John Greyson
Encyclopedia
John Greyson is a Canadian
filmmaker, whose work frequently deals with gay
themes. Greyson is also a video artist, writer and activist; he is currently a professor at York University
, where he teaches film and video theory and film production and editing.
. He moved to Toronto
in 1980, becoming a writer for The Body Politic and other local arts and culture magazines, and becoming a video and performance artist.
, in 1988. Pissoir is a response to the homophobic climate of the period and, particularly, to police entrapment of men in public washrooms (toilets) and parks and police raids on gay bathhouse
s.
Greyson's next film was The Making of "Monsters", a short musical film produced during Greyson's residency at the Canadian Film Centre
in 1991. The film deals with the 1985 murder by five adolescent males of Kenneth Zeller
, a gay high school teacher and librarian, in Toronto
's High Park. The film is a fictional documentary about the making of a movie-of-the-week, entitled "Monsters," in which the young murderers are depicted as psychopathic monsters, rather than 'normal' teenage boys. The film features Marxist literary critic Georg Lukács
as the producer of "Monsters," with Bertolt Brecht
(played by a catfish) as director. Greyson's film was pulled from distribution when the estate of Kurt Weill
objected to its use of the tune of Mack the Knife
. Greyson had originally received copyright permission to use the tune, but it was withdrawn, apparently because Weill's estate objected to the film's gay theme. Although copyright is no longer an issue, having lapsed in 2000, fifty years after Weill's death, the film has not yet been re-released by the Canadian Film Development Corporation.
Greayson directed the feature length films Zero Patience and Lillies.
Greyson's other films include Un©ut
(1997), The Law of Enclosures
(1999) and Proteus (2003). He has also directed for television, including episodes of Queer as Folk, Made in Canada
and Paradise Falls
.
In 2003, Greyson and composer David Wall created Fig Trees
, a video opera for gallery installation, about the struggles of South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat
. In 2009, a film version of Fig Trees was released. This film, a feature length documentary opera, premiered at the Berlinale as part of its Panorama section http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/2009/02_programm_2009/02_Filmdatenblatt_2009_20090876.php, where it was winner of the Teddy Award for best documentary.
In 2007, Greyson was the recipient of the prestigious Bell Award in Video Art. The award committee stated: “John Greyson is perhaps best known to a general public as a feature film director. He shoots his “film” projects on video with trademark video post-production techniques, thus colonizing the space of cinema with the aesthetics of video. An incisive social and political critic, Mr. Greyson is in fact one of the leaders in the AIDS activist video movement, among others. Mr. Greyson has supported the practice in many ways and he influences many emerging artists.”
Greyson is popular with film critics but controversial with some audiences because of the flamboyant theatricality
and thematic complexity of his filmmaking style, and the frank depiction of gay themes in his work.
His feature works have all been commercially unsuccessful.
is a musical film which challenged AIDS
orthodoxy, in 1993. Zero Patience is a response particularly to Randy Shilts
' 1987 book And the Band Played On
, which notoriously (and erroneously) traced the 'arrival' of HIV/AIDS in North America to a single person, a French-Canadian airline attendant named Gaetan Dugas
. Based on a single flawed epidemiological cluster study, the conclusions of Shilts' book were very problematic for the narrative of blame they created, suggesting both that particular individuals were at fault (for example, that Dugas wilfully spread HIV, although he actually died before the virus was identified and the study in which he participated was one of several that allowed scientists to determine that HIV was sexually transmitted) and that monogamy and the 'normalization' of gay male sexual practices were the proper and adequate response (as opposed to a focus on safer sex practices).
Zero Patience features a gay ghost named Patient Zero who returns to Toronto to hook up with Sir Richard Francis Burton who, through an "unfortunate encounter with the fountain of youth" has lived to become the Chief Taxidermist at the Museum of Natural History. Burton is engaged in creating a "Hall of Contagion." When he loses his central exhibit, the Düsseldorf Plague Rat, he casts around for a replacement, lighting upon Patient Zero. In a comedy of errors, Zero and Burton come together, fall in love and attempt to figure out what to do about Burton's earlier attempts to defame Zero as a "sexual serial killer." A number of sub-plots centre around specific criticisms of the social response to AIDS by politicians, doctors and pharmaceutical companies. There is a not entirely sympathetic ACT-UP group engaged in a protest against the manufacturer of ZP0 (a reference to AZT), a teacher who is losing his sight to CMV
and several scenes involving his students, and a number of scenes involving the animal and human inhabitants of the dioramas in the Hall of Contagion. Most of these feature lively and thought-provoking musical numbers, but none have drawn critical attention as much as the "Butthole Duet," in which Burton's and Zero's anuses sing about the social perception of anal sex
and its relationship to the discourses circulating around AIDS in the 80s and early 90s. Widely misunderstood by film reviewers, the song refers to a number of academic responses to the popular perception of AIDS as a "gay disease" and the now discredited belief that the anus was more vulnerable to HIV than the vagina, particularly Leo Bersani
's article "Is the Rectum a Grave?" Bersani thoroughly discredits the notion that anal sex is inherently diseased; Greyson takes this one step further to argue that an unreasonable bias against anal sex is linked to patriarchy
.
The central scene in Zero Patience, however, is probably the scene in which Zero looks through a microscope at a slide of his own blood. What he sees is the subject of an Esther Williams
-like song-and-dance number throughout which Zero converses with Miss HIV (Michael Callen
). Both lyrically and in conversation, Miss HIV informs Zero that he was not the first, that he did not bring HIV/AIDS to North America, and that his participation in the infamous cluster study helped to prove that HIV is transmissible by sex and thus place an emphasis on safer sex that saved countless lives.
, an adaptation of Michel Marc Bouchard
's play Les feluettes, ou un drame romantique
. Following the dual chronology of Bouchard's play, Greyson's film (for which Michel Marc Bouchard wrote the screenplay) moves between two time periods: the film's 'present' in 1952 and the events that took place in the town of Roberval, Quebec
in 1912. The film begins with a visit by Bishop Bilodeau (Marcel Sabourin) to a prison chapel where he is supposed to hear the confession of convicted murderer Simon (Aubert Pallascio
). Both men were at school together in 1912 when a fire supposedly set by Simon took the life of a third schoolmate, and Simon's lover, Vallier (Danny Gilmore
). However, this apparently simple story become quickly more complicated when the prison chaplain (Ian D. Clard) and the prisoners lock Bilodeau into the confessional booth and proceed to stage the true story of Vallier's death before their captive's eyes.
Greyson's directorial style is very much in evidence in Lilies. The film moves freely between realist and magic realist modes, making witty use of deceptively simple cinematic techniques, such as the way in which the camera tracks the removal of the roof of the confessional booth, apparently contained within the prison building, only to reveal the blue skies of summer-time Roberval and the arrival of the hot air balloon and its Parisian balloonist, Lydie-Anne (Alexander Chapman), which precipitates the events that lead up to Vallier's death. The narrative involves Simon's difficulties in resolving his love for Vallier in the face of homophobic Roberval (his father beats him viciously when he hears that Simon (played as a younger man by Jason Cadieux) and Valliers have been seen kissing, even though they are acting out roles in the school play), a love further complicated by the young Bilodeau's (Matthew Ferguson
) tortuously repressed desire for Simon and by the sophisticated attractions of Lydie-Anne, whose femininity allows Simon to dream of a safely heterosexual future.
While the narrative, involving as it does a religious school and schoolboy sexuality, clearly has echoes of Catholic child abuse scandals, the story deliberately involves telling a story reminiscent of Mt. Cashel, choosing instead to focus on the intensity and romanticism of the young men's love for each other. The narrative is enhanced by the visual style of the film, particularly the choice to cast only men in all of the roles. Of course, this makes perfect sense, since—on one level—all of the historical characters are being 'played' by the 1952 prisoners. This doubling is further enhanced by the decision to allow the male actors playing women to wear female clothing, but making no attempt whatsoever at realistic drag, relying instead on stellar performances by actors Alexander Chapman as Lydie-Anne, Brent Carver
as the Countess de Tilly (Vallier's mother) and Remy Girard
as the Baroness.
Lilies romanticism, lyrical story-telling and gorgeous cinematography all combined to make the film both more accessible to 'mainstream' audiences and more popular with critics than Greyson's more controversial and more intellectually demanding works, like Zero Patience. As a result, the film was nominated for thirteen Genie Award
s, including best director, best adapted screenplay, and three nominations for best actor (for Jason Cadieux, Danny Gilmore, and Matthew Ferguson). The film won four Genies, for best motion picture, best art direction, best costume design and best overall sound. The film also won a number of other awards, including the GLAAD Media Award for outstanding film.
The feature film Fig Trees (2009) has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Teddy for Best Documentary at the Berlinale, the Best Canadian Feature award at the Toronto Inside Out Film Festival, and a Special Award at the Torino GLBT Film Festival.
(TIFF) festival to protest the festival's inaugural City to City Spotlight on the city of Tel Aviv
. In a letter to TIFF Greyson wrote that his protest "isn't against the film or filmmakers" chosen but against the City to City program, specifically, and "the smug business-as-usual aura it promotes." He compared the "uncritical celebration" of Tel Aviv to "celebrating Montgomery buses in 1963" or "South African fruit in 1991." Greyson cited an August 2008 article in the Canadian Jewish News
in which Israeli consul-general Amir Gissin stated that Israel would have a major presence at the TIFF as a culmination of his year long Brand Israel campaign to re-engineer the country's image and that TIFF should not be a participant in such a PR exercise. Greyson also argued that "my protest isn't against the films of filmmakers you've chosen... [but] is against the Spotlight itself" and the failure of the festival to include Palestinian voices.
Greyson also wrote that he was protesting TIFF's decision "to pointedly ignore the international economic boycott campaign against Israel" and that "By ignoring this boycott, TIFF has emphatically taken sides – and in the process, forced every filmmaker and audience member who opposes the occupation to cross a type of picket line."
He cited Israel's Gaza War and the expansion of settlements as reasons for his withdrawal, accusing the festival of: "an ostrich-like indifference to the realities (cinematic and otherwise) of the region", and comparing the Spotlight on Tel Aviv to "celebrating Montgomery buses in 1963 ... Chilean wines in 1973 ... or South African fruit in 1991".
Greyson's stance and the proceeding Toronto Declaration immediately triggered international debate.
argued that Greyson's letter was "full of lies" and says the festival "shouldn't be intimidated by this coalition of lies."
Columnist George Jonas
, writing in the National Post
argued that Greyson was engaging in "mental gymnastics," and described Greyson's line of reasoning as follows: "Who, us, objecting to Israeli films? Perish the thought. We're only objecting to Israeli propaganda. Okay; what's Israeli propaganda? Well, the Israeli films we're objecting to." Jonas also asked rhetorically "What Israeli film wouldn't be Israeli propaganda for Greyson?" Jonas also argued "To hear [Greyson] object to "state-subsidized propaganda" is ironic, to say the least. As an activist-filmmaker, he has been a propagandist for the values of the ultra-liberal state and its shibboleths throughout his career."
Robert Lantos
, a Canadian film producer, sharply criticized Greyson, stating that "the (Toronto) festival has been free from the pressure of those whose fascist agenda is to impose their views on others, stifle the voices they don't like and interfere with people's right to see whatever they wish and make up their own minds. Until now." He also suggested that Greyson is "an opportunist eagerly leaping on the 'Israel apartheid' bandwagon in order to garner more attention for his film than it would have ever received had it played at the festival." Greyson later posted a response to Lantos in a video that was posted on YouTube.
Patrick Goldstein
, a film critic and columnist for the Los Angeles Times
wrote that he thinks "it's especially unhealthy to ... accuse a festival of being a propaganda vehicle, as the Toronto protesters have, just because it is promoting another country's film culture. Even though I happen to agree with Greyson that the Israeli occupation and the spread of illegal settlements is a terrible thing – both for the Palestinians and, in the long run, for Israel – I can't imagine a less auspicious forum for belittling any country's artistic accomplishments than a film festival." He concluded:
A number of Hollywood celebrities circulated a letter on September 15, 2009 protesting a petition calling for a boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival over a Tel Aviv-themed event. The letter, which appeared simultaneously in the Los Angeles Times
and the Toronto Star
was signed, among others, by Jerry Seinfeld
, Sacha Baron Cohen
, Natalie Portman
, Jason Alexander
, Lisa Kudrow
, Lenny Kravitz
, Patricia Heaton
, Jacob Richler
, Noah Richler
, George F. Walker
and Moses Znaimer
. The letter said:
Jane Fonda, who had initially opposed the spotlight on Tel Aviv at the festival, Tuesday released a statement that she had reconsidered her position. "I signed the letter without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn't exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue," Fonda wrote on the Huffington Post Web site. She added that the suffering of both sides should be articulated.
, director Ken Loach
, musician David Byrne
, actors Danny Glover
and Jane Fonda
, author Alice Walker
and journalist Naomi Klein
. The letter argues that:
Fonda would later reconsider her position.
Journalist, author and activist Naomi Klein went on to write an op-ed piece in The Globe and Mail, clarifying the intention of the support of Greyson's stance articulated in the Toronto Declaration: "Contrary to the many misrepresentations, the letter is not calling for a boycott of the festival. It is a simple message of solidarity that says: We don't feel like partying with Israel this year."
Greyson's act was termed "courageous" by neo-Marxist activist Judy Rebick
who argued that it "is a significant contribution to the Palestinian solidarity movement and the Boycott Divestment and Sanction strategy that it has adopted to shine a light on the inexcusable aggression of Israel against the Palestinian people."
Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir
, agreed with Greyson's stance and argued that the planned Tel Aviv spotlight will ignore Palestinian filmmakers who live in Tel Aviv and "even more importantly those who are indigenous to that specific area and whose families were exiled and ethnically cleansed from Jaffa/Tel Aviv."
Elle Flanders, a Toronto-based self-described filmmaker who grew up in Israel, also supported Greyson, stating that "We have been accused of politicizing culture but it has been the festival and the Israeli government that has done this." She also stated that the protest was "wildly misconstrued by opposing voices" and that "We in fact defend Israeli filmmakers' rights to screen along with the rest of the festival, rather than as representatives of their government."
, specifically joining with the "Tahrir," the Canadian member of the Flotilla.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
filmmaker, whose work frequently deals with gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
themes. Greyson is also a video artist, writer and activist; he is currently a professor at York University
York University
York University is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, Ontario's second-largest graduate school, and Canada's leading interdisciplinary university....
, where he teaches film and video theory and film production and editing.
Background
Greyson was born the son of Dorothy F. (née Auterson) and Richard I. Greyson. He was raised in London, OntarioLondon, Ontario
London is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated along the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 352,395, and the metropolitan area has a population of 457,720, according to the 2006 Canadian census; the metro population in 2009 was estimated at 489,274. The city...
. He moved to Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
in 1980, becoming a writer for The Body Politic and other local arts and culture magazines, and becoming a video and performance artist.
Film career
He directed several short films, including The Perils of Pedagogy, Kipling Meets the Cowboy and Moscow Does Not Believe in Queers, before releasing his first feature film, PissoirPissoir
Pissoir, retitled Urinal in some countries, was the first feature film directed and released by John Greyson.Released in 1988, the film's central character is an unnamed man who conjures a circle of dead gay literary figures, including Sergei Eisenstein, Dorian Gray, Yukio Mishima, Frida Kahlo and...
, in 1988. Pissoir is a response to the homophobic climate of the period and, particularly, to police entrapment of men in public washrooms (toilets) and parks and police raids on gay bathhouse
Gay bathhouse
Gay bathhouses, also known as gay saunas or steam baths, are commercial bathhouses for men to have sex with other men. In gay slang in some regions these venues are also known colloquially as "the baths" or "the tubs," and should not be confused with public bathing.Not all men who visit gay...
s.
Greyson's next film was The Making of "Monsters", a short musical film produced during Greyson's residency at the Canadian Film Centre
Canadian Film Centre
The Canadian Film Centre is an advanced training institution for film, television and new media. Based in Toronto, Canada, CFC offers residents education, industry partnerships and production experience...
in 1991. The film deals with the 1985 murder by five adolescent males of Kenneth Zeller
Kenneth Zeller
Kenneth Zeller was a teacher and librarian in Toronto, who was employed by Williamson Road Junior Public School and Western Technical-Commercial School. He was the victim of a homophobic hate crime when he was beaten to death by five youths in Toronto's High Park...
, a gay high school teacher and librarian, in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
's High Park. The film is a fictional documentary about the making of a movie-of-the-week, entitled "Monsters," in which the young murderers are depicted as psychopathic monsters, rather than 'normal' teenage boys. The film features Marxist literary critic Georg Lukács
Georg Lukács
György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic. He is a founder of the tradition of Western Marxism. He contributed the concept of reification to Marxist philosophy and theory and expanded Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. Lukács' was also an influential literary...
as the producer of "Monsters," with Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
(played by a catfish) as director. Greyson's film was pulled from distribution when the estate of Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
objected to its use of the tune of Mack the Knife
Mack the Knife
"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife", originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928 at the...
. Greyson had originally received copyright permission to use the tune, but it was withdrawn, apparently because Weill's estate objected to the film's gay theme. Although copyright is no longer an issue, having lapsed in 2000, fifty years after Weill's death, the film has not yet been re-released by the Canadian Film Development Corporation.
Greayson directed the feature length films Zero Patience and Lillies.
Greyson's other films include Un©ut
Uncut (film)
Un©ut is a Canadian docudrama film, released in 1997. The film was written and directed by John Greyson.Set in Ottawa in 1979, the film stars Matthew Ferguson as Peter Cort, a researcher writing a book on male circumcision, and Michael Achtman as Peter Koosens, his assistant who has a sexual...
(1997), The Law of Enclosures
The Law of Enclosures (film)
The Law of Enclosures is a Canadian drama film, released in 1999. The film was written and directed by John Greyson, and based on the novel The Law of Enclosures by Dale Peck....
(1999) and Proteus (2003). He has also directed for television, including episodes of Queer as Folk, Made in Canada
Made in Canada
Made in Canada is a Canadian television situation comedy which aired on CBC Television from 1998 to 2003. Rick Mercer co-created the program and starred as mercenary TV producer Richard Strong....
and Paradise Falls
Paradise Falls
Paradise Falls is a weekly soap opera shown nationally on the Showcase channel in Canada, starting in 2001. It is set in a summer cottage community in Central Ontario....
.
In 2003, Greyson and composer David Wall created Fig Trees
Fig Trees
Fig Trees is a 2009 Canadian operatic documentary film written and directed by John Greyson. It follows South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat and Canadian AIDS activist Tim McCaskell as they fight for access to treatment for HIV/AIDS. It was also inspired by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's...
, a video opera for gallery installation, about the struggles of South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat
Zackie Achmat
Zackie Achmat is a South African activist, most widely known as founder and chairman of the Treatment Action Campaign and for his work on the behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa.-Early life:...
. In 2009, a film version of Fig Trees was released. This film, a feature length documentary opera, premiered at the Berlinale as part of its Panorama section http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/2009/02_programm_2009/02_Filmdatenblatt_2009_20090876.php, where it was winner of the Teddy Award for best documentary.
In 2007, Greyson was the recipient of the prestigious Bell Award in Video Art. The award committee stated: “John Greyson is perhaps best known to a general public as a feature film director. He shoots his “film” projects on video with trademark video post-production techniques, thus colonizing the space of cinema with the aesthetics of video. An incisive social and political critic, Mr. Greyson is in fact one of the leaders in the AIDS activist video movement, among others. Mr. Greyson has supported the practice in many ways and he influences many emerging artists.”
Greyson is popular with film critics but controversial with some audiences because of the flamboyant theatricality
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and thematic complexity of his filmmaking style, and the frank depiction of gay themes in his work.
His feature works have all been commercially unsuccessful.
Zero Patience
Zero PatienceZero Patience
Zero Patience is a 1993 Canadian musical film written and directed by John Greyson. The film examines and refutes the urban legend of the alleged introduction of HIV to North America by a single individual, Gaëtan Dugas...
is a musical film which challenged AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
orthodoxy, in 1993. Zero Patience is a response particularly to Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts was a pioneering gay American journalist and author. He worked as a freelance reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations....
' 1987 book And the Band Played On
And the Band Played On
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is a nonfiction book written by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts, published in 1987...
, which notoriously (and erroneously) traced the 'arrival' of HIV/AIDS in North America to a single person, a French-Canadian airline attendant named Gaetan Dugas
Gaëtan Dugas
Gaëtan Dugas was a Canadian who worked for Air Canada as a flight attendant. Dugas became notorious as the alleged patient zero for AIDS, though he is now more accurately regarded as one of many highly sexually active men who spread AIDS widely before the disease was identified.-Patient Zero...
. Based on a single flawed epidemiological cluster study, the conclusions of Shilts' book were very problematic for the narrative of blame they created, suggesting both that particular individuals were at fault (for example, that Dugas wilfully spread HIV, although he actually died before the virus was identified and the study in which he participated was one of several that allowed scientists to determine that HIV was sexually transmitted) and that monogamy and the 'normalization' of gay male sexual practices were the proper and adequate response (as opposed to a focus on safer sex practices).
Zero Patience features a gay ghost named Patient Zero who returns to Toronto to hook up with Sir Richard Francis Burton who, through an "unfortunate encounter with the fountain of youth" has lived to become the Chief Taxidermist at the Museum of Natural History. Burton is engaged in creating a "Hall of Contagion." When he loses his central exhibit, the Düsseldorf Plague Rat, he casts around for a replacement, lighting upon Patient Zero. In a comedy of errors, Zero and Burton come together, fall in love and attempt to figure out what to do about Burton's earlier attempts to defame Zero as a "sexual serial killer." A number of sub-plots centre around specific criticisms of the social response to AIDS by politicians, doctors and pharmaceutical companies. There is a not entirely sympathetic ACT-UP group engaged in a protest against the manufacturer of ZP0 (a reference to AZT), a teacher who is losing his sight to CMV
Cytomegalovirus
Cytomegalovirus is a viral genus of the viral group known as Herpesviridae or herpesviruses. It is typically abbreviated as CMV: The species that infects humans is commonly known as human CMV or human herpesvirus-5 , and is the most studied of all cytomegaloviruses...
and several scenes involving his students, and a number of scenes involving the animal and human inhabitants of the dioramas in the Hall of Contagion. Most of these feature lively and thought-provoking musical numbers, but none have drawn critical attention as much as the "Butthole Duet," in which Burton's and Zero's anuses sing about the social perception of anal sex
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
and its relationship to the discourses circulating around AIDS in the 80s and early 90s. Widely misunderstood by film reviewers, the song refers to a number of academic responses to the popular perception of AIDS as a "gay disease" and the now discredited belief that the anus was more vulnerable to HIV than the vagina, particularly Leo Bersani
Leo Bersani
Leo Bersani is an American literary theorist and Professor Emeritus of French at the University of California, Berkeley. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992.-Bibliography:...
's article "Is the Rectum a Grave?" Bersani thoroughly discredits the notion that anal sex is inherently diseased; Greyson takes this one step further to argue that an unreasonable bias against anal sex is linked to patriarchy
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
.
The central scene in Zero Patience, however, is probably the scene in which Zero looks through a microscope at a slide of his own blood. What he sees is the subject of an Esther Williams
Esther Williams
Esther Jane Williams is a retired American competitive swimmer and MGM movie star.Williams set multiple national and regional swimming records in her late teens as part of the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team...
-like song-and-dance number throughout which Zero converses with Miss HIV (Michael Callen
Michael Callen
Michael Callen was a singer, songwriter, composer, author, and AIDS activist. He was a significant architect of the response to the AIDS crisis in the United States....
). Both lyrically and in conversation, Miss HIV informs Zero that he was not the first, that he did not bring HIV/AIDS to North America, and that his participation in the infamous cluster study helped to prove that HIV is transmissible by sex and thus place an emphasis on safer sex that saved countless lives.
Lilies
In 1996, Greyson released his most famous film, LiliesLilies (film)
Lilies is a 1996 Canadian film directed by John Greyson. It is an adaptation by Michel Marc Bouchard and Linda Gaboriau of Bouchard's own play Les feluettes. It depicts a play being performed in a prison by the inmates.-Expository narration:...
, an adaptation of Michel Marc Bouchard
Michel Marc Bouchard
Michel Marc Bouchard is a gay Canadian playwright.Born in Saint-Cœur-de-Marie, Quebec, he studied theatre at the University of Ottawa. Bouchard made his professional playwriting debut in 1983 and since then has written some 25 plays...
's play Les feluettes, ou un drame romantique
Les feluettes
Les feluettes is a critically acclaimed play written by gay Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard.The play concerns the confession of an aging prisoner to a bishop...
. Following the dual chronology of Bouchard's play, Greyson's film (for which Michel Marc Bouchard wrote the screenplay) moves between two time periods: the film's 'present' in 1952 and the events that took place in the town of Roberval, Quebec
Roberval, Quebec
Roberval is a city on the south-western shore of Lac Saint-Jean in the Le Domaine-du-Roy Regional County Municipality of Quebec, Canada. With a population of 10,544 in the Canada 2006 Census, it is the third largest city on this lake after Alma and Dolbeau-Mistassini.It is the seat of the...
in 1912. The film begins with a visit by Bishop Bilodeau (Marcel Sabourin) to a prison chapel where he is supposed to hear the confession of convicted murderer Simon (Aubert Pallascio
Aubert Pallascio
Aubert Pallascio is a Canadian actor. He is best known for having portrayed Pierre Trudeau in the 1980 film The Kidnapping of the President. He was nominated in 1996 for a Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for his role in Liste noire .- External links :...
). Both men were at school together in 1912 when a fire supposedly set by Simon took the life of a third schoolmate, and Simon's lover, Vallier (Danny Gilmore
Danny Gilmore
This page is about the Canadian Actor. For the California State Assemblyman please go to Danny Gilmore Actor Danny Gilmore was born on December 23, 1973 in Canada. He has appeared in a number of films and television shows, starting with his role as Vallier in John Greyson's Lilies . He has also...
). However, this apparently simple story become quickly more complicated when the prison chaplain (Ian D. Clard) and the prisoners lock Bilodeau into the confessional booth and proceed to stage the true story of Vallier's death before their captive's eyes.
Greyson's directorial style is very much in evidence in Lilies. The film moves freely between realist and magic realist modes, making witty use of deceptively simple cinematic techniques, such as the way in which the camera tracks the removal of the roof of the confessional booth, apparently contained within the prison building, only to reveal the blue skies of summer-time Roberval and the arrival of the hot air balloon and its Parisian balloonist, Lydie-Anne (Alexander Chapman), which precipitates the events that lead up to Vallier's death. The narrative involves Simon's difficulties in resolving his love for Vallier in the face of homophobic Roberval (his father beats him viciously when he hears that Simon (played as a younger man by Jason Cadieux) and Valliers have been seen kissing, even though they are acting out roles in the school play), a love further complicated by the young Bilodeau's (Matthew Ferguson
Matthew Ferguson
Matthew Ferguson is an actor born on 3 April 1973 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the Claude Watson School for the Performing Arts.-Performances:...
) tortuously repressed desire for Simon and by the sophisticated attractions of Lydie-Anne, whose femininity allows Simon to dream of a safely heterosexual future.
While the narrative, involving as it does a religious school and schoolboy sexuality, clearly has echoes of Catholic child abuse scandals, the story deliberately involves telling a story reminiscent of Mt. Cashel, choosing instead to focus on the intensity and romanticism of the young men's love for each other. The narrative is enhanced by the visual style of the film, particularly the choice to cast only men in all of the roles. Of course, this makes perfect sense, since—on one level—all of the historical characters are being 'played' by the 1952 prisoners. This doubling is further enhanced by the decision to allow the male actors playing women to wear female clothing, but making no attempt whatsoever at realistic drag, relying instead on stellar performances by actors Alexander Chapman as Lydie-Anne, Brent Carver
Brent Carver
Brent Carver is a Canadian actor.Carver is known for a variety of stage and film roles, including The Wars, Kronborg: 1582, Lilies, Larry's Party, Elizabeth Rex, Millennium, Shadow Dancing, and Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love...
as the Countess de Tilly (Vallier's mother) and Remy Girard
Rémy Girard
Rémy Girard is a Canadian actor and former television host from Quebec.-Acting career:He played the role of Rémy, the main character, who is dying of terminal cancer, in the Canadian film Les Invasions barbares by director Denys Arcand. This film was awarded the 2003 Academy Award for best...
as the Baroness.
Lilies romanticism, lyrical story-telling and gorgeous cinematography all combined to make the film both more accessible to 'mainstream' audiences and more popular with critics than Greyson's more controversial and more intellectually demanding works, like Zero Patience. As a result, the film was nominated for thirteen Genie Award
Genie Award
Genie Awards are given out to recognize the best of Canadian cinema by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. From 1949-1979, the awards were named the Canadian Film Awards...
s, including best director, best adapted screenplay, and three nominations for best actor (for Jason Cadieux, Danny Gilmore, and Matthew Ferguson). The film won four Genies, for best motion picture, best art direction, best costume design and best overall sound. The film also won a number of other awards, including the GLAAD Media Award for outstanding film.
Fig Trees
Fig Trees is a feature length documentary opera about the struggles of AIDS activists Tim McCaskell of Toronto and Zackie Achmat of Capetown, as they fight for access to treatment drugs. In 1999, South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat went on a treatment strike, refusing to take his pills until they were widely available to all South Africans. This symbolic act became a cause celebre, helping build his group Treatment Action Campaign into a national movement - yet with each passing month, Zackie grew sicker.The feature film Fig Trees (2009) has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Teddy for Best Documentary at the Berlinale, the Best Canadian Feature award at the Toronto Inside Out Film Festival, and a Special Award at the Torino GLBT Film Festival.
Opposition to 2009 TIFF for highlighting of Tel Aviv
In September 2009, Greyson withdrew his short documentary, Covered, from the Toronto International Film FestivalToronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
(TIFF) festival to protest the festival's inaugural City to City Spotlight on the city of Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
. In a letter to TIFF Greyson wrote that his protest "isn't against the film or filmmakers" chosen but against the City to City program, specifically, and "the smug business-as-usual aura it promotes." He compared the "uncritical celebration" of Tel Aviv to "celebrating Montgomery buses in 1963" or "South African fruit in 1991." Greyson cited an August 2008 article in the Canadian Jewish News
Canadian Jewish News
The Canadian Jewish News is a weekly, English-language tabloid-sized newspaper serving Canada's Jewish community. Though independent, the newspaper has been, since 1971, owned by a group of Jewish leaders involved with Canadian Jewish Congress...
in which Israeli consul-general Amir Gissin stated that Israel would have a major presence at the TIFF as a culmination of his year long Brand Israel campaign to re-engineer the country's image and that TIFF should not be a participant in such a PR exercise. Greyson also argued that "my protest isn't against the films of filmmakers you've chosen... [but] is against the Spotlight itself" and the failure of the festival to include Palestinian voices.
Greyson also wrote that he was protesting TIFF's decision "to pointedly ignore the international economic boycott campaign against Israel" and that "By ignoring this boycott, TIFF has emphatically taken sides – and in the process, forced every filmmaker and audience member who opposes the occupation to cross a type of picket line."
He cited Israel's Gaza War and the expansion of settlements as reasons for his withdrawal, accusing the festival of: "an ostrich-like indifference to the realities (cinematic and otherwise) of the region", and comparing the Spotlight on Tel Aviv to "celebrating Montgomery buses in 1963 ... Chilean wines in 1973 ... or South African fruit in 1991".
Greyson's stance and the proceeding Toronto Declaration immediately triggered international debate.
Criticism
Greyson's actions drew criticism from a number of sources. Cameron Bailey, one of the festival's co-directors, stated that "The City to City series was conceived and curated entirely independently. There was no pressure from any outside source. Contrary to rumours or mistaken media reports, this focus is a product only of TIFF's programming decisions. We value that independence and would never compromise it." Bailey also argued that "[Mr. Greyson] writes that his protest isn't against the films or filmmakers we have chosen, but against the spotlight itself. By that reasoning, no films programmed within this series would have met his approval, no matter what they contained." Canadian filmmaker Simcha JacoboviciSimcha Jacobovici
Simcha Jacobovici is a Canadian film director, producer, free-lance journalist, and writer. He is a three-times Emmy winner for Outstanding Investigative Journalism....
argued that Greyson's letter was "full of lies" and says the festival "shouldn't be intimidated by this coalition of lies."
Columnist George Jonas
George Jonas
George Jonas is a Hungarian-born Canadian writer and columnist. He is the author of 15 books. They include Vengeance , the story of an Israeli operation to kill the terrorists responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre...
, writing in the National Post
National Post
The National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...
argued that Greyson was engaging in "mental gymnastics," and described Greyson's line of reasoning as follows: "Who, us, objecting to Israeli films? Perish the thought. We're only objecting to Israeli propaganda. Okay; what's Israeli propaganda? Well, the Israeli films we're objecting to." Jonas also asked rhetorically "What Israeli film wouldn't be Israeli propaganda for Greyson?" Jonas also argued "To hear [Greyson] object to "state-subsidized propaganda" is ironic, to say the least. As an activist-filmmaker, he has been a propagandist for the values of the ultra-liberal state and its shibboleths throughout his career."
Robert Lantos
Robert Lantos
-Life and career:Lantos was born in Budapest, the son of Agnes and László Lantos, a mechanic and truck company owner. Lantos spent much of his childhood in Montevideo, Uruguay, where his family had fled after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956...
, a Canadian film producer, sharply criticized Greyson, stating that "the (Toronto) festival has been free from the pressure of those whose fascist agenda is to impose their views on others, stifle the voices they don't like and interfere with people's right to see whatever they wish and make up their own minds. Until now." He also suggested that Greyson is "an opportunist eagerly leaping on the 'Israel apartheid' bandwagon in order to garner more attention for his film than it would have ever received had it played at the festival." Greyson later posted a response to Lantos in a video that was posted on YouTube.
Patrick Goldstein
Patrick Goldstein
Patrick Goldstein is a film critic and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, writing about movies in a column titled The Big Picture. Colleague Tom O'Neill describes him as the newspaper's "chief Oscarologist" as his column focuses largely on the doings of the Academy Awards.-Rob Schneider...
, a film critic and columnist for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
wrote that he thinks "it's especially unhealthy to ... accuse a festival of being a propaganda vehicle, as the Toronto protesters have, just because it is promoting another country's film culture. Even though I happen to agree with Greyson that the Israeli occupation and the spread of illegal settlements is a terrible thing – both for the Palestinians and, in the long run, for Israel – I can't imagine a less auspicious forum for belittling any country's artistic accomplishments than a film festival." He concluded:
Everyone has a right to disapprove of and even scathingly criticize a country's politics. But I don't see how Israel's artists and its film industry are any more complicit in its treatment of the Palestinians than, well, American artists were complicit in our government's use of torture against suspected terrorists.
In his complaint to the festival, Greyson asked if "an uncritical celebration of Tel Aviv right now" wasn't akin to "celebrating Montgomery buses in 1963, California grapes in 1969, Chilean wines in 1973 ... or South African fruit in 1991?"
My answer would be: no way. Wine and grapes and fruit are agricultural products. Films are a product too, for sure, but they are also expressions of art and intellectual ferment. And once you begin to close the door in any way on artistic freedom, even if it simply involves pressuring a film festival to shun a country whose politics you disagree with, you might discover someday that it's a lot easier to shut the door to a free exchange of ideas than it is to open it up again.
A number of Hollywood celebrities circulated a letter on September 15, 2009 protesting a petition calling for a boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival over a Tel Aviv-themed event. The letter, which appeared simultaneously in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
and the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...
was signed, among others, by Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerome Allen "Jerry" Seinfeld is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television and film producer, known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the situation comedy Seinfeld , which he co-created and co-wrote with Larry David, and, in the show's final two seasons,...
, Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen is an English stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and voice artist. He is most widely known for his portrayal of three unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, and Brüno...
, Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman
Natalie Hershlag , better known by her stage name Natalie Portman, is an actress with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon, but major success came when she was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel...
, Jason Alexander
Jason Alexander
Jay Scott Greenspan , better known by his professional name of Jason Alexander, is an American actor, writer, comedian, television director, producer, and singer. He is best known for his role as George Costanza on the television series Seinfeld, appearing in the sitcom from 1989 to 1998...
, Lisa Kudrow
Lisa Kudrow
Lisa Valerie Kudrow is an American actress, best known for her role as Phoebe Buffay in the television sitcom Friends, for which she received many accolades including an Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards...
, Lenny Kravitz
Lenny Kravitz
Leonard Albert "Lenny" Kravitz is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and arranger, whose "retro" style incorporates elements of rock, soul, R&B, funk, reggae, hard rock, psychedelic, folk and ballads...
, Patricia Heaton
Patricia Heaton
Patricia Helen Heaton is an American actress, comedienne, producer and model, best known for portraying Debra Barone on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996 to 2005, for which she won two Emmy Awards....
, Jacob Richler
Jacob Richler
Jacob Richler is a Canadian newspaper and magazine journalist, and the son of novelist Mordecai Richler and Florence Isabel Wood. He was the inspiration for his father's Jacob Two-Two trilogy of children's books....
, Noah Richler
Noah Richler
Noah Richler is a Canadian journalist, who was raised in Montreal, Canada and London, England. He is the son of Florence Isabel Wood and famous Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler...
, George F. Walker
George F. Walker
George F. Walker, CM is a Canadian playwright and screenwriter. He is one of Canada's most prolific playwrights, and also one of the most widely produced Canadian dramatists both in Canada and internationally.-Early years:...
and Moses Znaimer
Moses Znaimer
Moses Znaimer, M.A., O.Ont is a co-founder and former head of Citytv, the first independent television station in Toronto, Canada, and the current head of ZoomerMedia.-Early life and career:...
. The letter said:
Anyone who has actually seen recent Israeli cinema, movies that are political and personal, comic and tragic, often critical, knows they are in no way a propaganda arm for any government policy. Blacklisting them only stifles the exchange of cultural knowledge that artists should be the first to defend and protect.http://www.cicweb.ca/scene/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Star-ad-9-15-09.pdf
Jane Fonda, who had initially opposed the spotlight on Tel Aviv at the festival, Tuesday released a statement that she had reconsidered her position. "I signed the letter without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn't exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue," Fonda wrote on the Huffington Post Web site. She added that the suffering of both sides should be articulated.
Support
A letter for support for Greyson, termed the Toronto Declaration, was signed by more than 50 people, including Israeli filmmaker Udi AloniUdi Aloni
Udi Aloni is an Israeli and American filmmaker, writer and visual artist whose works focus on the interrelationships between art, theory,and action. He began his career as a painter, establishing the Bugrashov gallery in Tel Aviv, a home for contemporary art, cultural and political events...
, director Ken Loach
Ken Loach
Kenneth "Ken" Loach is a Palme D'Or winning English film and television director.He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness , labour rights and child abuse at the...
, musician David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
, actors Danny Glover
Danny Glover
Danny Lebern Glover is an American actor, film director, and political activist. Glover is perhaps best known for his role as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise.-Early life:...
and Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...
, author Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...
and journalist Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...
. The letter argues that:
Fonda would later reconsider her position.
Journalist, author and activist Naomi Klein went on to write an op-ed piece in The Globe and Mail, clarifying the intention of the support of Greyson's stance articulated in the Toronto Declaration: "Contrary to the many misrepresentations, the letter is not calling for a boycott of the festival. It is a simple message of solidarity that says: We don't feel like partying with Israel this year."
Greyson's act was termed "courageous" by neo-Marxist activist Judy Rebick
Judy Rebick
Judy Rebick , arrived in Toronto at age 9, and is a Canadian journalist, political activist, and feminist.-Career:...
who argued that it "is a significant contribution to the Palestinian solidarity movement and the Boycott Divestment and Sanction strategy that it has adopted to shine a light on the inexcusable aggression of Israel against the Palestinian people."
Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir
Annemarie Jacir
Annemarie Jacir was born on January 17, 1974, she is a Palestinian filmmaker and poet.She has been working in independent cinema since 1994 and has written, directed and produced a number of award-winning films including Until When, A Few Crumbs for the Birds, and a Post Oslo History. She was...
, agreed with Greyson's stance and argued that the planned Tel Aviv spotlight will ignore Palestinian filmmakers who live in Tel Aviv and "even more importantly those who are indigenous to that specific area and whose families were exiled and ethnically cleansed from Jaffa/Tel Aviv."
Elle Flanders, a Toronto-based self-described filmmaker who grew up in Israel, also supported Greyson, stating that "We have been accused of politicizing culture but it has been the festival and the Israeli government that has done this." She also stated that the protest was "wildly misconstrued by opposing voices" and that "We in fact defend Israeli filmmakers' rights to screen along with the rest of the festival, rather than as representatives of their government."
Participation in Gaza Flotilla
In summer 2011, Greyson traveled to Greece to participate in the Freedom Flotilla IIFreedom Flotilla II
"Freedom Flotilla II – Stay Human" was a flotilla that planned to break the maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel by sailing to Gaza on 5 July 2011. Ultimately, the sailing did not take place....
, specifically joining with the "Tahrir," the Canadian member of the Flotilla.
Further reading
- Brasell, R. Bruce. "Queer Nationalism and the Musical Fag Bashing of John Greyson's the Making of 'Monsters." Wide Angle: A Film Quarterly of Theory, Criticism, and Practice 16.3 (1995): 26-36.
- Cagle, Robert L. "'Tell the Story of My Life ...': The Making of Meaning, 'Monsters,' and Music in John Greyson's Zero Patience." The Velvet Light Trap 35 (1995): 69-81.
- Dellamora, Richard. "John Greyson's 'Zero Patience' in the Canadian Firmament: Cultural practice/cultural Studies." University of Toronto Quarterly 64.4 (1995): 526(10)-536.
- Gittings, Christopher E. "Zero Patience, Genre, Difference, and Ideology: Singing and Dancing Queer Nation." Cinema Journal 41.1 (2001): 28-39.
- Gittings, Christopher. "Activism and Aesthetics: The Work of John Greyson." Great Canadian Film Directors. Ed. George (ed and introd). Melnyk. Edmonton, AB: U of Alberta P, xviii, 2007. 125-147.
- Guthmann, Edward. "John Greyson." The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine).742 (1997): 71(1)-72.
- Hallas, Roger. "The Genealogical Pedagogy of John Greyson's Zero Patience." Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Etudes Cinématographiques 12.1 (2003): 16-37.
- Howe, Lawrence. "The Epistemology of Adaptation in John Greyson's Lilies." Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Etudes Cinématographiques 15.2 (2006): 44-61.
- "John Greyson: Filmmaker." Contemporary Canadian Biographies (2000): NA.
- Kotwal, Kaizaad. "An Interview with John Greyson." Film Journal 1.6 (2003): [no pagination].
- Loiselle, A. "The Corpse Lies in 'Lilies': The Stage, the Screen, and the Dead Body." .76 (2002).
- McGann, Nadine L. "A Kiss is Not a Kiss: An Interview with John Greyson." Afterimage 19.6 (1992): 10(4)-14.
- Morris, Gary. "'My Penis! Where is My Penis?' John Greyson's Uncut." Bright Lights Film Journal 24 (1999): (no pagination).http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/24/uncut.html
- Ramsay, Christine. "Greyson, Grierson, Godard, God: Reflections on the Cinema of John Greyson." North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema since 1980. Ed. William (ed and introd). Beard, Jerry (ed and introd). White, and Seth (foreword) Feldman. Edmonton, AB: U of Alberta P, xxiii, 2002. 192-205.
External links
- "It's not about Bono, it's about the consumerism," by R.M. Vaughn, globeandmail.com, May 14, 2009
- John Greyson interview at The Film Journal
- John Greyson on glbtq.comGlbtq.comglbtq.com is an online encyclopedia that presents detailed biographies of notable gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. It was named one of the "Best Free Reference Web Sites" in 2005 by the American Library Association....
- Gary Morris, 'My Penis, Where is My Penis?' in Bright Lights