What's the point of talking in pictures if people don't talk in them? The characters in Ira Sachs' films always express themselves verbosely, even when there is a lot of action (check out the fervently kinetic “Transitions“), but in their amazing and bold new drama “The Day of Peter Hujar” they say becomes action. It's a biopic of sorts about the photographer of the title (played by Ben Whishaw), who was interviewed by writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) on December 19, 1974, in her Upper East Side apartment. Rosenkrantz planned to write a book about how artists spent their time, and asked Hujar to detail what he had done the previous day, from the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep. Rosencrantz eventually abandoned her project and the interview was lost, but in 2019 a transcript appeared in the Morgan Library, which houses Hujar's archives. It was published by Magic Hour Press in 2021, and the text is largely a script for Sachs' film.
The day Hujar told Rosencrantz about, December 18, was a tense day. It all started with a phone call from the editor, another from Susan Sontag, and a visit by the editor to Hujar's loft at East Twelfth Street and Second Avenue. There was a trip to Allen Ginsberg's apartment a few blocks away to photograph him for Times; a few phone calls, a visit from writer Glenn O'Brien, dinner with Vince Aletti (co-author of this magazine) and a walk to get some takeout; finally, a long evening of working in a dark room developing and printing photographs, including the photographs he had just taken of Ginsberg.
In the interview, Hujar not only describes this maelstrom of activity, but gives it dramatic urgency, psychological weight and social dimension, delving into the personal connections and backstory – the foundations of career, friendship, pleasure and money – that underlie the day's events. The result is a sublime transformation of uninhibited gossip, light but serious, light-hearted and provocative. Hujar puts forward a parade of names: Along with Sontag and Ginsberg, he discusses William S. Burroughs (obscenely, perhaps libelously), and also mentions Janet Flanner (a longtime writer for this magazine), Lauren Hutton, Fran Lebowitz, and Robert Wilson (all of whom he photographed). Describing a phone call from artist Ed Baynard, Hujar derides him as a talker, calls him “totally insane” and adds, “If this ever gets printed, I hope it gets his name on it.” Rosencrantz responds with mockery and indignation: “What do you mean by ‘if’?”
In Sachs' film, not a single tense day of Hujar is shown on screen. Instead, Peter and Linda are seen mostly in her apartment, during interviews talking and talking and talking, from daylight until dusk. But while the film may be all talk, it is nonetheless a very image-oriented work. Sachs films the couple in a variety of locations and poses: sitting face to face in the living room, standing in the kitchen, lying on the bed. Peter sits on the windowsill, leans back on the couch, sits at the piano, walks around, rummages through her books and records and puts on 45 (“Hold Me Tight” by Tennessee Jim) to which they dance. They go out onto the terrace and onto the roof, and their strong friendship, ease of communication and obvious familiarity give the gathering an elegant atmosphere of complicity, creative cooperation.
Rosencrantz never wrote his book, but Sachs, in a sense, completes it for her – not in volume, of course, but in depth. Converting interview text into film brings it to life in three different ways. The interview's first cinematic life is a drama on screen, a depiction of a conversation between Peter and Linda. For Sachs, the conversation is more than just a meeting of the minds, just as his images are more than just recordings of Wishaw and Hall's action-packed performances. The film's shots, while artfully unobtrusive, are carefully composed to give moments of conversation a sculptural weight. Long takes highlight the mental labor of Hujar's self-exploration, while Sachs's shots (with cinematography by Alex Ash) bring the couple together to evoke the intimacy of their conversation. What's particularly striking is the sparing use of close-ups. Sachs presents the intellect and emotions of his characters, their artistic energy, as inseparable from their physicality: he avoids the cliché of “talking heads” and implements the idea of talking bodies.
