If there’s one way to grab the attention of the gay community, using the word “faggot” for the title of an online documentary series is it. And Randall Jenson, the 25-year-old director/producer of 50 Faggots: How Gay Do You Want To Be Today?, wants exactly that. 50 Faggots is an ethnographic look into the lives of effeminate gay men and how they deal with prejudice from other gay men. It’s a topic that Randall Jenson, a St. Louis native, is all too familiar with. “The biggest part of why I’m doing 50 Faggots is really to create a dialogue to, for and about gay men so we can start talking to each other,” Jenson says. “We really suck at it, we really suck at supporting each other in a lot of ways.” The doc series will have its St. Louis premiere at the Missouri History Museum tonight, Wednesday, October 20, at 7 p.m. “I’m hoping people are going to come with questions, because we’re definitely prepared to talk about it, about why we’re choosing to use that word. That’s perhaps the most controversial part of the series,” Jenson says.
St. Louis Magazine: So I have to ask the question that everyone from St. Louis asks—where did you go to high school?
Randall Jenson: [Laughs.] I went to two high schools, actually. I went to De Smet for a little while, and then I went to Soldan.
SLM: Did growing up in St. Louis have any impact on this documentary or your work in the gay community?
RJ: Oh, yeah totally. When I was going to high school, which wasn’t too long ago, I would like to think [laughs], I remember sodomy laws were still illegal. Basically, having gay sex could put you into jail depending on where you live. So that was something that was huge. Not that I was even having sex, but the fact that part of my sexuality was illegal… It’s funny to think that when I started high school, gay-straight alliances really weren’t in St. Louis high schools. Tons of the civil rights movements were just beginning, or hadn’t happened yet. Definitely in St. Louis going through an all-boys Jesuit high school like De Smet was a pretty great experience in some ways; in other ways, it was a little more difficult. I had a pretty rough coming-out experience, which I don’t want to talk about too much…realizing what it means to be gay and to be proud and to be resilient, but also to know yourself and be honest with yourself, for most LGBT or gay and lesbian or queer people, it’s definitely their own journey. That was something I definitely had to go through, and I didn’t find the support in my family, but I did end up finding it from other pretty amazing people in St. Louis, eventually.
SLM: How long did you film the series?
RJ: Two years. And I’m finishing the filming of season one at the end of spring. We have over 600 hours of footage, which is a lot …[and there’s ] a lot of organizing that has to happen with it. I filmed the guys over two years, because part of ethnography is the shaping of one’s own experiences over time. So I wouldn’t get the content I’m looking for if I just showed up and filmed Aaron Gray or Acid Betty or Roger Goodman for two months. Maybe they would have one good moment and share with me other stories, but to really get the content that I’m looking for, I need to continuously follow-up with them for two years. And two years goes by fast [laughs].
SLM: How did you find people willing to share their stories with you?
RJ: Well, gay men love to talk about themselves, so I feel like [laughs], the experience of gay men who are out and proud and willing to be on camera and also willing to identify as effeminate and then on top of that, willing to be in a series called 50 Faggots. All of those things have to have checks on them for it to happen. But it was pretty easy. I knew some of the guys from previous stuff. Like I knew David Hale, who is a civil rights and disability rights attorney who works as a senior program manager for the American Association of People with Disabilities in D.C. And David Hale actually was a graduate of Washington University Law School, and the time that I met him when I was in high school, he was helping run Outlaw, the queer law group at Washington University. So David and I sort of knew each other through that way. Other folks, like Acid Betty and Epiphany, who are some the well-known folks in the series, I sort of met them through a listserv. There’s a drag entertainment troupe in New York that’s really famous that’s basically like [laughs] a warehouse of drag. They kick out drag. It’s called Screaming Queens and it’s this company and they’re known to have these spectacular drag queens out of it that are really good. I emailed them and then I was put in touch with different folks.
SLM: So what do you mean when you ask “how gay do you want to be today?” For the straight audience, what does that mean?
RJ: For a straight audience, I think it probably means something a little different than for a gay audience. The series is intentionally for gay men. If anyone else watches it and they’re like, “Oh my God, this is great. It’s wonderful”—which people have—it’s awesome. But one of the main missions of 50 Faggots is for the diversity of gay men and how we’re obviously not all the same, we all don’t want the same things because that’s a piece of it, too. Some of us don’t want gay marriage, and some of us are against what we see is as this homogenized push to be accepted and be just like everyone else and be just like our straight counterparts. Some of us don’t have aspirations for that—we want to create relationships our own way. But it’s not all about gay marriage. I feel like I went on a tangent about gay marriage. Part of it is to show the diversity of gay men. Obviously there are lots of different types. Race is a big thing, race and ethnicity and culture. In season one, over half of my cast members aren’t white.
SLM: Was that a conscious decision?
RJ: Not a conscious decision not to have white people, but definitely a conscious decision to have a diverse group.
SLM: Why did you use that word [faggot] if it’s such a big slur in the community?
RJ: Well it isn’t and it is, which is really funny. Here’s a good story: We had a launch in D.C. in late July, which meant that we went to D.C. and had a big party and got people excited about 50 Faggots. We had a Facebook invite-up and we were publicizing it and pushing it, and one of the folks I that film in D.C., Timur Tugberk, is probably like the most famous gay promoter–socialite in D.C. And he got all his folks on it. And it said something crazy like, 93 attending, 500 (or something higher than that) not attending, and people were writing on the wall like, “Oh my God, this is so offensive, change the name,” not having any idea what it was. I think they just thought the club called the night 50 Faggots, which is kind of funny and I would totally go to a night like that [laughs]. But D.C. gays are very general, very conservative, very business suits in the daytime, big party animals at night because they’re very binary. We had the launch party and the line was stretched two blocks long. So clearly there’s a need, and clearly there’s a want, to come out to something that’s not just gay because we’re not trying to create pride. I should be specific about that because I feel like I keep saying, “Oh, it’s really gay,” and I know what I mean by that, but we’re not trying to create a pridefest with some crazy shirtless men all over dancing and, you know, Crystal Meth in the bathroom. That’s not what it’s about. When I mean gay, I mean people who are confident in however they choose to present themselves. If they choose to show up in a business suit or they choose to show up in some crazy animal drag—whatever they choose to show up in, they’re confident, they’re proud of themselves, they’re out and open, they’re good role models for younger people, they don’t close off from other gay men, they’re comfortable. Effeminate gay men are the most disliked, highly censored, pushed out types of gay men within gay communities.
SLM: Why is that?
RJ: Because gay men right now are all trying to sell out and they all want to be like straight people. There’s an article in Details Magazine from 2006 that was called the “A-List Gays.” And when you have the power, the money and you’re most often white. And white men in general have a tendency to make a lot of money in their careers. But if you’re gay, you really don’t have kids a lot of the time, you have that extra income coming in. Our whole community is really pushing us to have lavish lives and to have the newest bag and to be on point with our fashion and be really culturally smart. I mean, we’re always portraying those characters in television, the screen sort of as the helping hand, whatever that is. We’re always coming on to clean up a women’s mess or to fix her makeup or to tell her she’s not good enough. I almost feel like today we’re the court’s jesters. And I feel like that’s how we’re portrayed over and over on television.
SLM: Why do you think Hollywood does that, where they chose effeminate gay men to be kind of like the funny, humorous gay character?
RJ: Because they can’t take us seriously. The idea of a man giving up parts of his masculinity and aligning himself more with a woman is considered ridiculous. It all goes back to the way we view women. For effeminate gay men, I don’t think the level of respect is really there. People may listen to our advice, but ultimately… We’re kind of looked at over and over again as the help, the hired help. Why I’m doing this is not even to tackle those issues with straight people. If some straight watches this and they get something out of it, that’s great, but that’s not my main goal. Because I’ve had people go, “Oh my God, straight people are never going to watch this. They’re going to be totally turned off from the name 50 Faggots.” I’m like, “No, I don’t think so.” I think a lot of people are going to want to watch it because it’s called that. On the flipside, if someone doesn’t want to watch it because it’s called 50 Faggots and they don’t like gay people already—this totally is not for them.
SLM: That’s what I was thinking, too. Projects like that when they’re trying to reach out to straight communities, the people you want to reach out to aren’t going to interested to begin with.
RJ: Exactly. They need to start with the basic 101, like “gay’s ok, love everyone, peace and love, peace and harmony.” Those are great messages, but I’m not trying to create that with 50 Faggots.
SLM: When you first started this project, did you envision what it is now with the multi-city debuts and how it keeps growing over time?
RJ: Yes. Absolutely [laughs]. Should I have said no? [laughs].
SLM: No, I mean it’s good to hear someone being honest, someone being, “Yes…”
I totally did, and I expect it to get much bigger. It’s become a movement, that’s maybe the part that I wasn’t as ready for.
50 Faggots premieres at 7 pm. Wednesday, October 20 in the Lee Auditorium at Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell. Tickets are $10, $7 MHM members and $5 students. For more information, go to mohistory.org. The 50 Faggots launch party will be from 10 p.m.–2 a.m., Thursday October 21 at Erney’s 32, 3200 Manchester.
