Portrait Of Jason
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Film Description
A pioneering work in the cinema verite movement, Shirley Clarke presents a raw record of a confessional conversation with an African-American gay hustler recounting his life and times. A disturbing and fascinating document, it unflinchingly observes Jason Holliday - conversing, performing, confessing, dissolving.
Film Information
DVD Extras
New digital transfer of the fully restored film print prepared by the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Introduction to the film by artist Wendy Clarke, daughter of Shirley Clarke; Wendy Clarke’s acclaimed video project Love Tapes, including Shirley Clarke’s personal Love Tape; Booklet featuring a new essay on the film by Tony Rayns; Essay by Tom Sutpen.
Technical Details
| Certificate |
E |
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Length |
99 mins
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Label |
2RUN |
| Cat No |
SECONDRUN010 |
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Format |
DVD |
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Black & White |
| Region | 0 |
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Aspect |
1.33:1 |
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Review by Graeme Hobbs
on 7th October 2005
Early winter, 1967. In one all night alcohol and weed session, Jason Holliday – hustler, whore, houseboy, raconteur, entertainer, freeloader and would-be nightclub performer, raps about his life to Shirley Clarke’s camera. Self-mocking, thoroughly sure of himself and his talent for a good story, Jason is at home, and his laughter, coupled with a self-deprecating amorality, is infectious.
With the entire film made up of Jason telling his tales, it’s hard to think of another film in which one character is so relentlessly present and yet which journeys outside of its own time frame for its stories. In essence, it’s a one-man theatrical performance with its 100 minutes held between past experiences and future dreams. Quite a performance it is too, and Jason knows it: ‘this is my moment, I’m like, here on the throne and I can say whatever I goddam please, but it’s got to be righteous you know. This is my chance to really feel myself, and say, yes, I’m the bitch.’
His anecdotes range from tales of work as a houseboy and a hustler, beatings as a child from his father (‘Brother Tough’), to visits to the psychiatrist. The rhythm of the film is marked by queasily unsettling fades in and out focus that accompany the changing of film reels. It’s marked too by the pattern of Jason pulling himself together and soberly beginning one of his stories and then, sooner or later – usually sooner, dissolving into helpless laughter as the absurdity of some situation or other – being drunk, mixing with hypocritical house guests, a headshrink asking him about his performance in bed, takes hold. As the film goes on and the alcohol hits, the laughter becomes a little more desperate and emotional, and the camera keeps on running, waiting for Jason to break. Jason knows this of course. When he talks of the nightclub act he is preparing, he says it should have a mix of ‘sex, comedy and a little tragedy – people love to see you suffer.’ We’re so accustomed to Jason’s performance of himself that when the crack does come, moving as it is, it’s hard to tell apart from another variant of his act, the tearful finale in the last reel. Jason is too resilient and resourceful to stay pathetic for too long.
A curious moment occurs about 30 minutes into the film when Jason takes off his bottle glasses and puts on a ‘picture hat’ to do his Mae West impressions. For a short while, standing there squinting and blind as a mole, he seems almost defenceless. An unlikely comparison came unbidden – he reminded me of Buster Keaton, though at first thought no two people could be further apart. Maybe it was because you know in both of them there is so much more going on beneath the surface. Maybe it was just the hat.
Aaron Payne, the birth name of the character Jason Holliday, died in 1998. His obituary in the local paper only mentions that ‘as a young man he was in the entertainment world’. It seems as though the nightclub act remained one of those sustaining dreams of life, as necessary as it was destined to be unfulfilled. There’s no tragedy here though. From the evidence of this film, his whole life was a performance, animated by a very human quality that may well have been born of need but that resembles something very like unconditional love.
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This film is part of the following Film Collections
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