Tom Ford Talks About When He & a Journalist Did an Interview Completely Nude

The new issue of Interview magazine has a very interesting interview with Tom Ford about his careers as a fashion icon and movie director.

Here is an excerpt of the interview with John Currin:

When Tom Ford walked away from womenswear more than six years ago, he wasn’t just vacating his post as creative director of Gucci Group, where he designed for both Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent—he was leaving an industry that he helped shape and reinvent. He’d brought a new understanding of glamour, beauty, sophistication, and, above all, sexual seduction to fashion, so when he announced in 2004 that he was quitting to try his hand as a film director, it sparked something of a communal identity crisis. Who would fill the void, rise to the occasion, and, more importantly, have both the creative talent and business acumen to fulfill the dreams of customers and the expectations of stockholders?

No doubt, in Ford’s absence—shorter than some imagined, as he launched his eponymous menswear label in 2007—fashion has changed significantly. But so has the man himself. In 2009 he delivered A Single Man, a poignant, wrenching, maturely expressed drama based on the Christopher Isherwood novel, which revealed him to be a cinematic force as well as a sartorial one. And then last fall, the man who famously got out of the game because he was fed up with the business came back to the land he once ruled—and did so in a sensational way.

Tom Ford’s Spring 2011 womenswear collection, presented at Ford’s Manhattan store to a select few journalists, editors, and fashion-world heavies, was the biggest show of the season that you never saw, partly because Ford decided to mark his return to dressing the female form as a way of protesting the current state of the industry: fashion as impersonal, aggressive, and aloof; fashion as playing to the critics instead of the customers; fashion as instantly accessible via the Internet to a global audience that obsesses over trends without ever experiencing the quality, the complexity, and the refinement of the clothes themselves. The presentation was Ford’s manifesto-like argument for bringing back to high-end fashion the excitement, intimacy, immediacy, and sense of fun—all qualities that have been arguably sacrificed over the last decade for the mass-takeover approach favored by many of today’s designers.

Ford invited only 100 guests to his Madison Avenue showroom on the evening of September 12, 2010. Playing emcee on the microphone, with photographer Terry Richardson and his team securing the show’s only visual documentation, Ford announced each look as it came down the runway worn by one of the many actresses, artists, models, musicians, socialites, and muses the designer had personally chosen to walk in the show—among them, Julianne Moore, Beyoncé Knowles, Daphne Guinness, Lou Doillon, Lauren Hutton, Karen Elson, Marisa Berenson, Natalia Vodianova, and Stella Tennant. While Ford refused all requests for media sneak peaks and red-carpet opportunities, what was evident in the collection was that Ford’s continuing obsession with and glorification of the female form had not gotten tame—he brought out the slips and curves of the body with silk fringe, leopard print, suede, and leather.

Ford hasn’t abandoned his second career—in fact, he is in the process of finishing the screenplay for his next film project. But as his friend, the painter John Currin (husband to another of Ford’s presentation muses, the artist Rachel Feinstein), caught up with him in Los Angeles, it was clear that Ford relished being back on his home turf, making clothes for women and making women feel the way only he can.

TOM FORD: We have to be careful. Everything we are saying is going to be recorded.

JOHN CURRIN: [laughs] The small acorn that will grow into a great oak of a scandal later, right?

FORD: [sighs] Ah, yes, I know what that’s like. You say the littlest thing, it gets misinterpreted.

CURRIN: Well, I’m here to ask you some questions, and I think a good one to start off with is about your childhood. What were some of your first memories of seeing beauty?

FORD: That would have been as a little kid living in Texas. My grandmother was probably the first person who I thought was beautiful. She was incredibly stylish, she had big hair, big cars. I was probably 3 years old, but she was like a cartoon character. She’d swoop into our lives with presents and boxes, and she always smelled great and looked great. She always had the latest things. She was larger than life to me, even as an adult, but when I was a child it was really like she was from another planet. It seemed like she lived in a different world, and wherever that was, I wanted to go.

CURRIN: So it wasn’t natural beauty, then. It wasn’t sunsets or mountains or trees.

FORD: No. In fact, I didn’t learn to appreciate those things until much later in life, because I grew up mostly in New Mexico, which is famous for sunsets and mountains and trees. That’s the reason I have a place there and spend so much time there now. When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.

CURRIN: Your movie had some of that feeling; for instance, with its collection of small moments of cultivation—the way things are folded or put in a drawer.

FORD: Well, I do that myself, and that character was very, very, very autobiographical and very different from the character in the Isherwood book. That’s really about putting on a sort of armor to go out in the world. The character played by Julianne [Moore] was quite literally based on my grandmother. It’s funny, that movie was cathartic for me. It was really my midlife crisis on the screen. [Currin laughs] It was! I was working through all of those earlier notions of what was important in life. And George has a moment where time stands still, and he really feels his connection to the universe and understands the meaning of life, in a way, and that he doesn’t need to live any longer, and he dies. I never used to say that he dies, but I think enough people have seen the film by now, so I can give away the ending. But as an adult working in the fashion industry, I struggle with materialism. And I’m one of the least materialistic people that exist, because material possessions don’t mean much to me. They’re beautiful, I enjoy them, they can enhance your life to a certain degree, but they’re ultimately not important. Your connections with other people are important, our connection to the earth. And that’s why I go to New Mexico as often as I can. And what I find to be the most beautiful thing in the world now is nature—sunsets, trees, my horses.

CURRIN: I didn’t mean it pejoratively that your aesthetic is always about cultivation.

FORD: My fashion aesthetic. I guess I’ve yet to express another aesthetic.

CURRIN: What’s interesting in the movie is that the aesthetic is so unsexualized. It was orderly and beautiful, but with this tragic panic underneath. But it was weird how it did look like you and your world to a degree, or how most people envision it.

FORD: Well, I think most people don’t actually know me. They know the projection of me that I use to sell things. And they know me from an expression of material beauty. I’m actually very introverted. I’m very shy. I’m very emotional. I think those are human experiences that everyone can relate to. So this movie wasn’t about sex. It was about love. That was on purpose, because a lot of people equate homosexuality with sex and not necessarily with love. It was important that I keep the movie not about sex. It was about the same struggle that everyone goes through, if you’re intelligent, at some point in your life. You ask yourself, What is this all about? Why am I living? What does this mean? Why am I here? Those are the questions George is asking himself.

CURRIN: If I could segue then to—

FORD: To high heels? Yes! Let’s get to high heels. That’s a great segue right into fashion.

CURRIN: Actually, yeah, because you are saying that people associate homosexuality with sex—or oversexed men and sexual relationships. But when you’re making a sculpture or image of a woman, is there a sexual aspect to it?

FORD: It is never even calculated. When I’m making an image of a woman, or dressing a woman—I have a reputation for sex and making a woman sexy, and men as well—but I don’t start out saying, “Oh, I’m gonna make this woman look sexy or sexual.” I simply stand there and put her in front of me and say, “What can I do to make her more beautiful in my eyes? Let’s pull in the dress here, let’s do this, let’s do that.” The end result is something that other people consider sexual, but for me it’s just beautiful. My expression of beauty is something I do naturally. I love the human body—the female body, the male body. I work in a way to try to enhance the body, and so you often see a lot of the body or the silhouette or outline, and that’s what people equate with sex. But I’m very comfortable with sexuality. It’s not anything that’s ever freaked me out. I’m very comfortable with naked bodies. Someone asked me recently about male nudity, and I brought up the subject that, in our culture, we use female nudity to sell everything. We’re very comfortable objectifying women. Women go out and they are basically wearing nothing. Their feet and toes are exposed, their legs are exposed, their breasts are exposed. Everything is exposed—the neck, the arms. You have to be really physically perfect, as a woman, in our culture to be considered beautiful. But full frontal male nudity challenges us. It makes men nervous. It makes women nervous. Other times in history, male nudes have been regarded in a different way. The Olympics were originally held nude. The reporter I was explaining this to said, “This would make a great story.” I explained how when I come home I actually
take off all my clothes, and I wear no clothes until I leave. I eat naked. I do everything completely naked. He said, “That would make a great interview.” I said, “Fine, we have to do it nude.”

CURRIN: How old was the interviewer?

FORD: Oh, 55 or 56. [Currin laughs] He was in very good shape. Anyway, we did the interview. The interviewer was straight, and I made it a point to desexualize the interview even though I was sitting with my legs wide open, completely naked. At the end of the interview, I put on a dressing gown and he put on his clothes, and I sat next to him on the sofa and said, “Was that sexual?” He said, “Absolutely not.” And I said, “That’s because I didn’t make it sexual. Sexuality is in the eyes, it’s an expression, it’s in a look.” Then, all of a sudden, I looked at him in a very different way, and it made him very nervous.

CURRIN: I wanted to ask if you’ve ever felt any remorse in your work, because that is something I’ve felt before in my work. You don’t seem like someone who feels a great deal of remorse about anything.

FORD: No, I don’t.

CURRIN: I sometimes get the feeling that I look at women to objectify them, and I start to feel guilty. I wonder if that ever plagues you?

FORD: I think I detach the physical from the spiritual. It’s my business to make a woman or a man beautiful, and I’m working with a model in a fitting, and I’ve objectified them to the point that they become an object. They’re something that I’m modeling or shaping or sculpting, but I’m very aware that even though I make them physically beautiful, their soul and personality and character is somewhat detached from that. It’s great when you have a combination of the two— that’s what makes a true beauty. Some people are physically beautiful but yet they’re completely uninteresting, and thus they’re not beautiful. I detach the two. And I turn the same eye on myself: When I look in the mirror, I say, “Well, this eyebrow is starting to sag,” or “I’m going gray right here, I need to fix that.” Or “I’ve eaten too much. I need to do a few more push-ups, blah blah blah.” But that’s completely separate from me as a human being. It’s purely the body that I move through the world in, and people react to it on the surface. So, no, I don’t have any remorse, because I separate them. Do you?

CURRIN: Yes. I think it’s mixed up in my lust for women, or my sexual desire for women . . .

FORD: That’s why I think gay men make better designers.

CURRIN: Are gay men free? Are you unburdened by lust? Is that an advantage of being a gay man?

FORD: I lust after beautiful women. First of all, I love women. But I lust after beautiful women in the way that I lust after a beautiful piece of sculpture—this will probably get me in trouble—or a beautiful car. I believe everyone’s on a sliding scale of sexuality. There are moments where I am sexually attracted to women. But it doesn’t overpower my first impulse; my lust for them is the same as my lust for beauty in all things. It’s not like I ever think, “Oh, my god, I’ve got to spread her legs and fuck her.”

CURRIN: Isn’t that the sticking point—

FORD: What a well-chosen word. [both laugh]

CURRIN: But the very thing that is required by art, which is to isolate and objectify and to look from a distance at something, is the thing that is considered oppressive when men do it to women. And that’s what gets you into trouble.

FORD: I think that’s wrong. I’m an equal-opportunity objectifier. I think it’s the exact same thing. I’m sorry, I don’t understand why our culture both worships and objectifies beauty, and then slams those of us who participate in it. Because I make that detachment, I’m capable of objectifying a beautiful woman, but that doesn’t demean her in any way. She’s beautiful because she’s a creature who exists physically, in the physical world, who happens to be in a moment of prime.

CURRIN: That would seem to be a theme of your fashion work: the complete freedom from guilt. Part of the fantasy of the ad campaigns—which I think Americans look at as a leisurely European playboy—is the evocation of a person not really hampered by guilt or remorse or worried about the unhealthy aspects of their lifestyle.

FORD: This may sound corny, but the only thing I feel remorse about is when I hurt someone, hurt their feelings, or make them feel bad. I’m obsessive about that. “Oh, my god, did I say the wrong thing? Did I hurt them? Did they understand what I meant?” But the creation of visual images or design, I have no remorse over. I’m not somebody who regrets anything, because I’m very happy with where I am and everything I’ve done in my life. Everything that’s happened to me, I’ve learned a lesson from—or if I didn’t, I was foolish, and I will repeat the same thing and eventually, hopefully, I will learn a lesson.

CURRIN: Do you think that is an unusual trait among Americans?

FORD: I think we’re very uptight in America. You have to remember that we’re descended from Puritans. Whether or not the country is now composed of immigrants, our culture as American really begins with the landing of the Pilgrims and a puritanical view of things. It was a group of people who escaped Europe because they felt it was depraved in a certain way, and that culture still permeates. I’ve lived in Europe for the last 20 years, so I’m kind of a hybrid. I feel very American in certain ways, and in lots of ways I feel more European.

CURRIN: How do Europeans feel about you? Do they see you as a stereotypical American who’s hardworking and controlling, or do they see you as one of them?

FORD: I think the Italians feel like I’m one of them. I think that’s because I resurrected a brand that was very close to their hearts, and I lived in Italy for a long time and speak Italian. The English, who knows? As for the French, the first thing out of every French reviewer’s mouth was something about being an American. The French are very nationalistic, which I think is very backward, honestly. I think today you have to be international and global. It’s very narrow to think in a nationalistic way. Unfortunately, Americans do the same thing, because most Americans don’t even have a passport. They don’t travel.

CURRIN: I’m so envious of Europeans for their history, their painting ability, their style and aesthetic, and I sometimes think “American painter” is an oxymoron. I wonder if it’s the same way for a designer.

FORD: Just remember that you’re descended from Europeans. You’ve just grown up in this country. You can still call yourself a European who’s living in America.

CURRIN: Northern Irish. That’s not quite European . . .

FORD: Not continental . . .

CURRIN: It’s not Monte Carlo.

FORD: That’s not one of my favorite places in Europe.

CURRIN: [laughs] I’ve never seen it. I’ve never been there. What I know of Monte Carlo is probably mostly informed by your advertisements.

FORD: That’s not what Monte Carlo is. It’s really a lot of people who are overly tanned and have too much collagen and too much money and diamonds that are too big.

CURRIN: It’s like Los Angeles.

FORD: On steroids.

John Currin is a New York–based artist. His recent exhibit, “New Paintings,” was shown at New York’s Gagosian Gallery.

To read the full Tom Ford interview pick up a copy of the February issue of Interview.

“A Single Man” Director Tom Ford Talks About Who He Wants Next, Brad Pitt!

Tom Ford’s outstanding directorial debut A Single Man is being released on DVD and Blu-Ray today. The film earned Colin Firth an Academy Award nomination for best actor and Julianne Moore should have received an Oscar nod but was somehow overlooked.

Ford should not have any trouble attracting A-List talent for his next film, whatever that turns out to be. The designer-turned-director talked to Entertainment Weekly about five stars he hopes to work with in the future:

Brad Pitt: “I’ve always admired Brad as an actor, but I think he’s even better now. I hope people take this the right way but he’s less physically perfect. His face has so much more character. He’s growing into himself.”

Tilda Swinton: “I think she’s amazing. She’s an incredible actress; she’s absolutely fearless. I loved her in I Am Love. She’s good in comedy too. There’s a huge untapped comedic actress there.”

Paul Rudd: “Everybody loves Paul Rudd. There’s something in his face and his eyes that everyone identifies with. I’d love to see him in something quite serious. I think he has enormous depth.”

Naomi Watts: “I love her always. I know her as a person, and I think so highly of her. She has star quality when she’s on screen. I’m riveted whatever [her current movie project] is.”

Justin Timberlake: “You can just feel he’s a great actor even from the few things we’ve seen him in. He has such presence and a kind of mystery. He has this enormous talent and it’s subtle

'Glee' Among GLAAD Media Awards Winners

"Glee" has another reason to be happy.

The Fox musical comedy was among the winners at the 21st annual GLAAD Media Awards. The show's cast and creator Ryan Murphy received the trophy for outstanding comedy series at Saturday's glitzy ceremony at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza. Murphy, in particular, praised lesbian actress Jane Lynch and gay actor Chris Colfer for their contributions.

"We have a great responsibility with the show," Murphy beamed.

Murphy told the crowd that Colfer's character, outspoken gay soprano Kurt Hummel, would have a boyfriend next season, and the pair would become prom kings. Murphy also promised the crowd that Colfer's character "would never be the victim."

"Iron Chef" Cat Cora presented actress-director Drew Barrymore with the Vanguard Award, which honors efforts to increase visibility and understanding of the gay community. In a humorous video before accepting her trophy, Barrymore listed several of her inspirational gay colleagues, including her agent, lawyer, doctor, stylists and one of her dogs.

"The thing that means the most to me about an evening like this, and why I want to fight and be outspoken about this is because there are so many people who are in desperate need of families," Barrymore said.

Constance McMillen, the lesbian Mississippi teenager who challenged her school district's ban of same-sex prom dates, presented comedian-actress Wanda Sykes with the Stephen F. Kolzak Award, which is given by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to an openly gay member of the entertainment community for their work toward eliminating homophobia.

"I'm willing to give this award to you," Sykes teased McMillen, "but I'm not gonna do it. It means a lot to me."

Other winners included Logo's "RuPaul's Drag Race" for outstanding reality program and "A Single Man" for outstanding wide release film. "A Single Man" director Tom Ford wasn't on hand to receive his trophy. His partner Richard Buckley accepted the award on Ford's behalf because the filmmaker was stranded in London thanks to the volcanic cloud of ash.

Adam Lambert, the glam-rocking "American Idol" runner-up who raised eyebrows with his racy performance at last year's American Music Awards, capped off the ceremony hosted by transgender actress Candis Cayne and gay actor Wilson Cruz with a performance of his tunes "Music Again" and "Fever." He ended by pleading for diversity within the gay community.

The awards salute fair, accurate and inclusive representation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives in the media. Other winners -- chosen from 152 nominees in 32 categories -- were awarded at a March ceremony in New York, while the remainder will be presented at a San Francisco ceremony in June.

Colin Firth Says Gay Actors Take a Risk

Colin Firth has suggested that there are "invisible boundaries" preventing out gay actors from taking leading roles.

Firth, a straight actor who played a gay man in Tom Ford's directorial debut A Single Man, said he felt "complicit" in the problem of gay actors losing out on parts.

Speaking at the UK premiere of the film last night, he said: "There might be risks for a gay actor coming out. The politics of that are quite complex, it seems to me.

"If you're known as a straight guy, playing a gay role, you get rewarded for that. If you're a gay man and you want to play a straight role, you don't get cast – and if a gay man wants to play a gay role now, you don't get cast.

"I think it needs to be addressed and I feel complicit in the problem. I don't mean to be. I think we should all be allowed to play whoever – but I think there are still some invisible boundaries which are still uncrossable."

Firth made similar comments in December, when he said that "sexual taboos" in Hollywood were constraining gay actors.

Out gay actor Rupert Everett said in the same month that he would advise ambitious gay actors to stay in the closet.

He said: "The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business."

Firth has been tipped for an Oscar nomination for his role as gay college professor George Falconer in A Single Man. He won the best actor award for the performance at the Venice Film Festival last year.

Ford, better known as a fashion designer, has said his debut film is about "love and isolation", rather than being a "gay story".

Tom Ford Family Tragedy Re-enacted In Film

Designer-turned-moviemaker Tom Ford had a lot of personal drama to draw from for the suicide scene in his acclaimed new film A Single Man - it took place in his own family.

Colin Firth plans his suicide in the movie after losing his longtime partner, played by fellow Brit Matthew Goode, and Ford admits the tragedy of the movie seems authentic because he actually experienced a relative's similar dreadful death.

He said in a recent interview, "The suicide in the story comes from my family. There was a suicide that really took place in my family. It was exactly that re-enacted in the film by Colin's character with the suit and cufflinks laid out, and how he zipped himself into a sleeping bag because he didn't want to make a mess.

"I remember very vividly that there were darkly comic moments because what are you gonna do when these things happen to you in your life."

Matthew Goode "Would’ve Been Very Happy to Snuggle Up to the Rug on Colin Firth’s Chest”

Matthew Goode who portrays Colin Firth’s deceased lover in A Single Man, chatted with Brandon Voss for The Advocate and he seems to be someone very comfortable in his own skin.

The actor, who has starred in such films as Brideshead Revisited, Match Point, Imagine You and Me, Watchman, Chasing Liberty and the upcoming Leap Year opposite Amy Adams, appears as Jim, the deceased lover that Colin Firth’s college professor mourns in a series of intimate flashbacks.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Tom Ford has said that A Single Man is “not a gay film.” As the actor kissing Colin Firth on-screen, how do you see it?
I kind of agree with him. He wasn’t making it as a political piece, and the theme of love and loss is fairly universal. Obviously you can’t escape the fact that these are men kissing, but what’s lovely about George’s remembrances of Jim is the fact that it’s not a sweaty clinch — which would’ve been fine, because I would’ve been very happy to snuggle up to the rug on Colin Firth’s chest. It was remembrances like sitting on the sofa reading books together, and there’s a beauty in the banality of those scenes that also speaks to their universality. You can call it a gay film, but what’s really nice it is that it shows the intimacy between two adult males as absolutely normal and exactly the same as heterosexual intimacy.

Colin told me that you were a good kisser. What did you think of his skills?
Right back at ’im. Sometimes you see straight actors trying to portray gay men as very aggressive, so the kissing is superaggressive and rough. I’m sure that does exist, but we liked that our kissing was sensitive.

Compared to shooting love scenes with a woman, do you find it more challenging to get intimate with another straight man?
Well, I’ll let you know when I have to do something with full-frontal. But I don’t think you can have an erection in a scene, and I always find that funny: If you’re going to have sex, you can’t suddenly have the man springing into bed with a floppy knob. It should be a little bit saturated with semen and standing out at an odd angle with a few veins involved. [Laughs] Obviously I’m a man who likes women and has a child now, but I’m not squeamish and I love all people. If you’ve been entrusted to do the job, then you find something to love in the other character and you do your job.

Young American actors sometimes shy away from gay parts for fear of being pigeonholed or mistaken for gay in real life. As a British actor, is that something you’ve ever been concerned about?
I’ve never looked at those kinds of roles as something to be avoided. I somehow ended up doing three in a row, really, with Brideshead, Watchmen, and A Single Man, so I steadily got more gay. I was “full gay” in this one. But the parts were all so good. I wouldn’t do a bad story with a character that was just gay for gay’s sake — which sounds like a porno, which I’m not particularly into. But I know what you mean about Americans. There’s a real problem with masculinity and sensitivity in Hollywood. I don’t blame actors for not coming out because America might then have a problem with watching them kissing Cameron Diaz. And then there are certain actors who don’t want people to think, I wonder if he’s really gay, because he did terribly well in that gay part. America’s a slightly harder country, where men are constantly trying to be men. And it’s not just Hollywood; everyone goes to the gym.

To read the entire interview, go to http://www.advocate.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Film/A_Single_Mans_Goode_Kisser/.

Movie Trailer: "A Single Man" Directed by Tom Ford

In his directorial debut, desinger Tom Ford brings to us "A Single Man", starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. It is a story that centers on an English professor who, after the sudden death of his long-time partner tries to go about his typical day in Los Angeles.

The movie will be released nationwide on December 11th after being showcased in several worldwide movie festivals, including most recently the AFI Fest.

Here's the trailer:

Tom Ford Discusses His New Film, "A Single Man"

Famed Gucci fashion designer turned film director, Tom Ford, discusses the genesis of his debut feature, "A Single Man" in an interview with OUT Magazine.

OUT: Your first movie turned out to be the toast of the Venice and Toronto film festivals. Is this the start of a second career?
Tom Ford: I certainly hope it’s the start of a parallel career. It was a lot of work when I was both shooting and designing, but if I were only making films, the lag time between different projects would drive me crazy. I’d like to make a movie every two or three years, which is about as quickly as you can get a project off the ground anyway.

How do you think those two sensibilities -- fashion and film -- come together in the way you approached this movie?
They are very separate things for me. Making this film is the first time in my life that I have been purely expressive or artistic. Fashion, for me, is certainly creative, but it’s ultimately a commercial endeavor.

On paper, certainly, A Single Man sounds like an unlikely project. It’s a story about a middle-aged gay man preparing to take his own life.
Even [my partner] Richard, when he first read what I wanted to do, said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes, I’m positive. I have a feeling.”

The focus on love between two men seems so apposite given the debate around gay marriage and the glaring need for better representations of gay relationships.
I didn’t even think about it, but I created the kind of relationship on screen that I have and that [the writer] Christopher Isherwood had with Don Bachardy for 43 years. So it just seemed very natural to me. It was funny to me when one of my agents said, “This is a gay story.” I said, “Really? It is?” I’m just blind to gay/straight at this point in my life. I am gay -- I’ve always been completely open about that—but first and foremost I’m human and live the same human condition that every other human on our planet lives. Christopher Isherwood was one of the very first people to treat his gay characters in the same way that he treated the straight characters. They were always just people interacting.

It’s clear that this is a personal movie.
If you read the novel, you can see that I’ve had my character and personality grafted on to the central character of George. The book A Single Man is kind of The Power of Now before The Power of Now was written. And going through a certain midlife crisis of my own -- having spent an enormous amount of my life concentrating on the material world -- this book spoke to me in my mid-40s in a way that it didn’t speak to me when I read it in my 20s. At this point in time a great message for all of us is to appreciate the small things in our lives and to try to be very present for them, because they are the big things in life -- that’s what we get, that’s it.

In contrast to your sexually provocative advertising and Gucci-era persona, A Single Man reveals a deeper, more romantic side that may have escaped people’s notice.
I agree. One thing that most people wouldn’t believe about me is that I’m incredibly shy, and I don’t think I’ve ever allowed people in that close. So the fashion side of me is the surface side, really. It’s also taken a bit of coming to terms with the fact that I do spend so much of my life working in the material world. But as long as you keep it in perspective and don’t take it too seriously, I think fashion is a great thing that adds quality to our lives. It doesn’t mean that a beautiful pair of shoes isn’t still beautiful. But if you lose them, big deal, because they don’t really mean anything other than to be able to say, “Wow, look at my feet. Aren’t they pretty?”

How did your partner react when he saw this movie?
Well, he saw it in many stages. He read every incarnation of the screenplay, he came on the set a few times, he saw the dailies, he saw the first cuts. And I think he loves it. He’s very rarely particularly demonstrative about things I’m working on. Many, many fashion shows where I got great reviews—he didn’t say a word about them. It was almost as if they didn’t exist, and that used to drive me crazy. But he’s been much more vocal about this.

How did you come to choose Nicholas Hoult for the movie?
Originally, I had cast someone else in that role, someone well known, who pulled out at the very last minute. He just didn’t show up at the costume fitting five days before we were due to start shooting. About two weeks earlier, I had received, via e-mail, an audition by Nicholas, who wanted to read for it even though the part was taken. I remember thinking Fuck, he’s so good, he’s so right for this, but the part had already been cast. And then oddly -- and this happened a lot with this film -- things just moved. Colin Firth wasn’t available originally -- I had cast someone else in the role -- and we had a shift in schedule, he had a shift in schedule, the other person dropped out, and all of a sudden things lined up. The same thing happened with Nicholas. Now I can’t imagine anybody but Nick in that role.

There’s something very serene about his presence in the movie.
And angelic. And in a way he is a bit of an angel who saves George (Colin Firth). What’s interesting is that Nicholas was 18 when we started filming; Colin was 48. They were exactly the ages of Chris and Don when they met.

A Single Man opens in December.

Tom Ford Fashions a Poignant Gay Drama

Designer Tom Ford makes a surprisingly successful leap from the fashion industry to the big screen with "A Single Man," a standout directing debut about a gay college professor who loses his longtime partner.

The theme of the search for meaning after a great loss is developed with great sensitivity, thanks to Colin Firth's moving performance in the main role, and should help the film go beyond gay audiences, who will be its strong supporters, to attract the more mainstream attention of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Far From Heaven."

Based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, the screenplay by Ford and David Scearce is concise and to the point. It opens on a fatal car crash in 1962, in which Jim (Matthew Goode) is killed. George Falconer (Firth) learns about his lover's death the next day when a relative phones, but he is warned not to attend the funeral of the man he lived with for 16 years.

Broken-hearted and alone, he seeks comfort from his long-ago flame, now friend, Charley (Julianne Moore), who is obviously still in love with him. But George is too devastated to be interested in either sex, and even rebuffs the approach of a hot young hustler played by Jon Kortajarena, who is a true James Dean lookalike. He tries to avoid getting involved with his student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult of "About a Boy"), who is just discovering his sexual preferences and aggressively courts the older man. Instead, he makes plans for committing suicide.

Most of the action takes place over the course of a single day in Los Angeles in the early '60s, when being gay was socially disapproved of by many. The film brushes ever so lightly on the issue of discrimination, first implicitly, when George lectures his students on how society fears what it is not, and later in a beautifully calibrated tete-a-tete between George and Charley, when she insinuates George and Jim did not have a "real relationship."

Through snatches of their life together, it is apparent that George and Jim had a very real and loving relationship whatever 1960's America thought. Their love story is contrasted with the next-door neighbors, who are down-to-earth suburbanites busy raising families and building nuclear bomb shelters. When a colleague tells George there won't be time for sentiment when the bomb falls, George characteristically retorts that he's not interested in living in a world without feeling.

Firth's measured performance, delivered in a clipped British accent, has just the right restraint, and the intelligent dialogue is a pleasure. Moore is glamorous and likeable as the alcoholic divorcee Charley, adrift without a husband. Goode and especially Hoult are just too perfect to be true, but they serve the purpose of offering George good reasons to stay alive. In contrast to Firth's underplaying, the directing has its overblown, operatic soul. Ford is unafraid of such cringe-worthy moments as playing an opera solo over a suicide attempt, or having a nattily dressed symbolic figure in Tom Ford Menswear give the kiss of death to the recently departed. In the same spirit, tech work is satisfyingly bold. Dan Bishop's stylish production design and Eduard Grau's cinematography set the film in a romantically idealized '60s world. The film score, written by Abel Korzeniowski and Shigeru Umebayashi, is variegated and full of lush orchestral themes that salute Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann, among others.

Designer Tom Ford Says Lack of Rights for Gay Couples is 'Disgusting'

Openly gay fashion designer Tom Ford has hit out at the bans on gay marriage and civil partnerships in many parts of the world.

Speaking at a Venice press conference for the premiere of his first film, A Single Man, which stars Colin Firth, he told of his worries should anything happen to he or his partner.

According to Reuters, Ford said: “I have someone I’ve lived together with for 23 years. Recently he was in hospital for something. I had to carry papers on me at all times that he had signed saying that I could visit him in his room and make medical decisions for him if anything happened.

"Our taxes, by the way: if I died tomorrow my estate would be completely taxed and then the remainder go to him whereas if we were a couple his life wouldn’t have to change and my entire estate would move to him. There are things that are wrong with our legal systems in a lot of countries.”

He added: "It is, I have to say, quite disgusting that in America and in other countries you cannot have a civil union or something equivalent to marriage."