“To be really successful, you have to be straight-up sexy”: Ben Whishaw in New York voluptuousness as Peter Hogar | the biography

HeyOn December 19, 1974, writer Linda Rosencrantz went to her friend Peter Hujar’s apartment in New York and asked the photographer to describe exactly what he had done the day before. He spoke in great detail about Allen Ginsberg’s photo shoot for the New York Times (it did not go well—Ginsberg was too performative for the kind of intimacy Hugar craved). He also described the Chinese takeaway he ate and how his friend Vince Aletti came to take a shower. He was concerned that he would not be paid by Elle magazine.

So what did Ben Whishaw, who plays himself in the new film Peter Hugar Day, do with himself the day before? The actor, on a video call from his home in London, anxiously rubbing his hands through his hair, says he could probably describe it in “about five sentences,” but only after some coaxing to add flavour. “I came home from filming and got the chicken I cooked the day before and ate half of it and finished it. Well, I didn’t finish it but I kept eating it and then I had a glass of wine and went to bed at nine-thirty. Boring. But, maybe there’s no such thing as boring.”

This is the thesis that the film tests to its fullest extent. Peter Hujar’s Day, directed by Ira Sachs, consists of a 70-minute chat between Hujar and Rosenkrantz, played by Rebecca Hall. The text is taken from Rosencrantz’s copy, which was rediscovered in 2019, when Hujar’s papers were donated to the Morgan Library in New York (Rosencrantz is now 91, while the photographer died of AIDS in 1987, aged 53). Hogar and Rosenkratz talk in his apartment, reclining on the couch and leaning back on the bed, the reel-to-reel tape machine clanking and buzzing as the sun sets in what feels like real time.

As you would expect from actors of the caliber of Hall and Whishaw, the accents are impeccable and the intimacy between Hujar and Rosenkrantz is conveyed through the smallest details: a look, a touch, and a comforting silence. Whishaw describes it as “a picture of a friendship, or almost a love story.” Some critics have hailed the film as a masterpiece. Lindsay Lohan recently praised her “quiet beauty.” However, others may find it difficult to watch in its entirety – although Whishaw says it can be viewed like a video work in an art gallery, with the viewer coming in and out. “That would be equally true.”

Whishaw usually hates looking at his works, because his memories of making them overshadow any enjoyment. However, he says: “I really like this kind of film. You can relax in it and there’s space for the viewer to drift off. We’ve looked very carefully at all the people he’s talking about, but I imagine most people would be like: ‘Who the hell is he talking about?’ So, at a certain point, people might say: ‘I’m going to let this wash over me’. It’s a different way to engage the viewer.”

Peter Hujar’s Day was photographed in Westbeth, an artists’ community on the western edge of Manhattan where Hujar took the photographs. Whishaw loves being in New York. “You feel like there’s a lot of sexual desire,” he says. “There’s a sexual energy – it’s about the climate, that island, the people, the way everything is presented.” When he’s in town, he likes to go to concerts, or to Julius, the oldest gay bar in town. “You can always get a chair at Julius,” he says. “If this had been in London, it would have been bumped all the time, wouldn’t it?”

Sachs asked Whishaw not to reveal exactly how long it took to film Peter Hujar Day, because it was very short – somewhere between a week and a month. However, Whishaw has certainly made a difference. He had 55 pages of carefully reconstructed ordinary conversations to memorize, while Hall had only three. “I really enjoy that in art,” Whishaw says of this focus on the little things. “I’m reading these memoirs by a brilliant Australian writer called Helen Garner” – a recent winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize – “and they’re all little notes. But they change your outlook on life, because they show you how life really is made up of small moments, even when huge events happen.”

Hugar, whose photographs I barely noticed in his lifetime, was completely attuned to the details, from the slivers of light on the Hudson River to the hairs on a drag queen’s legs. “I first saw his work on the cover of Anohni and the Johnsons’ album I Am a Bird Now,” says Whishaw. “And I had postcards with pictures of men in clothes. But in the pandemic I started to say: ‘Oh, all these pictures of the same guy.'” There was an exhibition at Moraine Paley around the same time, about backstage performers, and it was so beautiful. So much so that Whishaw bought one of the works from a London gallery. “It’s naked on a chair,” he says. “It’s quite unusual, because he usually poses when he takes selfies, and he had a string around his neck. “I think he’s starting to get into some sort of glamorous thing for his health.”

Whishaw likes Hujar’s work for the way it depicts the long-lost, AIDS-ravaged bohemia of New York (“like a portal to a time perhaps not remembered”); for his mastery of monochrome (“He talks about that in the movie – black and grey, and the sadness in it is beautiful”); And for psychological insight into his images. Earlier this year, Whishaw went to a comprehensive show of Hugar’s work at Raven Row in London. “You could really feel the extraordinary intimacy he was able to have with his subjects,” he says. “I think that’s very touching.”

He is also impressed by Al-Hajjar’s refusal to make concessions. “He was always trying to maintain the purity of his work. In the film, he talks about how someone likes something when it seems ‘intrusive with real art,’ and he hates that – something so obviously palatable will look beautiful on your wall.”

Whishaw was working on Sachs’s previous film Passages, about a man who cheats on his wife with a woman, when the director asked him to play Hogar. He agreed immediately. “I wanted to work with Ira again. I just wanted to He is “With Ira again,” he says. “He’s someone whose company I enjoy. We share interests and we like to talk to each other. So it came about that way. And yeah, working with a gay person is really nice.”

Is it different from working with a straight director? “It’s definitely different if you’re creating a project that’s about homosexuality or homosexuality,” Whishaw says. “And there are a lot of beautiful gay directors out there—but not gay Which a lot. I think it’s difficult for them to make films. So, it’s a valuable thing to be a part of one of them.”

There aren’t a lot of gay actors either, especially those who have reached Whishaw’s level of success. “No, not much,” he says. “It’s complicated and maybe different for everyone, but I think it still comes down to the fact that if you want to be really successful, you have to conform to what’s considered heterosexual taste, or something like that. Or be sexy in a heterosexual way. I’m always amazed at how much sex is underneath everything, actually. Or desire. There’s still a lot of homophobia and hate. I mean, it’s better, but it’s still true. Also, who knows what the journey people are with this stuff. I don’t blame people for being private.”

Whishaw is 45 years old. Like many gay people his age, he is somewhat haunted by the absence of the generation of gay men above him, many of whom died of AIDS when they still had much to contribute as mentors, teachers or father figures, and through work they were never able to do. “I feel a lack of seniors,” Whishaw says. “It’s such a huge gap, which is still very sad and shocking.” Hujar never took pictures again after he discovered he had AIDS. “It literally stopped the minute he got the diagnosis. Everything was left in the dark room exactly as it was. I shudder to think what might be behind it.”

It’s especially sad, Whishaw says, because most artists stick around for as long as they can. The actor is certainly no exception. After that, he would do a TV series, then a film, then maybe a play, before making something of his own. “A dancer can’t keep up, right? I mean some people do, and that’s unusual. But actors and photographers can keep up. And I think you can get better because you have more to offer about what it means to be human.”