Udo Kier and Michael Urie on their queer cross-generational bond in ‘Swan Song’

Arthouse icon Udo Kier and co-star Michael Urie on their moving, queer cross-generational bond in ‘Swan Song’

An Aging Queen Gets His Swan Song
By Chris Azzopardi

Swan Song is available on Amazon Prime

German character actor Udo Kier is on camera holding old prints of press photos from his previous films over his face like a Halloween mask. He jokes that if a journalist dare ask a terrible question that he considers daft, the photos, not Kier himself, will answer back. Luckily those prints never made their way back onto camera during our conversation, which also included his “Swan Song” co-star Michael Urie.

“Swan Song,” the new film from openly gay “Edge of Seventeen” director Todd Stephens (“Another Gay Movie,” “Another Gay Movie 2: Gays Gone Wild”), wouldn’t be the film it is without Kier’s brilliant performance at the heart of it. He’s a leading man for the first time, rightly earning him some of the biggest buzz of his 50-year career. But there’s no question the film’s bittersweet coda, a scene that serves as an elegiac tribute that Kier shares with Urie (“Ugly Betty”), is something special in its own right. Poignantly, it honors older generations of unapoletically queer elders who enriched the lives of younger LGBTQ+ populations, demonstrating that, without them, queer life now wouldn’t be the same. 

Though Kier, also openly gay, has appeared in more than 220 films over the span of five decades (among them: almost all of Lars von Trier’s films, as well as Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” and Gus Van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho”), he’s never played a character as proudly gay as Pat Pitsenberger, a legendary Ohio hairstylist known as the “Liberace of Sandusky.” Women loved Mr. Pat, as he’s called, for making them look, and consequently feel, beautiful.

Now in his advanced years and living in a nursing home, retired from doing hair, he’s more than earned the right to be a bitter old queen. Mr. Pat survived the AIDS epidemic, lost friends, was at the forefront of gay liberation. In this new gay world, he’s an outsider all over again, his glory days behind him. But when one of his former clients dies and he’s asked to do her hair, he has an opportunity to reclaim the history that made him who he is.

Kier, speaking from Los Angeles, and Urie, at home in New York, recently chatted about shooting their powerful scene, what attracted them to the film and the legacies they hope to leave behind.

What made you agree to do this project?

Udo Kier: For me, I got the script and I liked it. I said, “I want to meet Todd, because I want to see if I can work with him.” If I wouldn’t have liked him, I wouldn’t have made the film. But I liked him.

He came to Palm Springs, and we talked about it. His script was very strong. And I wanted to shoot as chronologically as we could. I wanted to start in the retirement home, which we did. I stayed there a single day on my own with no camera, because I wanted to feel the bed, I wanted to see where everything was. And then we went into town.

For me, the importance (of) this film is the different generation — my generation — and going back (to Ohio), and people don’t recognize me anymore. You see, I’m from Germany, and in Germany … if two men lived together, and the neighbors were hearing some erotic noises, they could call the police and the people were arrested and put in jail. Now they’re holding hands at Applebee’s.

So I think it’s so, so wonderful (that) in (a) relatively short time, two men or two women can get married and adopt children. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that, after 50 years in the business working with genius directors like Lars von Trier and Gus Van Sant, the critics now write that it is my best film.

Michael Urie: It was Udo from the beginning. When I was offered the job, he was already on board. That was very exciting to me, ’cause I’ve been a longtime fan of both the filmmaker, Todd, and Udo. But it’s this quiet observation that we as queer people have when we’re younger. Most queer people do not grow up in households with other queer people, and so we look elsewhere to find ourselves to see what we could be.

Michael, your character Dustin acknowledges that Pat, even though they had never met, made it easier for him to be openly gay. Who are the queer people you never personally knew who paved the way for you to be openly gay?

Urie: I’m from Texas, and I grew up in a suburb of Dallas called Plano, Texas. I was in drama in high school, and I was reading great queer literature and (there was) theater: “Angels in America” and Terrence McNally plays. I was exposed to this stuff, and I was aware of it and titillated by it. But there was a guy in my high school who was tall, strapping, extremely well dressed, very attractive, and pretty obviously gay. When I picture him in my head, he’s 30, even though he was, of course, 17 at the time. I looked to him and his strength and his power and his beauty. He was, in many ways, my Mr. Pat. I still think back on him. I still think about how awesome he was.

As gay men, do either of you see parts of yourself reflected in Pat?

Kier: I think, first of all, Michael, you did amazing, good work. (Our) scene on the couch works so well because I don’t move one inch. If I would have had a conversation, that would have been not good. But just having the cigarettes with the ashes, and listening, listening, listening made it stronger than if I would have answered you.

I’m more like an actor who likes to underplay (the character). That’s why, also, I never rehearsed with Todd, because Todd is a director who likes to rehearse. I learned from Lars von Trier, (whose) favorite line is, “Don’t act.” I always think about, especially if you’re in a movie like “Swan Song,” when you have a strong story, a strong situation, which is funny at times, and sad at times, there’s no need to do acting numbers. A lot of actors, they’ll start with their back to the camera, by the chimney, and then they’ll turn around and they’ll talk to the floor, and finally they’ll come up to the camera. No, no, no, no.

Yesterday I saw 20 minutes (of “Swan Song”), and today I will see the whole film at Outfest, and it’s a strong film. I hope a lot of people will see it. I showed it before to a few friends. Not many. I don’t have many friends. But I showed it to a few friends, and they all said, “Oh, I cried and cried. And I laughed.” So that is good. If you’re able to tell a story where people laugh and cry, that’s good.

It’s amazing how many really young people liked the movie. You know, I was afraid that (they’d say), “There’s an old man.” But it’s not true. There were young, young people. And one girl, yesterday, said to Todd, “This is one of my favorite films ever.” And I said, “Wow. Maybe she only goes once a year to the cinema.”

I got choked up throughout the movie thinking a lot about my older self and what I might be like when Im Pat’s age, how I might look back on my life. Do you feel like you share something in common with Pat when it comes to being gay and aging?

Kier: That’s why I accepted the role. Todd told me a lot about Pat and when I got there (to Sandusky) I talked to Pat’s friends and (they) told me how he was smoking and things like that. It’s definitely the generation, and we’re very lucky that in Sandusky, the main street became our set. So in that green suit, I went to have a glass of chardonnay, and they all know me. There was the secondhand store and across the street was the theater, so it became all real. It was not a film where you have trailers. No, no, no, no. It was a real film. It was all from my heart. It wasn’t calculated. I never in the whole film calculated a situation. When I come out and say, “I’m back!,” that was a copy of Liberace. Because when Liberace was performing in Las Vegas, he ran through the stage with all (his) rings and said, “You paid for them.”

Because this movie says a lot about the legacies we leave behind, how do both of you hope others will remember you?

Kier: Well, in my case, because Mike is so much younger, doing it for 50 years, being Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, people will, I guess, remember me (for those roles). But, for me, it’s really amazing that Variety and all the critics write that (“Swan Song” is) my best film. I feel a little bit strange about that. Making so many films with great directors, like “My Own Private Idaho” with Gus, and now they write it’s my best film. I know why. You know why? Because I have the leading part, and you follow the character. If you have a guest part in a film, people say, “He’s very good. He’s a good villain, yeah, yeah, yeah.” But they cannot follow you through the story, from folding napkins to wearing wonderful shoes when he’s dead (laughs).

Urie: I guess I want my legacy to be: “He was part of cool things. And he was always himself.” I’ve been in a lot of queer movies and queer theater and —

Kier: Strange movies.

Urie: (Laughs.) I’ve been in a lot of strange movies. And there was a point when I was first on TV and I was playing a very flamboyant gay character and I was told, “Don’t do this again. Don’t do any more of these. Don’t get pigeonholed.” And I thought, “There’s so many different kinds of gay people.” And I do play gay parts all the time, and they are different. We have so many different ways of being LGBTQ, and there are so many stories to tell.

I’m so proud to be part of this one, which I saw with a group at the Rooftop Film Festival in Brooklyn (with) a group of predominantly heterosexual people who loved it. That is a really exciting thing, too, to be a part of a movie that you would maybe call a gay movie because the protagonist is gay and the central conflict has to do with his homosexuality, but this is a straight person’s gay movie. Straight people love it. I think that’s a testament to Udo and a performance at the center that can compel and delight and break your heart. It’s a piece of life, watching it. And working on it felt like walking into the movie.

As Udo said, we took over that town — or they took over that town, and I showed up. I showed up at a certain point in the shoot and I felt like I was walking into a movie — not onto a film set, but into a movie. There he was in his green suit, and we didn’t talk much before we started shooting. He wanted our first interaction to be our first interaction. I’m used to going on stage and making people laugh, and here I am in this movie, reacting to a person. This is a guy walking into my space, and it was actually very easy because he was bringing so much over to me.

Michael, what do you think this film says about aging, in particular regarding the queer demographic?

Urie: That’s very interesting because now the way queer people navigate the world — marriage, parenting — there is a more traditional society-based way of getting older. An older person gets taken care of (by) family and loved ones. But I think all of us as queer people, we’re not going to have a life that society deems as normal. That is one of the things that we fear: that we will grow old alone or have no one to take care of us. Certainly it’s a fear that I have and I think about.

But what’s so beautiful about Mr. Pat and the way in which I relate to Mr. Pat is that, even though now it’s 2021 and queer people are accepted — I can walk down the street holding hands with my partner and I don’t feel any shame anymore or any danger, and I actually feel proud to do that; we’re legal, we’re allowed to marry, we’re allowed to have kids, we have full protections under the law, for the most part, I can blend in, I can assimilate — I don’t want to.

I think that is something that the older generation, when marriage equality became a thing and when people started getting married, thought, “Why would we need that? We’ve been fine without that. We don’t wanna be like straight people; we don’t wanna get married.” It’s two different things. It’s the right to be married, versus the need to be married. Also, I’m proud of who I am, and I’m proud to be different, and I don’t need to assimilate. I can be someone else. I think that I want to always have a little bit of Mr. Pat. I don’t wanna walk down the street and have people think, “That’s a straight person.”

Kier: (Laughs.) You have to get a green suit! Get a green suit and just smoke like (him).

Yesterday I looked up, because I hear (it) now so many times, the word “queer.” I wanted to look in the dictionary (to see) what it means. And queer means, actually, strange. If you go on the dictionary, it says queer means strange. Um, (I) definitely did a strange performance. (Laughs.)

So you might call your performance queer?

Kier: Not me. It’s just a performance. It’s not my swan song. I have made already four films after that. And so it’s not my swan song. That was the danger of it: I thought, “Oh my god, ‘Swan Song.’ I’m 77 years old soon, so is that maybe my last movie?” No, no, no. I had to go to Lars von Trier and quickly make a movie. And that’ll be my swan song.

Swan Song is available on Amazon Prime

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity

HIV & Aging in San Francisco

HIV & Aging

Older adults living with HIV in San Francisco face staggeringly high rates of mental health issues and levels of loneliness, as well as experience a dire need for regular social connections and health care coordination, according to a landmark new report by the ACRIA Center on HIV and Aging at GMHC released Sunday.

The report, issued as the first part of the multi-site Research on Older Adults with HIV (ROAH) 2.0 project, demonstrates in stark terms that living with HIV as an older adult presents a unique set of challenges—and requires a complex set of coordinated solutions. More than 50% of all people living with HIV in the United States are age 50 and older, and by 2020, 65-70% of people living with HIV will be age 50 and older.

“While there is increased awareness that there is a critical need for both more services for, and more research about, older adults living with and affected by HIV, our nation is not fully prepared for the medical and social implications of the growth of this population,” said Stephen Karpiak, PhD, Senior Director for Research for the ACRIA Centers at GMHC and a Co-Principal Investigator of ROAH 2.0. “We hope that the fresh insights from this timely study—which come just as adults age 50 and over are becoming the majority of all people with HIV in the United States—will inspire action to address the many challenges older adults with HIV face.”

In San Francisco, where 65% of people living with HIV are age 50 or over and the cost of living is among the highest in the country, the need to know more about older adults with HIV is particularly pressing.  Though most participants reported that their HIV is well managed and that their health is “excellent” or “good,” 41% reported that their health is “fair,” “poor,” or “very poor.” They also reported a high burden of physical symptoms and diseases other than HIV.

Furthermore, survey participants said that they contend with hunger, low income, and burdensome housing costs. Many also said they lack ways to get help with the activities of daily living or care should they fall sick or be injured.

The findings of the report underline the importance of providing older adults with HIV with medical services guided by the principles of geriatric medicine (an approach tailored to the complex needs of older adults with multiple chronic conditions, e.g., multimorbidity and associated risks of polypharmacy), enhanced access to mental health treatment and social support, trauma-informed care that acknowledges the repercussions of a history of trauma and avoids re-traumatization, and programs to help ease the financial burden of living in a high-cost city on a low fixed income.

Other notable findings in the San Francisco ROAH 2.0 study include:

  • Rates of depression and PTSD were extremely high: 38% of participants scored as having moderate to severe depression and 35% scored as having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using conservative criteria. About half (51%) of the participants reported childhood sexual abuse.
  • Participants show a high prevalence of multimorbidity (having two or more chronic illnesses). They report a heavy burden of illness and physical symptoms: On average, they reported experiencing seven symptoms or diseases besides HIV in the past year. Data shows that the older adult with HIV is evidencing higher rates of illnesses typically associated with aging (cancers, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, kidney disease, liver disease, diabetes). Multimorbidity is associated with elevated risk for polypharmacy.
  • Three-quarters of participants said their needs for emotional support were not fully met, and just over one-fifth said they needed “a lot more social support.”
  • The most frequent need among participants (and the need that was most often unmet) was having opportunities to socialize or meet others.
  • Nearly 60% of the participants reported that their housing costs account for about half, or more than half, of their income.
  • A brief assessment showed that 19% of participants were food insecure (meaning they have uncertain or insufficient access to food) and 25% experienced both food insecurity and hunger.

The full study, a successor to a pivotal ACRIA study of 1,000 older adults with HIV in New York City in 2006, will ultimately include almost 3,000 older adults living with HIV in sites across the United States, including New York City, Upstate New York, Chicago, and Alameda County (the East Bay), as well as San Francisco. Results will help social researchers and care providers across the country develop more services geared specifically toward people living with HIV who are over the age of 50.

“GMHC is committed to being a national leader in the study of older adults living with HIV as we all start to fully grasp the enormity of the challenges faced by the 50-and-over population living with HIV,” said GMHC CEO Kelsey Louie. “We hope that service organizations across the country will start to use these findings as they develop services and interventions designed to help this population. Since entering into a strategic partnership with ACRIA in 2017, GMHC has redoubled its efforts to work collaboratively with our older adult communities, launching the Terry Brenneis Hub for Long-Term Survivors earlier this year, relaunching GMHC’s pivotal Buddy Program, and using new data to better tailor our services. We look forward to shepherding more vital research that will help us provide the best possible holistic care for our older clients.