vietnamese restaurant

this buddha watches over us as we eat steak noodle stew, speak of the nature of only children, and plan our flight to a portland oasis. jane is here now and we're all excited to have another. the schedule changes frequently: we are unable to catch Dan Savage but those we do interview give us some good connections for other interviews further down the coast. our original plan had us going up to Vancouver BC where we had a few leads and a large film community, but harshly, we realize there are only 24 hours in a day and some of them are reserved for sleeping. in Portland we'll have a beautiful place to stay and some time to catch up on the footage that's piling up and get more of a handle on what's actually been digitized. it's decided. right after dinner, we pick up interstate 5 going south. it's misting lightly and after a hundred miles or so we pull off for a cup of tea. while the water boils, i have a good moment to set up my tripod and stand and drink tea while the shutter is open-- a good moment to realize where we are before hurrying to our next city and next interview.

auspicious arrival at pacific ocean

down the road from the Twin Peaks Motel in snoqualmie WA, we are charging a camera computer and cellphone batteries at a "mid-century kitsch" over Chai Tea and BLTs. the husband and wife who ran the place, it slowly came out, have had quite a few ups and downs in their relationship. "he drinks all the smoothies before the customers get a chance to order them," she tells me. we're waiting for a professor to arrive. Blue Suede Shoes and other oldies are on endless repeat, and the red colors are bright.

no matter, none other that sociology professor by day, sex doctor by night, pepper schwartz is in the door in a flash and we jump straight into her relationship paring ideas over a little something to eat. the woman who works there is riveted by every word about matching different personality types. if you're the type who reacts to eyes, she can nail you to the wall with a simple lingering look from her eyes. we're already in love. we follow her bright red car that zips around every corner through some back roads to her house. her interview makes you wish the movie was longer. she covers all manner of sociological issues and at the same time holds a sense of possibility suspended above our heads. love, excitement, ecstasy, could be around any corner. she never says impossible; she invites mystery; she closes no door.

Poke Free Bikes

as we drive, the temperature drops with every beam of warmth and light that folds itself behind some nearby hill, you can almost say cold. we pull off the old, brick and neon mainstreet, and drive a few blocks deeper into a small residential area. the streets are narrow and packed with cars; we slow and fill the only open spots by the side and back of a big white building. the duo we're following jump out into the cold air and we follow with some of our camera equipment. they're smart enough to be wearing knit hats-- an article that we, coming from the mid-fall southern desert, lack. we follow them down a lawn that funnels from three directions down to a basement door on the side of the old building. out of those doors pours bright light, a few metal clangs, and many voices high and low.

nate's preparing the houka; someone's getting a jug of cider from the welder who lives next door; two girls avidly discuss something-- what i cannot hear. my attention jumps to the tall circus bike they've built, to the t-shirts that say poke-free-bikes, to the thrift-store masterpieces worn by one of our guides, to the space earrings, to the history of the 95 year old former hydro-electric plant we're in, to the flower-garlands and black muskrat cat she's painted on the old stone walls. the couches are old and comfortable and someone sitting there is playing a long copper tube with a plastic-leather mouthpiece making long deep vibration sounds. now the houka is running and the couches are full of people and conversations. you can hear some hard metal music playing pretty low: people here are around college age in or out of idaho state university and they talk of a opening music venue elsewhere in the building and the history of the opened and quickly failed venues. when we bring the circus bike out into the street, the welder comes out to his doorway and calls out, "hey you never know what kind of activities you hippies will be up to next." nate sparks back, "we're not hippies." again: "what are you then?" ... "i dunno," he says more calmly as he rides the circus bike down the street under the sodium lights and we chased after with a camera and boom mike.

brigham young U at provo ut

sometimes you can feel the spark in the air-- a little electric feel of openness and willingness. you see a stranger next to you and you figure you can just try doing something together. the world is open for any experiment. if we have ideas, energy, a way to channel energy, mutual support, what can't be done?
you feel that way in Provo at the coffee house and music venue on university ave. kids are milling in and out of the place. there are 3 bands and assorted acoustic guitars being passed around. the ambient chatter here somehow seems full of possibility. many people here are BYU students with strict religious guidelines on sexual behavior. we meet three girls who want to discuss some of these very issues, excitedly, from the hour of 1am to 3am. the three sat in a row on the easy enveloping couch at the back of Giff's Corner, their friend's thrift store. they're giggly and excited to talk about feelings and experiences. they have some kind of trust in this experiment of human communication, some kind of trust that something of import is happening. there is less fear here in some ways, even as they speak of repressing & stamping out feelings that we all agreed are perfectly natural. it's a coexistence of open-mindedness and dogmatism we've now seen more than once on our trip.

does a direct interview approach incite our subjects to resort to their dogmatism? can we disarm them and give them space to open? i'm thinking of the Georgia O'Keefe's Angel's Trumpet or August Lily, or something, that opens up at sunset and closes again at mid-morning.

out of sedona northbound

we drive like a bat through the fine city of flagstaff az on our way to salt lake city. or we thought we were going to drive like some bird, but we see a mexican restaurant there and pull in for some sustenance. sitting in a booth nearby are four more good interview subjects. we quickly set up and exchange our bedtime for a few more words of love and life on film. brittany and josephine get a good rapport up right away, and the waiters and cooks wander around kind of wondering what's going on but not asking a word. they only smile, discuss among themselves with hushed voices, and generously replenish any empty water glass before any drinker or speaker notices. we close the place down and we're back out on u.s. highway 89 for northern arizona. it's roaring songs on patti smith's 2002 album trampin' that carries me though the wee hours into Page AZ for the night.

xanadu at oak creek sedona

mr. bracken of xanadu has painted his house many colors and he has as many goals for his house as there are colors of it. he has architectural CAD renderings of his future red rocks paint scheme, renderings of it's architectural history and architectural future, and a website for anyone who's interested. he briefly mentioned a few deals that went well some years ago that allows him the time to make his visions here on a roadside near sedona.

the domes are curved everywhere and shaped like a half buried egg. the dining room is sunken to the same level as the floor and a deep bench wraps around the table's edge. one bed is on an alice in wonderland toadstool about 4 feet off the ground with a ladder to get up to it. right there under the dome, my voice resounds back to me. we meet iamjoy nowjoy and starjoy, his three daughters. they are in home-school and each has an internet terminal molded into the wall. mr. bracken has ended the use of the words "war" and "hate" as well as some others within his domes. It's a partial vision in my opinion; it's a work in progress in his words.

sedona arizona

there is some mythic, mystic connection in sedona arizona. and in some people it brings out the question: do you believe in energy vorticies? energy centers? esp? spiritual healing? some kind of christian god? healing itself? the retired guy cleaning his window calls it all god's beauty. but the beauty at the restaurant is here for massage therapy. she believes in other more ancient powers. and all over we run into the influence of an older generation of hippies. maybe it's just because nils and i are pick-and-choose hippies. we love some bits, like the better groceries, but would rather forget others. but nevermind all that. the air smells like mountain pines. the cool crisp morning feels a bit like some ski town. josephine goes for a run. soon we're taking some southwestern green chile omeletes and grits in a spanish garden behind The Coffee Pot. we're just there digging the color casts on the cameras, talking to our future interviewees on the phone, and having a second cup of decaf.

I Heart Head

we heard tell of these two at the e.joy cafe in tempe. someone called them for us and we set up this meeting, planned for the hour it takes to apply the make-up, and got underway. now we're lost on the way to some apartment complex north of downtown phoenix. our directions say make a left to the cul de sac, but we just see an empty lot some non-descript bungalows and a circle K. some cell phones, some intuition and we're at the foot of an apartment complex with a half make-uped Austin out front. he's getting ready for us. he shows us in to johnny noir's apartment and goes to finish putting on make-up. we set up the place. all prepared, in comes the glam duo, Austin Head and Johnny Noir. they've been painting the Phoenix scene recently. they do songs. they make fun. they are the reason to hit the town in downtown Phoenix. they've put their bi - gay back & forth banter into a band called I Heart Head. Austin sings; Johnny does music. they're building a repertoire and planning to go international.

artists love & hospitality in tucson

Tucson treats us well. Last night, we met Revo Lution and discussed a grand caravan of bi-sexual love that would travel the country. Here she is thinking about the possibilities. Revo: in case you forgot, you were the Hula Girl dressed in white. I was the girl with the guy with the camera. That was a wild night and this morning, a bit slow to start, we take a brunch at the Good Egg, or the Bland Egg more accurately, that stretches into a long meal of discussing the zodiac and a longer day of more discussion, technology errands, and food stocks. Back in the car, we soon find Solar Culture mentioned in the previous post. from there we continue to the Pride Parade getting underway just as twilight turns to night. Lo and Behold, many of the people we met the previous day at Outoberfest are here again tonight. Our table at Casba Vegetarian Café grew from just us four to old and new acquaintances. Revo Lution is back with her hoops dancing to the music in the street. More interviews flow. "These labels are restrictive," many say, "I just am who I am and I feel how I feel." For the most part everyone here is very open. We interview one man who carried a ten foot two by four with two posters with bible quotes: he wasn't forcing anything on anyone, he was moved, he tells us, by the fact that the lord saved him from a life-threatening drug addiction fifteen years ago and that the lord helps him every day. moving along we hear about the hippie migration that converted this street in tucson to the amenable place it is today in the early 21st Century.

shop owners on 4th ave, tucson az

we just wanted you all to see this duo who has a shop on 4th ave in tucson. they were just on the porch enjoying the festivities. we discussed changes in tucson, the winter weather, and the uses and mis-uses of the internet until, mid-sentence, more interviews pulled me to task. what's you're favorite thing about Tucson?

here is a mask from tucson

a beautful mask made by a man in tucson who believes beauty will heal each human one by one. he believes the earth is unloved and the scale between the female and male gods has been out of balance for the last 2000 years. He has just come back from a trip to Greece to learn of the equal balance of masculine and feminine divinities. he feels that today, returning to the feminine will help re-balance the earth and bring peace among humans. it starts on a personal level and a personal friendship level, then maybe the local level. he runs & lives at an art gallery and music venue in downtown Tucson called Solar Culture. It's a collective of artists' work and his own work. And they have a pretty regular schedule of interesting musicians coming in. There's no doubt he's doing his part.

sexual fantasies

let's post up some sexual fantasies whatever kind you have. this is here for YOU to CONTRIBUTE. where should we start? we've collected a few to get going::

cats are pretty sexy but they tend to claw you and run off too soon.

group sex with four people i'm ACTUALLY ATTRACTED to.

sex in sacred places. like a burial ground. a church. stone cold floor. kind of near the altar.

in the train from kyoto to tokyo for just a minute and a half. or a place where you have to be quiet and discreet like staying at someone's house and controlling your passion so no one hears.

i haven't seen her in ten years. she comes into this cafe in new york. we'd been on opposite sides of the globe. she recognizes me. on the flash of seeing her what's about to happen is just obvious and any moment is too long to wait.

eyes wide shut style, anonymous, strict, unknown, masked.

i'm riding the bus home, just standing. a girl i've never seen before is sitting. we look at each other. we're both brave enough to keep looking into each others eyes. i get off at my stop. she gets off behind me. she says, "can i follow you home?" she follows me to my house and there's no stopping. we can't get out of our clothes fast enough.

i'm on beach at california, and we just sort of look at each other. he just sort of leads me down the beach to these rocks. we admire each others bodies ... he is hot.

i want to dominate a woman ... like ripping off the clothes of a girl where there's been a lot of tension for a long time. it's almost a public situation. i just start putting my hand down her shirt, forgetting all her buttons. up her skirt into her panties. warm. wet. my tongue in her mouth, her hands on my breasts.

roswell new mexico

we interviewed a high-school couple who knew many bisexuals at thier school. we moved on to an alien merchant who had been interviewed many times and was quite open-minded on the varieties of alien beliefs. when we asked about the sexuality of aliens he pointed out that they are usually grown in tanks. on second pass though he recalled a woman who says she was an alien in a past life and that aliens live and breed among us.

at the Out of This World Cafe there was a group of five who managed to steer any mention of bisexuality back into a conversation about the corrupted self-perpetuating government, the slide of morals, individuality, and political revolution. they called themselves rural people, self-educated legal scholars and they were all over the age of 50. they insisted there were bigger problems in our country than kinds of sexuality. soon enough we were off to meet a poly-amourous trio 150 miles away.

filmmakers doing what we do

we've got to run (again). but here's us just messing around some more.

Open Question: Do You Have Bi-dar?

The first of some open questions we're putting up for you to answer is this. Do you have bi-dar? Some people swear by their gay-dar, but what happens on the spectrum between gay and straight. Can you tell?

ride to roswell nm

we made a bee-line from dallas to roswell nm because we heard tell of sightings. not just alien sightings, but bi-sexual alien sightings. some of us in the car are surprised at the large distances between these points. we napped. we talked. we shot some scenery. we spent time in some regular west texas diners. we rolled past fields of funny looking oil pumps, too.

looking around the car, you could could see all manner of interesting sights.

when we got close to roswell and saw the lights on the top of the ferris wheel of the state fair we knew. ... we knew.

missed connections

you were out and you made the connection of a lifetime. now you're not sure if it was a dream or if it actually happened that one wild night:

you were cosmic kat at the cosmic cafe across from office depot. we were four diners who didn't want you to leave our table every time you came over. you have great tatoos. we were leaving for the road.

dallas TX -- it's time

we are pulling together our bags and people and microphones and communications devices and we are setting out before dawn tomorrow morning. the road will take us out into the texas highlands to new mexico and i am going to make some audio recordings and still images. and we're setting up for filming anywhere that looks good.

birds eye view

Here's looking out the plane window approaching Dallas Fort Worth. Non-descript & relentless yes. But when you think about it, these dwellings are filled with more ideas than you or i could imagine-- good bad & beautiful. We don't know what we'll find, but we know there's more than meets the eye. We all know people have more feelings of love than they express.

something to say

Perhaps you read or heard about our documentary and you've feel there's something you want to say. post here or e.mail us about getting on camera at the following address: info@bithewaymovie.com.

where we are

The road trip has had two phases so far. I say "so far" because there may be future travel filming elements just no longer in the car. there may be a trip to panama with Kevin along the pacific coast for new year's. there may be a trip to the south for another character. there may be return trips to follow up in los angeles and chicago. The road trip became two phases: Dallas to Seattle to L.A. and then a division of the crew. Two stayed in L.A. to film and two took off eastbound for Kevin in Chicago, eastern university professors & New York. Here are the cities of the phases and a map of phase one of the road trip to Los Angeles, the city where much happened and unfolded, and a map for phase two to chicago & new york.

Wed Oct 05: Dallas TX
Thu Oct 06: Roswell NM
Fri Oct 07: Socorro NM
Sat Oct 08: Tucson AZ
Sun Oct 09: Tucson & Tempe AZ
Mon Oct 10: Tempe AZ
Tue Oct 11: Sedona AZ

Wed Oct 12: Page AZ
Thu Oct 13: Beaver UT
Fri Oct 14: Provo UT
Sat Oct 15: Salt Lake City UT
Sun Oct 16: Boise ID
Mon Oct 17: Seattle WA
Tue Oct 18: Portland OR
Wed Oct 19: Portland OR
Thu Oct 20: Portland OR
Fri Oct 21: Portland OR
Sat Oct 22: Portland OR

Sun Oct 23: Crescent City CA
Mon Oct 24: San Francisco CA
Tue Oct 25: Sonoma CA
Wed Oct 26: Berkeley CA
Thu Oct 27: King City CA
Fri Oct 28: Los Angeles CA
Sat Oct 29: Los Angeles CA
Sun Oct 30: Baker CA
Mon Oct 31: Las Vegas NV
Tue Nov 01: Venice Beach CA
Wed Nov 02: Los Angeles CA
:
: 2 Weeks 2 Days
:
Fri Nov 18: Los Angeles CA

In those weeks, Nils flew back to Lopez WA. Brittany developed a relationship such that two subjects became important people in her life, and her in theirs. When the day came to leave, it was obvious that Brittany would stay with the 2 subjects and Jane, too, to film and heal her ankle. Josephine and Wilmot (me) took to the road again chicago-bound for Kevin's house and eastern university interviews. While Brittany and Jane live in Los Angeles, Josephine and I cover more cities, in the 2nd part of the road trip

Sat Nov 19: Littlefield AZ
Sun Nov 20: Laramie WY
Mon Nov 21: Des Moines IA
Tue Nov 22: Chicago IL
Wed Nov 23: Indiana Dunes IN
Thu Nov 24: Indiana Dunes IN
Fri Nov 25: Indiana Dunes IN
Sat Nov 26: Chicago IL
Sun Nov 27: Chicago IL
Mon Nov 28: Bloomington IN
Tue Nov 29: Lansing MI
Wed Nov 30: Ann Arbor MI
Thu Dec 01: Ann Arbor MI
Fri Dec 02: New York City

ok, josephine travels to panama with wilmot to film kevin in january. for mardi gras, brittany and jane leave to film new orleans and many bisexuals who live there. then in late april brittany travels to memphis with wilmot to film new main character pam. in june, it's time for a new roadtrip in the south to cover more of the country's ideas and practices. we include a return to main character, pam, and pick up a new potential main character, garrett.

Tue Jun 20: Arrive Dallas TX
Wed Jun 21: Dallas TX
Thu Jun 22: Morillton AR
Fri Jun 23: Memphis TN
Sat Jun 24: Memphis TN
Sun Jun 25: Memphis TN
Mon Jun 26: Memphis TN
Tue Jun 27: Oxford MS
Wed Jun 28: Jackson MS
Thu Jun 29: Hattiesburg MS
Fri Jun 30: Gulfport MS
Sat Jul 01: Pensacola FL
Sun Jul 02: Loxley AL
Mon Jul 03: Austin TX
Tue Jul 04: Austin TX
Wed Jul 05: Austin TX
Thu Jul 06: Austin TX
Fri Jul 07: Depart Austin TX

contribute

Things cost too much and our accounts are below empty, but we have one choice-- to keep going. If you're interested, if you can, contribute something so we can keep rolling, uncovering, interviewing, and loving. e.mail us at info@bithewaymovie.com or use the PayPal button on the sidebar.