Art is Love Made Public

Re: Bad metaphors about maps Henry <hwales@kensingtonemail.com> 9/25/20 6:07 AM to A From Jean Cocteau to Jean Marais, 1939: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for having saved me. I was drowning and you threw yourself into the water without hesitation, without a backward look.

Up close and in person they are waves of chaotic energy bouncing off each other. (“It is kinda like water when we’re together,” Zakhar Perez says.) They tease each other relentlessly. They push each other. They finish each other’s sentences and bicker like an old married couple. Wind them up and off they go.

Then, I discovered that was the easy part because what if they don’t work together? What if it’s just oil and water? They were able to do what they do in this movie because they are two fundamentally different people who respected and trusted each other, and they decided to trust each other from the beginning. They were both smart enough to know that they needed each other. And I think that in some ways they were holding on to each other for dear life while making this movie. I don’t think that there was a moment in the process where one of them wasn’t a little scared and the other one was a little brave. They just took turns being that person — sometimes daily, sometimes hourly. I got lucky. I got two remarkable young actors who needed each other, and I think that in some weird sort of alchemy, we created the situation by which they actually became Henry and Alex together.

'He's watching Henry's face- he can't imagine looking at anything other than Henry's face right now- and his expression goes so soft and his mouth so happy and astonished... Henry's face should be illegal, the way it's turned up toward him, flushed and undone.'

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