Music by Sting.
Crisp's experiences in New York went on to inspire Sting's 1987 song Englishman In New York. This after the duo shared screen
time together in 1985's The Bride, a re-make of 1935's The Bride of Frankenstein.
A wood carving portrait I commissioned to hang next to the "naked civil servant" sketch.
I first met Quentin in the early eighties after seeing him on David Letterman and him commenting his phone was publicly listed.
I called and did an interview with him for a show I planned on Manhattan Cable. I never aired the interview(I might put up
clips of it here tho.) But over the following years I kept in touch with Quentin occasionally taking him out to eat, usually
at the diner down the street from his east village room.
I invited him to a picnic Lambda was having at Snug Harbor. An amusing story about our trip over to Staten Island, some friends saw us on the Veranzano Bridge and later asked me who
the elderly woman was in the car with me. LOL, he did look a bit like Lilian Gish.
He was a very gracious man, who I think was taken aback when I would tell him to relax, there was no need to be "on". I would
always call him on his birthday which fell on xmas day. I have several of his books which he autographed for me. All in all,
an elegant man with "style".
QUENTIN AND I AT SNUG HARBOR
ORLANDO HAD JUST BEEN RELEASED
Quentin played Queen Elizabeth in Orlando
Orlando
1992 - UK, Russia, Italy, France
Director - Sally Potter
Orlando stars Tilda Swinton in a role crafted for her over a two year period by director Potter. Swinton plays a young man
in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, whom the Queen orders to never grow old. As the decades pass, the young man keeps his word,
remaining youthful. He awakens one day to find he has transformed into a woman. This is fine with Orlando, until the weight
of society strips away the family estate, wealth and stability. As the story reaches into the 20th century, the beginnings
of "modern" thought offer the promise of reconsideration, but not without cost. The original novel from which the story comes
is by Virginia Woolf.
Some of my favorite "Quentinisms"
Any film, even the worst, is better than real life.
Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation to which the filing system has been lost?
Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other
people think about us.
An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last instalment missing.
Existence is a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.
If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than
they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.
