I know, I know, this is yet another bitch rave from the Punk Outsider, but it's cold out here on the edge. And hey friends, I've got to get a load of shit off my chest.
The narrow-eyed Snooties and Snippies dislike this critique as it doesn't suit their hero-status and leader of the queer pack bullshit. I don't have my foot in the door of the Sydney Mardi Gras committee not the Town Hall, such sucking up to the elite both improbable and anathema for me. I'm not an icon of "identity politics" but totally enmeshed in "intersectional activities" and that seems to condemn me. This is my "push-back."
In 1992, after a 7 year struggle of hard work, perseverance and ingenuity, I finished a movie called "Virgin Beasts". Though it only showed in the Australian underground it went on to win, in 1996 with Japan, Best International Trash Film award at Freakzone Lille France.
It's fabulous cast starred Simon Reptile in his one speaking lead role in a feature film. He was quite proud of it and hoped it would get some recognition, showing the world his talent for posterity.
He took on two roles, the chief heart-swap surgeon and a pretend JC, faux messiah at the END of civilisation, in reality merely the MC at a mutants' saturnalian debauch. He was very, very good and very, very funny.
There is a certain group here in Sydney called "The Friends of Simon Reptile", they're on FB and planned to have a gabfest with slide show about him in Darlo Community Centre, except Covid got in the way. They didn't invite me to tell of his contribution to "Virgin Beasts" nor will they accept any film stills on their FB site.
A certain person who organises such things, who considers himself an "impresario," is putting on an exhibition in Oxford Street declaring Simon a hero and one of the great Sydney characters of the 1980s, with photos of a few of his Cabaret acts. Again he has ignored my film and Simon's brilliant starring role.
Recently I messaged him pleading for him to help me promote "Virgin Beasts", to perhaps get my film a screening and give Simon a good chance of shining in the sun again. The wannabe Diaghalev didn't even have the good manners to reply, just silence, as if that would efficiently handle any incursion into his glorious non-career. (And lately he's veen had the nerve to claim his show is all about "outsiders" while making sure I remain an outsider, what a crunt!)
I KNOW Simon would turn in his grave at this treatment, he would be furious.
What s it with Sydney, and some of its denizens, to be both unhelpful and hypocritical? Is it jealousy because they never have, or could, create such an amazing artwork. The film is one third animation, (acetate cells, cut-outs, rotoscoping and computer graphics), and contains 7 original lip-synched songs from some of Australia's best bands of the 1980s. But it is risque, anarchic and political, it rocks the boat in your face on climate change and govt/corporate/religious malfeasance in contributing to the destruction of the world. This is quite pertinent to our present situation but of course it's caused the "cone of silence" to descend over it, THEY even tried to stop production halfway through, and "Diaghalev" has contributed to this censorship.
For it's politics, art and music it captured the French Punk cognoscenti's high regard, and has shown all around the world, recently in New York in a cinema. It will live on. Only Australia has slammed the door on it and me.
And that unctuous impresario can bite his tongue, Simon will haunt his vapid "queer virtue signalling" show that's happening now, (that's why I've got a hair in my arse about it), and rattle the window panes in annoyed response.
"A dead star is so valuable to others!" So sang The Smiths in "Paint a vulgar picture." Sydney's saintly "Diaghalev" has made a career out of wheeling dead stars out of the closet and championing them, along with himself of course. Who will be next I wonder, no god help me if I should drop dead before him... creak creak creak goes the rusty wheelchair as my dessicated corpse is wheeled out and shoved into the limelight to milk of any leftover charisma.
Because of the State's prohibitions, the public's brainwashed famewhoring and the poseurs undeserved vanity, many really good and cool artists leave Australia, and I'm leaving soon also. How I wish I wasn't coming back here, but I'm 72 and don't have the money or two passports to live anywhere else. At heart I really don't give a shit about the skewed obstacle course created by the artsholes I'm made to run, it actually makes me stronger. I've achieved much and am happy, I don't need the cheers of the vacuous, Sydney fashionista fuckwit crowd, (but I would like some assistance, not possible from the bitches who have 7 cents worth of power.).
Read all about the travails of independent filmmaking in Australia in my book "PUNK OUTSIDER", especially the story "Virgin Beasts Fucked Over."i
Order at tobyzoates@hotmail.com
Or The Bookshop Oxford Street
Or Pass-Port Store and Gallery Oxford Square Darlinghurst
