Culture That Made Me: Panti Bliss
The book I’ve read most in my life is The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. It was also made into a movie with Mickey Rooney. It’s about a boy who lives with his parents in Arabia. At the beginning of the book, he’s alone on a ship back to the United States. The black stallion is kept below in the ship’s bowels. The ship sinks. The only survivors are him and the stallion. They end up on an island together. Eventually they’re rescued. After the boy had all that time in isolation – him and the stallion just working out their own way to live on the island – he then goes back to the real world and gives two fingers to everybody and wins this huge horserace. That book made such an impression on me as a kid. Read what you like into it.
I always liked Robinson Crusoe, The Blue Lagoon, Swiss Family Robinson. I’ve always been drawn to those stories where young people are trapped on an island and they build their own society, living free from everyone else on an island. I also adored all the Tarzan films – a big muscly man swinging around on the trees, but it was also this idea of a man living away from society. I am a bit of a hermit. I’m what people describe as an extroverted introvert. People think I want to be running around nightclubs all the time. Actually, I’m not really that person. I’m good at that when I have to be. I can turn it on, but for example, I quite enjoyed the lockdown. I’m happy in my own company.
Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas is a memoir about a gay guy in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. It woke me up in two ways. In Ireland, we have this naïve attitude: “Ah, sure Castro was grand, wasn’t he?” Then you read about the terrible things that happened to people in Cuba under his revolution. It also made me aware about how lucky I was to end up being queer somewhere like here even though there was terrible things about it. It made be conscious of there being a bigger world. In Uganda or parts of eastern Europe, for example, it’s really dangerous to be queer. Books like Before Night Falls awoke something in me. It made me thankful in some ways, but also that we can’t get too comfortable in Ireland: we’re grand, let’s pull up the ladder.
I would almost say the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is responsible for everything I’ve ever done! If I’m going to collaborate with somebody on a project, I always make them watch it before we do anything because I will be constantly referencing it. How Panti looks wouldn’t exist without it. Panti’s attitude, the way she interacts with people – everything is based on it although over time, the links may seem less obvious because Panti has grown into her own thing. Maggie Smith won the Oscar for her performance. Never was an Oscar more deserved. It’s set in Edinburgh pre-war. She’s a teacher in this very stuffy girls’ school. She’s a force of nature, but like all great characters she has a major flaw. It has everything I want in a movie. It’s funny. The costumes are incredible. The dialogue is really sharp. Every scene is alive with millions of layers and meaning.
If I’m only ever allowed to watch one TV show again it’d be The Muppet Show. Miss Piggy – which is a bit of cliché – and Gonzo are my favourite characters. It's entertaining for the whole family. It’s clever. It can go from being stupid and ridiculous to being beautiful and poignant in the space of 30 seconds. It also gave me great insight into variety shows – I love old-school variety shows which change things every few minutes.
I used to make puppets when I was younger. When I was in art college that’s how I made money. At weekends, I had a Punch and Judy show that I did on Dún Laoghaire pier. In the old days when companies had their Christmas party, their families would be invited. I did the entertainment for the kids. I built my own Punch and Judy booth. A friend of mine, Liam, used to come with me to carry the various bits and pieces. Half of Liam’s job – once the thing was all set up – was to stay inside with me and stop kids from crawling in under the booth. Also when you’re doing Punch and Judy – and ours had a darker twist on it – it’s amazing to see how much kids love violence. They love when Punch gets the crap beaten out of him, or when Punch beats the crap out of the crocodile.
I adored [Dublin theatre company] ANU’s Faultline in 2018. It was an immersive theatre production, which ANU do so well. Everybody felt they were really there. It was about the early days of the gay rights movement in Ireland. It was set in a big, old Georgian house on Parnell Square. We went in groups of about 10 people, being led through it by various characters, ending up in different scenes – a basement nightclub exactly like the one I used to go to when I was a student; or in the offices of a helpline in the days when you would go to a telephone box and call this number and say, “I’m gay.” It was all against the backdrop of a real-life murder investigation into the death of Charles Self, who was found tied up and murdered in Dublin in the eighties. It was thought-provoking in so many different ways.
Absolutely formative for me and everything I have become comes from meeting Leigh Bowery. He was a performance artist in London in the eighties who earned his bread and butter doing these nutty performances in nightclubs. He was very queer. Until I saw him, I had no idea I was going to be a performer. Google images of him, you’ll see why. He was from a shitty town in the middle of Australia. When I met him, he was the most spectacular thing in London. It made me realise I don’t have to be from Ballinrobe, Co Mayo; I can be anything I want to be.
