Posted on 01/26/2005 10:35:33 AM PST by Phsstpok
Thursday January 27, 12:09 AM
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Some people don't need doctors to tell them that Gore Vidal goes his own way -- all they have to do is read his work.
At age 77, the writer known for his sharp wit and unsparing waspishness has given up living in Italy to spend most of the time at his home in the Hollywood Hills and continue his mission as a sort of national scold.
He once called himself "the gentleman bitch" of American letters and described himself as a man without qualities. "I am exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water," the author of such bestsellers as "Lincoln," "Myra Breckinridge" and "Burr" once told an interviewer.
Norman Mailer once tried to beat him up. William Buckley sued him for libel. Robert Kennedy wanted him barred from the White House.
But Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for the 1995 bombing the Oklahoma City federal building in which 168 people died, wrote him letters, thinking he would understand him although not condone his actions. McVeigh invited Vidal to attend his execution.
Always a pessimist when it comes to America's use -- he would say misuse -- of its power, Vidal's worries about the direction of the country these days seemed larger than usual. Things are not only bad but getting worse,
"What is happening as we speak is catastrophic for us," he said.
EYE ON GREEK KING
During a recent conversation, he began with an approving discussion of the recent film "Alexander." In typical Vidal "march to a different drummer" manner, the interview had been granted so that he could come to the defense of a movie trashed by almost every critic in the country.
As far as Vidal was concerned, "Alexander" was a breakthrough work because it treated Alexander's bisexuality in a matter-of-fact manner rather "than a terrible sin to be punished by Our Lord."
"They are on the right track with this picture because it says bisexuality exists which is something the public already knows because they practice it," he said.
Then he described how as one of the key script doctors on "Ben Hur" he secretly wove in a homosexual subplot into what bills itself "as the world's most honored movie."
Vidal, who along with playwrights Christopher Fry and Maxwell Anderson were uncredited writers on the film, figured that a homosexual subplot would explain the tension between first century Jewish prince Ben Hur (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd), the old Roman pal who turns on him and sends him into slavery.
SECRET LOVE
"I said this thing (the original script) is not working and that the only thing that would work is if when they were teen-agers, they had an affair and Ben Hur is still in love with Messala. Sam Zimbalist, the producer, said 'Gore, this is a tale of the Christ,' which was the subtitle of the novel on which the movie was based.
"I said I would not bring this up directly but I told Boyd about it and he used it in acting with Heston, who always denied knowing anything about it. He also denied I was on the picture until he was shown a photograph of the two of us together on the set."
These days, Vidal says he does not feel physically up to researching another historical novel or funny enough to write another satire like "Myra Breckinridge." He does plan to go to Duke University next month to help oversee a production of a play he has written about the effect of Union soldiers marching into Georgia during the Civil War.
Then Vidal and the conversation strode into another direction -- the war in Iraq and what it was doing to the country.
He said that he can foresee the war going so badly that President Bush will be forced to resign or be driven from office. "I can't believe the speed with which the entire republic fell apart. The U.S. Bill of Rights fell apart with Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act," he said of post-9/11 America.
"Preventive war became our national policy, which has not been any nation's policy since Hitler. A preventive war is about as un-American as you get. But that doesn't mean we haven't done it before," he said.
"The worst (previous) example was the Mexican War. That brave moralist, Ulysses S. Grant, who had been a second lieutenant just out of West Point, hated that war and said ... that nations like individuals suffer for their transgressions.
"I believe the Civil War was the judgment of God on us for what we did to Mexico. God knows what we are going to get for Iraq."
Charlton still has the chance, though.
Gore (isn't he distantly related to Al?), the old queen, probably put the hit on Heston. Heston was a gorgeous man back then.
Was SpongeBob in Ben Hur, too? I tell you, these homos are everywhere!
And that who slavery thing was just an afterthought.
I can't help but notice that we have yet again a lib attacking the work of someone is dead and is therefore unable to defend themselves from attack. The smear of Heston is equally as mad, given that Heston is basically no longer able to defend himself, either.
Vidal is absolutely a cold fish. How anyone can stand to listen to such people is a marvel to me. I just figured that they were just as much a bunch of blue-blooded snobs
as he was. These folks are about as deep as a road puddle.
Reuters thinks he walks to his own beat? Who are they kidding? He is just another lib stuffed-shirt intellectual marching in lock-step with all the other pessimists, Malthusians, and conspircy kooks we are all too familiar with.
Them thinking that he is a maverick is about a stupid as Molly Ivins calling herself iconoclastic. Iv you've heard one, you've heard 'em all.
Gore Vidal IS Walking...
straight to an eternal hell of his own choice...
Vidal has told this story in print a number of times over a period of at least 20 years.
So9
I get a bit of a sadistic kick out of people who try to reshape the Lord into their own image. Gore Vidal is among the many who are going to be a bit surprised when his days are through.
It's amazing the face of their god. He actually frowns upon Christianity, traditional Judaism, and morals drawn forth from the Ten Commandments.
It remarkable to me that the whole idea of "One God" as recognized in our culture comes from a Judeo-Christian set of beliefs based on scripture; yet so many who believe in the idea of "One God," drawn from these scriptures, give the scripture zero merit on who He is and what He's all about.
Reminds me of how they view the Constitution......
Someone (I think it was Dick Cavett) once referred to watching Mailer and Vidal arguing with each other, was like watching two old queens in a cat fight.
"Them thinking that he is a maverick is about a stupid as Molly Ivins calling herself iconoclastic. Iv you've heard one, you've heard 'em all."
Should read:
Them thinking that he is a maverick is about as stupid as Molly Ivins calling herself iconoclastic. If you've heard one, you've heard 'em all.
One of these days, folks, I'll learn how to type. In the mean time, I'll just have to look like an idiot. To be fair, though, I can't feel my fingers after this morning outside without gloves, though...
Yeah, that was my first thought, too. Imagine how stupid you have to be to make a statement like that.
if ben hur was gay, what was he doing with that slave girl who's ring he wore during his galley days? Why was he so infatuated with her at the end of the movie if he was in love with MAssala?
he had a deep longtime friendship, which the movie supported. Couple that with heston's famous over-emoting, and that's where vidal gets this tripe.
ben hur was no more gay toward massala than he was to marcua araleus - who adopted him.
vidal is a pathetic has-been struggling for relevancy.
Molly should just admit she had an unreciprocated crush on Dubya back in high school. Everybody knows that high school baggage of some sort is half the reason for her malice vis a vis the Commander in Chief.
Bill Buckley should have taken care of Gore Vidal back in 1968.
http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/debates.html
People such as Vidal believe deep male friendships are gay because they can't form them in their own lives (Good Lord, who'd want to sit down for a drink with Gore Vidal?) and are therefore suspicious of them.
Of course, there's also the possibility that he's just telling this tale to tick Red staters off; he would certainly get a kick out of it if we got all mad. Of course, again, he misunderstands human nature. I doubt anyone will care.
i reckon that some people are incapable of having any kind of relationship with anyone unless sex is the major part. pity them for they know neither joy nor real friendship.
They spend their beings self righteously assigning fault, eventually to all but themselves. All the while, the world passes them by with little notice.
It can only be sad to be Gore Vidal.
No need. Gore's brain died a natural death 25 years ago.
Gore's also changed his story. He's written about this before - usually that Heston was too stupid to realize there was a gay theme in the film (which, admittedly, is pretty hard to find). And why would Heston - a huge star at the time - remember Gore Vidal on the set of "Ben Hur"? Writers are the bottom of the barrel in Hollywood.
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