Over the Rainbow

Blog Idol 2 winner Chaz Harris is a writer, filmmaker and astronaut from Wellington - all right, maybe not the last one. Chaz's blog is a delicious combination of raw, unadulterated opinion with a side order of random quirk and a dash of wit and charm. In case the blog title wasn't obvious enough, he's also gay - just FYI…

My last blog and testament

08:00am 21 Apr 2011

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As I stand above the fiery pit of doom looking at the daunting view below, I feel like Frodo hesitantly holding on to the One Ring of power - can I let it go? Perhaps I should keep it in my hands for just a few moments longer? However, as much as it urges me to hold on, I fear I should cast it back into the fiery chasm whence it came, you know, before I get my finger bitten off. It's done, it's over. This is my last blog for Over the Rainbow and here, at the end of all things, it's time for one last blog post to rule them all.

No matter what you might think, my own personal experience of being gay is not that it is a choice - regardless of whether a switch got flicked during my childhood or I was genetically born this way, I know what a moment of sexual attraction feels like and it has never happened to me in the presence of a woman. Well, that's a lie actually, women have certainly been present but to be frank they were never the ones who got my heart racing.

In a way, you could compare it to saying that you don't like the taste of Marmite: even after someone has argued the wonders and tasty goodness of it and how great it tastes in a pita bread or on toast, you will still sit there saying "but, I don't like Marmite". Sure, sexuality can be complex, but I can only speak for myself and say that I am very much gay and that there is categorically nothing I can do but just accept that and get on with my life. For the record, I should note for the purposes of clarity that I personally hold nothing against Marmite and think it tastes fine.

Whenever I have defended the statement that being gay is not a choice, Christianity has always come into the discussion at some stage. I would like to stress that I am not anti-religious as I do believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs. Not all Christians or religious groups are bigots and we should be careful not to make that assumption and remember that the minority often ruins it for the majority. I've usually taken issue only with more extremist groups when they have enforced their beliefs on others. It is always wrong to make anyone feel guilty or bad about something they can't change about themselves, whether that be race, gender or sexual orientation.

Something else I believe in is fate and that most things in life happen for a reason. I particularly believe this when it comes to relationships as I've met so many couples with spooky stories of near-misses that made them ultimately realise they were destined to meet at some point. So I don't get too hung up on the idea of going in search of the right person. Sure, I'm open to it, but I think if you go actively looking for the right person then you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Until that day when that person crosses your path: love life, love your friends and work hard at learning to love yourself.

The gay Carrie Bradshaw

08:00am 20 Apr 2011

17 comments

I'm going to let you all in on a little secret. Nobody knows the reason I named this blog "Over the Rainbow". Some have assumed it's because the gay pride flag is made up of a rainbow, others have speculated that The Wizard of Oz is my favourite film or that it's because I was born the same day that film was released back in 1939. Even that it's a play on words of being "Over" the whole gay thing, but that was more a happy accident that was pointed out to me, if I am being honest. The truth is, it's none of the above but there is a connection.

Dorothy's Shoes Since mid-2006 I have been developing and repeatedly rewriting a feature film project called Dorothy's Friends about a fashion designer based in San Francisco who turns 30 and realises that love and friendship have passed her by. Dorothy then sets out in search of finding love and dates three guys who turn out to be gay called Jake Straw, Rusty Silverman and Leo King. Along the way, Dorothy also struggles to accept her "wicked" stepmother Ellen West and meets a handsome Australian man from "Oz".

At the core of this story is the belief and perspective that when you find that one special person in life you know you are meant to be with, "it feels like home" - and just like the original story, sometimes we don't see or appreciate what is right in front of us. It's a somewhat whimsical and lighthearted coming-of-age story about a modern-day Dorothy but with side stories involving people with familiar traits from the original story as they try to overcome their own struggles of intelligence, heart and courage. A particular subplot close to my heart involves Dorothy's new friend Leo, a closeted school teacher lacking the courage to be himself and how he works to overcome that in order to help one of his students who is being bullied.

Having been inspired by one of my readers recently who wrote and released an eBook called The Arrival online, I found it something of an epiphany or wake-up call that I don't need to keep waiting for someone to agree to make the movie before I can share my story with the world. It is amazing how far technology has brought us and how more power than ever is being given back to those in creative roles instead of gatekeepers. Content is now king and it really is an exciting time to be an artist whatever your chosen arena.

So I've decided to follow in the footsteps of Nicole MacDonald and adapt the film script I have written into a book as it's now working well, according to my story editor in the US. The subject matter of the story as a film is perhaps a little bit too edgy to go ahead and make without any evidence of an existing audience or underlying material so I found myself thinking "why not write the book and create that underlying material myself?"

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One year ago today

08:00am 19 Apr 2011

26 comments

One year ago today, I wrote my first Over the Rainbow post, so I'd like to wish the blog a happy first (and last) anniversary. With just two more blog posts until I bid you all farewell and float off in my WordPress hot air balloon, it seems an appropriate time to take stock for a moment and look back on the past year.

At just shy of 200 posts, but just over that figure if I include my Blog Idol 2 competition blogs, I do feel a sense of accomplishment. I feel I've done what I set out to do and that was to demonstrate that I'm a person just like you and my opinions are not just limited to gay issues or subject matter. Yes, I have come to freely admit that I'm gay, and it is true to say that I accept it as an undeniable part of who I am as a person, much more than I did a year ago. However, it is still something I struggle with and don't fully embrace. Despite being referred to as writing "the gay blog" when people try to place me, I certainly don't believe that is what defines me as a person. There is so much more to me and all of us, than who we are attracted to.

However, there was one particular piece of feedback I got recently that made putting myself out there all worthwhile. It came from a gay couple who know a close friend of mine and they told me, "it was refreshing to read a gay voice that had a different rhetoric and perspective on being gay and was not just another one of the predictable and bitchy gay blogs with no substance".

I'm sure if I thought about it I could have gone that way and turned this into a light-hearted and schmaltzy or bitchy gay blog, but it seems like the world has enough of those and I don't think that would have been truly representative of me as a person or authentic to the message or perception I want to be putting out there. I like to talk about controversial things, I like to raise matters that might not usually be talked about and challenge the way we think about certain things. It's fun to turn an issue on its head sometimes and see why people have a problem with it, or not, as the case may be - in some cases I have even played the Devil's Advocate.

So, I got thinking about some of my personal favourite posts over the past year and came up with the following ones that particularly made me either smile or think:

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Drivers behaving badly

08:30am 18 Apr 2011

25 comments

The weekend death toll on the roads was sitting at six come Sunday morning and it got me thinking about the state of driving in this country. Is there anything we can do about it or is it just a statistical inevitability that people will get killed on the roads?

Car Crash A couple of friends found themselves in near-miss accidents this weekend and I saw quite a few others mentioning the bad driving they had been experiencing. One friend surmised this morning that at least eight out of 10 drivers in Wellington are either a**holes or idiots after narrowly avoiding three different accidents on a 10-minute drive to work. Another suggested that they need to stop handing out driving licences in cereal boxes, but is that really the issue?

Personally, I think one of the biggest problems here is the kind of cars people are able to drive. In a country where insurance is voluntary, that makes almost any car within reach for young people with the money to get financed for one. In the UK, the price of insurance on certain types of cars made it cost prohibitive to own and drive a powerful and fast car which was one of the ways to control the appetite for them and the "need for speed".

However, that is playing on the common misconception and generalisation that all young drivers are bad and I don't believe they are the primary problem on the roads. I'm sure I read some statistics a few years back that older drivers are the ones more likely to be caught speeding or drunk driving.

I definitely think there are areas of the country that are more hazardous to drive in than others though. I don't find myself noticing bad driving in central Wellington unless I am on the motorway but I do recall driving past Auckland on the state highway there and witnessing cars weaving around each other on both sides. After that experience, I haven't driven in Auckland since - it was even worse than LA.

What's your favourite scary movie?

08:30am 15 Apr 2011

72 comments

I went to see Scream 4 last night; don't worry though, there won't be spoilers in this post. I remember the first time I saw the original Scream movie, I had a group of friends round for a party and we turned off the lights and sat there watching it together.

During the original movie's opening scene, there is a moment when something comes crashing through a window. One of my friends screamed at the top of their lungs and so high-pitched that we thought it was one of the girls - it was my friend Andrew. After we had paused the film and all recovered from the half-laugh half-scare moment, we pressed play and continued watching that very harrowing and scary opening scene. Just as it ended, our home phone rang and made us ALL jump and scream.

That was the magic of that first movie. It had the ability to make something as simple as a phone call when you are at home a terrifying concept. Don't answer the phone, don't answer the door, don't try to escape. After showing the film to my dad, we watched the end credits and he pointed out how many people are involved in making a movie and said "look at all those people, you must be able to get one of those jobs, right?" and then as the Miramax Films logo showed up, he said "there, Miramax - why don't you go and work for them!" I looked at him, rolled my eyes and went "yeah, right, like that's gonna happen!" Six years later in July 2003, I walked into the offices of Miramax Films in London and soon accomplished that seemingly impossible concept. It was then that I realised anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

In the latest Scream movie, one thing became clear: blood and guts are not scary anymore. Tension and making someone suffer as they see someone else murdered without being able to do anything about it are far more disturbing and terrifying than seeing pieces of meat shaped like people's internal organs. Movies like SAW and Hostel have completely desensitised people to blood and guts. Even though I've never seen those films because I'm not keen on the torture porn genre, I feel that I no longer have the same level of shock and disgust I did back when I saw the original film. It's just not quite as scary as it could have been. Yes, it was clever, yes it tricked me, but did it scare me? Only sometimes and this made me ask myself that iconic question, "what's your favourite scary movie?"

For me, it's not so much my favourite, but I consider one film above all others to be the scariest movie ever made. That film is Jaws, because after seeing that film I have had a lifelong fear of the ocean. I've not been in the water since aside from a brief five-minute dip in Antigua, but only up to my chest and with my feet firmly on the sea bed. That film has a lot to answer for and the reason I think it is scary is not because of the shark itself, but the fact that it's the one film to have a long-term psychological impact on me.

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