'ROCK' Tim Fountain Interview

TIM FOUNTAIN talks about what inspired him to write his new play Rock, a co-commission between Homotopia and Glasgay starring Bette Bourne.

Rock Hudson was the biggest screen idol in 1950s Hollywood - the ultimate Tinseltown hunk. But his career was perpetually under threat from Confidential magazine, every queer actor's nemesis. Only one man stood between stardom and oblivion.

ROCK is the story of Henry Willson, the man who made a star of Rock Hudson; the most unscrupulous agent in Los Angeles; the man who would do anything to protect his money-spinning protégé.

ROCK has its World Premier in Liverpool in May and is quickly followed as part of the queerupnorth festival in Manchester.

What motivated you to write the play?
“A combination of wanting to do something new for Bette and finding a character that was a sort of gay anti-hero. I thought it would be great for him to play a gay baddie and Henry Willson is sort of a monster, although I quite like him.

Also I’d been interested in Rock Hudson since I was a kid, as he was the only person I’d heard of who was gay and the idea that drew me to it was in a sort of Pygmalion way in that one gay man (Willson) could manipulate another (Hudson) in teaching him how to appear straight, while probably having slept with him. There were lovely contradictions at play.

The play is a two hander set in Henry Willson’s office over a number of years and Michael Xavier plays Rock, he played Raul in Phantom of the Opera and he was also in Mamma Mia. He’s 6ft 3 so he looks the part. There’s a lovely seen in which Willson teaches Rock how to walk and talk straight.

Do you think Hollywood’s attitudes to gay actors have changed?
“Without overstretching it, I don’t think that much has changed in Hollywood I still can’t think of a major leading actor in Hollywood who is out. What’s interesting is whether women are ready to stomach a male lead who is openly gay like they have in pop music, for example with someone like George Michael, there is still a huge reluctance in the movie industry to come out.

I didn’t write the play for it to be a campaigning piece it really is a great fun part for Bette to get his teeth into.

You could argue that the way that PR controls Hollywood now shows that the manipulation of the public is the same, if not greater than it was in the days of the studio system. Stars seemingly give candid interviews but they hand pick journalists to be candid in the right way.

I think the interesting thing with Willson is that he was in control of Rock Hudson and then Rock became famous and then started to control Henry and then they both
realised that they were both controlled by the studios.”

Was there anything in the play that you wanted to use but couldn’t?
“You do the research and then you throw it away so I’ve no idea whether my interpretation of Henry Willson’s life is in any way like the real thing. It doesn’t really matter as we do some of the things that Henry Willson did do. In the end it has to work as a piece of drama.

It’s a couple of years since I did the research so now I think of it as a piece of drama, I’m interested in the relationships, it’s like a sort of Educating Rita in the way that in the beginning Rock is just a little kid and Henry has all the power and by the end the roles have reversed.”

What would you hope people experience from seeing ROCK?
“It is funny. Bette is a great comedian, but it is quite black humour, a real laugh and cry piece. Ideally I hope people just have a great night out but it is a play in which people will ask questions about whether the price Rock paid for his success was too great and whether Willson was as bad a man as he appears or if he was simply responding to the times he lived in.
I think there will be a whole generation of young gay people for whom Henry and Rock may as well be fictitious characters. It’s only now that I realise that the interest in this play is bigger than I imagined it would be as there are lots of angles to it.”

ROCK is a Homotopia & Glasgay co-commission.