Gale Harold: Interesting FanMeet in Bilbao

On September 27 in Bilbao (Spain), the fanmeet - organized by Zarata Events and dedicated to American actor Gale Harold - ended. Gale Harold is best known in Italy for his masterfully played role of the lascivious and tormented Brian Kinney in the series Queer as Folk, and for being Susan Mayer's new beau in the popular TV show Desperate Housewives: the fanmeet was a two-days-full-immersion where Harold, with courtesy and professionalism, replied for hours to the many questions asked by his fans, not sparing interesting anecdotes about his experience on sets like Deadwood (where he played Wyatt Earp) and about his stay in Italy.

In fact, in the bel paese, especially in the capital Rome, the artist filmed one of his most recent works, the Sci-Fi movie Andròn - The Black Labyrinth by director Francesco Cinquemani.

The film, which should be released in theaters next year, uses special effects never seen before in Italy. It stars a group of strangers who find themselves trapped in a maze and have to face a journey full of dangers and codes to break to be able to get out alive; "They're still editing", he pointed out. "They were very ambitious with the film. There are a lot of effects; it is science fiction and heavily psychological and they are trying to figure out how to make it work. Those things are not easy to do".

Andròn is produced by AMBI Pictures, the company founded by Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi, so it was not necessary to resort to the public funds that our country provides every year to support the works of cultural interest considered worthy to make their way to the screen. However, these government grants are rarely donated to emerging filmmakers and most often they merely increase the already substantial budget of well-known directors like Ermanno Olmi, the Taviani brothers or Ferzan Ozpetek, with the result that even in Italy during the last years it is becoming increasingly popular the phenomenon of the independent movies, films produced by private citizens (often by the director himself or by the same actors who take part in them).

The risk is to invest time and money in productions that will never be completed, and Mr. Harold in person explains that: "Making a film is very difficult for a lot of reasons. A lot of films run out of whatever they need to finish the film. At the end of it there are decisions that you have nothing to do with, that you can not control. People do whatever they can do to get the film finished, and release things early, but at some point everyone has to look at what the resources are and either move forward or shelve it and come back to it".

In the United States, unlike Italy, there are no public funds for film productions: in his opinion, the Italian model "is an old model. There is the studio model and there is the traditional model. And you have to realize that the United States has no interest in making art. We don't support the arts with our tax base, we don't have any inherent devotion to the form. A great example is what is happening in Italy. It is one of the fountains of film-making, some would say it is the fountain of film-making. Some would say it is France, some would say it is Russia. England is in there somewhere. But in the United States, if you are a film-maker either you are contracted and you have a studio system behind you. Or you are a complete independent and you have no support and it all has to come from private financing. And those piles of money can disappear like that. You have to do what you can do to make the film happen. And sometimes those resources vanish, they just go away; for whatever reason. Because you are not the only person making a film. If six people are making a film and you're all financed, five of you might lose it all and only one of you goes through. That is why just to see a great film get made and find its way to the screen is really inspiring. I mean, it is your art and it is your life, it is your world, but at the end of it the sun is going to come up again tomorrow".

Investing his time by doing what he loves the most, that is playing a role, is every actor dream, but how does it feel when one of the projects he takes part in gets suddenly cancelled? "It is like poker. You can bluff all you want but someone might get a better hand and take all your chips. So if you get upset about it and you obsess about it then you can be obsessed for the rest of your life. I get paid for the day. You will succumb to psychosis if you approach it from any other perspective".

Among the many panels offered this year by Zarata Events there was also an "auction panel", a session where some items - kindly donated by the actor himself and personally signed at the event - went up for auction, and the proceeds were given to the Spanish Association Against Cancer.

About the upcoming projects, already on their way or still theoretical, in which hopefully we will see him soon, he cited some short films and Adoptable, the web series written by his friend and colleague Scott Lowell: "He's gonna make it, there will be Sharon Gless and it will be fun" (Scott recently re-confirmed Gale's role in the project).

Finally, more than one question has been about The Lock, the project in its early stages that sees the collaboration of Gale as a concept creator and lead actor, and his friend and director Shirley Petchprapa: "We have had to reconfigure the entire project because the central point has been usurped by another project so we have had to re-introduce what it is about".