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Thursday, April 30, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
English instructor's drama based on the novel 'Queer'
By JERRI NIEBAUM
"Anybody who knows me knows that I am an invert and a jungle."
That is a line from "Lee and the Boys in the Backroom," written and directed by Paul Stephen Lim, lecturer in the English department.
The play is based on the novel "Queer," a partially autobiographical story by William Burroughs, Lawrence resident and author. Lim, who has known Burroughs for about 10 years, also based the play on letters that Burroughs wrote to fellow writers he said.
"It's about how a writer becomes a writer, and it's essentially a love story," Lim said. "Except that it's a homosexual love story."
Lee is a middle-aged man living in Mexico City in the early 1950s with his wife and two children. He is addicted to drugs and has fled the United States because he is afraid of being arrested on drug charges.
While living in Mexico, Lee begins to withdraw from drugs and to pay attention to food, drink, sex and relationships that have been put aside because of his drug addiction.
"This is that period where he is rediscovering life," Lim said.
While he is rediscovering life, Lee visits a bar called the "Ship Ahoy,"
where he tells fantastic stories. In search of love and in search of an audience for his stories, Lee uses his tales to court male lovers at the bar.
He soon becomes frustrated with his boyfriends and turns to his typewriter.
And from the typewriter comes
Louis Pasteur, representative of
Burgundy (first book).
"A typewriter doesn't talk back." Lim said.
Lim said he worked directly with Burroughs while writing the play so that he could retain some of the style that Burroughs used in "Queer."
"His writing style and my writing style are quite different." I said.
But Lim said he had managed to incorporate the two styles into a new style that satisfied him.
"The play is true to the spirit of William Burroughs," he said.
Lim wrote the play in one month. He wrote the play after he had cast it and the theater had scheduled it.
"The people were agog," he said.
"They said, 'You can write a play in a month?' I said, 'Watch me.'"
The actors read "Queer" and the play in sections as Lim wrote them.
Charles Whitman, Lawrence resident, will play Lee in the play.
"I have enjoyed and been petrified
He said he saw Burroughs as a "near-mythic figure in American literature," so he had jumped at the chance to perform in the play.
by the process at the same time," Whitmap said.
But he said he wasn't sure how the audience would react to it.
"It's a homosexual love story," Lim said. "Women are just simply not in that world."
No women perform in the play, but two woman-sized mannequins, designed by Elle Patton, Lawrence resident, will sit on-stage. They will represent Lee's wife and Lee's "hapelessly heterosexual" boyfriend. Allerton's girlfriend.
"We just don't know what's going to happen." he said.
Jay Karnes, Omaha, Neb., senior,
blavs Allerton.
"I just had to think, 'My God. It's got to be hard for him seeing his life played out on stage,' " Karnes said of Burroughs.
"Lee and the Boys in the Backroom" will be at 8 p.m. May 8, 9, 11 and 12 and at 2:30 p.m. May 10 at the Lawrence Community Theatre, 1501 New Hampshire St. Tickets are $4 for senior citizens and $5 for the general public. For reservations, call 843-7469.
Award-winning Canadian film flops
"The Decline of the American Empire" bathed in critical acclaim when it arrived at the Academy Awards as Canada's official entry for best foreign language film.
Gil Chavez
Columnist
The film's humor, or lack of it, or my lack of it, was one of the problems. Rumor had it that this was a comic-drama. I saw the drama but little of the comedy.
But as most things that have to do with the Academy Awards, the film's reputation exceeds itself.
I found little to laugh at in the film, and neither did other members of the audience. The scene in which men mimic the dances and conversations in pickup bars and a scene that features a flashback about a man who accidentally solicits a transvestite were the only scenes where I saw a spark of humor.
For the most part, it seemed to be a blunt slice of life. Denys Arcand directed and wrote this frank account of an afternoon in the lives of eight self-satisfied French Canadian academics. They while away the hours finding historical justification for their sexual pursuits.
The world being as it is, the truly brave are never truly bored. Sadly, these middle-aged academics are bored and frightened. They're afraid that old age will rob them of the physical and intellectual qualities that feed their narcissism.
During the afternoon, the men cook dinner while the women work out at a fitness center. Both groups engage in long discussions of sex in its varied contexts, kinks and subterfuges. Arcand uses recurring themes in a score based on Handel's music to echo the themes in the conversations. In fact, the film is one long discussion of sex and love. It's a modern Plato's Symposium with flashbacks.
Arcand's central theme is that civilizations decline when personal satisfaction becomes paramount to all societal values. One of the characters, a rough fellow who interrupts them, says, "All intellectuals do is talk."
Yet the plot lines are set so skillfully that they almost save the film. By now all the important events have occurred except one, a disclosure by one of the women that alters the relationships within the group.
It's unfortunate that the subtleties of the plot are wasted on such hackneyed characters. It seems that every few years a variation of the same group of yuppies trots out to a different location to act out the tragedies and comedies of Baby Boomer Sexual Angst.
I have seen these mythical boomers in college, marriage, divorce, idealism and disillusionment. All that is left for them is old age and death, and it won't be soon enough.
'Extreme Prejudice' audience might get lost in the crossfire
For those of you not familiar with the term "Extreme Prejudice," it is the U.S. armed forces' nice way of saying "kill everyone in sight." That's just what this film attempts to do.
John Benner Columnist
Nick Nolte as Jack Benten with Maria Conchita Alonso as Sarita in "Extreme Prejudice."
The movie also displays a prejudice of its own through its portrayal of Mexicans as gun-wielding, tequila-swilling, drug-drunk murderers. Additionally, the plot manages to combine cops vs. dealers and hysterically brutality to attract as many blood-hungry viewers as possible.
courtesy Tri-Star Pictures, In
The most disappointing part of this film is that some very good performances are wasted.
Nick Nole paints a better-than-average and almost believable picture of Jack Benteen, a Texas ranger who must hold a drug trafficking ring headed by his boyhood best friend.
Rip Torn, as an abrasive but good-hearted sheriff, turns in the one truly superior performance, is killed off much too early in the film. He and Noelle play off another quite well until he is gunned down, the type of thing that happens much too often in this movie.
To add some complication to the plot, Bentene's lover, Sarita Cisneros (Maria Conchita Alonso), also is the former girlfriend of his coke-dealing pal, Cash Bailey (Powers Booth).
As the story progresses, we see that a group of super-secret U.S. soldiers, all of whom are supposed to have died in combat or in
It was annoying and difficult to ignore Alonso's Italian accent. Perhaps the producers thought we would be so wowed by her performance as a Mexican saloon singer that we wouldn't notice. She doesn't sing that well.
accidents, has arrived in El Paso presumably to stop Bailey from raking in any more easy money
This is implausible enough, but the group then is ordered to rob a bank and to follow Bailey across the border to Durango, Mexico. The reasons for these irrational acts eventually are explained in a way that could convince only the most gullible viewer.
When this elite squad follows Bailey to his stronghold in Durango, they find that he has set up a "company town" that is populated by his drug-smuggling henchman.
This idea previously has been explored in "The Heart of Darkness" and again in "Apocalypse Now." This film is inferior by comparison.
"Extreme Prejudice" has some serious plot shortcomings, and the producers have succumbed to the temptation to create yet another "shoot-em-up" without a purpose.
The good performances of Nole and Tern, especially when they are in a scene together, unfortunately are not exploited. We can only hope they again will be paired up and will be allowed to act without someone shooting at them.
JAYHAWKER
The 1987 edition of the Jayhawker Yearbook has now arrived.
Pick yours up at Hoch or in front of the Union between 8:30 and 4:30.
Distribution will last for only two weeks
You must have your KUID and receipt of purchase.
Yearbooks can still be purchased
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