"I wanted to write a Quirry version of the" Orphan Roman of Roman ""

From May 23 to 26 in Moscow, the Film Festival "BOC ON BOC" will be held in Moscow. Among the others, in his program, a film about an orphan girl from the American outback of the 90s, which, after Aunt with his uncle learned about her novel with the Queen of the Graduation Ball, had to survive conversion therapy in a Christian school.

- The book is based on a real or fictional story?

- The book is fiction, and Cameron Poston is a fictional character. However, like Cameron, I grew up on a rural ranch in the eastern part of Montana in the 1990s. Therefore, I used my own memories of my emotional experiences as a homosexual teenager to create a character and her world. In addition, the conversion (or, as it was then called, reparative) therapy is quite real. In the United States alone, 700,000 people were subjected to her.

- That is, this is not a pure autobiography. And what else served as material and guidelines for the novel?

-I felt like a Quir-Persona from nine or ten years old (although, of course, I did not know the word “Quir” then), and from the age of eighteen I seemed to be different as Quir. I have lived my whole life as a Quir, so any literature I wrote will always be devoted to such a life and this experience. And I wanted to write a Quirry version of the "Orphan novel." This genre is the basis of American literature of the XIX and XX centuries. I also wanted to write about growing up a teenager-gay in rural Montana. There is a great tradition of novels created by the authors from Montana in Montana, but I have never read a single novel that would capture Quir-life and would be something like my own experience. In short, I followed the wise advice of Tony Morrison and wrote a novel that I wanted to read myself. This is me and communities known to me.

- How did you work on the script? Why didn’t the film enter the film from Cameron’s life before her entering a Christian school?

- The novel consists of almost 500 pages, and the film lasts only an hour and a half. Of course, there are significant differences between them! In fact, the film covers only the last third of the novel - when Cameron is in the "abode of God." When Desire Akhavan (the director of the film and the co -author of the script) first talked to me, she said that she plans to go in this direction: to focus on the Christian school. I like the film - it does not look like a direct adaptation of my novel, but rather a kind of love letter to some topics and emotions in the book. This is exactly the film that I once wanted to see when I was a closed teenager.

-Have you studied the work and life of such correctional schools in the 90s?

- Yes, sure. I talked with convertible therapy, read the memoirs (I was especially impressed by the “stranger at the gate” of Mela White), the work of Elizabeth Moberly (she came up with the term “reparative therapy”). The documentary of Theodor Manyachi and Francin Rzheznik “Unified Nation under God” in 1993, partly dedicated to the foundation of Exodus International (an organization that provided many resources for practitioners of conversion therapy; fortunately, it broke up in 2014) and the first days of conversion therapy in the US era. I also searched for primary sources - for example, textbooks for practitioners of conversion therapy. The pamphlet “Guide to the hostel”, which is described in my novel, is a paraphrase of a similar document used in the hostel of the Center for Conversion Therapy in Kansas. The same rhetoric, the same formulation.

- How do you evaluate the casting of the film?

- The biggest compliment that I can make to the actors is to admit that now I see the characters through the prism of their game. Although the heroes on the screen may differ from the characters that were in my head when writing a book. I think criticism underestimated the game Chloe Morets, so rough and open. It is a pity that she has very few dialogs in the film, especially when you consider that she is the main character. But she speaks so much with facial expressions. Sasha Lane in the role of Jane Funds and Forrest Goodlac in the role of Adam Red Eagle is very funny and smart. And most importantly, they behave exactly like Quirry teenage of that era. And Emily Skeggs as a teacher Erin is also very good. She presses on all emotions at once - longing, desire, confusion.

-Today, it is just as difficult for teenagers to make a camming out, as in the days of your youth?

- Yes, for many adolescents it is still very difficult, even dangerous, to act like a gay, a lesbian or a transsexual. Now in the media and in the field of entertainment the theme of LGBT is more and better, much more developed activism, the interests of LGBT are better represented in the political sphere. For some adolescents, especially in the USA, all this really facilitates the process of camming out. However, there are still many separate cases of discrimination and even violence against LGBT, especially color trances. For every teenager who writes to me that his parents are accepting and supporting, there is another who says that he still has not visited certain family members, did not make a camming out at work, was disgraced or persecuted because of his quirery.

A short answer: Yes, we have achieved progress, and yes, much more has to be done.

- Are there Christian schools like described in the film/novel today?

- Yes. Conversion therapy exists today in the USA and in other countries of the world - despite the fact that all leading professional medical and psychiatric associations in the United States rejected it as unnecessary, ineffective and dangerous. This does not always happen in a camp or boarding school, as in the film. In addition, this practice is found not only in Christian communities. Some of the therapists offering such services to patients do this without any religious foundations. The statistics of the use of conversion therapy in the United States can be found here .

- In the film on TV, they show “Svyatopitnes”, “Aerobik with God”. Have you come up with it yourself or is it really?

-Ha ha! Many are sure that I came up with Svyatopitnes, even Desire (Akhavan, the director of the film. - Ed. ) At first I thought that I was so great. But no, the “aerobics with God” really existed; Maybe someone is still engaged in her. The video and song used in the film for “Aerobics for Christ” are real videos from the 80s-90s.

Subscribe to the COLTA.RU channel in Yandex.Zen to miss nothing