Quentin Crisp interview | Naked Civil Servant | Mavis Catches up with...| 1989 

Why?

@@PibrochPonder unique a great story teller a survivor a legend to many he even had his one man show were 1000s of people went to see him talk .. that enough for you prick ?

@@PibrochPonder unsure, could be his unpretentious honesty combined with 60 plus years of being shunned by all. Perhaps you then choose either death or acceptance of your lot??

@@PibrochPonder OH Please......really??/

@@BlytheWorld1972 let’s be clear he was special and popular because he was a contemporary version of the Victorian freak show.

Cool x

Wow. You know like you have your fantasy dinner guests ? Quentin would definately be one of mine .

How I’d loved to sat with him and listened

@Grey _ Often, when things are beyond what your limited experiences have been, you deny them out ignorance. Someday you'll find out that the very reason why you have lead a limited existence is the attitude that you just displayed. It will probably be much too late when you DO find out. I have worked and lived in NYC for over 35 years of my life and worked in the film industry. The most famous people that I have met and talked to have been outside of the Movie business on the streets of NYC, just by chance. Whether it's Liv Tyler buying a magazine at a newsstand or Dustin Hoffman eating a bagel in front of the shop with his son. But see, a limited brain like yours will never know something like that and you'll live your whole life in a stagnant bubble. I'm sorry for you.

Wow lucky you. That's awesome.

Ditto

At the grand age of 86 I remember riding the same bus with Quentwhen I was all of 17 ..it was fasinating everything about his presentation was sooo elegant.his make up hair nails and his sandeld feet ..but best of all was his perfume...no not after shave but PERFUME..if I hadnt been 17 and shy I would loved to have asked him for the name.what an elegant man..yes yes I know he was gay but for me at 17 .........

@@eunicelynch3511 Lovely memories, I definitely would've asked ;-).

yes, so beautiful to listen to her openly flow and joyfully connect with Quentin and vice versa :-)

In English we say: what An amazing enlightened (NOT Enlightened) soul!

@@Saraaa2538 thank you for Enlightening me 😱

He was always something of an outsider and contrarian and rarely chimed in with the general consensus. There's always been prejudice against effeminate men in the gay community and this is probably even stronger now than before.

He relished being an outsider. Quentin was shaped by his Edwardian upbringing. He railed against that staid conformity yet as time passed he remained tethered to that view of society and became trapped in that past- never truly belonging to any age- a curiosity

@@_Sakidora_ Sadly true. My limited experience of the lgbt community is that they're just as filled with bigotry and prejudice as everyone else. There's even hierarchies within them, with groups looking down on other groups. Very disappointing.

There is no defined "gay community" identity. There is just the gay part of humanity.

He is a lighthouse in the sewer of contemporary queer life. Of life period. He is a practical philosopher, not some academic clap-trap post-structualist psychobabble. He is the real deal ~ dandy, bohemian, effete looking but otherwise quite masculine, aesthete, and true blue. His bravery and wisdom inspires anyone who reads or watches him. Thankyou Mr. Crisp, you have given a blueprint of elegance and stamina for desperate and lonely queers. Rest in glory, darling 💕

Andy Nixon Mavis Nicholson was a brilliant interviewer

He talks very good he looks his age but I did not notice it cuz he's cognitive abilities seem very good

I HATE TO ARGUE BUT HE WAS 77 OR 78 THIS WAS 1986 AND HE WAS BORN IN 1908 SORRY TO BE AN ANAL RETENTIVE BUT HEY............. ;)

@@danielwhittaker695 This interview is from 1989, the year in the title is wrong, but the description says it's from 1989 and Mavis says 1989 at 0:33. She also says it has been 14 years since their first interview, which was in 1975.

@@535657 Well spotted. I like attention to detail.

And lived to past 90

They were ovaries actually, that accidentally dropped.

@@ronrendon lol that was kinda funny handsome

By god yes, he took the Bull by the Horns, and stood firm! Im listening to everything I csn find, he's highly intelligent and honest. I guess him having it so tough he had to learn.

Rockfish; And his balls had guys!

Are you subtly saying you loved him because you were too afraid to be like him and followed the establizhment to the letter? Or did I misread?

I think their friendship predated that.

Yes that is true. In his last book He admitted learning He was actually transgender.

@@ellioshiem7892 what is the title of his last book?

@@pennyc7064 THE LAST WORD

Gore Vidal hated effeminate gay men

@@briandelaney9710 Then I can imagine it being even better....

That one slipped through 🤣

Lol sure

@@bristolgareth1 He also lagged my boiler. I didn't ask him to but he did it as a surprise Christmas present and said "you'd be amazed at the amount it will reduce your fuel bills."

He comes across as extremely caring, and sensitive to the needs of others

Appropriately so. Such a stupid question. Has anyone ever been asked “Why are you heterosexual?”

@@itsjustme4848

Lol very true! But in the other commenters defense people make such a huge deal over sexuality it’s ridiculous. People have been sleeping with both sexes since the beginning of time. Also let’s all have a 3 some 🤫😘

@@itsjustme4848 Twaddle. It's a question appropriate to the time. In part to help those that aren't LGBTQ+ to understand, also for us all to understand a thing which shaped his life greatly. She prefaced it marvelously, explaining that when it would've been viewed a prejudiced question - in his eyes - she avoided it, allowing him to state happily 'I've no idea'. She's a bloody marvellous interviewer and I'm surprised you don't see that and see their easy companionship - she had interviewed him in the '70's, she'd visited him at home in the UK and the US. Stop and consider that she already knows him, and that he stated she was his favourite interviewer. Clearly that question didn't bother him showing him to answer in a way that suggests there's no way to have influenced it (rightly), she challenged him when he tried to suggest that all 'men' desired similar things, and she questions him to refute the idea it was just a desire for fatherly love (all common beliefs about sexuality/gender stereotypes knocked down in a 1980's interview). Incidentally neither has it bothered me when folks I am close with ask about my bisexuality (I had to clearly explain to my one friend, who didn't know, that in our relationship I wasn't then going out having sex with the other half I'd, in his words, 'given up'). It is only a problem when someone, as some folk of both sexualities have, said 'you're pretending/ lying to yourself/ going through a phase/greedy' those sorts of statements are the type to reject out of hand - self-evidently bigoted statements/questions that override one's self, or one's agency.

@@ScoundrelDaysSon Has anyone ever asked you “Why are you bisexual?” If so, what did you say?

Sending you good vibes boo. ❤️

That is because he gets asked the same or similar questions.

Don’t we all?

Quentin Crisp: I have come to the end of my personality. And: "You've told that joke before." You should always repeat a good joke, it's bad ones you shouldn't repeat.

He later came to believe he was a woman in a man’s body. He would have it made today.

Yeah, this is really dated & and unfortunately, Quentin's answer was inaccurate. Homosexuality isn't "caused" by anything, just like being left-handed isn't caused by some family trauma. It just is. We're born this way. Heterosexuals are never asked, "What tragedy caused you to be straight.?" It's ridiculous, rude & ignorant.

@@kriskabin Not for its time, when people still thought homosexuality could be learnt. Be a bit more tolerant, Mavis was brilliant. (And btw, towards the end of his life, he came to believe he was transgender)

frightened little creature ... how often in your life have you been shot, robbed or knifed, dearie?

But as a young man in the 1930s he was not.

Absolutely agree. Like myself he was able to separate his sexuality from his political beliefs.

I think he was a model for the best part of 30 years so there isn't really much of a gap between that and publishing the Naked Civil Servant and the eventual film.

I don't know but he was doing performance art because I saw him live on stage once here in L.A. Same crowd as one saw at all the gay bars; it was as if the beer bust was over so they decided to take in some theater before going home. The rest room was like a bath-house. LOL! I loved his "performance"; all he did was sit with regal aplomb in a chair on stage and answer questions from the audience but it was fun.

@@FriendofDorothy Yes, but it was after the book that he did the stage shows. I’m talking about the time before. Someone said he did in fact make a living as an art school model into his seventies.

Models at art schools didn't have to be young. They could be any age.

artists models are all ages, shapes and sizes ... I'm sure he had some other meaningless, dreary jobs, too, to make ends meet, but he bore his audience with those pages of his life - do you?? 😬

You claimed in your previous comment that Quentin was 77 or 78 , giving it large that you were right. You didn’t reply to the comments yet here you are making out that your the one who copped the mistake with the dates 😂

Thats 42 dollars today. What the hell lol

Very good I see the resemblance never thought of it like that funny 🎀

Trump is not wear his hair effeminate like Quinton

Pls don’t compare Trump to this wonderful man. It hurts me and so many others.

Yes!!

LOL! Thanks for the laugh.

considerate ❤️

@@shoulders-of-giants ✌🏻

You need to listen to it again

Quentin was wrong. He was brilliant, but his speculating that it was "caused" by his illness & too much time with his mother is ignorant & wrong. Nothing, no tragedy, turns a person gay. (If this ridiculous reasoning was true, 80-90% of the world's population would be Queer!) We're born this way, just like most ppl are right handed, but a smaller percentage is naturally left handed.

Really? He was a thinker and seemed very well resolved

I'm watching this video Feb. 17, 2021. Maybe no one answered because it's not open anymore?

It is (was) Chez Milan but it’s no longer there. I think the building still houses a restaurant but I haven’t been uptown to that neighborhood in quite some time.