VARIETY
dir. Bette Gordon
1983
(until August 24th)
When digital filming suddenly became cheap enough for poor people to get involved in, with the advent of decent, low priced miniDV cameras, I expected there to be an explosion of feature films, put together with a punky DIY ethos, that would form part of a movie revolution. I even had a go myself, buying a camera for a grand, gathering actors and non-actors and blagging locations, filming all through summer with my co-creator and star, Matthew Zajac, until there were enough hours of wobbly footage to make a musical drama called Gordon Bennett. Shot on the streets of pre-gentrified Hackney (and the river Thames) the film showed the following year in a packed Rio cinema and, then at a few venues to a ‘select’ audience.
The revolution didn’t happen, wasn’t filmed, let alone televised. Blair Witch appeared, making a virtue and a fetish of pre-mobile selfie footage and then… I suppose people realised that access to technology, just as in music creation, is only part of the equation. You need people, locations, money and time.
As with Gordon Bennett, the location of Variety is a definite character in the film, possibly the main one. Released in 1983 and filmed in a New York that looks as if it’s sinking back into the marshes on which it was built, there’s a chance that it might have heralded a few revolutionary moments of its own. Directed by a woman (Bette Gordon), written by two women and a man (Kathy Acker and Jerry Delameter) and featuring a female lead that broke taboos and new ground (played by Sandy McLeod) it would have been reasonable to expect further challenges to the male dominance in film making in its wake.
The film is both of its time and anticipating the future in its attitude to sexuality. Exploring the effect of exposure to pornography on a young woman after she takes a job on the ticket desk of a mucky looking porno palace on Times Square. Of its time is the attitude of men she encounters, overwhelmingly sexist and naturally oppressive, also of its time, particularly in big, western cities like NYC and London, is the way that the female characters negotiate the city, insisting on travelling solo through dark streets and into unwelcoming venues, in the days before mobiles gave a sliver of safety.
the lead embraces her confused and stimulated reaction to porn
The future is anticipated by the portrayal of attitudes to sexuality, in the ways that the lead embraces her confused and stimulated reaction to porn and the effect it has on men and how, at the end of the film, she distills it into a hard confidence.
Watching Variety in a tiny theatre (30 seats!) in Shoreditch reminded me that film, as a shared public experience adds the missing element to cinema, puts the people in the cinema into cinema. So, where are the bijou micro-cinemas showing DIY features to enthusiasts, the equivalent to pub music venues?
Unfortunately, no, the revolution didn’t happen, at least, not out on the streets. It’s as if Richard Hell couldn’t get a gig in Birmingham.
