Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Washington Blade - November 5, 2004
Steve Weinstein, Editor
DRUG ADDICTS, DRUG dealers and hustlers constitute the dramatis personae of Ron Nyswaner's memoir, "Blue Days, Black Nights." The latest in a long line of recovery memoirs ("Prozac Nation," "Heroin from A to Z," "Dry"), Nyswaner's is barely 235 pages, but it's more than enough to endure the litany of woe-is-me tales that inevitably accompany substance abuse.
Nyswaner definitely has some talent. He wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for "Philadelphia" as well as the Showtime film "Soldier's Girl," which garnered a Peabody award and Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
On the rebound from a failed relationship, he made the decision, rather foolish in retrospect, to hole up in Woodstock for the winter. Quicker than you can say "The Shining," he meets a Germanic hustler on a trip to L.A. He also quickly graduates from the occasional coke-and-wine binge to smoking crystal.
Desperately lonely and unhappy, Nyswaner pays the hustler for company. As in many such situations, he mistakes the gestures of a paid companion for real affection.
ALONG THE WAY, Nyswaner takes brief breathers from his full-time dissipation to attend to his ailing parents in his hardscrabble Pennsylvania hometown. There are also a few story meetings where Nyswaner is trying to sell a screenplay and visibly exhibits the tina shakes. But since this is Hollywood, no one notices.
This sort of thing was actually done much better several years ago in Julia Phillips' "You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again." None of Nyswaner's shenanigans match Phillips' audacity when she entered a marketing meeting and threw a packet of coke on the table.
Certainly, there are no sex scenes comparable to Phillips toking coke in her Malibu beach house as she watches two surfer dudes doing her in a room-length mirror. In fact, there is very little sex of any kind in "Blue Days."
Nyswaner's encounters with the hustler Johann seem to consist mostly of his servicing the guy for a few minutes.
As someone who has sat through endless one-sided confessional conversations from recovering addicts of various stripes, there is nothing particularly new or revealing in "Blue Days, Black Nights." The sad truth is, every addict's story is pretty much the same: deep depression, addiction, rock bottom, recovery.
There's another reason why I'm not sympathetic. This is a guy who made his fortune and reputation on a movie about a gay man suffering from AIDS. And yet the disease hardly merits a mention in the book.
How come it never occurred to Nyswaner to take his skills, his fame and his money and devote it to AIDS causes? At the very least, the guy is smart enough to know that people holed up in the Catskills during the long winter months often drink themselves silly out of sheer boredom.
To his credit, Nyswaner doesn't present himself as a cautionary tale, per se. But what I can't forgive is his expecting us to find Johann as fascinating as he apparently did. Internal contradictions? Lies? Role playing?
Sorry, but all hustlers play these games. They aren't new, or particularly interesting.
Nyswaner's book is the first gay crystal tell-all I've read, but David Sedaris has covered the same territory, only in a much more humorous and, ultimately, affecting way.
Despite some funny incidents and some horrendous ones, until the club crowd moves beyond crystal (and there are signs that this is actually happening), this is an unfortunately all-too common story.
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