"One of the most touching love stories..."

Chris and Don: A Love Story is a documentary about two men and the three-plus decade relationship they shared with one another. These men were noted writer Christopher Isherwood (his Berlin Stories became the basis for Cabaret) and famed artist and portrait painter Don Bachardy, thirty years his lover's junior. Starting in 1950's Malibu these two shared a life together as openly as any you would see today, their commitment to one another no less profound or inspiring as any straight relationship you've ever heard stories about.

The film goes into release starting later this Summer, and I'll get into it more fully in a review then, but as for now just know that this is a pricelessly mvoing documentary that is richly satisfying and deeply emotional. There is an ethereal timelessness to the pair's love story that really forced me to look again at how I view relationships between people, and for anyone that thinks gay marriage can't work or is some sort of genetic impossibility I herby give you two men how, not only prove that statement wrong, did it decades before the idea that California could ever legalize marriage between people of the same gender was even a twinkle in some vocal activist's eye.

While I personally don't consider myself gay (can't say I've never thought about other girls, it's just the idea of giving up guys is as alien and as weird for me as those things come), looking at a film like this can really broaden people's horizons and open their eyes to the possibilities love has to offer. Committment isn't easy, but if these two could do it in an age when they could have severely harmed (or worse, kiled) for doing so gives me hope that I can maybe do the same someday in my life.

I sat down with the directors of this movie, Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, this morning to talk about the making of their film and how seeing it all come to fruition has affected their lives. It was a glorious forty minute chat that I hope leads to an equally fantastic profile piece a bit later on. As say later because, unfortunately, the film doesn't open in Seattle officially until this August, so for those interested in reading a complete article you'll have to wait a little while until it hits the pages of the SGN and the feature section of MovieFreak.

But I am not above posting a few highlights from our conversation. Hopefully you'll find them interesting. Even more important, I hope you take the time to see the pair's movie. It's very, very good and I seriously doubt anyone in the right mind is going to be even remotely disappointed.

On first coming up with the idea for the project:

Guido Santi: "I had a chance to Don Bacharady about 17-18 years ago when I arrived in the States from Italy. We became friends and I remember one night at a dinner party he showed this this beautiful footage he shot with Chris [Isherwood] in the 1950's and I thought, this is incredible. I was surprised nobody had told their story as this is one of the most touching love stories I'd ever heard. One day, Tina and I were talking and I interested her to Don and we decided make the movie, decided to put it on the credit card and make the documentary about this beautiful relationship."

On spending so much time with Don Bacharady:

Santi: "It's a film about the past. It's more much difficult when you work on such material. Don deserves about 90-percent of the credit [for this]."

Tina Mascara: "I mean, he's the film. He's amazing."

Santi: "Yes, amazing, that's right. He is a fantastic man and a fantastic storyteller. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry. In the film, you go up and down with him, and I think that is because Don was willing to be so intimate with us."

Mascara: "There were days when he was really really on and their were days when he wasn't really on, and on the days he was one we had more material then we knew what to do with. Everything he said sounded so amazing, and it was hard for us to actually take only the bites there were the important parts of the story because there was so much that he would say that would hit us over the head."

On not implicitly relating Chris and Don's story to recent political and social events:

Santi: "Our film is political in a different way. You can be political without being overt. I think, their life together for thirty years, is a major statement. The statement is the relationship."

On using animation to visualize the 'Kitty and the Horse':

Mascara: "I feel the animation is just so important because I don't think you really get the magical, secret life that was for them unless you play it really big. We read a few letters [in the film], but there was correspondence between them for twenty years in these character voices. It as important to show that visually in some way."

On living as an openly gay couple in the 1950's and 60's:

Santi: "It is dificult even now for a homosexual or a lesbian couple to live a normal life and for them to have thier rights and knowlesge recognized, but I think back then it was even worse. I think that if Isherwood were alive today he would be incredibly happy of all the battles that have been won by the gay and lesbian community. But, for them, living life was the greatest statment."

Mascara: "That's what they thought. I think in the 60's and 70's, when gay rights were coming into being, I think Chris was critized for not being involved in the active marches and that sort of thing. But I think his point of view was I'm always there to show up and talk about it and that I'm writing about it in my work and I am not hiding it [my relationship with Chris]. What more statement could there be then that? He was completely conscious that he was contributing. He did contribute and this relationship is proof of that."

On sitting down with Leslie Caron:

Mascara: "We went to Paris to interview her, and we were lucky because Don created a connection for us and she was automatically open [to us] because of her friendship with Don Bacharady and Christopher Isherwood. She was an honor for me. I saw Gigi and An American in Paris and I was, as a kid, jsut loved her. She's a movie star. It was incredible."

Santi: "I think her interview for the film, in my opinion, is the best because she gives such a personal touch to [Chris and Don's] story. When she talks about the last time she saw Chris and she remembered what he told her, it is such a poignant moment. It was amazing."

On Don's reaction to the film:

Mascara: "He generally travels with us and I wish he would have been here because the Seattle audience is just amazing. He would have been really, really blown away. But on his first time watching the film he cried. He laughed and he cried."

Santi: "We showed it to him about a year ago in March and we were terrified because it is his life, it is his legacy. I remember after he was reacting in a spelendid way, and that was the most euphoric moment so far. To show your work, to show four years of your life, and have the main subject of your film approve it, it was touching for me. I was so happy that night."

Again, I'll have the full interview available at Moviefreak in August. Until then, it's now time to get back to SIFF. I've got more movies to see today and tonight (which hopefully all be better then the anemic offerings I suffered through yesterday), and if I don't get going soon I just might miss out on another winner.