"[Man] The night of the day he died, without any preliminary decision, almost, uh, unconsciously," "I went straight to his diary." "[Michael York As Isherwood] That spring I realized that I had fallen deeply in love... with a boy whom I'd known for only a short while" "Don Bachardy." "The 30-year difference in our ages shocked some of those who knew us." "I, myself, didn't feel guilty about this, but I did feel awed by the emotional intensity of our relationship... right from the beginning." "The strange sense of a fated, mutual discovery." "I knew that this time I had really committed myself." "Don might leave me, but I couldn't possibly leave him... unless he ceased to need me." "This sense of responsibility, which was almost fatherly, made me anxious but full of joy." "And Chris knew exactly what to do with me." "Yes." "His role could be described... as that of the arch villain." "He took this young boy, and he warped him to his mold." "He taught him all kinds of wicked things." "It was exactly what the boy wanted, and, um, he flourished." "Well, I mean, the idea of this middle-aged man, um, deflowering this young boy." "And also what Chris was doing to his own reputation." "I don't even think that a lot of queers... would have considered me ripe enough yet." "Chris told me I was very sophisticated for my age." "And, of course, that just enchanted me." "Chris was against having an animal, a pet." "And his reason was... that he felt that when two people live together... who had an animal, an awful lot of affection would be siphoned off by that animal, which otherwise would go between the two people." "And, of course, he was absolutely right." "The, uh, result was that we became each other's animals." "I became the cat, and Chris was an old horse, an old dobbin." "On birthday cards, he would always do a little drawing of a dobbin... in some act of homage to Kitty." "Kitty often rode the old dobbin." "We devised stories about Kitty and Dobbin." "And they had all kinds of adventures, which, uh, were just" "[Chuckles] full of symbolic meaning." "This is Chris's workroom, where I've been sleeping for, oh, eight or nine months now." "And, uh, I moved his day bed into the corner... under the windows." "At night I can lie down and look up at the stars in the sky, and also I see the full moon coming through the other window... around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning." "The Hockney print, which is a variation on the painting he did of the two of us." "In the painting, Chris is on the right in profile." "Here he is full-faced in the chair that I'm sitting in in the painting." "And that was a piece of Indian corn... that Elsa Lanchester gave Chris." "They're no longer there, because we once had a rat living in the house." "To force him out, we locked up all the food cupboards, and he was so desperate one night, he ate the kernels." "He cleaned almost entirely both cobs." "And this is ancient corn." "It had to be something like 50 years old." "Imagine being so hungry." "[Laughing]" "And finally we drove him out." "We didn't want to catch him in a trap, but we did drive him out." "There was nothing left to eat." "[Chuckling]" "And these are watercolors... by Chris's father." "This one down here too." "This was by a professional painter of houses in England." "And this is of the house that Chris was born in" "Wyberslegh Hall." "Chris was born in Cheshire, England... to an upper-class family in 1904.." "His mother, Kathleen, was a dominant figure in his life." "And he often spoke more fondly of his nanny than he did of her." "He and Kathleen were adversaries." "They couldn't help but be, because Kathleen had very clear ideas... what she wanted, what she expected of Chris." "She wanted him to be a don-- a teacher-- and, uh-- and that wasn't his intention at all." "His father, Frank, was an officer in the British army." "And he was killed in the First World War... when Chris was just a young boy." "He later received a scholarship to study history at Cambridge." "But Chris was rebellious... and felt manipulated by the way history was being taught at Cambridge." "[Woman] He did fine in his first year exams, and then in the second year, he deliberately wrote joke answers." "Wrote about the decoration of the examining rooms, mocked the examiners." "And shortly after wards, he was called back to school from London, where he'd gone for the summer holidays." "And got expelled, because he wanted to be, and I think because he wanted to disappoint Kathleen... and make it perfectly clear... that he wasn't going to do her bidding." "Isherwood was searching for a place where he could live... and explore, I think, among other things, his sexuality." "He was beginning to realize that he was gay." "England was a place of confinement and strictures... that made it hard fora gay man to pursue that life, if not openly, at least in a satisfying and complete kind of way." "Also his very good friend, W. H. Auden, one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, had gone to Berlin." "He was writing letters back to Isherwood, urging him to come to Berlin." "[Isherwood] I was looking for a sort of homeland, for somewhere where I could function in a way where I would feel freer... than I felt in England at that particular time... under the particular circumstances I was living in." "I think it was partly a class thing, but, of course, it was inextricably mixed up with my homosexuality, because, um, what I in fact started to encounter... was the German working class." "[York] To Christopher, Berlin meant boys." "At school, Christopher had fallen in love with many boys... and been yearningly romantic about them." "At college, he had at last managed to get into bed with one of them." "Others experiences followed, all of them enjoyable, but none entirely satisfying." "This was because Christopher was suffering from an inhibition... then not unusual among upper-class homosexuals." "He couldn't relax sexually with a member of his own class or nation." "He needed a working-class foreigner." "Isherwood just happened to be at one of the most important spots to be in... in the 20th century." "And that was in Germany in the late 1920s, the early 1930s." "This was the place in which Nazism was developing, emerging as an important force." "This was where Hitler's Germany was on the rise." "[Bachardy] Chris was observing everything that was going on there... and formulating ideas... that would later go into his two books about Berlin-- one a novel and the other a collection of stories-- that really put him on the map as an author." "The success ofthose two books led to a play, I Am a Camera, and a movie of the play and eventually Cabaret, which was quite a success on Broadway, and then, of course, the movie version with Liza Minnelli." "Ladies und Gents, fraulein Sally Bowles!" "Isherwood did not love the way the movie was done." "He thought Liza Minnelli was too good." "He made a funny comment in interviews about, if-- if she opens her mouth and she's every bit Judy Garland's daughter... and that there's no way a club in Berlin could have housed such a talent." "♪ Life is a cabaret ♪" "[Bachardy] Five minutes after Liza Minnelli had been on screen," "Chris leaned towards me and said, "She's no good. "[Laughs]" "That's him." "[Laughing Continues]" "He liked Michael York very much." "He thought he was just right for it." "But how could he like Liza Minnelli?" "Because, um-- with her personality and talent, she destroyed the character of Sally Bowles." "Because if Sally Bowles isn't an amateur, she isn't Sally Bowles." "I think Christopher Isherwood enjoyed the film." "I think he would say," ""Well, that's not what it was like."" "But it was a point of view." "And when you write a piece, you have to be prepared for all kinds of points of view." "And, um, he liked that people liked it so much." "[Hodson] Cabaret put him on the map for the world at large, for the general public." "People who didn't read much or may not have known about Isherwood as an author" "Cabaret was really the ticket to fame." "[Train Whistle Toots]" "Isherwood had to leave Berlin in 1933, as so many people did." "And throughout the 1930s, he'd wandered in Europe, looking for a country where he could settle... with his German boyfriend, Heinz Neddermeyer." "There were problems about passports, papers, visas." "Heinz eventually was arrested by the Gestapo... and first served a prison sentence and then went into the army." "This was very distressing." "This was a boy to whom, at the time, he felt very committed." "[Hodson] I think for both Isherwood and Auden, they could see that there was a war on the horizon in Europe, without any doubt at all." "And they recognized that they had no part in that, because they were pacifists." "So he and Auden turned their backs on Europe." "They decided to emigrate to the United States." "And they arrived in New York City in January, 1939." "[Bachardy] Chris didn't like the cold." "He didn't like the grime of New York." "He didn't like the bustle, and he longed for the West." "He had a romantic vision of the West, which he got from John Ford movies." "[Hodson] So he headed out across country... and ended up in Southern California." "Los Angeles offered a tremendously varied cultural atmosphere... for someone like Isherwood to drop into the center." "There were the expatriates, the artists, the musicians, the actors, the directors-- a great boiling pot... for all sorts of cultural and artistic life and creativity." "He fit in beautifully." "Because he had something to offer, they had something to offer him." "He's one of the few writers who will admit... that writing for Hollywood made him a better writer." "He learned an economy of language." "He learned how to use dialogue, how to set something up visually in a paragraph... rather than in pages and pages." "When he abandoned England... and came to this place where there were no rules, he also abandoned the methodology... and structures and styles of traditional novel writing." "He wrote with this camera eye, if you like, influenced by the cinema." "[York As Isherwood] I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." "Someday, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed." "Pulling up roots from England, coming to this country, was an outward manifestation... of a spiritual crisis in his life." "The impending war was getting him down, and he really was in need of some kind of guidance." "And he certainly couldn't have got it from the Church of England, because he'd learned to, uh, loathe... all that official religion in England." "[Man] He met Aldous Huxley, who in turn introduced him to Swami Prabhavananda, who had started the Vedanta Society in Southern California." "And Isherwood studied Vedanta, a branch of Hindu philosophy, with Prabhavananda, for the rest of his life, really." "Chris immediately told him he was homosexual, and Prabhavananda didn't regard that... as an insurmountable obstacle." "He became such a devout follower of Vedanta and of the Swami... that he did seriously consider becoming a monk." "But there were two things that stopped him." "He recognized in himself that he wanted to have... a longtime personal commitment to a serious relationship with a partner." "The second thing he knew is that he needed to continue writing, that he could not give that up." "Um, these are my mother's own scrapbooks." "Um" "Joan Bennett, um" "I think this is Nancy Carroll." "Oh, Louise Brooks." "She had Louise Brooks here." "Look at the trouble." "It's beautifully done." "How carefully all these things are put in." "Imagine cutting out that so carefully." "I must get my orderliness from my mother." "My parents were attracted to the glamour of Hollywood, especially my mother, who loved movies and movie stars." "So as soon as they were married, they traveled across country by car... and settled in Los Angeles." "And soon my mother gave birth to my brother Ted." "I was born four years later in 1934.." "It was during World War II when we were growing up, and there was a big demand on my father to work long hours, because he worked in the aerospace industry." "So while my father was working overtime, my mother would take Ted and me downtown by streetcar to the movies." "This is one of the key theaters I remember." "I think it's the first one I remember being brought to-- to see a Joan Crawford movie called My Shining Hour." "Um, I was four." "[Man] His mother would take his brother out of school even, and they would go to movies during the day." "Then Don would even go on his own." "When he was" "When he was very young, he would go." "He wasn't old enough to actually get a ticket, and he would get someone to buy the ticket for him to get into the theater." "At the theater, he was looking up close at these big images of these movie stars." "[Laughing]" "[Bachardy] We started as ordinary fans, sitting in the bleachers outside the theater with our mother." "And eventually, Ted and I had the idea-- when going to a premiere-- to put on our best jacket and trousers and ties... and try to look as though we belonged there." "And we also brought our camera with us, and we started taking pictures of ourselves with the movie stars." "[Woman] I met Don Bachardy all by himself." "Round cheeks and bright eyes." "And he was one of those young kids who would ask you to sign an autograph, come next to you and--while you sign-- and his friend would take the picture." "And years and years later, he found the photograph and gave me a copy of it, which is wonderful." "[Bachardy] Ted and I went to the beach every weekend." "Ted mysteriously at first... always wanted to walk us about a mile and a half... to Will Rogers State Beach... for us to lay out our beach blanket." "I soon discovered that that was because it was the queer beach in Santa Monica." "This is more or less the area of the beach... where I met Chris, and that would have been when I was probably 16." "He was so friendly." "He had such a charming smile and sparkling eyes." "Eyes that had such energy." "Eyes that ate you up." "Sometimes Chris and I would just wave to each other in the distance." "And sometimes he would come up to our blanket... and engage us in conversation." "A t that time, I was only interested in actors and actresses." "Writers were an unknown quantity to me." "So I wasn't impressed by Chris as a writer." "And at the time, he was really only interested in my brother Ted." "I knew they had slept together a couple of times." "[Men Laughing, Chattering]" "The first time I can say that I met Chris socially... was in October of 1952 when I was 18." "Ted and I were invited for drinks... by a couple of, uh, queer men we knew." "And they'd had Chris for dinner." "And I think Ted and I were invited for dessert." "[Laughing]" "Dessert for them and for Chris." "It was one of the first times that I got drunk, and I was very unused to drinking and had too much to drink." "And Chris had been there since before dinner, so he was fairly drunk too." "And we found ourselves standing up in the dining room, kissing." "We lost our balance and fell against a big window, which was all panes of glass-- [Glass Breaking] and we broke one of the glass panes." "That sound of glass breaking brought me out of my alcoholic haze, and I suddenly said I had to go home." "I didn't see Chris again until the following February." "We were going to the beach when, in the middle of the drive," "Ted said, "Why don't we stop and see Chris?"" "He was in the middle of work when Ted and I arrived." "I remember he made us scrambled eggs, with mushrooms from a can." "Mushrooms were one of the few things..." "I found disgusting to eat, particularly ones from a can." "I didn't much like the breakfast he prepared, but I did like Chris." "Our morning encounter was such a success... that Chris decided to come to the beach with Ted and me." "When we parted at the end of the evening, we made plans to do the same thing the following weekend." "And the following weekend provided the first night..." "Chris and I spent alone together." "[Beeping]" "Ted?" "Uh, I'm nearly dressed." "Are you ready?" "The film goes on at 1:00." "So I'll pick you up in half an hour?" "Okay." "Bye-bye." "Not long after that first night Chris and I spent together," "Ted began to go into another of his nervous breakdowns." "They'd begun when he was 15 and I was 11." "This was maybe the third one." "Of course it was devastating for me, because he was really the key person in my life at the time." "And suddenly he wasn't available to me." "[Man Muttering, Groaning]" "He had several series of shock treatments." "That was the standard therapy in the '50s, which permanently changed him, I think." "[Electrical Buzzing] [Groaning]" "Chris was concerned about me, because he guessed how important Ted was to me." "And he started asking me out to dinner, the ballet and the theater," "Just as a means of showing support." "[York As Isherwood] I feel a special kind of love for Don." "I suppose I'm just another frustrated father." "But this feeling exists at a very deep level, beneath names for things or their appearances." "We're just back from a trip to Palm Springs together, which was one of those rare experiences of nearly pure joy." "There's a brilliant wide-openness about his mouse-face, with its brown eyes and tooth-gap and bristling crew cut, which affects everybody who sees him." "If one could still be like that at 40, one would be a saint." "[Bachardy] The official mental diagnosis for Ted... was a manic-depressive schizophrenic, and, indeed, he fills the bill." "He's being medicated by the people who run the building he lives in." "You know, if he gets too obstreperous, um, they medicate him down." "Hi." "[Ted] Hi." "Guido's here with me." "You're right on time." "He's filming." "I never know quite what state he's going to be in." "You know who Josh Hartnett is?" "Of course." "We've seen his movies together." "[TV] Here we come." "Oh, is that he?" "Yeah." "Look at all of 'em." "Oh, that's a great picture of him." "Yeah, that's just terrific." "Charlize Theron." "Uh, yeah." "Well, you know what I think of her." "You don't like her." "You know I don't." "I don't dislike her." "I'm just not interested in her." "I don't understand why you don't think she's pretty." "Um, pretty in a kind of vacuous way." "And he's still, at 75, having manic phases." "I know right away... when he's going into his other persona." "It really wrecked his life." "[Man Narrating] Yes, this is the land of the rainbow's end, where out door pageantry enraptures the soul." "[Bucknell] In the early '50s when Don and Chris first met, obviously it was, let's say, a squarer time than now, even in California." "Isherwood had just done over and moved into a lovely little garden house... on the property of his close friend, Evelyn Hooker." "She was a psychologist... who spent most of her career studying the gay community in Los Angeles, and she published the first research suggesting... that homosexuals were as well-adjusted psychologically as heterosexuals." "Even Evelyn Hooker and her husband, who were pretty liberal-minded-- and obviously she was engaged in studying the behavior of gay people-- didn't feel comfortable... when this very young-looking boy moved into their garden house." "They said to Isherwood that it couldn't go on." "Isherwood decided that he would move out." "Don was more important to him than the garden house." " They found another place to live." " [Vehicle Engine Starts]" "[Bachardy] Our honeymoon trip was on my Easter vacation from college." "Chris was waiting for me on the street outside." "His plan was to drive us to Monument Valley." "He was sitting in the sun and smiling at me." "And, um, I was so pleased to step into the passenger seat." "And we drove off right then." "There weren't even roads into Monument Valley then." "Paved roads didn't exist." "But we made it." "We arrived in this bunkhouse." "Nothing but men sitting... at this ranch-type table, at the head of which was John Ford, and it was all his crewmen." "And, of course, they all had to be, um, macho types." "And here were this small Englishman... and his very young-looking boyfriend." "And maybe they assumed we were father and son." "[Ship Whistle Blows]" "[York As Isherwood] Yesterday at noon when the great ship thundered good-bye to the echoing towers of Manhattan," "I could hardly hold back my tears." "It was so beautiful." "The Hudson full off us sing tugboats... and brimming with silver light." "The thought that it was Don's first voyage, never to be quite duplicated for him" "[Bachardy] Chris and I were making our first trip... to Europe together, uh, in 1956... when I was 21 and he was 51." "We were on an Italian ship, and it docked at Gibraltar." "It occurred to Chris that, Gibraltar being so near to Tangier, we might get off the ship for a weekend... and pop around to Tangier and see Paul Bowles." "I never had any drugs in my life." "I simply didn't know what I was in for." "And here we were, uh-- um-- uh, smoking the finest keif... and eating majoon." "It was so delicious." "Oh!" "Little did we know what we were in for." "We were offered the hashish in a very elaborate pipe... with all kinds of bangles coming down from it, and it seemed very exotic and mysterious." "It took us both a long time to have any reaction." "And then little by little..." "I began to get very scared and very paranoid." "Paul Bowles suddenly seemed to me a very sinister character." "I felt that there was a situation developing... in which Paul was trying... to isolate me from Chris." "And I said to Chris-- [Whispers] "We've got to get out of here."" "We got to our hotel, and by that time, I was really deep into the experience... and scared like I'd never been before in my life." "This was real, real terror." "I thought I was insane... and that I would never find my way back to sanity." "I thought, "Ah, I'm like Ted." "I'm going down the same drain."" "And I was just scared out of my wits." "And I know that Chris was scared too." "But he never left my side." "He never stopped reassuring me." "We were clinging to each other for dear life." "[York As Isherwood] I now realize what I should have known from the start-- that I ought never to have let Don take the stuff, because the whole Ted problem now came up to the surface." "And yet, in another way, it was good that he did take it, because he passed through the experience... and, to some degree, overcame it." "I feel that a new and very strong bond exists between Don and myself." "This is a tremendous experience we've shared." "[Bachardy] I think we crossed a barrier for the first time and really became trustful... and sure of each other... in a way that we hadn't been before." "[Bell Tolling]" "Well, Don as a man was entirely formed by Chris." "And I can't remember what his accent was... or his voice was like when he was a young boy." "But he came to have the same voice and the same accent and mannerisms... as if he'd been raised in Oxford." "Isherwood had succeeded in cloning himself in some curious way, because their mannerisms, their speech patterns were so similar." "I had the impression that Don had actually gained access... to Chris's genetic code... and had gobbled it up and reproduced himself." "Before we went out anywhere, I remember very clearly..." "I would always show him what I was wearing... and say, "What do you think?" "Is this right?"" "And if he said, "Oh, I think another jacket or another tie"... or maybe a whole other ensemble," "I would change." "Don had this British accent, and we're both Los Angeles boys." "Don should essentially be talking like I talk." "I'm from Montebello." "He's from Glendale." "Really Atwater, I know." "And I never spoke to him about it, but it's very noticeable." "And I've heard people say, "Where did you grow up in England?"" "And he always said, "No, I'm from Los Angeles."" "[Bachardy] The English accent showed up after less than a year." "People who knew me before thought I was putting on the dog, giving myself airs." "I couldn't help it." "I'm an unconscious impersonator." "Chris said how important it was to stand up straight, hold my head up." "And he gave me as an example... a young revolutionary on his way to the gallows." "The whole town was watching, and I was walking down the middle of the street, proud, defiant." "[No Audible Dialogue]" "Don Bachardy must have been absolutely bowled over... by suddenly, through his relationship with Isherwood, meeting the huge big-name people... that were friends of Isherwood." "Authors like Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, composers like Igor Stravinsky." "And all of a sudden, here is this very young man, thrown into social settings." "It must have been enormously intimidating." "[York As Isherwood] Floods of tears from Don this evening." "Don feels left out of everything, ignored, overlooked, slighted." "And what am I to say?" "It's true." "That's how the world treats young people, and it hasn't changed since I was 20." "[Bachardy] I was feeling incredibly insecure." "I wanted people to like me for who I really was, but I wasn't sure myself who I was." "What would it feel like to be 25 or 22 years old... and be sitting down to dinner with Somerset Maugham or E. M. Forster-- all of these famous people-- and you're just this handsome young man?" "But Don did it." "He experienced it, I think, in the best way... because he listened to them, learned from them, interacted with them... and then went home and complained to Chris... about how he felt and how he was treated." "On the one hand, you're so flattered that you're with these people." "On the other hand, how can they view you in your finest... when you haven't developed who you are yet?" "♪♪ [Dramatic] [Actor On TV]" "[Bachardy] The profession that I dreamed of... when I was a kid was being an actor, and by "actor," of course, I meant movie star." "So I was quite excited when Chris was invited to Key West... by Tennessee Williams for the filming of The Rose Tattoo... with Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster." "And Anna Magnani provided me, also, with a very key experience... in regard to movie stars." "She was the first movie star and the only one... that I actually saw and heard fart." "A t the tender age of 19, I had never acknowledged... that real movie stars ever farted." "I also got a part as an extra in the movie." "It's at the moment when a little coupe... drives up to Marisa Pavan's house to pick her up." "The four people in the car are supposed to be young friends of hers, and I was one of the two in the backseat." "It was an awful, humiliating experience." "Like all extras, the four of us were treated like cattle." "But it was a useful experience, because I never again yearned to be a star of the cinema." "The only thing that I knew I was clearly good at was drawing people, and Chris realized very early on that I had a flair for it." "In fact, the very first drawing I did from life was of Chris, and I still have it." "He was urging me to find out whether or not I might want to be an artist... and kept prodding me to try art school." "It was about three years before I did, in fact, enroll... for a summer term at an art school." "It was an immediate success." "I was a dedicated and inexhaustible art student... for the next four years." "He was totally responsible for my being an artist, because he not only paid for all of my schooling, but far more importantly, he was there when I came home... and said, "Let me see what you did today. "" "And that, of course, means more than anything." "When you're doubtful about yourself... and trying to be confident about what you're doing, to have somebody give you that kind of support is golden." "But my father, you know, he-- he not only never encouraged me, he actively tried to discourage me." "He was unreceptive to my being an artist, made it clear he hated my queerness." "And when I came to dinner with them, I was instructed-- not by him, because he was too cowardly, but my mother had to tell me-- that Chris was not to be mentioned." "Well, I should never have agreed to such a restriction." "How dare they?" "Hi." "Hi." "You're Dan." "I'm Don." "Great to meet you." "Pleased to meet you." "Would you come and sit" "[Bachardy] Once I found my vocation," "I was then indefatigable;" "nothing would stop me." "I wouldn't take no for an answer." "I would draw anybody in any situation." "In the very early weeks of our getting to know each other," "Chris took me to an Italian restaurant on Gower Street." "We were in the restaurant about 10 minutes... when the door opened, and in came Montgomery Clift." "I said, "Chris, Montgomery Clift just came in."" "And I was thrilled." "And I was watching him, and, um, he came closer and closer and closer, until finally he was right at our table, and he said, "Hello, Chris."" "Well, I nearly fainted." "I had no idea." "I mean, here was this major hot star." "And I saw him from the very first moment he came in, and imagine his coming right up to the table." "And of course, Chris instantly introduced me." "Well, I was just-- [Chuckles] undone." "And when he realized that was a way to thrill me, he charmed every movie star we met." "He would go to all kinds of occasions... that couldn't have interested him in the least, except that he might meet someone who happened to be somebody... from my pantheon of most favorite favorites." "And that's the way I'd gotten many celebrities to sit for me." "If I were forced to work from a photograph," "I probably wouldn't paint." "But then, if I accepted the limitation," "I would choose a very bad photograph, because at least that would force my imagination." "[York As Isherwood] Coming back at 10:45 from supper-- the nice smell of redwood as I lifted the garage door... and the feeling of impotence, or what it really amounts to:" "lack of inclination to cope with a constructed, invented plot." "Why not write about one's experiences from day to day?" "And then, as I slid my door back, this sinking, sick feeling of love for Don-- somehow connected with the torn shorts-- and the reality of that, so far more... than all this tiresome fiction." "Why invent when life is so prodigious?" "Perhaps I'll never write another novel or anything invented... except, of course, for money." "[Woman] What are you famous for?" "I'm a painter." "I paint people." "Why don't you paint me?" "[Laughs]" "I've got a nice face." "A good question." "Yeah." "Because I only see you once a week, and I expect you're busy." "Well, yeah, but I can always rearrange my schedule to get painted." "Well, thank you very much." "Thank you." "Have a good one." "Hi, Don." "Hi." "[Bachardy] My first one-man show... was in October of 1961 in London... at the Redfern Gallery." "This was my official introduction... to my identity as an artist." "[York As Isherwood] I'm so proud of Don sometimes that I could burst." "Don was interviewed and photographed by the press, while I kept away in a corner, nearly splitting with pride." "I put on a rather disparaging expression, like a parent who fears to show his pride." "Of course, I know it's the most monstrous egotism on my part to be proud, to claim any part of what he has made of himself." "Just the same, I do." "[Bachardy] He often said he'd never been denied... any of the pleasures and satisfactions of a parent, because he'd met me... when I was young enough that he could still have... an enormous influence on my development," "and this was a crowning achievement." "Like this?" "If I could--And" "Yeah, I'm flexible, you know." "I had finally established myself as an artist." "I had my own persona, as it were, and I could function independently." "The question was, did I want to go on with the old life-- which had brought me to this point-- or did I want to go on to fresher fields?" "The thought crossed my mind that I might think of leaving Chris." "All kinds of very real problems between us... could be so effectively dealt with... in our animal personas." "Because I could give voice... to my feelings-- [Meowing] of being deprived of this or that experience... because of my life with Chris-- my life with somebody so much older than myself" "[Meows] I could voice it in terms of a poor little kitten... struggling against insurmountable odds, and how brave that little cat was, and how dear and deep his love... that, despite everything that he was giving up," "he could still take care of that old horse." "Chris had been open with me about his past-- all his lovers, all his adventures." "I took the obvious position:" ""Well, how can you deny me... such adventures, such freedom?"" "[Man Singing Rhythm And Blues] ♪ Hello there, hi ♪" "♪ You know you really turn me on ♪♪ I would go out "mousing. " That was the term we used for it." "Next morning-- or that night when I came home, if he was still up-- he would ask me, "How was the mouse tonight?"" "And I'd say, "Plump one,"" "or, "A disappointingly skinny one. "" "And I also insisted that he have his affairs too, just because I didn't want to always feel like the guilty one." "I didn't like it so much when he found really quite attractive, intelligent people." "That wasn't quite what I had in mind." "[Laughing]" "I suppose I imagined his choosing somebody of his own age, which was, of course, out of the question." "[Freeman] They tried to set rules, I think, and tried to be pretty true to those." "But Chris did not like it if Don didn't spend the night at their house." "And he didn't like the secrecy, and so I think he was more interested in disclosure-- you know, who's doing what and with whom." "I'm going to stop this." "Thank you very much." "Oh, the eyes are intense in that one." "That's a good one." "Did I forget your ears, or could I not see them?" "I don't know." "Let's see." "I forgot them." "Just" "[Bachardy] 1962, 1963 was our bumpiest period." "And that's really what prompted him... to write A Single Man, which is all based on the supposition of a man of his age... losing his lover in an automobile accident, and what does he do?" "And Chris was seriously contemplating... what kind of life he would lead without me." "I got involved with somebody, sort of." "I thought maybe I might even want to break it up with Chris." "I" "It made Chris miserable to know... that I was pondering such a decision." "He went away to San Francisco to teach up there... for, oh, at least a couple of months." "And I was in the house alone here, and it wasn't really any better." ""Dear Horse, Old Cat is coming out of a deep sulk," ""one that any horse would thank his stars for having missed." "I need you terribly sometimes." "It shocks me how much. "" "[Whinnies] "I don't want to need you." ""I want to be able to rely on myself." ""I don't like depressing you with all my woes." ""I must do this alone." ""I must get through by myself." ""And I try hard to love you instead of just needing you." "Your Overwrought Pussy. "" "[Bucknell] Don felt a huge obligation to Isherwood... that was almost unbearable-- that he'd been given so much." "At one time he said, "I want to get really rich..." ""so that I can no longer be beholden to you... and I can somehow pay it back. "" "And freedom is just not necessarily being given everything." "Freedom is something you need to get for yourself." "Isherwood by then was a mature and experienced person... who used every ounce of his self-control and knowledge... not to allow this thing to break altogether." "[York As Isherwood] Own Sweetest Fur, got the dear letter yesterday." "I do hope Black Puss will scat for a while and let you work." "The Bay is significantly beautiful." "I lie on the roof when I can and sun." "Also, I walk all over the area, and I'm learning its geography at last." "Kitty would have clapped his paws and laughed from the bottom of his furry heart... to see Drub hopelessly stuck... on a vertical bit of Jones Street high up on Russian Hill... and trying to cling to the passing houses with his hooves." "Think of his dear so very much, and sends thoughts of love... and prays that Kitty will find a way out of his sadness." "[Bachardy] I adored his drawings... because he had absolutely no technical skill whatsoever, and that made them all the more wonderful." "[Chuckling]" "Yes, and they made me cry." "Of course, the effect of Chris's leaving the house for three months... was that it immediately put the other relationship into perspective, and I realized I wasn't nearly as involved... as maybe I thought I was." "[Bucknell] We have, in this record of the diaries, the true account of how bad and how good a relationship can be." "I came across a passage in the 1967 diary." "He's writing about how could love be profane... if it was really love." "He talks about that idea of sacred and profane love... and then observes that Don has become... his path to spiritual enlightenment." "Chris and Don were never apologetic about being a couple, and there were lots of reasons that they could have been-- the age difference thing, the difference in status... at the beginning of their relationship, in particular-- but they never were." "They would go to Hollywood parties when closeted people were surrounding them, and they were a couple." "[Bachardy] Joseph Cotten was very rude to me in front of a lot of people... at a party at David and Jennifer Selznick's." "He talked in a loud voice about "half men"... and how disgusting they were." "He wouldn't dare talk like that within earshot of Chris." "He would pick a moment when I was by myself." "Even the homophobes could usually bring themselves to be polite to Chris, because they knew he was a distinguished writer." "But who was I?" "I was just this little upstart faggot from their point of view." "[Freeman] They were friends with Anthony Perkins, the star of Psycho, who wrestled and struggled with his sexuality all his life... and who, of course, died of AIDS complications." "He would come to Chris and Don's house, having just spent the entire day in therapy trying to not be gay." "And I think they looked upon that with much sadness, because they were so comfortable in their lives." "Christopher never took a woman with him to a function so that it would appear he was straight." "Don never did." "They went to parties together." "They went as a couple, and there would be men that they had had sex with in the room with their wives." "[Bucknell] Part of Isherwood's whole endeavor as a novelist... involved emerging from the "closet," for want of a better word." "There are obviously some homosexual characters in his early books, but there's always a kind of covertness and a coded quality to how he talks about it." "For example, in The Berlin Stories, if you read it very, very carefully, you can pretty much guess that the narrator, the protagonist, is gay." "But you don't know that." "It's not a big thing in the story." "And as Isherwood remarked later on, he didn't dare make it a big thing, because if he had, it would have been the whole story." "I t was very i mportant that this observer should have been rather sexless-- at least how it seemed to me at that time:" "rather unobtrusive, just a kind of a straight man to take-- I mean no pun here-- a straight man to take the-- to pick up the other people's jokes, you know?" "Later he told that story-- the story of a gay man in Berlin, openly gay-- he told that story in Christopher and His Kind." "[Isherwood] "Christopher had taken longer than Wystan..." ""to become aware of his own change of attitude..." ""because he was embarrassed by its basic cause:" ""his homosexuality." ""As a homosexual, he had been wavering..." ""between embarrassment and defiance." ""He became embarrassed when he felt that he was making..." ""a selfish demand for his individual rights..." ""at a time when only group action mattered." ""And he became defiant..." ""when he made the treatment of the homosexual..." ""a test by which every political party and government..." ""must be judged." ""He must never again give way to embarrassment," ""never deny the rights ofhis tribe," ""never apologize for its existence," ""never think of sacrificing himself masochistically..." ""on the altar of that false god of the proletarians:" ""the greatest good of the greatest number," ""whose priests are alone empowered... to decide what "good' is. "" "[Bucknell] Christopher and His Kind sold faster than any book he ever published." "And when he went to this-- I think it was the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in the Village to sign copies-- and he saw young men lined up around the block... wanting to meet him and have him sign their copy." "And he was absolutely thrilled about that." "[Bachardy] I stopped driving because I had my license taken away." "I was considered responsible for an accident I was in... in which nobody was hurt." "My revenge was to give up driving." "I ride my bike everywhere, all over Santa Monica." "I ride it into Beverly Hills." "I had lunch just last week in Beverly Hills." "And it was fun, and I got good exercise." "Well, now, here's this letter from Oliver." "He wants us to go to this party." "What will we do about it?" "[Bachardy] Well, do you want to go or not?" "Well, he says we have to go in armor, you know, and mine's terribly rusted to start off with." "[Bachardy] From 1968 until the late '70s, we collaborated and wrote six or seven scripts together." "Uh, Dr. Frankenstein." "It's the only one of the screenplays we wrote together that got produced." "I still have such clear memories of working on it." "Chris made it such fun." "We were very pleased with our idea, which nobody else had thought of-- of the creature as being created... and being such a success-- that he was a beautiful young man." "You are beautiful." "Beautiful." "[Bachardy] Eventually, the creature deteriorates... and becomes scary-looking." " [Hisses]" " And it's much more poignant, because he started out beautiful, and then loses his beauty, and like all of us, minds it terribly." "These three, four, five drawers are all pictures of Chris." "Oh, these are-- are some nudes." "This is end of June, uh-- uh, '85." "Wow." "Um" "Yes, they bring back those days... and very much his mood... and what it was like being with him." "[York As Isherwood] I look at my body with its wrinkles and slackness of the skin... and other imperfections which can never be set right anymore now." "It is wearing out, tiring, getting ready, whether it likes it or not, to die." "I am getting ready to die." "All very well to say I'm not my body and even believe this." "Still, it is a parting." "All very well to say that my whole life has been dying... and saying good-bye to the past." "This will be different." "Even if it is quite painless, it will be different." "And there is saying good-bye to Don." "Nobody who has ever loved anyone as I love Don... can seriously pretend that-- that it won't be painful." "[Bachardy] Oh, in 1981, they discovered cancer in his prostate." "It was helpful to me to have a pretty good four years... to accustom myself to the idea of losing him." "But no matter how much preparation one thinks one has... about losing a loved one, you can't real ly be prepared." "[Caron] About a year before Chris died, some close friends called me and said," ""Leslie, if you want to see Chris a last time, you better come quickly." "He's very ill. "" "So we had this dinner i n a Japanese restaurant." "And I found Chris rosy, plump, just absolutely-- the expression, "in the pink. "" "And I said to him, "Chris, I was told you were near death." "Look at you." "You look fantastic, and you're so full of pep. "" "And he said, "Oh, well, I know." ""I was in a very bad way, but I decided it wasn't the right time. "" "And I said, "Why?" "You hadn't finished a book?"" "And he said, "No, it's"-- and he pointed to Don." "And he said, "He isn't ready."" "He was always upbeat about my life after he was gone, and I was always, uh-- uh, describing scenes... of wandering the hideous byways, uh, mewing outside a door that never opened." "[Laughing]" "Yes, we laughed a lot about that." "Finally the last six months of his life," "I gave up working with anybody else and worked with" "I only worked with Chris." "And we usually did something every day, and sometimes, I would do as many as, um-- uh, nine, 10 pictures of him." "[White] He was so profoundly affected... by the fact that he was dying, and he knew he was dying, and that Don was there taking care of him to such an extent." "Because they were together all the time, and Don was painting him and drawing him all the time." "Chris said over and over and over... how much he loved Don and how much it meant to him." "Chris, as he was dying, going through this period-- there was a kind of ecstasy that he was going through-- that aspect of it-- his feelings of his love... being manifested with Don and Don taking care of him." "He was in great pain, and it was a terrible situation, what he was going through." "But I think what made the situation bearable for him... was his realization that this love was manifested, and that it was still his to the very end." "[Bachardy] Of course, it's my instinct" "Always when I work, I identify." "So I was in my artist mode, but I was also identifying with Chris." "So in a way, it became more and more... like something that we were doing together." "Here I was being an artist, and at the same time, I was dying with Chris." "And even when it was an effort for him," "I excused myself by saying to myself," ""Well, it serves him right..." ""for being responsible for making me an artist in the first place," ""that I should devote myself to this daily task... of working with him. "" "In the later months, he wasn't well enough even to sit up." "And sometimes he was restless, sometimes he was in a state of half-sleeping, half-waking, and moving a great deal." "Some of the pictures I did were done in just a few minutes." "It was hard on him." "And, uh, he would-- [Chuckles] moan and-- and be so weary of it." "But he would go on, and so would I." "And a lot of our sittings... began to take place at night by artificial light." "And sometimes I would look later at the pictures... and be shocked... that I could do such a stark picture of Chris." "We're getting very close to the end." "This is the first of the drawings I did... after he was dead." "It was a Saturday morning... and we were completely alone in the house." "And I spent the rest of the day, um-- uh, drawing his corpse." "I'd been drawing him steadily, uh, every day." "I hadn't missed a day in-- in several weeks." "I continued that day." "I wasn't sure I'd have the courage to do it." "And one of the things that spurred me on... was my belief that he-- he would have been cheering me on, that he would say," ""Yes, uh, that's what an artist would do."" "And that's what an artist did do." "[Voice Breaking] Yes, I know he would have been... proud of me." "[Boorman] I was so impressed when Chris died, and Don said, "I'm reading his diaries now." "I'm starting from the present." "I'm working backwards."" "And he said, "I just can't wait to come to the point at which we met. "" "So he would then have Isherwood's account of their first meeting." "[Water Running]" "[Bachardy] In a way, I've managed to satisfy my acting ambitions, because what I'm really doing is impersonating my sitter when I'm painting." "Every face has to be important." "Every face." "And when you think, each individual... is showing me a face... that he is living his entire life with." "So it has to be of immense importance."