“I
never really had a relationship with a man,” says Tony Ward,
crunching little bits of gossip and publicity half-truths
beneath the heel of his boots. “I mean, I´ve had my little
affairs… and a lot of, you know, fun. There´s a lot of
experiences I would just put in the mindless-sex category. I´ve
had good things with both men and women [but] I´ve always
been in relationships with women.
If
dicks earned frequent flyer points, Tony Ward could´ve been
to the moon and back five times. That, and a nose that could
cut sheet metal have taken the 33 year old places that a kid
growing up in San Jose could never have imagined. And if Ward
is stuck with a certain reputation after the international
success of his film debut in Hustler White, the irony isn´t
lost on him.
Eleven
years ago he left the filthy world of print porn for a stellar
career strutting the world´s top catwalks, fucked the world´s
most desirable pop star and made what was, for an instant, the
world´s most controversial movie. And now, all that directors
want him to do is fuck boys again. “You can´t avoid it, “
he says evenly, still a little irritated because he just comes
from a meeting with a Director who just wanted to tell him
what was wrong with Hustler White. “Every role that I´ve
been offered is a gay role. I don´t mind. That´s fine with
me for now, and eventually I´ll go into an arena where it´s
a little bit less close-minded.”
He
can´t possibly mean close-minded in a bad way. He, who talks
so openly about giving blow jobs to photographers so he could
get a couple of extra copies of his shots. It´s just that his
acting options at the moment are a little, well, focused.
“I´m
going to the south of France [for a film] called Chevalier. He´s
a courtesan in the early 17th century and he goes in and
basically srews this whole family. He goes in for a
pre-arranged marriage to the daughter of the Duke. So I go in
and fuck the mother in the first scene and then I´m banging
her for a while. I meet the Duke and I ask for his daughter´s
hand in marriage and I end up fucking the Duke and then I´m
fucking the daughter and it all ends up crazy. It´s great and
it´s actually a dramatic thing, like Dangerous Liaisons.
There´s
a talk of a part in Flowers For Algernon [... Albuquerque] as well as a
blossoming sideline in international television commercials.
“Then there´s this script written by Tennessee Williams back
in the ´60s. It´s called One Arm and it´s about a
prize-fighter who loses his arm in a car accident and becomes
a hustler who ends up on death row. It´s been buried [for so
long] because the lead character isn´t gay but becomes a male
hustler. So it was a little too controversial to be made. It
was written basically for James Dean.”
If
Ward isn´t routinely compared to Dean, it isn´t because he
lacks the guts. Although Australian censors objected to just
over a minute´s worth of simulated sex in Hustler White, the
actor himself was almost happy to do it for real. “They
wanted me to really have sex.” Ward says of the movie´s
creative team, led by US [actually Canadian] budget-porn
legend, Bruce LaBruce. “They wanted me to blow [my co-star],
they wanted me to really fluff him, they didn´t want me just
to jerk h)m off. And I said to them ”I can´t tell you [whether
I will]. I have to get in this situation, feel it out and see
how it goes.”
“It
end up being all simulated … it´s not a porno because there´s
no penetration. But that´s Bruce´s thing, he wants to put it
all in [the audiences´] faces. What ended up happening made
it more commercially accepted than it ever possibly could have
been if there was actual penetration shown. The shocking stuff,
I mean, it´s completely boring. People go ´Oh, they just
wanted to shock people with the stumping´ [where an amputee
fucks another man with his stumpy leg], but you know what!
This is reality. This is a man with no fucking foot. They
tried to soften it up a little bit and humanize it by trying
to make everyone laugh at it. But it´s a heavy image, it´s
reality.”
The
movie was an enormous success among urban gay audience in the
US, Europe and New Zealand, where it was shown uncut, as well
as in Australia and Great Britain where the censors had their
say. Ward speaks as if the film could´ve had wider appeal.
“This is a family movie, or, if you like, a nightmare. But
if you compare it to some of the grotesque crap that Hollywood makes – the gratuitous,
senseless, abusive sex, violence, death – what we saw up
there was a fucking picnic. And it was done with humour.”
For
someone almost solely responsible for turning the word stump
into a verb, Ward is strangely nostalgic for good old
Hollywood schlock. “When I fell in love with film as kid, I
was affected. I was emotionally touched by film. And I haven´t
been in years,” he says.
| |
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| Grease
Movie |
Hello
Dolly Movie |
Lucille
Ball |
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Danny
Kaye |
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| “When
I was a kid I watched Grease like 50 plus times. I watched
Hello Dolly 50 times. I watched endless Lucille Ball and I was
addicted to Danny Kaye movies, Abbot and Costello, Katherine
Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart. I wish I could do a film with Danny
Kaye, but he´s dead. He was my favourite actor, then one I
most related to. He was goofy and made funny noises; he had
fun an he entertained children. Actually he was an alcoholic
and was really an angry person, but he had something that came
out of him that was like magic.” |
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| Abbot
and Costello |
Katherine
Hepburn |
Jimmy
Stewart |
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These
days Ward advocated mediation as a way of dealing with his own,
inner, tension. Outwardly, however, you can chart his
emotional life just by looking at his skin. “My tattoos are
memories,” he says. ”I just came up with a new tattoo and
it´s awesome. It´s a very simple line drawing from the 13th
century and it´s a hare from a Chinese calendar. On the
Chinese calendar I´m a rabbit. It´s a really great sketch of
a rabbit with a stick in its hand, whipping a frog. But I´m
not going to have the frog, just the rabbit and the whip on
the inside of my left biceps.”
The
tattoos have not always so benign. “When I think about it,
part of it for me with tattoos is inflicting pain on myself.
Sometimes it was motivated because I was going through
emotional pain. I´d say, ´Okay, let´s go get a fucking
tattoo, I´m feeling like shit´. My second was adevil on my
back. All my tattoos are emotions or mental states of me.”
The
devil, perhaps, represented a point of low esteem. “We all
have low self-esteem. We use the wrong toothpaste, we use the
wrong fucking butt wipes. I don´t use the right shampoo. I
don´t drive the right car. I don´t wear the right clothes.
We´re fucking chaotic messes, we´re psychotic. In a very
commercial way we´re all insurance.”
Going
out with Madonna might be enough to make anyone insecure.
Something
Madonna said to me which was really hard for me to swallow and
a very powerful statement for me to take was ´You are not
enough for me. I need more than just what you have to offer´.
And of course I took it and went ´Aaah, my God´, only the
way a kid could take it. I was very, very hurt, very abandoned
and al these ´poor me´ things.”
“It took me really a long
time to understand. The world is so huge and there´s so
many amazing people and there´s so much I can get and learn
from, that I can´t just achieve that from one person.”
“We
all think ´Oh, I´m going to find my soul mate´. I don´t
believe that anymore. I believe that we have ! lot of soul
mates and for me it´s very important to connect with these
people. Whenever I try to manipulate a relationship, or make
something work out, it doesn´t. I have to many expectations
it´s bound to be broken.”
“It
might hurt, but I have to let it go. I have to say just `OK,
go do what you have to do´. I know my love is never going to
go away, and that´s something that right now I have with
[Madonna]. I have very powerfull love for that woman, and it
doesn´t matter whether she´s in my life or not, ever again.
I don´t have to be next to somebody to know that I love
them.”
Ward
is a little more guarded about the Queensland photographer he
married in 1991 – the very same week he took up with
Madonna. The Australian tabloids had a field day at the time
and the woman he calls “Mills” is still a subject that
causes him to hesitate.
“All
right, I`ll tell you,” he says, sounding like the man who´d
rather talk about anything else. “I met her around the same
time as I met Madonna. And the week that I meet Madonna, I
went and married this girl.” The circumstances surrounding
his introduction to Madonna remain taboo and, from that time
on Mr and Mrs Ward never had a chance.
“We
never really spent time together. It took me about a year to
get back in touch with my life … and it took he a while [to
talk] because she was shocked that I would change my mind. She
kind of, like, did married for two weeks and then saying ´I
can´t do this´ put her in a really bad spot.”
Ward
is back to being a single guy. He says nice things about
Madonna´s kid but doesn´t care for nay of his own, and isn´t
placing any bets on who he might end up with next. “I don´t
know if it´s going to be a man or a woman,” he adds
charitably, choosing to ignore his earlier remarks. With time
running out, I ask him what he´d most like readers to take
away with them from this interview. !I´m not going to be an
actor” he says, after a pause. !I´m not going to be like
Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt. I´ve never wanted to be anybody but
me. I never was that big a fan of anybody that I wanted to be
like them. I just want peace and however you want to interpret
that for yourself, reader, go ahead!"
© blue
magazine
