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Punks Patrik Ian Polk3/28/2021
I believe those kind of attractions, between straight people, gay people, whatever, are genuine and real.
Punks Patrik Ian Polk Professional Black ManHe takes calls on his cell phone during our interview because hes also overseeing the final sound mix of his fun and frothy gay romantic comedy, which charts the angst and drama of lovelorn Marcus (Seth Gilliam), a young professional black man, and his three romantically challenged friends, including a drag queen with a thing for Sister Sledge (We Are Family).Before malting Punks for less than 1 million, Polk, a Hattiesburg, Miss., native, graduated from Brandeis University, dropped out of the University of Southern California film school, and developed films at MTV Films and for RB songster Babyface. ![]() I didnt realize that we, as gay black men, were reclaiming the word punk, like queer, as a political statement. Punks Patrik Ian Polk Movie When IWe are with this movie When I was writing it, I didnt have a title. I was telling my friend about it, and he asked, Whats it about I said, A bunch of punks, and he said, Then thats what you call it--Punks. It was perfect, because Im from Mississippi, and my understanding of the term was that it literally meant a gay man. I can remember going to a distant relatives house, and this really small little girl, with not a trace of malice, said, Is you a punk So, hopefully, gay men will start to embrace that term. Would you say you wrote this movie out of frustration with what passes for gay cinema There had been a surge of those gay independent movies, like Lie Down With Dogs. It was all white gay men and no people of color or one--marginalized--person of color, I had seen the latest one of those, and I thought, Someone should tell the other side of this story--Ill write a script. So over Christmas break from MTV in 1996 I wrote the script in, like, eight days. I got really good feedback, but I really didnt do anything with it. ![]() How often can you see a group of white men go on a vacation on Fire Island or see a white teenage boy coming out of the closet You would think that they would get it. Another angle to market Punks is to that daring part of the straight black community thats going to be, A black film Well go see it; we dont care if its gay. No distributor is smart enough to say, This film didnt cost a lot of money; lets put it out there and hope for the best. And what about your romantic life What about it Luckily, now theres not much of one to talk about. I am single. Completely. L.A.s tough if youre not a big, black, beautiful buck with bulging muscles, and even then, there are plenty of white guys that are like, Oh, I dont date black men, and they think thats just as OK as saying I dont like oranges. I dont know how we got to the place where we think its OK to say, Im not attracted to this race of people. ![]() If youre black and you go to a club in West Hollywood, you may as well be the invisible man. Your hero, Marcus, has a crush on his hot neighbor, Darby, played by Rockmond Dunbar see below. Hes Darbys friend. Marcus has a theory that if he feels a real emotional connection with a guy, then he cant be straight. Thats his theory. So when Marcus says, Im attracted to someone, he means something in emotional territory that means a connection, where you talk and start to feel it.
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