I met Jay Gillespie at a Strand Pictures release party for a collection of short indie films called Boy's Life 4. My friend Brian Sloan produced the release and directed one of its short films. When Jay walked into the party, everyone turned to watch him. A giant poster for the movie featuring a picture of Jay was taped to the wall -- a pretty 'Tiger Beat' style boy's face with a huge smile dominated the poster design (see picture below). The irony is that Jay's role in the film was dark and depressing -- the story of a gay kid who is stripped and tortured on a cold winter night by a gang of high school athletes, and left to die in a corn field. The poster suggested a slightly lighter theme. I told Jay it would be fun to take some darker images of him...
Jay is straight, but says all his life everone has assumed he was gay for some reason. Jay's first two professional acting jobs, an independent film and a play, consisted of gay roles, and he wants to take on straight roles from now on, not only to avoid being type-cast but also because it becomes increasingly difficult to play gay roles. He says he was completely caught by surprise when his best friend called and told him his picture was on the front cover of HX magazine, one of the most widely distributed gay publications in New York City. He literally became the poster boy for Boys Life 4, one of the biggest gay film releases of the year.
Jay grew up in Texas and Connecticut. His high school friends all smoked a lot of pot and occasionally got into trouble. He went to a private school, where he ran cross country and once got chased by cops during a senior prank gone bad. Jay loves the coast and likes to sail. He attended college for a year at the College of Charleston. This is where he took his first acting class, and he immediately knew that acting was something he loved. He enrolled in NYU's acting school his sophomore year, and spent the next three years being trained. He picked it up quickly, and unlike many of the other students (who he describes as either highly trained yet apathetic, or rich kids who didn't care), Jay enjoyed the classes and tried his hardest to learn from the other actors in his class. Convinced of his prospects as an actor, he immediately hired an agent. But it was hard to juggle school schedules with castings and auditions, so he didn't find much work during his NYU years. But after school, he quickly found several acting jobs.
In 2004, Jay landed a key role in his first feature film 2001 Maniacs, a remake of H.G. Lewis' 2000 Maniacs written and directed by Tim Sullivan, and starring Robert Englund, Connie Mason and a host of cameo appearances. The story follows the cult horror classic about ghoulish residents of a small Southern town who seek revenge for their massacre at the hands of Union troops by luring unsuspecting Northern spring breakers to a cannibalistic carnival.
Tim Sullivan describes it like this:
"Three ingredients make for a great horror film: sex, gore, and a rockin' sound track. We're covered on all fronts: When Gordon's Two Thousand Maniacs came out starring then Playboy's 1964 Pet of the Year Connie Mason, it made quite a stir. Well, she's back in our version, still as beautiful as ever, plus we're doing a thing that she arranged through Hugh Hefner: the "barb-e-cuties". Five gorgeous Southern bunnies running around killing helpless Northerners! C'mon already! Our leading young stars are also amazingly talented and amazing to look at. We basically raided the WB and MTV. So even our hacked up body parts will be beautiful. Everything's so lovely when it's dipped in blood... Scream, laugh, have fun. A total roller coaster ride. Nothing more than magic tricks. Illusions. That's what horror films are for. Now there's a thin line between sadism and gore, torture isn't fun, and so we don't torment our characters, the minute they know they're gonna die, it's quick, it's over, like David Warner in The Omen. He looks up at that sliding glass window and swoosh, he's decapitated, he's gone".
Excerpts from my shoot notes with Jay Gillespie:
I picked up Jay at 9:00am just around the corner from Peter Luger's Steakhouse in a largely Hasidic neighborhood in Williamsburg. He was sitting on the steps of his decrepit brownstone building -- an extraordinarily pretty boy with a huge contagious smile (he says he is always described as a young-looking Val Kilmer, which doesnžt seem to bother him too much). As we walked to the car, I remember a young Hasidic boy with big green eyes watched curiously as Jay walked by.
We stopped for coffee at a nearby corner deli on Broadway under the L train (only 50 cents a cup!), then found our way to the BQE and headed south toward Brooklyn to Floyd Bennett Field. I missed the exit to Floyd Bennett Field and had to turn around out near JFK airport. The day was not starting well, but the drive actually gave us a chance to talk about his life.
We stopped again, this time for cigarettes at Jay's request, Camel Lights -- Jay says he smokes only for 'artistic' reasons. We drove up to the entrance of Floyd Bennett Field and checked in at the security office. We asked if we needed a permit to take some photographs. The Security Officer said we wouldn't need anything.
We drove around the desolate airfield, then we parked in front of an old hanger and wandered into a nearby warehouse. We shot several portraits against a rusty door, then Jay wandered inside to look around. There were old church pews dumped inside the building. We found a room that used to be a bathroom and shower. Jay looks up and says, "Hey, there's a park ranger heading over." I look up. "Really?" Jay nods his head. "Two of them."
Two very serious looking police officers, one talking into a handset on his shoulder, were walking up to the building. The officers asked what we were doing. I told them we were taking photographs of Jay, who's an upcoming movie actor. "By trespassing in an abandoned building and parking in an illegal space?" [Note: none of the buildings say 'No Trespassing' and the parking space didn't say 'No Parking.'] They asked for IDs and I handed them mine but Jay said that his ID was back at the car. We were escorted back to the hanger. Three other backup cars - NYPD, Park Ranger, and an unmarked car - have now driven up. I opened the back of my old Volvo station wagon, and the officers looked through all the photography equipment. Admittedly, my camera cases looked similar to those gray artillery cases used by the military. But mine were filled with a bunch of cameras and film. They continued to interrogate us about why we were there.
One of the officers looked at my ID, then up at me. "Is this really you? You look like Woody Allen in this picture."
"Yeah. I've heard that one before."
The officer asked Jay to come over to the squad car while they ran our IDs through the computer. Jay stood next to the car. "So, you're an actor? " Jay smiled his huge smile and nodded yes. "Can you really act? Let's see something." Jay looked confused. The officer was totally serious. "Do something. ACT." Jay was still confused, not sure what to do ('acting' on demand). "Like, right now?" The officer nodded. "Yeah, do some Shakespeare. Can you do Romeo and Juliet?" Jay responded, "I know some Sebastian from Shakespeare's 'Twelth Night'." The officer "Yeah, yeah, do that."
So Jay backs a few steps from the police car and proceeds to deliver a soliloquy from Sebastian. He is animated and confident, and his performance is remarkably compelling given the situation. Against all common sense, I grabbed my camera from my backpack and started taking photos of Jay performing in front of the police car. The absurdity of this scene -- I mean, how could I resist? This is when I realized how absurd it was to be an artist in Manhattan. Here they were, six officers detaining a couple of geeky white kids for taking photographs in an abandoned airfield and obviously not harming anything -- and treating us like terrorist threats.
After our detention as possible terrorists, we escaped without prosecution and quickly headed to an industrial neighborhoood in Brooklyn. We took a few shots of Jay sitting on the shore of the East River under the Manhattan Bridge. A rubber raft filled with six Navy Seals rushed up the river. Then a huge Coast Guard cutter drifted by, a huge gun turret on the deck. A terrible feeling like we were about to get arrested for taking photographs too close to a bridge made me nervous and I figured we should get out of there pretty quick. We walked out by a warehouse building, and I noticed Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Tommy from 'Third Rock from the Sun') walking into the building. It was a coincidence, because Jay had asked me earlier in the day who my favorite actor was, and I had mentioned that one of my favorite performances from the past year was Joseph in the film 'Manic.' We then snapped off some portraits in front of a spray painted sign that said Jay St and against a wall spraypainted with 'Fuck No Evil.' These were by far my favorite shots of the afternoon.
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