16. TELEVISION HOSTS

  I personally like television. If I have any ambition at all, it is to meet everybody in the world before I die. I’m not doing badly. You cannot listen to everyone, of course, but you can speak to them on television. It’s an excellent opportunity, a wonderful medium.

  More precisely, my appreciation is for that much-maligned, although much-loved, much-watched and even listened-to form of television called the talk show.

  People, often in a panic, sometimes telephone me to say, “I have to go on television. Have you any advice to give me as to how I should conduct myself?” I reply, “It’s like a party. Dress up and look pleased to be there.” After all, the operative words are ‘host’ and ‘guest’. But this advice must be taken calmly. There are strategies, which I won’t go so far as to call secrets, to navigate the territory of television. Allow me to share them with you.

  First, do not wear anything spectacular such as sequins. They will catch the light and distract attention from your face. And when I say, “look pleased,” I do not mean that you should smile broadly. It will emphasize the lines on your face. Like all people who are in the public eye, you must wear an expression of fatuous affability. Turn toward the lights, but never blink. The only time you can shut your eyes is when the host is speaking. With any luck, the cameras will be turned away from you then.

  Secondly, understand that the experience of doing a talk show begins long before you are on camera. Some channels lead you straight to a make-up room where an expert paints you bright orange, to counteract the bluish tint of the television lights. It’s a good idea for a guest to carry a pocket mirror so you can take a crafty peek at what has been done to you in case it is absolutely terrible. And remember not to put your hands near your face because they will not have been made up to match.

  Other stations lead you into a green room and from there onto the stage, so be prepared. For some unknown reason, cameramen do not like you to wear large areas of black or white. Wear smart, new, unemphatic clothes.

  I could say that guests have nothing to fear, but unfortunately some interviewers try to score points off you. While the metaphor of a party may be true, to some the metaphor of a boxing match, automobile race or skeet shoot is closer.

  An English interviewer, now fortunately dead, asked Mr. Tati[45] why Englishmen thought that all Frenchmen were pigs. Mr. Tati rose from his chair and left the screen. Somebody had to run after him and coax him back. Mr. Tati did the right thing. Never argue with a television host. Never defend yourself. In fact, never display any strong emotion at all. It may embarrass the viewers.

  The same man was interviewing Ms. Swanson[46]. She was a woman, about 30 years older than he, a movie star and an American. That placed her just south of being a saint, but when she pronounced the word ‘schedule’ in American (skedule) instead of in English (shedule), he turned to the camera and made a face of disgust. Ms. Swanson ignored him. Nothing said in front of the cameras need be taken seriously.

  Only one law governs television: the survival of the glibbest. If you’re asked, “What is the secret of the universe?” don’t gasp, don’t cough and don’t say, “A good question.” That shows you’re playing for time. Say immediately and calmly, “I’m happy to tell you there is no secret.” The remark is inane but you smile and your lips move. You’ll be back.

  A television interview, you see, is like a geography examination. You can’t study the whole world. Therefore, on the night before your exam, you take your atlas down from its shelf and open it at random. The map that you happen to expose is of China. You regard this as a sign from You-Know-Who and study China. The next day the main question in your paper is about France. You-Know-Who has sold you a pup. Don’t panic. Your answer begins, “France is not like China, which is . . .”

  Let me translate the situation into television terms. You arrive at the studio with a wonderful anecdote about your mother. When you get there, some fool says, “How’s your father?” This give you a few seconds to reply, “My father’s worn out coping with my mother who . . .” In other words, you say what you’ve come to say, no matter what the question.

  Americans love what they call ‘one-liners’. In other words, aphorisms. An aphorism is an untidy truth neatly phrased, but do not begin an interview with one. The interviewer and the audience may find it too much for them, but when they have become used to your style of conversation, finish the interview with one. It will give people something to remember you by. Begin by addressing the interviewer. End by speaking to the camera. The world must get the impression that you are its friend and have come to tell it something you feel it would like to know.

  There is also the question of how much of you the camera can see. This you will have to guess. If the camera seems very near, then likely only your face will be visible. Do not make big movements. Keep your hands near your face. I have known a victim who stood up to demonstrate something he wished to explain. As he rose, he said to the cameramen, “Can they see my feet?” The technician adjusted his camera. They do not mind doing this, so long as you don’t do it too often. It is your show. You must make the most of it. You have only about ten minutes in which to persuade the world to understand you and, above everything else, to like you.

  Though certain famous interviewers try to score off you, most of them are working to show you off. You’re talent and stardom reflects theirs, since you are their guest. The best in this respect is Mr. Cavett[47]. Whatever he is secretly thinking, he appears to be giving your every utterance his gravest interest and he gives everyone the impression that he likes them.

  If you do not have the good fortune to be the guest of such a person, still accept any offers. You need all the television time you can acquire. If you are forced to appear with another guest you must acknowledge them, but do not give them an opportunity to speak. Your television time is short. It is sacred. Do not let someone steal your thunder.

  17. THE ALTERNATIVE CHRIsTMAS MESSAGE

  As you may know, the Queen of England addresses her subjects every year on the afternoon of Christmas Day in a broadcast on BBC television and radio. In her speech she reviews the year and invites viewers and listeners to be part of the history of Britain, to be proud of being British, and to journey onwards together.

  Sometime in 1993, a television executive called Mr. Michael Jones came from England to America to meet with me. When we met he asked me, “Have you one final speech, one final message, to deliver to the people of Britain?”

  And flippantly I said, “Yes, I have. Tell them to pack tonight and to leave for America tomorrow.”

  He seemed rather pleased by that. He told me that Channel 4 were contemplating an annual alternative to the Queen’s Christmas Message.

  “Will you make the inaugural alternative speech for us?”

  And in typical fashion I said, “Ye-e-e-e-s-s-s-s.”

  Then, of course, I began to worry about it. Principally I was worried about whether or not I would have to memorize the speech. My worries were soon soothed. The producers told me I could either read it from a script or a teleprompter. This made me considerably happier about the whole thing.

  So, without further ado, here is what I told the British that night, as broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4 on Christmas Day in 1993:

  As Mr. Dickens[48] would have said, 1993 has been the best of times and it has been the worst of times. A reginal theme has permeated my year. I have had, as some of you may know, the novel experience of appearing as a queen of England in a film adaptation of Mrs. Woolf’s[49] novel Orlando. The film connects the many moments of English history with what I believe is called ‘gender-bending’.

  Having worn reginal gowns, I begin to understand why Queen Elizabeth I was not always in the best of moods. She was much troubled by relatives and in-laws, often Scottish, many of whom she axed from life and even more seriously from the social register.

  Continuing my honest masquerade, I appear thus to address the entire British nation on Christmas day. I am, of course, in mufti[50]. But departing from tradition, I will not speak mainly of myself, Britain, or the strangely misnamed Commonwealth. Instead, I will speak of America. I do this because America is the land where I think, despite its faults, the best of you should be.

  Mr. Bush, still president in early 1993, being an elder statesman wanted everything to stay the same, the same as it had been in the Hollywood sunshine of Mr. Reagan’s day. Now Mr. and Mrs. Clinton have entered the White House, and by political standards they are a young couple.

  They watched many episodes of Sesame Street and they wish for change. For one thing, they want to transform America into a welfare state. They want everyone, however poor, however foreign, however idle, to be eligible for healthcare. The trouble with this grand notion is that it will cost money. A lot of it.

  Americans believe in money. The dollar is not just a currency, it is a passion. This being so, it is difficult to find out how they lost so much of it, especially as they did not have Mr. Lamont[51] to guide them.

  In the early 1960s, when the Kennedys reigned from the brittle splendor of their fireproof castle in Camelot, almost every country in the world owed money to the United States. In the thirty years since, this situation has been allowed to become reversed.

  Just as the country in general is falling part, so is New York in particular. Viewed from a distance it looms up as a magnificent citadel of steel and glass. The Emerald City come to life. But when you live in it, it turns out to be a wreck. If you take a swift taxi drive down Fifth Avenue, your head hits the roof of the taxi cab several times. If Audrey Hepburn today wanted to enjoy breakfast at Tiffany’s, she would not choose to arrive at that Mecca of diamonds by taxi cab.

  In the early 1960s, not only all the money but also all the power in the world was in the hands of the United States. They could have bombed everybody, so that there was only America or ashes. There would have been no more trouble, no more anti-Americanism. The bombing hasn't been done, because American politicians were afraid of what the neighbors would say. They want to rule the world and be loved. It can’t be done.

  What made Mrs., I beg your pardon, Lady Thatcher so great was that she didn’t give a damn whether anybody loved her or not. That was how she became the greatest political star since Mr. Churchill. Like that great figure, she wept only for herself.

  Now America is not in a sufficiently secure position to bomb the world, so it has decided to save it, which may prove to be just as expensive and will certainly take much longer.

  Adding to the violence of life in general, women have now decided to become people. This is a change for the worse. Women were nicer than people. If our cities are to be populated entirely by people, life will become faster, louder and harsher. The loudness is already here. No one seems to mind.

  The American young are violent because they have no inner life; they have no inner life because they have no thoughts; they have no thoughts because they know no words; and they know no words because they never converse. They would not be heard above the din that rocks the dim cellars where they gibber and twitch.

  They have one word a year which means “I don’t like this” and another which says “I do like this”. One season you can be bad, another you can be neat, and yet another you can be cool. When you ask the young in what sense their little friends are cool, they say nothing. They cannot embellish their judgment.

  Now, all our heroes are either sportsmen, whose profession obliges them to charge one another like buffalos until their injuries compel them to retire, or movie stars, who pretend to hit, kick or shoot one another or to blow up entire cities.

  Though I regret all this, it does not in any way lessen my love for America. So far, I have only once been threatened in the streets of Manhattan, whereas in England I never felt safe for a moment. Indeed, it is my impression that everybody in the United States is a friend. In England, nobody is a friend.

  I left England’s lonely streets over ten years ago. Here there are no nice people from Tunbridge Wells eager to chill what is left of my marrow with iceberg stares. There are no royal appointments and disappointments. This city[52] instantly embraced me, and I it. I became a naked film critic[53] and, dream of dreams, almost, almost a celebrity.

  I have also come to believe wholeheartedly in Mrs. Lazarus’ verse inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty[54]. If ever there was a huddled mass, it has to be me. Everyone can see at a glance what a huddled mass I am. No one draws attention to the fact. Indeed, on occasion, I am permitted to appear in the guise of a VIP.

  Recently I attended a secret screening of a movie called Zelda. After the film, the entire audience went to the Algonquin Hotel. There I managed to be photographed with Mr. Fairbanks and later with Ms. Warrick. Neither of these two luminaries had the faintest idea who I was, but neither refused for a moment to raise me to their rarefied level of royal visibility.

  This is only one sign of American generosity. They are a truly openhanded people, free with their time, their money and their availability. My advice to the British is pack tonight, set out tomorrow like the Portuguese explorers of old for the land of the blessed. We are waiting for you.

  18. Apology

  I’m told I have stepped into a political controversy because of comments attributed to me in a recent London news story[55], sensationally titled: ‘Stately Homo backs call to abort gay babies.’

  The article was inaccurate. I am eighty-eight years old and have never called for any public policy, certainly not the policy referred to in the headline. I’ll say what I’ve said before when I have been dragged into political controversy: if I offended or caused anyone hurt, I apologize and withdraw my statement.

  I often get into trouble, my friends tell me, because people today – even other gay people – don’t understand how painful and miserable it was to be a homosexual in the early part of the twentieth century. And so, I’ve borrowed a tactic from Act Up[56]: I sometimes feel the need to shock people to make my point.

  I was speaking of my own personal pain – in part because I want people to better understand how harmful homophobia was to the homosexuals of my generation. Most people today don’t know this and I don’t know how to make them understand. And so sometimes I say shocking things.

  I hope that my controversial statement won’t trigger the very kind of witch-hunts and censorships that contributed to my lifelong pain. I don’t mean to get involved in politics, but sometimes I get dragged into them, and if that is the case, again, I apologize if my old age has caused me to be inarticulate in my attempts to avoid causing pain to others.

  Quentin Crisp

  POETRY

  19. COLLECTED poetry

  I don’t remember my poems very well, but lately I have been trying to remember them. You see, through discussions with Mr. Ward I am beginning to revive them from a long ago past. I thought that maybe they could be made into a slender volume, but there are only a small number of them I can remember. So, instead, I have gathered what I can remember here for inclusion in this book. There were a lot more, but alas I can’t remember them all.

  THE WOUNDED[57][58]

  What shall we say, who cringed and live,

  To those who fought and died,

  And what excuses shall we give?

  Where can we hide?

  If there’s a heaven, there they live,

  Our hell is at their side,

  Whether they blame or, worse, forgive,

  Where can we hide?

  What shall we do that will assuage

  For those who did not die, their pain,

  Their blindness, lameness, and their rage

  That it was vain?

  There are no words that we can give

  To those who fought and died,

  To beg for pardon that we live,

  Where can we hide?

  THE HAUNTED [59]

  Now I am dead, the cold square house is shut,

  Where once I used to live and wonder why,

  And every dark, uncurtained eye,

  Though bleak before, is now a tone more bleak.

  Upon the blue-green lawns the starlings strut,

  Where once I stood and hoped that I might die.

  They strut and lance with sudden beak

  The blue-green blades that no one comes to cut.

  And on the pathways, tended now no more,

  The raindrops gathered on the underside

  Of leafless boughs, drip as they dripped before,

  And here I walk and wonder why I died.

  I WILL MAKE MUSIC[60]

  I will make endless music, syncopated,

  Shrill, sad music, out of English speech.

  Your ears, to calumny habituated,

  More euphonic phrasing might not reach.

  I will make endless music, till the lonely

  Limits of our torment have been told,

  That all may hear and some, not only

  Hearken, but be heartened and consoled.

  I will make endless music. Say not

  That the world’s ears are waxed or numb,

  Because I will not, dare not, may not,

  See you suffer, and be dumb.

  MANIE D’AMOUR