Chop Suey: Photographs to Remember You By

Bruce Weber's Chop Suey is one of overlooked pleasures of 2001 Toronto International Film Festival, receiving scant critical attention from local press during festival. Judging from its limited distribution, (the film, as far as I know, has had only a brief theatrical screening last fall at Film Forum in New York City), it looks as if Chop Suey will be consigned to a direct-to-video release, which is unfortunate as film is a visual delight which should be seen on a big screen. Like Weber's previous features and shorts, Chop Suey is a documentary film which is autobiographical in nature. The film's ostensible subject matter is Peter Johnson, a young man from Wisconsin Weber discovered while photographing high school wrestlers gathered at a 1996 mid-western competition. In next few years, photographer turned Johnson into a highly paid and internationally known fashion model and homoerotic icon. During these years Weber took Johnson under his wing, becoming his friend and mentor and introducing Johnson to arts and Weber's vision of world. Chop Suey is an elaborate collage film (employing contemporary and archival footage, voiceover narration and interviews) which loosely chronicles young man's evolution, ending with Johnson's maturing into an independent adult person who has developed a more fully rounded idea of himself and potential to be an open and expressive person. The film's title carries a two-fold purpose: 1) early on, Weber tells viewer that when he began photographing Johnson, he, remembering his own high school days, decided to form a camera club and named it, in capricious spirit of undertaking, the chop suey club; 2) and film, like dish itself, is made up of odds and ends. Arguably, it is 'odds and ends', which Weber supplies through a complex of elements from striking images to personal reflections to engaging personalities and more, that make Chop Suey an enjoyable and rewarding film. Weber offers an explanation regarding his fascination with Johnson, suggesting that latter embodies what he would like to have been as a youth; but, primarily, his interest in Johnson revolves around photographer-subject relationship. Their professional (and personal) connections are, in fact, used as a point of departure by Weber to explore other meaningful relationships amongst people he knows well and/or admires. The relationships that are depicted are diverse and include thirty-some year partnership of singer-comedienne Frances Faye and her manager/lover, Teri Shepherd. Weber is dealing with a wide range of experiences and feelings, from light and humorous to deeply emotional. As for his concentration on and obsessive interest in photographing Johnson, Weber likens experience to falling in love, camera being means to give expression to feelings that subject inspires. Weber says that photographer's partner needs to realize that a potential rival exists with each subject photographer encounters. To elaborate on his point, Weber makes reference to relationship that developed between photographer(s) Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. Looking at photographs Weston took of her, Weber speculates that their particular intensity stems from his desire for her which led eventually to a love affair. He also suggests that while photographer's impulse may be that of a lover, photographic images produced might be sole physical reality of existence of those feelings. In latter part of film, a segment features Donald Sterzin, an editor at Gentlemen's Quarterly, who gave Weber his first big commercial break, putting one of his photographs on c over of magazine. Sterzin, a gay man who died of AIDS, had fallen in love with Jeff Aquilon, a model who happened to be heterosexual. Weber's story is about Sterzin's long term commitment to Aquilon, friendship between two men which lasted until former's death. …

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