It's My Party feature
A different sort of party - Kleiser films his own story of breakup and loss in poignant It's My Party
By Steve Warren Contributing Writer Of Dallas Voice
When Franco Zeffirelli came out in 1982 he said he hadn’t done it sooner because no one had asked him.
While the outing craze had some Hollywood types quaking in their boots or burrowing deeper into their closets, others went their openly-gay way without anyone noticing.
Randal Kleiser has been making movies for 20 years with-out anyone making a fuss over him or the fact he’s gay. His latest film, It’s My Party, already has changed the latter and is working on the former.
Based in part on Kleiser’s eight-years-on, three-years-off relationship with Harry Stein, most of It’s My Party takes place during the final weekend on earth of Nick (Eric Roberts), who wants to celebrate with family and friends before ending his life.
Kleiser denies that the film is designed to promote suicide, even for terminal AIDS patients like Nick, who is within days of being reduced to a mental vegetable by Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML). Although Nick looks healthy, even as his vision and memory fade, Kleiser points to some less attractive pictures in flashback sequences: “There’s the other side that’s shown as well- the guy who takes the pills and doesn’t get it right, and Chris Atkins lying in bed all emaciated. This is the story of someone who’s seen all that and wants his death to be beautiful.”
“It’s not supposed to be a message movie saying that people should go out and kill themselves. In fact, I wrote in the scene where Monty (Bronson Pinchot) says he’s been positive for eight years and Nick tells him to stay strong and keep on fighting, as a message against casual suicide.”
The film’s main dramatic thread, other than the countdown to the end of Nick’s life, is his reunion with Brandon (Gregory Harrison), the filmmaker who was his lover for years before throwing him out of their home in an ugly divorce. The parallels to writer-director - Kleiser’s story Nick and Brandon met on Santorini, where Randal filmed Summer Lovers with Harry as his assistant, just for starters - are apparent, which may explain why Brandon is seen as something of a villain.
“Anybody who writes adds parts of themselves to all their characters, but basically Brandon was based on me,” Kleiser admits. “The story needed to have some drama, and between the two characters I decided to make Brandon the heavy because I couldn’t be criticized.”
“It’s not that the real story was boring,” he adds, “but for a movie audience you have to dramatize things more vividly. Maybe I took things that happened over a couple of years and put them into a weekend, or made three different people into one character.”
“The feeling is based on reality,” Kleiser asserts. “The specifics, some are real and some are invented.”
'It's the pictures that got smaller!'
Most directors start by making low-budget, independent films and work up to major studio blockbusters. Kleiser has gone the other way. His first feature, after such acclaimed telefilms as The Gathering and The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, was Grease, which ranks as the highest-grossing musical of all time. It’s My Party showed, albeit out of competition, at this year’s Sundance film Festival, surrounded by the work of unknown novices.
Kleiser laughs at the suggestion that it might have received more attention if he had used a pseudonym to make people think it was the work of a first-timer. “How could an unknown have gotten all those names?” he says of his cast, which also includes Lee Grant, George Segal, Marlee Matlin, Margaret Cho, Olivia Newton-John, Bruce Davison and Devon Gummersall.
“Each of the actors who were in the film had lost friends to AIDS and wanted to work on a project about it,” Kleiser says. “I called up and said, 1 really want you to be in this film and we don’t have any money. We can only pay you scale.”
Many of the actors have a history with Kleiser. This and a theme that recalls his early work give It’s My Party the sense of a career retrospective.
He cites his Masters thesis film Prege, made in 1973, “which was about my family visiting my grandmother in a nursing home at Christmas time.” They have trouble communicating with the senile woman (Jeanette Nolan), but when the others leave, a grandson, played by Bruce Davison, stays behind and tries to trigger her memory. Her final smile indicates his success.
“There were humanitarian issues also in The Gathering,” the filmmaker notes. In a situation closer to It’s My Party, “Ed Asner had cancer and brought his family together for a last attempt to resolve things before he died.”
With this background, he chuckles, “Suddenly I did Grease and everybody wanted me to do mindless fluff.”
Davison, who competed against Kleiser in high school track, also appeared in The Gathering, as did Gregory Harrison. Newton-John starred in Grease, and Christopher Atkins in The Blue Lagoon.
Eric Roberts hadn’t worked with Kleiser but Party co-producer Joel Thurm had given him his first film role in King of the Gypsies.
Roberts has said he decided Nick should be the more feminine half of the couple, and that the direction he got most frequently from Kleiser was “Eric, not so fruity.”
The director disputes both assertions. “I tried to make them both equally masculine,” he says. “Eric started going in the direction of more effeminate gestures and I had to tone him down a little. I don’t think I used the word ‘fruity.’ What I said was, ‘Eric, a little more butch’; and he said, ‘You’re the first director who’s ever told me to act more butch.”
Roberts may have felt that he was surrounded by queers on the set but Kleiser says, “Mostly it was just the producers” who were gay. “I would say it was pretty evenly mixed, really. I wanted to surround myself with a group of actors and production people felt comfortable with doing this kind of personal story.”
Was this intended as a coming-out film for such “reputed homosexuals” as Olivia Newton-John and Roddy McDowall? “We never really discussed any of that,” Kleiser evades. “They were focused on the project.”
"Kiss Him Again!"
Although Kleiser shot It’s My Party in a brief 25 days, he says he usually does “at least two takes of each shot, in case something happens to the negative.” He did as many as a dozen takes on shots involving complicated camera movement. The big kiss between Roberts and Harrison required “about three or four takes,” he recalls, “and I’m not sure which one we used.”
Perhaps the best illustration of Kleiser’s versatility is that while writing It’s My Party he was shooting Honey, I Shrunk the Audience for Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center. He’s made a wide range of films that include White Fang. Honey I Blew Up the Kid and Big Top Pee-Wee, but Kleiser has avoided the spotlight that falls on most directors with any kind of track record.
“I never really was interested in doing talk shows and being everywhere,” he explains. “I hate crowds and smoke and loud music and parties, so I’m not the type who would enjoy celebrity. I’ve stayed mostly with friends.”
Being openly gay has never hindered Kleiser in the industry, even on The Blue Lagoon, which dealt with adolescent sexuality. “It just never came up,” he says. “That was a book I found in the library and I raised the money for it, so it wasn’t like I was a director for hire. I guess if I had been some sort of militant it might have been a problem.”
Having made films of all sizes, Kleiser enjoys the variety. In the future, he says, “I’d like to mix it up. I’ve talked about doing a science-fiction film with my brother (Jeff Kleiser of Kleiser-Walczak Construction Co., who did digital effects for Stargate), but we haven’t found a script yet. I’d also like to do some more intimate films.
It’s unlikely that Kleiser, or many other people, will ever make a more intimate film than It’s My Party. In an alcove of Nick’s house hangs a crucifix surrounded by pictures of people, real and fictional, who were lost to AIDS. In a moving scene near the end, Nick hangs his own picture on the wall.
If you look just above Nick’s photo as he hangs it, you’ll see one of Randal Kleiser’s late love, Harry Stein.
Few documentaries, let along feature films, achieve that level of intimacy.
'If I should die before the wake' - It's My Party review
Despite film’s breeziness, Kleiser’s It’s My Party takes up subject of suicide by terminally ill patients.
Reviewed by Steve Warren, Contributing Writer Of Dallas Voice
Longtime Companion told the story of the first decade of AIDS. It’s My Party tells the story of the second decade.
In both statements “the story” should be changed to “a story,” because there are as many stories as there are people affected by the disease. This one reportedly is based on true incidents from the life of writer-director Randal Kleiser and his late lover, Harry Stein.
The romance of architect Nick Stark (Eric Roberts) and filmmaker Brandon Theis (Gregory Harrison) is sketched in the opening moments. The good times come to an abrupt halt when Nick tests positive for HIV. “That flu it wasn’t the flu. I got it,” he tells his lover. “When he got sick I got scared,” Brandon explains later. Each has issues around the disease that combine to drive a wedge between them, although Brandon seems to merit the bulk of the blame for their nasty divorce.
The past is prologue. They haven’t spoken in a year when Nick learns he has an advanced case of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), which will destroy his brain quickly. He’s seen one friend go that way and resolved, “I’m not gonna die blind, demented and lyin’ in my own shit.” Rather than waiting until he’s dead to exchange “I-love-you’s” with friends and family, he throws himself a farewell party that’s so successful it’s held over for a second day.
It makes sense to let people know they’re appreciated before their memorial services, but where It’s My Party is eye-opening if not potentially controversial is around the issue of assisted suicide. Although there’s black comedy in a flashback showing Nick and Brandon helping a friend to kill himself, Nick’s “final exit” is a Hallmark card that may offer false hope to others considering this path. The idea that anyone can have a good time and wrap up any unresolved issues in a weekend is unrealistic as the thought that we can all go out looking like Eric Roberts when most of us didn’t come in looking like Eric Roberts.
If you can accept the premise, get ready to laugh and cry a lot. Kleiser has assembled an amazing cast, with very few of the usual suspects, to attend this party. Once you know Nick is “half Jewish, half Greek,” you’ll be surprised to learn Lee Grant, playing his mother, is the Greek half. Consummate actress that she is, she pulls it off. George Segal was a good father to Nick for the first 20 years, but didn’t stay around for the second 20, once he learned his son was gay. This and the relationship with Brandon they are still the great loves of each other’s lives are the only serious problems to be worked out.
Marlee Matlin plays Nick’s sister. His best friends are Margaret Cho, who is not exactly cast against type as a fag hag but shows a flair for drama as well as comedy; Bronson Pinchot, who was more believable as a queer when he wasn’t playing one and didn’t push so hard; and Olivia Newton-John, whose husband (Bruce Davison) has issues with their gay son (Devon Gummersall of My So-Called Life). “Dad keeps sending me to church all the times in hopes that I’ll become straight,” the youth tells Nick, who replies, “Catholic Church? Good luck!”
There are also cameos by Greg Louganis, as a guest with a videocam at an earlier party; Roddy McDowall as Nick’s only friend who can’t accept his opting for suicide; Sally Kellerman and others. The lesser-known Paul Regina plays Tony, who seems to be Nick’s constant companion but turns out to be just a friend and “health care professional” who is helping him unofficially.
Brandon initially takes a lot of crap at the party, especially from Pinchot. We’re allowed to wonder for a time whether he really loves Nick or is just there to ease his conscience. In either case it takes strength to hang around, and he and we ultimately are rewarded by a passionate kiss between the two men.
Both lead actors are good, though unlikely to follow Davison and Tom Hanks to Oscar nominations.
Most of the party is filmed almost in Henry Jaglom fashion, apparently with very few retakes, giving it a spontaneous, unpolished look. The polish comes in the editing, including numerous flashbacks, some almost subliminal. Basil Poledouris contributes a restrained score, tasteful but not maudlin, with a solo piano theme dangerously close to the one from Diva.
I don’t know if there are more laughs than tears, because I lost count of both. As for the former, don’t miss the throw-away joke that ends with the punchline, “You’d better pet him first.”
I had trouble with Longtime Companion when it came out, because it hit too close to home. Some of you will have the same problem with It’s My Party, not to mention the complaint that we’re again dealing primarily with middle-class whites.
But as I said, this is only one story, and it’s no longer the only one of our stories to play in a theater near you this week. It was probably brave of Kleiser to make this film, but we get a clue to his motivation near the end when Nick tells Brandon, “I want you to go back to making the kind of films you made in college.”
I don’t know what kind of films Kleiser made in college, but I think I’ve just seen one. Now bring on the cheerleaders!
“It’s My Party” opens Friday for an exclusive run at the UA Cine.