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Not a Review of Kim Joel Booster's Fire Island

I am pagan. Therefore, I support the right to discriminate

As pagans, we understand the importance—not just the importance, but the value and, in fact, the cultural necessity—of any given self-selected group's right to exclude non-members while associating freely within itself: with the necessary proviso, of course, that such a right cannot be universal, but always (by necessity) time- and place-bound.

If this is so, then Kim Joel Booster's Fire Island may well be the most pagan movie of the summer.

Can't stand feel-good movies. Don't like rom-coms, especially gay ones. No big fan of Jane Austen, whom I really can't help but suspect would, if she weren't a woman, be read today only by English Lit grad students.

Here's what I really liked about this summer's gay feel-good rom-com, the newest iteration of the Pride and Prejudice franchise, though: with the exception of one nightmarish flashback scene, there are no straight people in the film. None.

A group of gay friends go to Gay Island for one last dizzying swirl of what passes for gay male “culture”, in all its shallow, abs-obsessed dysfunctionality.

Gods: how incredibly refreshing.

One lesbian. (Margaret Cho's character, though, is anything but token.) No straight characters. No (current media darlings that they are) trans characters. Not even any bisexuals. Just men for men telling our own story, for a change, with lots of gratuitous nudity, sex, and good-looking guys.

The Horned One be praised.

Not that I have nothing against trans folk, straight folk, or lesbians, mind you. Those stories, too, I value. It's just that everyone deserves a chance to talk about themselves every now and then. Enough about you: let's (finally) talk about me for a change, OK?

Dear Boss Warlock:

Word around the Wiccan water cooler has it that you used to be something of a gay porn star in a previous incarnation.

Is this really true?

Titillated in Tuscaloosa

Dear Tittie:

To crib a line from a much better writer than myself, rumors of my porn-stardom have been greatly exaggerated.

Through the course of his long and illustrious career, Boss Warlock has been many things, including (once) an extra in a...well, let us say, a same-sex horizontal drama: in fact, just another pretty body in just another anonymous orgy scene. If you didn't know the tattoos, you wouldn't know it was me.

Hey, nobody got hurt, the money was pretty good, considering, and the sex was...well, let's just say that the sex had a happy ending.

You can't fool us, Mel Gibson. We've been around the maypole a few times, and we've seen your films.

You really like naked guys, don't you?

Well, hey, I'm with you on that one. But here's the other horn of the stang: You really like to hurt naked guys, don't you?

Sorry, Mel, you lost me on that one.

"Holy" Week is coming up, and with the prospect of churches in covid lockdown just like everything else, chances are that lots of Christians will be pulling the old Bible-epic CDs off the shelf.

(No gloating here, O pagan reader: when Beltane rolls around, you'll be dusting off The Wicker Man too, along with the rest of us; admit it.)

No doubt many will be watching that 2004 classic of sanctified pornography, The Passion of the Christ.

(Amazing, isn't it, how that second article transforms an otherwise commonplace phrase into sheerest bombast? And if you think the title is bombastic....)

Give it a look-see, if you can stand it: every lash-stroke laid on with love.

(On second thought, don't bother; just take my word for it.)

And the close-up of the hammer driving the spike through Jim Caviezel's outstretched palm: that's Mel's hands doing the ghastly work. Oh, I see the theological point—laid on, as usual, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer—but, ye gods. To your god you're doing this? Gee, Mel, I'd hate to be your boyfriend.

Years ago I used to date a guy whose flatmate was big into BD/SM. The flatmate had an entire wall covered with dozens and dozens of crucifixes.

Crucifixes and sado-masochism: even a poor hapless pagan boy like me could see the connection.

Ye gods, I'd think every time I went past the crucifix-wall, I'll never understand Christians.

Still, you've got to give Mel credit for genre-bending. A snuff movie with a happy ending: who else but Mel Gibson could dream of such a thing?

Wouldst thou live deliciously?

So the Dark Lord* whispers into Tamsin's ear, from behind, at the climax of Robert Egger's 2015 film The VVitch: A New-England Tale.

(Anyone who knows the Master well will recognize that nape-nuzzling whisper from behind.)

Forget all the nonsense about the Devil and temptation. We enter here into the realm of the Animal God.

See Him that we call the Horned as the collective body of animal life on planet Earth.** Embrace Him—embrace Life—and live deliciously.

Or reject Him and what He has to offer, and endure a joyless existence of crabbed misery.

“Buddha” was wrong. Yes, life is full of suffering, but there's joy, too. Embrace the Horned, embrace the life which as animals, is our inheritance by right. Embrace bodily existence, for all it's worth.

This is the gift of the Horned, lord of this world: the gift of a god.

Every decade has its premier witch movie, and that of the twenty-teens (so far, anyway) is surely Robert Egger's 2015 The VVitch: A New-England Tale, in my opinion the finest filmic invocation of the Horned Master since Roman Polanski's 1999 The Ninth Gate.

So there are two recommendation for your next coven film night.

In The VVitch, young Jonas and Mercy sing a song with an eerie three-note tune about Black Phillip, their family's ornery he-goat and (as it later turns out) something more.

Black Phlllip, Black Phillip,

a crown grows out of his head.

Black Phillip, Black Phillip

to nanny queen is wed.

Jump to the fence post,

run to the stall:

Black Phillip, Black Phillip,

king of all.

Yes folks, it's time for your annual appointment with...the Wicker Man.

(No, not the one with Nicholas Cage!)

The role of Sergeant Howie was originally offered to actor Michael York. He turned it down.*

American composer Paul Giovanni, who wrote the film's strikingly memorable score, was the boyfriend of director Anthony Shaffer's brother Paul at the time. That's how Shaffer knew him.

Though set at Beltane, the film was actually filmed in mid-October. Between takes of the bonfire-leaping scene, the naked schoolgirls had to be bundled up in blankets to warm them up.

Because of the cold temperatures, while shooting many of the outdoor scenes, the actors had to hold ice cubes in their mouths so that their breath wouldn't smoke.

The blooming apple trees are all artificial. Because the budget was so tight, they had to keep moving the few trees that they had for the sweep shots of the orchards.

The phallic topiary, however, was all real. It was filmed at Hush House Manor in Kent, home of actor David Kennings (who had also been offered the role of Howie and turned it down).

Rowan and Howie's escape through the caves was shot at Wookey Hole caves in Somerset, home of the famous Witch of Wookey.

Edward Woodward (Howie) actually broke a toe on a rock while being dragged to the Wicker Man. (Technically, this injury should have disqualified him as a sacrifice, but of course—as their pastiche paganism suggests—these are neo-pagans we're talking about.)

I don’t remember a Disney movie launching with as much controversy as this year’s live action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast.  First it was Emma Watson, a well known advocate for women’s causes, taking fire for playing the role of Belle, one of a long line of Disney Princesses who fall for the charms of a man (the term “man” used loosely in this case).  Then there were Christian groups advocating boycott of the film because of a brief moment hinting that the character of Lefou (Josh Gadd) was gay.

In the midst of the blowback resulting from that “gay moment” (which, for the record, was quick and innocent), social media blew up with a meme shaming the film’s detractors with a message to the effect of “Keep your gay characters out of my movie about bestiality and Stockholm Syndrome.”  A first, I thought the meme was funny, but then I finally saw the film.  The truth is, this Beauty and the Beast is about much more than the 1991 animated film leads us to believe.  This version is bigger, smarter, more emotional, and- dare I say it- more human.