In the Life: Ep. 905, "June - July 2000"

on this edition of in the life you had pain over your world getting hip to hepatitis a new health campaign targets gay men a gay film classic returns with some familiar faces everyone was like oh we saw you in parting glances and the first openly gay federal judge lays down the law plus an ambitious new play about the town where matthew shepard lived and died all this and more on in the life america's lesbian and gay cultural news magazine in the life is funded in part by the h van ameringen foundation additional support provided by michael a lepin richard m and peggy danziger agnes gund and daniel shapiro jonathan b scheffer and christopher barley barry c scovard and mark wielinski jeffrey b sorif rick wyland the lilly akinclass foundation broadway cares equity fights aids the collingwood foundation the gill foundation the rainbow endowment the riverside church in the city of new york the snowden foundation the new york community trust the mitchell gold company in the hopes of eliminating all types of fear and prejudice the gay network gay.com and the annual support of in the life members like you welcome to in the life america's news magazine on gay and lesbian issues and culture i'm catherine linton it has been nearly two years since a gay college student named matthew shepard was found savagely beaten and left to die outside of laramie a small town in wyoming just the mention of shepherd's name still evokes horrifying images of anti-gay violence and many in the gay community in fact many americans in general have often wondered what life would be like in a town where such a chilling crime could happen on this episode in the life turns the spotlight on an acting company that is providing some answers to that question and some insight into the shepherd murder through a theatrical portrait of the people of laramie the people who are performing are the people who met the people of laramie presidential appointments to the federal bench are decidedly political and jonathan capart reports as we hold court with the first open lesbian appointed to a federal bench later in this program we'll also talk to the cast of a pioneering film called parting glances that was first released 15 years ago parting glances is one of the first films to feature a character with aids one of the many health concerns addressed here at the callan lord community health center in new york our first segment focuses on another potential killer one that has not received the attention that it deserves hepatitis is a disease that is spread much like hiv and gay men are at a particularly high risk as mason sf reports there's a new campaign to educate the public about hepatitis and thankfully some of the news is good forty-year-old carl schmidt says it must have happened about 20 years ago while he was young and enjoying life before the you know onset of aids and the onset of you know practicing safe sex if you had pain over your liver carl wasn't infected with hiv but with hepatitis and all these questions come in my head how long was i going to live is this the end am i going to have a productive life while there are several hepatitis viruses gay men are at high risk for hepatitis a and hepatitis b hepatitis a is spread through unsanitary conditions such as contact with human waste the result is severe flu-like symptoms including vomiting and fatigue it can last from several weeks to several months but then typically goes away hepatitis b is spread much like hiv mainly through sex or contact with blood again the symptoms are like the flu but even when patients feel better some 10 percent don't get rid of the virus over time it can cause severe liver damage and can be fatal seattle doctor ted eaton has treated gay patients with both types hepatitis b is much more debilitating has a three to four percent rate of death and it can cause complications lifelong including liver cancer so it's pretty serious while for years carl felt fine he was always conscious of damaging his liver we'd like to go to parties go out to bars and i was you know concerned how much should i drink if i drink am i going to you know is it going to cause me to get sick carl also wonders if the hepatitis might have affected his relationships i would be afraid if i told someone that i was you know a carrier of hepatitis that they wouldn't be interested in me unlike carl's situation 20 years ago when he was infected today a vaccine does exist for both hepatitis a and b when we ask should we vaccinate everyone in this case it's really a slam dunk researcher jake jacobs recently published a study in the journal of the gay and lesbian medical association he analyzed the cost of the hepatitis a vaccine to the benefit of keeping gay men healthy to him the results were clear for every dollar we spend on vaccine we save 12 dollars in medical costs work loss costs and in addition fewer men die and we save additional years of life we should be out there with uh public health messages on the television we should have billboards for it same way we have anti-smoking billboards as a large benefit would come from getting the gay community vaccinated something like this perhaps this was what dr eaton had in mind he thought a public awareness campaign would help both seattle patients and their physicians the medical profession has been a little bit amiss in educating that population about their risk and so a lot of men have sex with men come to see me and aren't aware that these vaccines are recommended for them or that they should get them working on seattle's commission for sexual minorities eaton hoped the city would help from the beginning it was acknowledged by the mayor's office and the city council that sexual minority health was important so basically there's two different kinds well they look great with the city committed to a hepatitis initiative drew emory at the public health department was the man to make it happen one of the messages that we're promoting is that vaccine makes you stronger because it does you are going to fight disease before it gets to you but by getting vaccinated the ads were to run on the city buses but first emery had the fun task of choosing the right models i went to bars i went to the broadway market i walked down the street one model i met at kinko's i did you know your basic how do you meet guys routine and it worked and i'm out of practice so you know it was good for me emery recruited sean penn offsinger at one of seattle's dance clubs and apparently his appeal was wider than expected i've had a lot of straight girls come up to me oh my god you're the one that's on the bus and and whatnot so more than gay people but gay people are noticing i thought it was a spoof on the abercrombie and fitch commercials i think it looks like fun they're very gay i thought there was actually a gap commercial i applaud you a round of applause for everyone okay little stick the real applause goes to guys like eric boxford who's getting his hepatitis b vaccination it's a series of three shots and so i have to come back again in a month for the second booster and then again in six months after that for the final shot besides lifelong immunity eric also receives a t-shirt declaring him a member of the hep squad wear it with pride but the campaign doesn't end here we're also doing outreach in producing materials that will be taken to bars to the baths to community events places where gay men are while the city of seattle is doing what it can to help educate gay men on the vaccines available to prevent hepatitis work is being done here at the national institutes of health on how to treat those already infected in fact experts say that they're already reaping benefits from years of research into another deadly disease all too familiar to gay men hiv aids there's no question there's an aids legacy that the attention and the money and the interest poured into antiviral treatments with aids has been benefited us directly dr jay hoofnoggle heads up hepatitis research at nih he says drugs such as interferon approved in 1992 and the more recently approved limiting have given patients hope so that within the next 10 or 15 years i believe we'll will not only be able to prevent hepatitis b which we can do now but we'll also be able to treat it effectively so that the majority of people will not suffer the long-term consequences carl may be living proof when he got sick last year dr prescribed lumidine it worked the drug is working it brought my liver enzyme count down over the last year it i do feel somewhat better i don't lay around as much i have more energy but with the new medications there are a lot of unanswered questions such as how long will the benefits last what we find is a percentage of patients develop resistance and it no longer has this effect of suppressing the virus while carl is thankful for the new treatments he wishes the vaccine would have been available to him before he became infected unlike hiv you know there is a vaccine this can be prevented through a vaccine and i would encourage you know all gays and lesbians to um get the vaccine it's well worth the cost they said you can't be gay i said i am they said it's a phase i said i don't think so they said well even if you were gay which you are not we don't care we don't care we really don't care and i said well i do which blew their arms and voices through the roof oh great great now what are we supposed to do you know there's a place for people like you yeah new york the doctor-patient relationship is built on honesty and trust if you don't feel comfortable talking openly with your doctor he or she may not be able to make informed decisions about your health care the gay and lesbian medical association offers a referral service so that you can find a gay friendly physician in your area to find the link visit in the life's website at www.inthelifetv.org i'm david drake and you are watching in the life many film buffs consider the period of a new queer cinema refreshingly original and daring films produced from the late 1980s to the early 90s as the golden age of gay themed films but predating that by just a few years was the release of parting glances which one critic called the best movie ever made about gays in the united states he said he only eats because you come over and make him is he trying to do himself in ah he'd eat he only says that because he's afraid otherwise i'm dumb i feel like a widower in miami beach pardon glances marked the directorial debut of bill sherwood who died of aids-related complications in 1990. sherwood's first and only film was unique in that it presented aids as only one part in the larger picture of gay life in the 1980s the film was certainly a breakthrough for gay cinema but also for many in its cast and to celebrate its 15th anniversary it has just been re-released on dvd fighting glasses was part of the beginning of the gay cinema it's a wonderful film i loved it i went crazy over it it was like a coming out party at the multiplex this was like the stonewall of gay cinema pardon glances centers around michael and robert a new york couple who are about to temporarily separate when robert is transferred overseas michael's ex-lover and best friend is nick who is hiv-positive oh not that believe it or not i like this stupid thing the plot takes place within a 24-hour period and begins as robber prepares to leave michael and new york for a two-year work assignment in africa i want to leave look i'm not going to last two years over there i'll probably be back in six months we just need a break you know the centerpiece of the film and its most memorable scene is a going away party for robert hosted by their close friend joan let me just put on a light surprise my character um is hiv and at that point i don't think there was any other films that that were dealing with this if you're trying to market a film it's probably not the thing that people would flock to see there was a screening in new york uh and we invited the audience uh to talk back um afterwards and i'll never forget there was a woman who stood up and said um this film really disturbed me and i'm like okay take a deep breath talk to me and she said i have a brother who's homosexual and i said oh my sister and you have something in common and she said what really upset me about the film is you made it look so normal and i just said thank you and i said you need to go home now and think about what you just said because yeah that's what it's about writer director bill sherwood's desire to make parting glances grew out of his frustration with the usual content and style of gay themed films he had a way of capturing snippets of his life and writing them down and and making you see so clearly what what he had lived it's not your fault it's nobody's fault it's not that it's that sometimes when i'm over there all i can think of is i'm so glad i don't have it who wouldn't be don't worry a few years down the road we have lung cancer heart attacks to look forward to it's different when you're 50 or 60 impending death doesn't freak you out as much i bet it does but it's a drag even if you're 80. i think if bill had lived that he would have turned out movie after movie and that just like in his real life there would have been this incredible mishmash of characters that were gay and straight and gay straight and women who acted like men and men who danced like little girls he had a very vivid imagination my pants don't hang down in the back straight guys pants always hang down on their back michael did my pants hang down in the back yep i ended up playing joan and parting glances because i worked with bill sherwood as a secretary at one of the local television stations bill actually saw me on stage which was good for me because when i auditioned for the film my audition was so terrible that he told me that he wouldn't have hired me unless he had seen me on stage steve was not at all bill's original conception of of nick nick was supposed to be six five and strong and with bushy black hair and uh instead we found steve buscemi who was totally wonderful in the part right but you didn't think this kid from bensonhurst had so much dashed away did you he was concerned that i wouldn't take it because i was working on the fire department and i wouldn't want anybody to know i was playing this part and i think that when i first read the script there was an element within me that just thought can i really play this part but i think any actor who would have turned down playing that part because the character is gay would be insane richard was fresh out of acting school and bill cast him in this role it was difficult role because it was bill and he was very much a control freak we would shoot a scene and he'd say now on this line you should say it more this way but then on this line you could be a little bit and he'd go through every line and then we'd do the scene and the scene would end and he'd say gee steve can't you have any spontaneity he's mad good hey you think i should go beat up robert yeah yeah yeah oh yeah you don't believe me do you i'm gonna call a guard and i'm gonna book it right now you better call an ambulance too parting glances opened doors for several of its cast members for kathy kinney and steve buscemi it became their ticket to hollywood listen we had more fun in one weekend than the entire state of new jersey's had since assigning a declaration of independence that's not saying much actor director steve buscemi has gone on to star in such films as reservoir dogs fargo and most recently 28 days while kathy kinney has reached cult status as mimi on the television hit the drew carey show go for it have a little adventure yourself when i came out here to los angeles everyone was like oh we saw you in parting glances what a wonderful movie you were so wonderful you know let me see if i can help you the day the film was released i got a call um from an agent that icm so that's what really got me started in uh getting film work i do know i got a part on a series in los angeles because of parting glances the director had seen parting glances and said that i was good and wanted me in it you're leaving because you don't want to be around when nick dies you don't want to deal with me going through that i think parting glances holds up very well i think it's kind of the grandfather of a lot of contemporary gay films parting glances is still important because it gives you permission to just live your life june is gay pride month and to commemorate that we turn to the in the life archives and travel back to big sky country we were there in 1995 when helena montana held its first gay pride parade the event in the state's capital took place a quarter of a century after the very first gay pride celebration ever held in new york city where it was then called the christopher street liberation day parade in june 1970 lesbians and gay men marched in new york los angeles san francisco and chicago to commemorate the stonewall rebellion new york city's christopher street liberation day parade was by far the largest with over 2 000 marchers flamboyant irreverent and unapologetic it reflected a bolder lesbian and gay activism let loose by stonewall 25 years later we take you from new york to montana a state that is of particular interest as earlier this year the montana senate voted to equate homosexual acts with felonies like murder and rape after a storm of protests that provision was rescinded but montana still has a law on the books that declares any same-sex sexual contact illegal theoretically including kissing it's clear now that organizers use gay pride marches and events like this one to focus on the major issues that lesbians and gays live with throughout the year it is very hard for people to come out and march today we've tried to make it as safe as possible but the word is out that this is a gay parade so a lot of people will not march because of that fact montana unfortunately is becoming known in some circles as the hate state the sodomy law so-called sodomy law in montana allows them to have anger hatred abuse of gay lesbian bisexual people montana is a big city with long streets and and we really honestly don't know each other and this sort of celebration allows us to network and get together meet and know each other in a rural area um that often has maybe less than a thousand people in the town or ten thousand we're talking small numbers you often think you're the only gay or lesbian around you also don't have access to good information about sexual orientation you don't have that cultural awareness that happens in the big cities when you're here in a rural area of the country you realize how vulnerable you are and every move that you make is watched and looked at do you feel like this pride parade has any effect on the community you bet it will if there's not people like me coming down here trying to straighten things out like this and this whole town's going to be like this and that's what i say ain't right paradoxically in a rural area it's sometimes easier to organize because yes we we have 190 000 square miles in montana but we also know everybody in the state i mean we have these networks that talk to each other i think the problem is that gays and lesbians are still afraid to come out of the closet but for those of us who are out we're very tight we have a chain that weaves all through the mountains in the plains of montana i am so glad to be here in the great state of montana we've been worried about you yes thank you yes we've been worried about you when they said we want you to do some comedy here i said you needed a uso tour because out here in montana where there are 850 000 people you can't hide you can't hide and it takes a special degree of courage to come out where you are as a teacher i haven't been able to get out of the closet and so i haven't been able to express myself i've had to be in the closet in montana and so i retired thursday and i'm really glad to be out of that closet and say hey i am what i am a job that he doesn't feel comfortable in beating out it's also a little frightening my daughter is very open about having a gay parent but i still have concerns about her and how she's going my being out is going to affect her but she has a real positive attitude about it so we decided not to worry about it and we had a great time it was hard for me to come out today it's hard for me to be here right now because i'm not out to my family and i guess maybe i am now last year montana sodomy law was finally found unconstitutional by that state supreme court when i was a grand marshal for west hollywood's gay pride parade a few more people may have lined santa monica boulevard than marched in helena montana but in many ways that event of several hundred people was no less significant every year millions of people in over 300 cities in over 20 countries take to the streets to let their communities hear their voices and see their numbers perhaps no gesture is more important in the struggle for equal rights than that of letting your neighbors know who you are now a website called interpride can help you find the location and dates of a pride event near you to find the link go to www.inthelifetv.org this is bruce for lance for in the life where are you guys well we're running a little late so what else is new look i don't know if we're gonna make it hey none of that get your butts over here pronto i'm kathy kinney i play mimi on the drew carey show and you're watching in the life last april hundreds of thousands of gay lesbian bisexual and transgender people and their friends from all over the country gathered in washington dc for the millennium march for equality among the weekend's events were a mass commitment ceremony of same-sex couples one day you will be able to walk march move in to the county clerks in the states you come from and one day we will be able to marry legally because we well-known celebrities gay and straight helped to pack the house with stand up on my poster that says dyke ellen they put pimples all over me and on and they didn't mess up her face it was just a pretty face of anne that said dike and which we don't mind that title at all it's the pimples that bother me messages i think it's good for the community it's good to energize these people these people are gonna go home with a real just a good sense about them and music the climax to the weekend's events were a march and rally on the great lawn where estimates of up to 800 000 people gathered in support of equal rights for the glbt communities controversy from within these communities continued to follow the weekend with some rally speakers as well as protest marchers expressing dissatisfaction with the way the events were organized and the overall commercialism this march has been organized by money and by the internet this march has not been organized on grassroots principles there are no feminist principles involved in the organizing of this march i speak not to get my place at the table but to demand a whole new table arrangement that welcomes all those who have been excluded the lasting impact of the weekend continues to be hotly debated in the gay press tune in next season when in the life takes an in-depth look at the impact and the controversies surrounding the millennium march still to come on in the life i believe hillary not bill should have worn the crown slam is evocative if it's real it's gritty lesbian and gay slam poets they're bringing new meaning to the phrase poetic license and laramie wyoming takes center stage in a play about the town marked by matthew shepard's murders matthew shepard is a 21st century you know martyr and this is a very personal and emotional uh response to his death but first jonathan capehart profiles a federal judge whose appointment was a landmark decision recent legal gains for gay men and lesbians seem to indicate a shift in attitude toward public acceptance from the civil union law in vermont that grants same-sex couples many of the benefits of marriage to the legal challenge against the anti-gay policy of the boy scouts of america that has reached all the way to the united states supreme court another barometer in this shifting climate is the number of federal appointments of openly gay and lesbian public servants in our next segment we profile one such individual a judge who presides over a federal bench in new york city my name is deborah a bat and my title is united states district judge for the southern district of new york okay how many doctors have been involved as a district court judge i have jurisdiction over an incredible variety of cases i have civil cases as well as criminal cases the honorable deborah batts became the country's first openly gay federal judge in 1994 having been recommended for the bench by senator daniel patrick moynihan of new york i was asked if i would be interested in submitting an application to be considered for a federal district court judgeship i was delighted i said yes i was sent the application i filled it out i met with senator moynihan however change in the country's political climate was necessary before the application was given serious consideration the bush department of justice or administration felt that while they thought i was very nice that my view of what a federal judge should be was not what their view of a federal judge should be the president of the united states when president clinton was elected in 1992 bats's nomination finally moved forward early on the administration made clear that they wanted to seek out a diverse slate of candidates including openly gay or lesbian candidates for the federal bench finally i was nominated by president clinton and was sworn in as a federal district court judge june 23 1994 which was during gay pride week the ease with which an openly gay candidate won confirmation to the federal bench took many legal observers by surprise please be seated still many felt that her confirmation had more to do with her credentials than it did with a tolerant congress batts was an openly lesbian tenured professor at fordham law school who had taught there for i think 10 or more years and had a very uh prestigious resume before that she was a prestigious law firm she worked at the u.s attorney this matter is a jury bats studied government at radcliffe college then went on to graduate from harvard law school at a time when radical changes were sweeping the country i think that the timing of it the assassination of robert kennedy the assassination of martin luther king the vietnamese war the problems that the country was roiling in at that time that was a very very strong influence in terms of deciding that that's what i wanted to do so that's why i wound up in law school at the time presidential appointments to the federal bench are decidedly political and are part of an administration's legacy but batt says a judge's job is to steer clear of politics and offer a fair interpretation of the law are they coming in tomorrow the federal judgeship is a lifetime appointment but i do think that the system of checks and balances works judges stay out of the policy-making role have i done this one before and get into the fray or come into action once the legislature has done its job one place where bats is able to be more vocal on the ways gays and lesbians continue to be denied equal protection under the law is at fordham university where she is a visiting professor her courses have focused on family law marriage and adoption if we all agree that families and marriage for instance provides positive effects on the individuals who are part of them then one might wonder what legitimate interest the state would have in in preventing individuals who wish to take advantage of those relationships so listen guys if we could uh come in in about five or ten minutes or so and do this as a private person and as a mother all right great anybody who wants to do an experience what i have should be given every opportunity to do so working toward getting more openly gay and lesbian individuals appointed at the federal level is a slow and contentious process but a crucial one that can lead to social change there are ways that judges can create social change and one is simply by the example of that they are there and that they are in a very revered prominent position in our society as an openly gay person and in and of itself that is social change and it inspires social change a judge requires being viewed as fair and impartial so that political action is is something that we are not really able to do as judges but we still are people the lambda legal defense and education fund pursues litigation in every area of the law that affects lesbians gay men and people with aids they've succeeded in establishing positive legal precedents in court cases nationwide involving issues such as job discrimination domestic partner benefits and adoption you don't have to be an attorney to make a difference in the fight for equal rights and lambda's website offers ways you can get involved in your community to find the link visit in the life's website at www.interlifetv.org i'm toshi regan and you're watching in the life in october 1998 matthew shepard was found tied to a fence outside laramie wyoming one month later writer director moises kaufman and members of his tectonic theater company traveled to laramie to find out more about the place where shepard had lived and died the laramie project which opened off-broadway in may at the union square theater in new york is a dramatic representation of what they found on november 1998 the members of tectonic theater project traveled laramie wyoming and conducted interviews with the people of the town during the next year we would return to laramie several more times and conduct over 200 interviews the play you're about to see is edited from those interviews as well as from journal entries by members of the company and other found material it seemed that matthew shepard's beating was a turning point in american history where all of a sudden the country said no more this is wrong so we went to laramie a month after matthew shepard was beaten and at that time we weren't really thinking about a play coming out of it that wasn't really what we were thinking about moyes has never said we're going to go and we're going to write a play about this he basically said can we as theater artists respond to this do we have a role to play people are really with her she says choochoo and she's telling these funny stories i'm a writer and i'm a director the actors are actors but we all wrote the play together we were able to sort of break down the roles we became interviewers we became sort of journalists we became researchers i think the idea of a theater company going out to a town talking to the people of the town coming back and writing a play about it was something that interested me very much hi my name is amanda gronik and i'm here in laramie working with the theater company uh we're from new york and uh we're interested in speaking with people here about recent events um my colleague and myself went to the reverend your husband's church on sunday and and saw the services and well we were so impressed with his sermon and we were extremely interested in talking with the reverend further about some of the his ideas about what's happened well uh i don't think he'll want to talk to you he has very biblical views about homo sexuality what is it that we can do what is it that the people that are gonna come to the laramie project get that you wouldn't get from a film or a documentary or or a tv show most of the time we called him chuchu you know because we used to call him machu and then we just started calling him chuchu whenever i think of matthew i always think of his his incredible beaming smile i mean he'd walk in he'd just be like you know and he'd just smile at everybody he just made you feel great going to laramie for us as a company was a very very uh scary proposition when we drove into laramie it was about a dusk and there was like dead silence in the car all the joking and the laughter was was gone we pulled into this parking lot we've had to sit there for a moment and kind of deal with the fact that we did feel really frightened one of the events that really brought home to me what the company was experiencing was we were walking down the street and there was an out member of the company and at some moment i put my arm around him i just was immediately viscerally like get your arm off of me you know i mean i you know a a gay guy just been killed in this town like the month before this happened i think as gay people you're always checking your peripheral vision to see is it safe and there were people in my peripheral vision who i didn't feel very safe around so i sort of felt that people weren't going to want to talk to us i sort of felt like we were going to have a very difficult time getting ordinary people to talk to us and that wasn't the case at all i mean people really opened up to us in ways that amazed me there was a very warm reception and i was not anticipating that at all matthew shepard has served us well do you realize that he has served us well and i do not mean to condemn matthew to perfection but i cannot mention anyone who has done more for this community than men there were some really remarkable people that we spoke to and you know i had uh preconceptions about this little town in the west and and how much more sophisticated and humane and wonderful i was than these people and that that wasn't what i found at all and for the first time people that would not otherwise be talking about gay rights or about education or what are we teaching our children or why is there this violence in this culture we're forced to talk about it well the news reports started trickling in on thursday but no names were mentioned the brutality of the crime was not mentioned all that was mentioned was that there was a man a laramie man found beaten out on the prairie basically later on in my office they mentioned his name and it was like oh my god that can't that's not the matthew shepard i know that's not my student that's not this person who i once the many hours of interview material had been edited down to a working script the laramie project had its world premiere at the denver center theater the production garnered enthusiastic response from audiences and critics alike i think what is uh memorable about the laramie project is that it shows the amazing diversity of responses to matthew shepard's death you get to meet real people talking about how it affected them i think that's what audiences will respond to is to dress up like angels and we have designed an angel outfit where our wings are huge they're like big ass friends and there'll be 10 to 20 of us that are angels and what we're going to do is we're going to encircle to bring this story to the stage in such an immediate way the people who are performing are the people who met the people of laramie it's one degree of separation so as an actor who's coming out on stage and she's simply saying i went there and i met this person and this is who they are and this is what they said i think we're personalizing this story for people and i think it's hitting them in a positive way i think people are responding very hopefully to it and i think it's just touching people matthew shepard is a 21st century you know martyr and this is a very personal and emotional uh response to his death when you see the laramie project you get a sense of where we are at as a nation how we are thinking how we are feeling about not only sexuality but class and education and violence and a whole number of different things because we live under this promise that we are all equal under the law and i think we are really testing the validity of that statement proposed hate crime legislation relies on accurate statistics of anti-gay violence that's where you come in if you've been attacked or even threatened report the incident to the police if you don't feel comfortable filing a police report the hate crimes documentation network offers a new way to report the incident online anonymously for a link to the hate crimes documentation network and other organizations that offer support visit in the life's website at in the lifetv.org i'm danny pentaro and you're watching in the life during the 90s a new generation of poets exploded onto the scene in coffeehouses and colleges all over the country they were on the cutting edge of a provocative new genre called slam poetry the initial idea was to get audiences listening to what is often considered a rather sedate art form but as you've probably guessed by the name slam poetry is anything but it is shocked and challenged live audiences as well as the mainstream literary community a poetry slam is a competition where artists are rated on both verse and verbal skills up next three queer poets who are champions of the slam style i believe harriet tubman should be on the dollar bill we found our fill of white boy faces time to change places i believe hillary not bill should have worn the crown slam is evocative it's real it's gritty slam poetry is rebellious but you see my friends my sisters are my family because they love and accept me as lokudas and don't consider me una descracia de la familia you want to play with me you can just quit orientalizing because i ain't gonna change my content calvin's for you or my mother if i lose i can go from seattle to maine people are slamming quick quick quick quick quick moves in a traffic dodging dance i didn't want to be white but i was told i had no choice i don't know if i'll ever get used to cruising at bars you learn by doing or so i'm told my entire life i was an actress in my entire life i'd done these dumb girl parts so i just i just got so sick of those parts um that the rage i mean there was rage contained in my first my first poems um and the first time i heard my own voice i think i probably started to cry because i had never really been entitled to that before when i finally pulled out of you know drug dealing prostituting whatever um there was a time when i seriously thought that i was hiv positive i wanted to leave something behind i wanted to leave a message i never liked poetry at all i just wanted to be an actor and i thought you know i'd be in miss saigon but it didn't happen like that so um i had to write and slam came down you know people responded well and it was a kind of response that i never got as an actor and a lot of people who enter the slam who are really successful have come from other art forms that you know wouldn't accept them i slam because people listen when you slam and because i have something to say i think in terms of poetry and i think in terms of lyrics and your voice is your guitar and your body movement is your rhythm and it's like being a one-person band i don't trash your letters i read your letters i hate your letters i write them in importance with my student loans and publishers sweepstakes including the bible quotes are you pizarro or cortez and my motto is don't worry people so every time i do a slam poem i feel like you know it's like my broadway show stopping moments you asians got the best skin what do you orientals use slam is also making poetry accessible just to get the message across of queer identity filipino identity and making it fun and showing that that we are multifaceted human beings i'm a man in love with a man i'm a gay man and i live with a man this prejudice is the pain that clouds my eyes and knots my spine the scars on the back of my head when i was out on the streets i hung out a lot with members from the house community i went to a lot of different balls and basically they were just stylized competitions and when i first entered the slam scene i noticed the similarity i mean the only difference was that people were competing with words and not competing with like runway or like in and i wanted to bring these two worlds together because there were two worlds that had influenced me so much as it turns out i mean the the poetry balls that we've had have been very successful on the edge of insanity only in blue moons do i see humanity i've only rushed against love i've never touched it the slam attracts just teams in general because they they need slime because they want the truth told to them and they also want to um say something it's probably the most rebellious eloquent way to really speak it's this celebration of this different thing that is really great you know and really cool and and i wish i'd had that when i was first you know experiencing those feelings i wish i had had a stage to talk about it on and had had other people scream for me and applaud those feelings as opposed to you know closing the book and going on with my homework as long as people have something to say as long as a coffeehouse culture exists as long as the internet hasn't taken over our lives um we will always be slamming i think poetry in general is very healing you know when you know when you let go of the words you know um it's a great feeling i think slam poetry has a long lifespan and i think i think that's because people are so desperate for this this connection to each other i believe art is universal if you're a white male artist talking to straight white men i believe feminism is in reversal when we believe art is universal because then we're just believing them the government asks me to check one if i want money i say how could you ask me to be one race that we do not understand is hate tradition but from all of us in the life thank you for watching and we'll see you next time sure stupid thing like in the life is funded in part by the hvan american foundation additional support provided by michael a lepen richard m and peggy danziger agnes gund and daniel shapiro jonathan b scheffer and christopher barley barry c scovard and mark wielinski jeffrey b sorif rick wyland the lily akinclos foundation broadway cares equity fights aids the collingwood foundation the gill foundation the rainbow endowment the riverside church in the city of new york the snowden foundation the new york community trust the mitchell gold company in the hopes of eliminating all types of fear and prejudice the gay network gay.com and the annual support of in the life members like you you