Howard Brookner

Biography: life and films

Howard Brookner was an American film director, writer and producer, one of a generation of talented artists to have his life and career cruelly cut short by the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s. He was born in New York City on 30th April 1954, the second of three sons, and he grew up in Great Neck, Long Island. He went to school at Phillips Exeter, where he won an award for a play he wrote revolving around a lavatory. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in political science at Columbia University, he studied film and art history at New York University.

For his master's thesis, Brookner embarked on a documentary about the counterculture writer William S. Burroughs. What was originally conceived as a short film developed into something far more substantial as a bond of intimacy developed between the amiable, good-looking Brookner and his subject, the most unpredictable of writers. With funding obtained from various sources, including the BBC, the film took five years to complete and ended up as a feature-length documentary entitled Burroughs: the Movie (1983), which was screened to great acclaim at several film festivals around the world. The film also aired on British television on 22nd February 1983, as part of the BBC's Arena series. It was an auspicious start to what promised to be a glittering career.

Not long after this first triumph, Howard Brookner came into contact with the avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson and set about making another television documentary on Wilson's Herculean but ultimately doomed attempts to stage his monumental opera Civil Wars at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Entitled, Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars (1987), this was the last film over which Brookner would have complete artistic control, and also the last to be seen in his lifetime.

Howard then spent two years trying to break into Hollywood. He finally persuaded David Puttnam, chairman of Columbia Pictures, to allow him to write and direct a mainstream movie with a four million dollar budget. Entitled Bloodhounds of Broadway, it was to be a period piece adapted from four short stories by Damon Runyon, set in the twilight of America's Jazz Age. The film featured several well-known actors of the period, including Madonna, Matt Dillon, Julie Haggarty and Rutger Hauer. As pre-production got underway, Brookner was feeling confident that his career was about to take off.

And then the bombshell landed. For much of the past decade, Howard Brookner had been pursuing the same hedonistic lifestyle of his contemporaries, experimenting with hard drugs and having unsafe sex with multiple partners. It was all part and parcel of the liberated, Bohemian lifestyle that artists of Brookner's generation were naturally drawn to. No one had any inkling of the disaster that was just around the corner. When America's gay community began to fall foul of a new and mysterious disease in the mid-1980s, Brookner feared the worse. In the spring of 1987, he took tests and learned that he was HIV positive. By this time, several people known to him had died from what came to be known as AIDS. He felt he was on borrowed time. This moment of truth came just a few months before filming was due to start on Bloodhounds of Broadway. Fearing how the studio would react to the news, Brookner kept the fact he was ill and taking medication to himself whilst the film was being made. The only person he let in on his secret was his boyfriend Brad Gooch, with whom he had been living since the early 1980s, sharing a close but turbulent relationship.

Knowing full-well the consequences, Brookner made the decision to come off AZT, as the side-effects of the drug prevented him from focusing clearly on his work. He was determined to finish the film, and make the best that he could of it, at any personal cost. The cost was that the virus began to wreak its havoc sooner, although such was the understanding about AIDS at the time that Brookner's chances of recovery were pretty well non-existent. He must have known that this would be his last film. It had to be good. The physical and mental effort of shooting Bloodhounds of Broadway was gruelling but the job was finally completed. All that remained was to edit it into a watchable movie.

Shortly after his last holiday with Gooch in Acapulco in February 1988, Brookner's eyesight began to deteriorate - the first sign of a brain infection caused by the AIDS virus. He was admitted to St Vincent's hospital in New York but was just well enough by the autumn to move into a one-bedroom apartment bought for him by his parents. As his condition slowly deteriorated, Brookner kept a video diary, casting himself at the centre of his own personal movie. His passion for directing films would remain with him right to the end. He would carefully stage-manage the days that remained to him, supported by those closest to him.

By the end of 1988, Howard Brookner had virtually lost his sight and his motor function had gone to the point that he was wheelchair bound and incapable of moving without help. In spite of his physical deterioration, he remained in good spirits. Howard never lost his dignity, his drive nor his mischievous sense of fun. He even believed he would make another film, adapted from Gooch's recently published book Scary Kisses, and held read-throughs in his apartment.

Then came another blow, as cruel as the first. Dissatisfied with Brookner's original cut of Bloodhounds of Broadway, the executives at Columbia Pictures decided they had no choice but to take the film away from him. It was re-edited with no input from its director and given a voiceover narration to make the plot less confusing. The prospect of seeing the film as he had conceived it had provided Brookner with a boost to his dwindling morale. When this prize was taken away from him, he lost interest and did not care whether he saw it. The film's release was delayed by Columbia selling it on to Vestron and then buying it back again. When it finally came out, almost seven months after Brookner's death, the film was given a lukewarm reception by critics and audiences.

Towards the end of days, lovingly nursed by his closest friends and relatives, Howard Brookner accepted death bravely and with characteristic good humour. He slipped away peacefully on 27th April 1989 and was buried three days later, on his 35th birthday.

In his book Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard & Art & the '70s and the '80s, Brad Gooch (now a highly successful author) writes a moving and vivid account of his eleven-year long relationship with Brookner, charting the highs and lows of their ambiguous love affair and culminating in a heart-wrenching description of the director's last few years as the AIDS virus took its toll. It is an intensely evocative and devastating work that honours the memory of a young filmmaker whose talents were never to be fully tapped whilst recording a colourful and painful chapter in American history. Gooch's honest and perceptive writing exposes a fragile side to Howard, giving a glimpse of his inner insecurities - an abhorrence of loneliness and a need for emotional support.

Thanks to the fundraising efforts of his nephew Aaron, himself a promising young filmmaker, Howard Brookner's important first feature has been digitally restored and made available on DVD and Blu-ray, the film's re-release coinciding with the centenary of Burrough's birth in 2014. It was whilst working on this project that Brookner Jr unearthed a large quantity of material relating to his uncle at various sites in the US and Europe, including Burrough's basement apartment in New York City, the Bunker. Among this treasure trove of discoveries were a wealth of personal correspondence and many private films made by Brookner Sr. Some of this material Aaron Brookner was able to incorporate into his subsequent documentary on his uncle's work, Uncle Howard, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2016 and then at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival, garnering some very positive reviews.

Filmography

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External Links

• For news and photos drop in on Howard Brookner's facebook page (created by his nephew Aaron).
• Information on Aaron Brooker's recent documentary about his uncle can be found at the 'Uncle Howard' official website.
• Reaction to the re-release of Burroughs: the Movie and news on possible releases outside the US can be found on the film's Facebook page.