Taxi zum Klo director
Ripploh makes waves
by Steve Warren
Kwik Kwiz: Who said, “I’m completely fed
up with gays"?
A. Anita Byrant
B. Jerry Falwell
C. Frank Ripploh
While the answer may well be (D) All of the
above, your reporter heard the words from the
least likely and (temporarily) least famous
person on the list, Frank Ripploh.
Ripploh is the self effacing narcissist whose
first feature film, Taxi zum Klo (Taxi to the
Toilet) has achieved such notorious
respectability that it’s forcing surveyors of the
entertainment scene to consider relocating the
line that separates art from pornography.
This largely autobiographical movie was
written, directed and co-produced by the
dark, bearded, 33 year old Ripploh, who co
stars with his lover Bernd Broaderup. Though
employing wry humor it is unflinchingly
honest and well--, frank—both about Frank
and our subculture in general. In just over an
hour and a half it touches on tea rooms, baths,
parks, glory holes, leather, porno, drage
queens, drugs, hepatitis and other STD’s,
pederasty and "golden shower.”
Having thus exposed us in a way that will
shock the shit out of the middle Americans
who were becalmed by Lm Cageaux Folles,the
German filmmaker has largely dropped out of
the gay scene himself, as his opening comment
suggests. "It’s so on the surface,” he continues
in broken English, “and only based on bodies
and talk about sex and ‘My cock is greater
than your cock.”
He describes San Francisco’s Castro Street
as "a terrible, luxurious gay ghetto—very
boring,” explaining that this kind of
“paridise” makes us irresponsible. "In a way
it’s nice that (finding sexual partners) is so
easy, but in another way...” He goes on to
detail the difficulty of forming a lasting
relationship, which takes too much energy
when it’s easier to just have sex with a stranger
whenever you want it. “inflation sex” is his
name for this atmosphere of surfeit.
Made in Berlin for $50,000, part of which
Ripploh borrowed from hi mother, Taxi zum
Klo is the story of a gay schoolteacher, his sex
life and loves, his one story but lasting
relationship, and how he ultimately becomes
an ex-schoolteacher.
While it’s true that Ripploh no longer
teaches school, how he lost his job is
fictionalized in the film. He’s seen coming to
school in costume after an all night drag ball,
and letting the kids make a shambles of the
classroom to teach them a lesson about the
need for structure in their lives.
The truth, while less cinematic, is hardly
less interesting. In 1978 Ripploh was one of
600 gays featured in a photo article, “ Wirsind
SchwuT (“We are Faggots”) in the magazine
Stern. He was fired under a dictum that said,
according to Ripploh, “It is not allowed that a
German teacher publish his sexual attitudes.”
He went to court and won reinstatement, but
was fired again after a physical examination
declared him 70 percent handicapped”
because of a bad liver. He laughs at the
absurdity: “Seventy percent-that’s to have no
arms and no legs!”
This time he didn’t fight—“I’m not a gay
martyr”—but accepted his freedom as an
opportunity to go into creative work on a full
time basis. “I always had one leg in the arts,”
he says, referring to his acting for such
underground filmmakers as Rosa von
Praunheim and producing his own
multimedia shows, all under the name of
Peggy von Schnottgenberg, while he was still
teaching. Friends address him as “Peggy” in
Taxi zum Klo\ but now, he says, “It’s all over
with Peggy.”
It’s not over with Bernd, however, as
incompatible as they appear in the movie.
Ripploh stresses that they meet, in the film,
outside of the gay subculture. When they start
living together, Bernd is the domestic one who
cooks dinner and dreams of buying a farm
while Frank spends every spare moment
cruising.
The writer-director discusses his character
in the third person: “Frank is very
schizpophrenic in his mind. He tells you more
about his fantasies than about life. Bernd is
afraid of life but also afraid to let go and
fantasize. I think it’s important to show the
continued on page 12
Taxi Seized in Norfolk
NORFOLK. VA (Our Own)— Taxi zum Klo.
which will have its North Carolina premiere
later this month at the Carolina theatre in
Durham, ran into serious censorship
problems during its showing in Norfolk.
Attorneys for the distributor of the film, which
was seized by the local police, were expected to
file suit against the city of Norfolk sometime in
the first week of January.
The film was seized October 5 after one
scheduled showing at the Naro Expanded
Cinema on Colley Avenue in Norfolk. It was
confiscated by the local police on the grounds
that it may violate the city’s obscenity law.
Naro manager Tench Phillips, Jr. told Gay
Community News that he brought the film to
the Naro, a general cinema which plays
second-run films and classics, “because the
community requested. . . But there’s a small
town atmosphere here and I knew they might
make a case of it and 1 have to live in this town
and run my business. So I brought it for just
one night. Well, that was enough.” Naro later
cancelled the showing of another X-rated film,
saying that “we’re sterring clear of anything of
a sexual nature.”
Over 500 people attended the show on
October 5, the anniversary of the film’s
opening at the New York Film Festival.
Corporal L. R. Barnard of the vice squad and
Chief Magistrate R.H. Carawan were among
the 500. After seeing the film, they wrote an
affidavit authorizing the search warrant which
was used to confiscate the film.
According to the affidavit, the critically
acclaimed film is graphically obscene and has
as a dominant theme “a shameful, morbid
interest in homosexual love affairs” that
contains no serious medical, artistic or literary
material and [goes] beyond the limits and
candor of social acceptability.”
Phillips disagrees, pointing to the fact that
“film critics and those who judge art. . . say
it has artistic merit. I wouldn’t have risked
bringing it here otherwise.”
He added that while the 92-minute film does
contain a few minutes of “explicit sex,” the
segment does not “reduce the film to porno
graphy. . . because it has artistic value.”
Nevertheless, Phillips believes that it is the
explicitness of the sex, not the gender of the
participants, which city officials object to.
Several films with a gay theme have played at
the Naro in the last few years, he said,
including Im Cage Aux Folles, Victor /
Victoria, Personal Best, and The
Consequence, a film about gay men in
Germany.
continued on page 10
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