Original subtitles

(slow jazz music)

- [Voiceover] Kept awake in the small hours

of very long nights, no number of cigarettes

or midnight rhapsodies from a chance encounter

in East Village Bar, badly singing Billie Holiday,

could deliver him back to sleep.

Europe, long way away,

across ocean of indifference.

His indifference.

No going back, not yet.

(slow jazz music)

(tires screeching)

(slow jazz music)

(traffic whooshing)

(slow jazz music)

- [Voiceover] Next presentation will be The Sleazy Uncle,

a comic gem from Italy by Franco Brusati,

director of Bread and Chocolate.

The Sleazy Uncle stars Giancarlo Giannini

as the stuffed shirted Riccardo.

His well-ordered bourgeois lifestyle is thrown into chaos

by the arrival of his amoral Uncle Luca.

- [Voiceover] Anywhere in the world.

- [Voiceover] He read his poems about death

and finding peace.

- [Voiceover] I went to photograph him

and I got all these sort of very normal,

poet photographs of him lying on the ground

under trees and sitting in his library

and you know I come out of the drive way

and I look up at the window of his bedroom,

he was looking out the window, staring

and kind of a deep stare

and I drove away and I said.

- [Voiceover] Our message today.

- [Voiceover] I gotta get back, I got to go back.

You know I don't have it, I don't have it.

- [Voiceover] Electromagnetic power.

(radio static)

(slow jazz music)

(radio static)

- [Voiceover] The poet's life was a trail

of disconnected moments.

And each moment was composed of some small gesture,

captured as if in mid-flight.

He would try to discern some meaning in them.

But he would be overtaken by a violent, eddying feeling.

Exhilarating as it was pointless.

(distant train horn)

(train rumbling)

- [Voiceover] He was sprucing,

dangling at the cavaliers,

now called poise or leave.

Are they sons of Mars or Venus?

Pastures, toasts,

demeanor, salute, drills, commands.

Martial rule defeat.

His dances of the eyes

of the hands, the neck, the voice,

the ramrod backbone, abdomen,

Succulent, oh so good.

(tires screeching)

The shield of the killers,

and witches engraved,

the whole world.

(soft instrumental music)

- [Voiceover] For the poet,

the sailor represented everything a fag could want.

Good solid hands,

presentable face,

and a restless cock,

which the poet could almost hear slapping

up against his stomach.

His passion for women was great,

but he would make due if things were tight.

The poet liked that pragmatic approach.

It was what made America great.

For the sailor, the poet was strange.

He had no visible means of support

or some from anywhere the sailor would remotely call home.

He never shaved

and when asked where he was heading he would simply reply,

"Out west."

(soft jazz music)

(voices chattering)

(soft band music)

* Hello baby

* Yes it's really me

* After all the wrong I've done

* I guess you're surprised to see me

* Here at your door

* Like a sparrow with a broken wing

* Who's come back to beg you

* Oh

* Reconsider me

* Oh please

* Reconsider me

* I can't make it

* Without your love

* Can you see

- War is good business.

Invest your son.

- I need a blow job.

Who do I call?

(heavy breathing)

* Oh please

* Reconsider me

* I can't make it, I can't make it

* Without you girl

* Can't you see

- [Voiceover] Jackie was intrigued by the poet

and the magical and turbulent world

that his arrival suggested.

The stranger had parachuted into her life

and she had need of a savior

even if it was bit queer.

The sailor's presence was an afterthought.

* Oh baby, baby

* Oh baby

* Reconsider me

(soft jazz music)

- [Voiceover] I have a friend who is a pathological liar.

I found out later

they smoked pot and took LSD.

Do you think people on LSD might travel into far beyond?

- [Voiceover] Marty are you a pot smoker?

- [Voiceover] Are you kidding?

- [Voiceover] Just chill, hey just asking.

I'm the talker right?

(birds chirping)

- [Voiceover] I wanted to take a trip for over five years

and every time I am about depart on the trip,

about a couple weeks before I always end up canceling out.

And a couple of my friends have gotten

rather annoyed with me.

(radio chatter)

- [Voiceover] I think the lion

does a trick into,

it's very great.

You can tell somebody they're in Idaho

and they're in Los Angeles ,

and if you stop long enough

and probably convinced him,

he might think he's in Idaho who knows?

- [Voiceover] My girlfriend's grandmother died.

- [Voiceover] Hmm, okay so that made you feel

that you were justified in not having left.

- [Voiceover] Exactly.

(soft jazz music)

(radio chatter)

(voices chattering)

- Bop it and shoot for this one.

- [Voiceover] The sailor liked Jackie.

She was glamorous.

Her attraction to the poet was a harmless

and meaningless infatuation.

He liked that Jackie was difficult,

he had nothing but contempt for whores.

The sailor reminded Jackie of all the men in her home town.

He was too young, not too bright.

She couldn't imagine beneath that ordered exterior

lay a more complex set of desires.

The poet was slow in unraveling Jackie's amorous interest.

For him, that was another world

which he had long gone rejected

in the name of liberation.

(loud slap)

(soft instrumental music)

(soft jazz music)

- Have you got a light?

(slow jazz music)

- [Voiceover] Page Mr. Brown.

Page Mr. Big Brown.

- [Voiceover] The sailor and the poet were linked

through sex.

The poet and Jackie were made one through ritual.

The sailor now felt marginal to their concerns

and he could reassert himself in the only way he knew,

through violence.

- Give me some money.

I said give me some money.

Do it, do it.

(brooding instrumental music)

- Burn a hole in it.

Fuck you faggot.

Burn a hole in it.

Do it, do it.

(loud punches)

(groaning)

- [Voiceover] The poet had felt the violence of men

many times.

It was the glue which cemented his existence.

But far from being a threat to other men,

he was in fact tolerated because of their need

to be worshiped.

In that perverse ritual of adoration,

the poet had elected to play the role

of sacrificial offering.

With tears and blood he bathed their bodies

and made them clean.

- [Voiceover] Fly through the air under three minutes

or even teaming up and beating up,

that's paramount, but you know what I'm saying.

- [Voiceover] Yeah but I just wonder how they,

how they form those races and pack up,

you know the cars when they race around

and their chasing each other, then they blow up.

- [Voiceover] Those are really, those are done

by stunt performers.

- [Voiceover] Oh well that's scary.

- [Voiceover] Well yeah

and stunt performers get paid a lot

and every once in a while a stunt performer

is really injured or killed while working.

Remember.

(slow jazz music)

- [Voiceover] Toto,

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

(radio static)

- [Voiceover] The sailor's moment of triumph,

his conquest of Jackie was a terrible revelation,

his desire had been grounded in nothing.

But the poet chose to except Jackie's love as real.

He could not comprehend that by giving himself to her,

he was destroying that which made him desirable in her eyes.

His unavailability.

(soft jazz music)

Kissing the poet,

the sailor had sensed the dizzying familiarity

he felt when looking into a mirror.

Self-love propelled him to receive the poet.

In whom he glimpsed for the first time,

the reflection of his own feminine self.

Just as for the poet,

the sailor was the dream of the dominant male made flesh.

Such a union is at best improbable,

and fragile.

(brooding instrumental music)

(soft jazz music)

- [Voiceover] Get out of this relationship immediately,

and yet here I am.

I mean if I was with him, if I was in the audience,

look I would say run away.

You need to get out of that.

This is...

- [Voiceover] The escapade has nothing to do

with your gender confusions.

Some counseling will help you.

- [Voiceover] Jackie took the car and headed south

for Mexico,

at least there men were men

and you could spot a fag a mile away.

She felt relieved and free.

She was lying to herself.

(soft jazz music)