On Saturday night, Michael and I caught a screening of "Portrait of Jason," Shirley Clarke's notorious 1967 documentary about Jason Holliday -- ne(e) Aaron Payne -- a self-proclaimed hustler, house boy and would-be cabaret performer. Clarke, the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer and investor, decided to "become" a filmmaker after her dance career peetered out, and thought her flamboyant friend would make an interesting subject. Clarke probably didn't need to ply Jason to get him to talk about himself nonstop for 10 hours -- he is a gay man, after all -- but countless cocktails and joints costar in the bizarre opus, as he describes being black and gay in pre-Stonewall America in the 1960s. (IFC is showing the newly restored version, which has so many flaws in it -- frequently out-of-focus or entirely missing picture -- that I fear to think what it used to look like.) It's hard to say I "liked" this film. Jason is an enormously depressing presence, whose constant cackling and Mae West and Katharine Hepburn impersonations do little to mask a life of sorrow and shame. But I'm certainly glad I spent the 105 minutes that were included in the film, which was as educational as it was disturbing.
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