#does it feature any queer characters eventually? im curious now

[gammija]

the visual of a train slithering like a serpent is deeply unsettling in a way that doesn't seem intentional

how does john instinctively know what a taxi is, but doesn't recognize a wheelchair on sight

[rockettransman]

MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT ROCKETMAN

I HAVE SO MANY! HERE WE GO!

prelude: i went into this movie pretty jaded and not thinking i was gonna like it. in my head, i got john lennon and elton john confused. i was thinking it was about john lennon. “oh god, they made a movie about that prick?” further, i was already dreading it because they play EJ’s hits on the radio at work all the time, and frankly i was fucking sick of tiny dancer and im still standing. when i watched the trailer i was like “aw geez, elton john sings these? damn, i was hoping i could tolerate him at all.” so. not many high hopes for this movie.

that was until i was on a six hour flight from boston to portland, oregon, and i was delirious with pain and boredom. i was sat in the middle of a father and daughter, and so i really didn’t wanna pull out my laptop and get in their space. reading the subtitles from the office off the airplane tv made me sick. the lights were off and it was 2 am, so no reading. i. was. BORED. and then, i saw someone watching something in the row in front of me. where i was sitting i got a whole view of their screen. oh, they were watching that elton john movie. they didn’t have subtitles on, so i could only take from visual and context clues what was happening. it looked flashy, and oh-- that man just stared lovingly, tenderly into another man’s eyes. oh shit. oh yeah. elton is gay. 

now i’m hooked. if i’m anything, i’m a trans man in a desperate search for a complex queer romance movie. i wanted something that would pull on my heartstrings, that would wreck me emotionally with a high reward. suddenly elton is staring at himself in full garb, putting on and taking off his glasses. smiling then frowning. glasses on. smile. glasses off. scowl. oh he’s in distress. oh, is he snorting coke? okay, cool, tight.

from here on out, i watch the movie with (no audio) the predisposition that elton is in severe distress, dealing with drugs and self-sabotage all because his feelings and attraction towards men are confusing and frustrating and he doesn’t know how to cope with them. is he in denial? does he hate himself for it? does he try to make himself attracted to women? obviously, i was incorrect. elton was pretty secure in the fact that he was gay in his personal life. 

i think about rocketman for days until my flight back to sarasota. i decide to watch rocketman on the plane back instead of renting it. but for some reason, my goblin brain told me to rent it, and i did. but i ended up just watching it on the plane anyway.

i was disappointed. really, kinda bummed about it. every article and review said it was R for a reason. there was plenty sexual content and drugs to do elton’s real life comparison justice. in the movie i watched, i saw none of it. there was some drinking of alcohol, he took pills, it was implied he snorted coke. i saw no kissing, no intimacy, not even a tender hand on a cheek or embrace between elton and another man. this movie was praised for being so groundbreaking! for representing so much of what elton’s life was really like, with drugs and sex and all that. and now that i thought about it, i heard not one curse word. “bloody” was tossed around a lot, but that is used as an inflection. and during the pool scene before he throws himself in, when he meets john at the deck, he spits something about “his secretary shagging him in front of the pool boys.” that had me in utter confusion. there... was no one there with john? he was just sitting there? must’ve been something i missed.

SO IT TURNS OUT THE AIRPLANE’S VERSION OF THE MOVIE WAS HEAVILY CENSORED. i watched the real thing when i got home yesterday and was FLOORED by the differences in the same movie i had just watched. in the scene where elton remarks he’d like to change his name, they completely edited out the character behind him peeing into a glass bottle. they also cut out the scene where elton is staring at the performer, being yelled at to close the door, and the kiss where he’s pinned against the wall. holy fuck. i realized when i saw that, i had missed something MAJOR. this meant i was missing some MORE major explicit, probably important-to-the-plot-and-character-development stuff. oh, now i was excited. 

(we could talk all day about the fact that a single kiss between two men was cut because it was deemed “too explicit”, and in a movie about elton john being the ultimate irony)

the sex scene AND take me to the pilot were completely missing in the airplane version. i had no idea this song existed! oh my god, it was a banger! i cried tears of happiness during the song. holy shit. the tense energy between he and john, standing there silhouetted by the window, and then all of a sudden they’re all over each other, fingers tangled in hair, moaning into each other’s mouths, squirming, trying to get as close to each other as possible. this is what i wanted. this is what i was looking for. not because i was looking for something “hot” or “dirty.”’ i wanted an intense sex scene because then i knew it was real. i wanted the desperation, the nerves, the tender way they cradled each other, and how they went to town on each other. it was elton’s first time being intimate with a man, and it was such a nerve-wracking, intense, lustful, desperate moment. taron and richard absolutely nailed it. The swaying and the leaning into each other, the grabbing and nuzzling and all of a sudden they’re all over each other... it honest to god moved me. not to sound too “grew-up-baptist”, but sex, especially the first time you have it is so special and intimate and personal and important (imo). i know all the times i’ve had sex, it was a very, very special moment to me, and i wholly and completely trusted my partner then. i was so happy elton could find security and love and a heckin good time in bed with another man. it must’ve felt so freeing.

This was between two men! In the smack dab of the AIDS crisis in like 1975 or some shit! If being queer is this fucking tough in 2019, imagine what it was like in 1975!! MILLIONS of people were left to die by eat-shit Raegan who say by and said “aw that’s cute.” MILLIONS of people died for loving who they love!! That’s fucked man!! Seeing a triumphant moment like this in the middle of what was happening and what it could mean for Elton and his career just rly got me ya know

my entire perspective of the movie changed from then on. i was excited to see what else i had missed. in fact, some of the songs weren’t bad. maybe i’d like some of elton’s stuff after all?

i missed the scene in the closet. on the airplane, he followed john into the closet and shut the door. the scene cut. but in the real version, suddenly john pinned him against the wall, mirroring the scene of the first kiss i missed, and elton lamely stutters he wants dinner with him, not a sexual act john was certainly looking for, and in the next moment he was hungrily snapping at his finger. i missed exactly how much coke elton snorted. i missed entire scenes and nuances that provided so much to the story. man, i was angry i missed all this. i was cheated.

when i finished the real version, my perspective on the movie, and elton, and his music, had spun an entire 180. i dug it. i listened to rocket man on repeat during the entirety of my forty minute run. i fell asleep listening to the soundtrack. i woke up today listening to it, and have been through the whole day. i have not been able to get this movie off my mind. im watching it for the third time right now.

WELCOME TO THE THIRD POINT OF THIS POST!

if you made it this far, thank you. what i wrote feels so important to me. someone needed to hear it. I WANNA TALK ABOUT THE ENTIRE ROCKETMAN SCENE. I have PTSD with psychotic features. This means that under the right triggers, i hallucinate, visually or auditorily (is that a word), things that aren’t there. sometimes they’re scary, connected to my past trauma, but sometimes, they’re hazy outlines of good people who i think i know. i also deal with all the lovely things that come along with ptsd, including dissociation. pretty much any and everything can trigger me in a specific way. the pool scene was incredibly difficult to watch. seeing a little boy playing piano underwater, him sinking and hovering and singing along, and people slowly descending, dancing in the water until they retrieve him. the vision snaps apart and holy fuck elton is in trouble. (as an aside, that’s one of my favorite affects of film: the protag is under the influence of something, whether it be a hallucination, drugs, in a deep fantasy, or just otherwise a storytelling device, and he is in imminent danger. the audience is aware he is in imminent danger. the protag, however, is cool and chillin and hanging out, not aware or bothered, and maybe this is where a major character arc beat hits. in an instant, they’re pulled out of it, and we--the audience and the characters--are hit with how dire the circumstances really are.)

Suicide is a super sensitive subject to me. when he mumbled “i’m going to fucking kill myself” and plunged into the depths, my throat constricted. it was a difficult few minutes, but i held my breath, gritted my teeth, and paced myself through it. despite the sheer terror and panic that was racing through my brain, the entirety of it was so beautiful. the bright blues, whites, and blacks of the pool lighting and bubbles decorating him, the flow of his--forgive him, i don’t know if there’s a cultural name--outer garment, how curious and confused he looked as he watched his younger self do something he did now, and the people twirling through the water, reaching out, and eventually snatching him up until we’re suddenly in the present--dude, the cinematography of the entire first verse is so, so breathtaking. the scene in the ambulance and getting his stomach pumped was a bit too graphic for me (i could feel a flashback/hallucination creeping on; sometimes i can’t tell them apart.) but it was all done so smoothly. when they lifted him up, spun him around, undressed and dressed him all in one fluid motion, i lost my fuckin mind. i rewound it several times to just watch that sequence. the pain, reluctance, and exhaustion in his face right before he was handed his bat and exuberantly entered the stage was so intense it was palpable. my heart ached for him deeply. it’s allll about putting on a mask of being truly happy and well, when just before that, he had tried to fucking kill himself. how fucking heavy is that shit?

the downward spiral kept me on the edge of my seat. honky cat was funky as hell, and i loved the little tiny moments and gestures towards each other. maybe john and elton truly cared for each other for mere heartbeats before it all went south. he was hurting so bad and ruining everything and in such denial i wanted to throttle him by the shoulders to scream “LOOK WHAT YOU’RE DOING! YOU BIG FUCKING IDIOT!” he was constantly suffering, doing more coke and drugs than i thought a person could keep in his system. the suicide attempt, the fantastic Dodgers show, the night and day between his outward appearance and his actions, all of it was so gripping. the group therapy medium through which the story was told was insanely cool, too. i thought at first it was a bit cheesy, but it worked. i loved that he confronted everyone who had hurt him, and who he had hurt, and reconciled. i loved that as the major plot beats went on, his clothes eventually toned down in loudness, mirroring how the story was going along in real time. he went from having an explosive outburst, to levelly confronting his parents, and firmly insisting they not treat him like that anymore. they didn’t have the right. we could see how he’d grown through several different literary elements. the fact that it was laid out so plainly really helped me, someone who is dumb as fuck and constantly misses nuances like that.

it’s so disheartening to see elton’s first love was someone who was aggressive, non-interested, and who refused to listen to him.

(im at the pinball wizard scene, and holy shit this tune fucks)

at the end of the day, when i had thought the movie fell through so many expectations, i watched the real, authentic version and was so, so happy with how it turned out. it was much more honest than what i had thought it was. when the credits rolled, and it said he and his husband David Furnish had been happily married for 25 years, the tears really started coming. Elton did it. He survived through all the shit he put his body through, all the heartache and loneliness and terrible isolation and suffering, and he won. He got what he always wanted. A man who loved him deeply, purely, passionately, and properly. 

i haven’t shut up about elton john for days. i’m kinda baffled how something gripped me so intensely, when i had written it off as stupid just a day before this. thank you for reading. i’m sure i forgot a lot of things i wanted to express, but hopefully i got something across. let me know if you read this, please. if you made it all the way down here, i owe you like $5. drop me your venmo.

thank you for reading. this movie touched me in a way i didn’t think was possible. thank god for elton john. thank god for his perseverance. thank god for his story, giving me and millions of others hope that happiness will come. recovery is possible. healing is possible. you just need to reach out first. thank you and goodnight.