`Sex Is...' Director Speaks Out

On February 11, "Sex Is...," Marc Huestis' documentary on gay sexuality, opened at the Coolidge Corner Theater in the midst of the worst snowstorm of the year. Huestis' journey to Boston in order to promote the film was a mini-Odyssey full of storms. Flying in from San Francisco, Huestis was stuck in Chicago for several hours before his plane was actually allowed to go to Boston. However, the weather in Boston was so bad that five minutes before landing, the plane was re-routed to Montreal. Unfortunately, Huestis did not have proper identification. Despite his ordeal and the fact that the heavy snow was keeping away all but the hardiest patrons, the Crimson found Huestis in surprisingly good humor as he, to use his word, "gabbed" about various and sundry matters:

"Sex Is..." the Young

[A review in an NYU newspaper] called it the first post postmodern film, and to me it's like really great that young people can relate to this film and identify with it. I've gotten a fair amount of criticism for it being kind of tipped toward middle-middle aged people, but, also, there's people in it that one would not consider young but are. Madame X, for example, is only 20 years old.

I think it's really important to have that younger energy and certainly a lot of my inspiration came from ACTUP and from gay activism, what was happening particularly in the late `80s and early `90s. A lot of [that] was political, but there was also a certain amount of sexual activism that was going on, at least in San Francisco, where a lot of people who were involved in AIDS politics were involved also in a pro-sexual approach to life, were saying. "Let's separate the equation sex=death. [Let's] deal with our sexuality in a healthy way, not to advocate having unsafe sex but also to get rid of the irrationalities of "You have to be in monogamous relationship' or `You have to be celibate' or `You have to be this and that," which was basically pressure that was put play men in the 80s. And these were the people who kind of began to bring it out again. There were parties and discos where once again people did celebrate their sexuality. People became very sexual and so I was sort of plugged into that energy.

Expression of a Younger Generation

But I wanted to take that energy and also make it relatable to all different age groups, because in San Francisco there were all these arguments that "Oh, ACT-UP is ruining it for all of us," and I'm like "No, ACT-UP isn't ruining it for people. ACT-UP is an expression of a younger generation, and every younger generation needs its expression and thank God They're expressing it," People had been politically inactive and dead before ACT-UP came alive and I think that ACT-UP was one of the reasons that ultimately the Bush-Reagan years fell. They were the first group out in the streets before other people, saying. "This is fucked up; this will not pass."

Guerilla Graphics

There was a group in San Francisco called Boy with Arms Akimbo who did this campaign that had different posters. It was kind of a guerrilla graphics and they were an anonymous collective. And during the whole Mapplethorpe-Helms thing they spread these posters that said, "Sex Is..."

They were very clever. They would have an advertisement from the `50s or they would have Michelangelo's David or they would have a porno shot. Seeing those posters really clicked to me that while this is great and I really love what they're doing, I would like to make this movement more accessible because film is a much more accessible medium. What they were doing was great for the specific streets in San Francisco at that time, but with films you can travel around the world and bring forth the message that would otherwise just be kept in San Frnacisco.

Sexual Hypocrisy

When I found out I was [HIV] positive, I had assumed I was, so it was no big deal. It made me ponder a lot of questions--mortality, spirituality, politics, etc., and sex brings all those together. And being HIV positive I continued, and I was finding that, particularly in the mid `80s when we were living in an age of, I felt, sexual hypocrisy, people would either say, "I can't believe you're still having sex," or they would say, "I respect you so much for still going out," like it was work or something like that. And I'm like "No I'm a sexual being. I continue to have sex. But I have safe sex." And I certainly wasn't exposing anybody to my virus, and yet I felt that that was a crucial part of who I was as an artist.

Sexuality and Art

Sexuality fuels so many artists and I don't think it's any coincidence that a lot of people, particularly in the early days of AIDS, were artists. There is that connection between creation and sexuality. In Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George the grandmother is singing about the two things that people leave behind and it's children and art. Obviously I'm not leaving any kids behind, and so I focus all that energy into my art. You can look back at somebody like Tennessee Williams and you can see his sexuality throughout all his work.

Blessings and Creation

[When I found out that I was HIV positive] it was not very heavy for me. Before I got tested, it was very heavy for me. I went through like two or three years where I just shut myself off and those were years where it was incredibly scary to be a gay man. We lived in the plague in San Francisco. We would see people dropping from this mysterious ailment. We had no idea how people got it, the process of the disease. It was frightening and all you wanted to do was just go and hide. You didn't want to come near it, or you didn't want to come near people. They were years of complete antisociability. I would do things like manifest symptoms. I would go to the doctor like every week all the time. And I finally said, "I have to stop this. Either I make a commitment to just live my life and make sure I live it to the fullest and not be paranoid about things like this, or else I'm just going to be overwhelmed and consumed by this paranoia. When I made that commitment, that liberated me.

Since then, I have been concentrating on my creativity. It's like HIV doesn't enter that much into my life. I don't go to bed at night worried about dying or anything like that. I've been extremely blessed. I always thought at the beginning that I would be one of the first people to die. And then all of a sudden I'm alive and I'm watching all my friends dying. So many people died. And I'm still healthy. And to me it's a huge blessing and I've been able to take that energy and create with it. I don't spend a day of my life idle.