Chop Suey By Bruce Weber

I'd longed to see this 2001 film and finally, visiting PH at his new Waterloo Street flat, did. The only thing you need to know is: The book is better. In truth, there's something authentic in there somewhere (there must be - the long ramble certainly reeks of ernestly striving after something), but in the making it's been banalized out of existence. Unfortunately, the movie feels like you'd asked your favourite old queen what they really, really like and getting a three-hour answer. You sort of regret asking, and just want to say 'speed it up aunty!'. It's a scrapbook style sinking into Weber-World, and you could be looking at a very long Ralph Lauren commercial for all you know. As Weber's record of his obsession with Peter Johnson, a high-school athlete Weber commemorated in torrential detail and made a big model of in all his commercial work, it seems somehow embarrassingly shallow, reducing the young man to basically his youth. There's no sex even though that is the most obvious theme in Weber's ouvre, and reduces his work to a carnival of surfaces. This gives the film an embalmed effect. Every natural instinct seemed frantically perfumed over, making every vignette hollow and fake.
I'm glad we watched it nibbling on pineapple tarts and gossiping and laughing. I would have fallen asleep otherwise. And I am a Bruce Weber and scrapbooking fan!