAG
FIRST CLASS DREAM
AWARDS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT
WHEN I WAS about ten I was cutting the grass outside our house when a car drew up and a strange man got out and asked me if I knew an Alan Cumming.
“I … um, I, well …,” I stuttered, worried I had done something wrong and this man was from the local gulag and I was about to be abducted and whisked off to some child labor camp. Then I realized that would actually be preferable to my life as it was under my father’s draconian regime so I said boldly, “Yes, I am he.”
Except I said it too quickly and it came out as “Yamahee,” like the name on the side of the plastic electric organ with the wobbly leg my auntie had recently bequeathed to me.
“What did you say, son?” said the man, a slight note of pity in his voice, as though I was impaired in some way.
“I am Alan Cumming,” I said.
Years later I saw the movie Spartacus and so wished there had been a horde of other little boys amid the freshly mown lawn to echo my childhood pronouncement.
“Then congratulations!” said the man, a smile breaking across his wrinkly face like an accordian opening for air. “You’ve won a camera!”
He proferred a gleaming plastic box with a plastic Kodak camera inside it along with a packet of Kodak film wrapped in plastic! I was overwhelmed. I’d never won anything before. I thought it must be a joke of some kind. Nice things like this didn’t happen to me. I panicked that it was some sort of test my father had engineered to see how I would react.
“But how?” I spluttered, looking at the magical package in my grass-stained hands.
“You went to the Monikie church jamboree, did you not?” said the man, enjoying my puzzlement.
“Yes.”
“And you bought a ticket for the tombola, did you not?”
“Uh-huh,” I countered, my mind whirring.
Suddenly he was a prosecution attorney circling in on the accused, about to look up at the judge and murmur, “No further questions.” But instead, in real life, he said …
“There you go then! You won this camera! Happy snapping!”
And with that he stepped back into his car and was gone.
I stood there, just staring at the magical offering, absolutely dumbstruck. Suddenly I heard the sound of the front door open behind me and my father was striding down the drive, the tacks on the bottom of his boots beating a militaristic and ever-loudening cacophony that rung in my ears and overwhelmed my present wonder.
“Who was that?” My father’s voice snapped me back to reality.
“I won a camera,” I said, realizing how ridiculous that sentence would sound to him. Even in something as simple as cutting the acres of grass around our house, his ditzy, flighty son had failed—and not only failed, but conjured a camera and some ridiculous story to validate his failure.
My father eyed me suspiciously and pulled the camera from my clutches.
“A man from the church jamboree brought it. I won!” I added faintly.
“If you fell out of a window, you’d fall up,” my dad scoffed, pushing my prize back into my hands, turning on his heels, and marching back inside. “Get on with that grass,” he threw over his shoulder as he went.
I looked down at the box again. The whole thing seemed magically unreal. This wasn’t just a raffle prize, it was something untouchably mine, something my dad couldn’t control or beat me at. In an instant I realized what it was to be an artist. I had the means to express myself and now I merely had to work out what I wanted to say.
The first picture I took was of my granny when she came to visit the next week. She was as excited as I was about my stroke of luck and gamely became my first model, posing in front of the rose trellis in our garden.
I didn’t mean Granny to be so on the left of frame. I thought I was centering her, but my novice skills forbade such a predictable action. However, I am glad she is at the side, beaming away encouragingly, giving the roses a chance to bloom beside her.
My parents were standing by as I took the picture and I felt it rude not to ask them to be my next muses. In the ensuing portrait my framing issues were less able to be explained away, although perhaps cutting my father out of the picture was a rather symbolic premonition.
The last picture I am going to show you from that first, and sadly, only roll of Kodak film, is of a sheep and her lambs that were residing in the field in front of our house. Much as I want to advocate the rustic beauty of dry stone walls, I did not intend to show such an expanse at the expense of my ovine models.
Do you see a theme emerging?!
When that first roll had been de
veloped and picked up from the local town’s chemist, and my family huddled around me as I opened the packet and viewed my attempts at capturing my contemporary existence, this photo of the sheep was the final straw for my father. That I had bothered to take a photo of them at all incensed him but it was my repeated left-side framing of my subjects that his militaristic mind just couldn’t handle. That, along with the expense of the film processing, made him issue an edict that forbade me from ever taking another picture with my new camera. I placed it in the chest of drawers in my bedroom, and once in a while I’d look at it waiting for me, still sparkling and new, both of us knowing that one day I would be free to tell stories and take pictures of whatever I chose.
That time would come, although by then my little plastic Kodak wasn’t the conduit. But its spirit still surrounds me—and now you, dear reader, because … guess what?
THE TIME IS NOW!!!!
LUSTROUS PINNACLE
I WAS LEAVING Julius’s bar in the West Village of New York City the night after Elizabeth Taylor died and I saw this copy of the New York Times lying on a table among the empty beer bottles. I just snapped it.
Every month there is a party at Julius’s called Mattachine, which John Cameron Mitchell throws. It’s full of fun, counterculturey, queer people—the kind of night I think Liz would have loved.
Everyone was talking about her that evening. Above all, it felt as though we’d lost an ally, a really long-term and loyal ally.
I met her once in LA. I was invited to Carrie Fisher’s birthday party and was uncharacteristically early. Like, really early. I was the first to arrive. Next was Liz.
She was helped in by her driver, and she plopped down in a comfy seat in the entrance hall, I presume so she could have a good look at everyone as they arrived. I was hovering nearby, totally awestruck. I introduced myself and we made some banal small talk about the weather and such, and then I totally clammed up. There was an embarrassing pause. She started to shuffle things around in her handbag and I excused myself and went into one of the main rooms and asked the barman for a stiff drink.
Suddenly Carrie appeared. She’d been running around doing hostessy finishing touches, expecting her one-time stepmother to be kept entertained by yours truly, so when she saw me she wasted no time in chastising me for reneging on my duties.
“What are you doing here?” she asked like a disappointed schoolma’am. “Do you know how many homosexuals would like to be in your position right now?”
I opened my mouth to speak but before I could utter a syllable, she continued, “Get back in there and flank that legend!”
And so I did.
I grabbed my drink and walked back into the hall and blurted out, like the errant ingrate I was, “Elizabeth, I am here to flank you!” She let loose the first of many cackles, patted the cushion next to her, and I sat down beside her.
We began to chitchat. She told me she had recently fallen and I asked her the circumstances. Apparently she had been eating dinner at home and stood up to leave the table but, having left something, made to sit down again to retrieve it. Not realizing her maid had already pulled away the chair, she fell to the ground and injured herself.
“Was there much pain?” I asked in concern.
The screen siren looked straight at me for a moment then rolled her violet eyes back into her head, took in a breath, and clutched one bejeweled hand to her chest. She grabbed my hand with her other, as though she were reliving the pain of the fall at that very moment. It was riveting.
There was silence for a few seconds. She opened her eyes and stared at me, her face a blank mask. She was still clutching my hand and I wasn’t sure if I should release myself from her grip. I suppose I wasn’t sure if the performance was over or not. It wasn’t.
“Alan,” she growled like the Cat on the Hot Tin Roof she still was. “You have never seen such a black ass.”
My mouth gaped open in an involuntary gasp. I waited just a beat longer, then with the most saucy twinkle in my eye I had ever mustered, threw down my slam dunk. “Oh, Elizabeth,” I said. “I bet I have!”
Suddenly her hand unlocked from mine and slapped me across the chest. She cackled like a trucker who’d just heard a good fart joke.
We got on like a house on fire after that. Pretty soon she was showing me her bling. She proffered her hand with the enormous Krupp Diamond ring Richard Burton had given her in 1968. I told her I had seen smaller New York apartments. Another cackle.
“Can I touch it?” I asked, mesmerized.
“Just don’t leave your fingerprints on it,” she quipped.
“I could leave my whole handprint on that thing,” I retorted.
Soon the party began to fill up, and as people came over to pay their respects to the legend, I felt it was time to vacate my cushion next to her.
“Elizabeth,” I whispered in her ear. “I’m de-flanking now.”
“All right, darling,” she said. “Be careful.”
CROCS
I AM FASCINATED by Crocs. Not just the shoes themselves, but more the way, somehow, society has deemed it okay for everyone to think, and then voice openly, that they are ugly.
I suppose I worry about the sheeplike following of any belief. Religion and politics, to name but two, are topics to which people have fierce allegiances that they will unflinchingly defend, yet often these don’t stand up to much scrutiny, if indeed much scrutiny is ever entertained. Crocs are much the same.
You need only drop the very name in some quarters and people will spew virulent hatred. I find it frightening. I think it’s a form of fascism. We all feel comfortable in our collective hatred of the other. But in this case it’s about colorful rubber shoes. Come on, people.
Once I was in Hawaii making the film The Tempest. I wore my Crocs all the time because they are comfortable and you can go in and out of the water with them, and I like them. I really, really like them. I like that they are big and clumpy and fun and bold and therefore the antithesis of what we are conditioned to believe we should wear on our feet, especially when we are a middle-aged man.
Whenever we went to a new location for the film, we would be given a blessing ceremony. The cast and crew would all gather to watch the Kahu ask the spirits to wish us well and then we’d have a few beers. One night I was chatting to Helen Mirren, who was playing Prospera (it’s normally “Prospero” but they made her a woman in our version) and out of nowhere she looked down toward my feet and said, “I think Crocs are really ugly.”
I was slightly taken aback. “Oh,” I said. “Well, you know what, Helen? Sometimes I think what people are wearing is ugly but I just use my inside voice.”
She thought about that for a moment and then replied, “Yes, I see what you mean. But I still think they’re ugly.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
A FEW WEEKS later I was returning for my first day back on set after a break home in New York City. I was driven through a vast forest of short, windswept trees and finally we came out onto a remote, volcanic wasteland. There were the familiar trailers and the hustle and bustle that is a film set gearing up for the day.
As I got out of the car, I heard a familiar voice call my name. It was Helen. She came running around the corner of the makeup truck to greet me.
“Look, Alan, look!” she cried. She pointed down to her feet and to a pair of bright pink Crocs!
“Helen!” I laughed. “You’ve come over to the other side!”
“Yes,” she said, like a little girl who had just been given a puppy. “I was wearing flip-flops but my feet got so sore on all the rocks and so I tried on some Crocs and they’re so comfortable and now I’ve got three different pairs!”
“You were a hater and now you’re a lover,” said I, happy that I had one more convert, not just to colorful rubber shoes, but to freedom and tolerance and fun!
PAGE SIX
TRAVELS WITH HONEY
IN 2004, I left New York for many months to film a m
ovie in Australia. My dog, Honey, had to stay behind in Manhattan and was not best pleased. She had recently become the child of a broken home and had been shuttled back and forth between my ex and me until custody issues were resolved. Then, just as we were settling into a new apartment, a new dog run, a new routine, I disappeared off down under. Poor Honey must have felt very insecure. Indeed, when I was away, I heard reports of a very disturbing trend in her behavior …
Jen, my assistant (aka dog nanny) at the time, had gone to the pet shop to stock up on canine nosh and as she was paying, she felt Honey tugging on her leash, very anxious to leave the store. As soon as they were outside on the sidewalk, Jen realized why: Honey had a large swirly bull’s penis in her mouth! She had begun to shoplift!
For those of you not initiated in bull’s penises, I should tell you that dogs love them. I have never met a dog who would not drop everything and happily spend an entire afternoon chomping on one. To mix my animal metaphors, bull’s penises are catnip for dogs. Of course I am sure bulls and cows are crazy for them too, but that’s another story for another time.
What I really found fascinating about this little insight into Honey’s adolescent bout of acting out is how clever she was to know she should remove herself from the scene of the crime, and quickly!
Anyway, I eventually returned to Manhattan and she gradually forgave me for abandoning her in a sumptuous Chelsea apartment, with only Daddy’s assistant and a revolving door of beloved friends to keep her company. Soon after though, I was due to start a new movie in Vancouver. I intended to take her with me, but I knew there was no way I could possibly put her in a crate and then in the hold of a plane to be transported all the way to British Columbia. Oh no. Honey was too delicate. We both were. We’d been through a lot this past year. But then I thought of a solution that would both solve any air-travel anxiety and give us maximum daddy-daughter rebonding time.