At LAST ! The Scottish PREMIERE ! ! !

Well- I knew it would happen SOMEDAY - but today is the DAY!

U & ME & TENNESSEE - an American romance...

is finally being screened in its nation of origin, in the city where it was made - indeed only a few yards from the very place that graciously allowed us to film our unscripted, no-holds-barred conversation about TENNESSEE WILLIAMS in the first place!

Wednesday, 5th November, 2008 -

U & ME & TENNESSEE - an American romance...

Gilmorehill G12 Cinema

Glasgow University

8:00 p.m.

It has been a long time coming. The better part of two years ago I went to Glasgay! and suggested that 2008 would be a great year to devote the entire Glasgow festival of Queer culture to Tennessee Williams - after all, this would be the twenty-fifth anniversay of Tenn's death, and he was a towering artist whose work is still unfolding and touching people - gay, straight, in-between - worldwide.

"And if you DO decide to make a Tennessee Williams festival, I hope you'll include our movie, which features the only man in Scotland who actually knew Tennessee (in all senses of the word), who has a stack of letters from him that no one has seen before, and who has made this very candid, very moving portrait of their relationship and its impact upon them both."

Well, Glasgay! took the idea of a Tennessee Willams festival and ran with it - it was an idea whose time had come - but the cultural commissars, the self-appointed gatekeepers of gay culture in Glasgow, decided to ignore the only genuine link between Scotland and Mr. Williams. Incredible, but there it is.

A dear friend of mine, Rodger Parker, a gay man who recently tied the knot with Stephen Hubbard, his partner of thirty-five years (great wedding, by the way!) remarked to me:

"I mean, who is Glasgay! supposed to be for?!"

What's that they say about a great idea or revelation? First they ignore it, then they ridicule it, and finally it is accepted a a self-evident fact. U & ME & TENNESSEE has certainly had its share of the first stage of this process!

Happily, young people are not as hidebound or blinkered in their perceptions as their more established older brothers and sisters. The Glasgow University LGBT Society and the SCATS - the Student Cinema & Television Society have both wholeheartedly embraced our movie, and arranged for its Scottish premiere at the Gilmorehill G12 Cinema!

We filmed the original conversation that forms the largest part of our movie, in the Glasgow University Visitors' Centre cafe - so it's fitting that the project comes full circle and receives its welcome back where it all began on International Gay Pride Day in June, 2005.

Thanks to Alan Convery, and Didge, of the LGBT Society - and to SCATS - for their awesome support!

Photo Copyright Alan Wylie 2006 -All rights reserved.

Text Copyright Paul Birchard 2008 - All rights reserved.