November 20, 2024 • 36 mins
Patrik Ian-Polk is the creator of Noah's Arc, the first scripted TV show to center Black gay men. The show defied stereotypes and developed a cult following in the 2000s. He discusses the superheroes in his own life that served as his inspirations.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network. This interview was taped in front
of a live studio audience for our very first live show,
and before we start, I just want to say thank
you so much to everyone who made the time to come.
It was awesome to meet every single one of you,
(00:21):
and I've enjoyed building a relationship with you since we
started the show. Because of you, we also won the
Signal Award we were nominated for a few weeks ago,
so thank you again for that support, and thank you
for writing into the show. I have enjoyed reading every
single one of your letters telling me what you've overcome
(00:43):
in your own life. They've touched my heart actually, and
I want to hear more from you, So follow me
on Instagram and TikTok and message me there at your
Underscoregan sol this. You can also email the show at
butw Looved at gmail dot com. Thank you so much again.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
You watch over the years and you would see aids
kind of it would creep closer and closer like you.
Of course, you hear about celebrities, and then in my twenties,
I remember my best friend in high school calling me
and telling me that our friend Tim had died, and
(01:24):
hearing about our high school classmate Jeffrey Lewis who died
or this, and so, you know, just coming closer and
closer close friends being HIV positive and so it was
really important.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
To see for people to see it's not a death sentence.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
In this episode, we'll meet Patrick ian Polk, often considered
(02:06):
the father of black gay cinema. We'll learn about how
he broke ground in making the first show on television
to center black a Life, how that show got canceled
at its peak, and how his fan base was forever
changed because of it. From My Heart Podcast, I'm Jordan
go and Solves and this is what we loved. When
(02:49):
I came out at twenty one, I had two best
friends that were proudly gay, and even though they were
my age, they mentored me through my coming out. At
that time, I was shocked at just how confident they were,
how proud they were to be something that I was
so ashamed of. I had spent a lifetime trying to
(03:09):
be anything but gay, fixing my walk, perfecting the timbre
of my voice, training myself to look away anytime a
handsome man walked by me. But for these friends, they
did the opposite. They thought the world should conform to them,
and for years I wondered why until I asked. Funny enough,
(03:34):
they didn't know each other, but they both had the
same answer, Noah's Arc. At first, I was like, wait,
the story from the Bible, But actually it was a
TV show that came out in two thousand and five.
It was the very first scripted show about black gay men,
and more than that, it showcased characters that were proudly out,
(03:55):
proudly living with HIV, and proudly black. Despite it being
a rating smash, it unexpectedly got canceled, but in the
nearly twenty years since, new generations of queer people continue
to find this timeless show over and over again. My
next guest, Patrick ian Polk, is the creator of Noah's Ark.
(04:19):
At a time when people in entertainment were losing their careers,
for coming out. He doubled down. He knew from when
he was a kid that he was destined to be
a storyteller. I just want to say thank you so
much for taking time out of your busy weekend to
(04:40):
come and see our show live. Ladies and gentlemen, please
welcome our guests for today's live episode of But We
Loved the Illustrious, the Luminary Patrick Ian Polk. So, Patrick,
we start out every show pretty much the same way,
(05:03):
and I think it kind of gives our audience a
little chance to get to know where you're from and
how you grew up. So take us to the moment
where you knew you were.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Gay, damn right out the box. Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Well, Probably the first sort of piece of pop culture
or entertainment that I sort of connected to on a
on a sort of sexual level was my uncle had
just hundreds of record albums. I loved music as well,
and so I would constantly go through and kind of
(05:40):
pill for records.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
And one of them.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
That I gravitated towards was I was a big fan
of Prince and I still am. It was the nineteen
ninety nine album. On the sleeve that the album was
in is a photo of Prince. I don't know if
you know this picture, but it's like a bed with
purple satin sheets and he's draped laying across the thing,
(06:07):
you know, butt naked with the sheets kind of wow,
just at the bottom of his butt cheeks, you know,
laying you know, laying on his stomach, kind of like
very sexy.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
And that picture was like, holy cow, wow.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I just very distinctly remember, and I definitely kept that album.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So yeah, that's sort of the first kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
But I always understood at a very young age, I
don't know when what it was, and I also understood
inherently that it was not something to share or be
spoken about.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
You grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I wonder if
you have a story that sort of epitomizes what it
was like to grow up as a gay kid in
a town like that in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Hattisburg, I say, is it's like the Austin of Mississippi, Oka.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
So it's a college.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It's less than two hours from New Orleans, so it's
probably would I would argue, the most progressive city in
the state, but it really was. I think around junior
high into high school that I met some other you know,
(07:22):
gay kids. We kind of found each other, or rather,
this one kind of older gay kid kind of found
me and just you know, and befriended me. And then
I remember we were driving home one day. I was
riding with him, and he was just like and suddenly
he just pulls into the guy's driveway and said, we're
just going to his house, and we went to his house.
(07:43):
And then from that day on we were all kind
of friends. And then eventually that guy and I became
like best friends. He's like my best friend in high school.
And he was a star of the church choir. I
was not super religious because I was raised very very
very permanent mom and so I was allowed to kind
of explore. I could do what I wanted in terms
(08:05):
of religion. But he was very much Baptist. Would travel
all over the States, singing at churches and stuff, and
he would be dating men in the church like pastors
and deacons and this and that. And it was just
amazing to me to see kind of this happening. And
there were certainly examples of those kids who just either
(08:26):
completely cannot hide or choose not to hide, and so
you would kind of see those kids and you'd be
kind of terrified for them and at the same time
terrified that people would maybe identify you with that, But
at the same time, there was kind of a quiet
reverence and appreciation because they were the ones that.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Were kind of like on the front lines.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I remember there was a kid in my neighborhood who
rode the same bus and his nickname was Miscotton Candy
and I couldn't even tell you what his real name was,
that was what people called him.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
And he was.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Extremely, extremely flamboyant, and I would watch him and of course,
you know, people would come for him and he would
let them have it, and it was very bold, and
so there was this sort of like respect that he commanded,
and people kind of learned not to don't come for him,
(09:26):
and if he was stupid enough to come for him,
he would really lay into them, like a superhero kind
of thing, and you kind of think, like, maybe one
day I can be like that.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, so fast forwarding a little bit now to the
late nineties, and you've graduated from USC as a filmmaker.
You're out and you write the precursor to Noah's Ark,
which is punks, anyone in your herd of bunks, and
you premiere it at Sundance. And this is at a
(09:56):
time in America where people's careers are ending because of
coming out in the entertainment in the stroom, thinking about
Ellen DeGeneres at that time, and I'm wondering, you know,
this is all happening at the same time, what was
driving you to create a film knowing that these themes
(10:19):
might end your career before it could even begin.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So when I left Mississippi, graduated high school, and I
always knew I would go I was going to go
away to college, like outside of the South, and I
got a full scholarship to Brandeis University in Boston. And
I got on the plane in Jackson and as the
plane took off and I looked out and watched, you know,
(10:43):
Jackson kind of getting smaller and smaller. I said, very
clearly to myself, when you step off this plane, every
person that you meet from this day fourth will know
that you are gay.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Why that came to my mind, but that that was
the thing. It was like, this is what it's going
to be. And then that's what I did. I went
to college. I was out. I remember going to the
bookstore Harvard Harvard Square, the co Op, and there was
a whole section. I remember marveling, like, Wow, there's a
whole sort of section of these are all gay books.
(11:19):
And there was one book that I could see on
the spine had an illustration of brown skin, and I
grabbed that book. And that book was Blackbird by Larry Duplachan.
And it's this amazing coming of age story set in
the seventies, this gay black boy and he sings in
the choir and it's just beautifully written. If you haven't
read the book, I highly recommend it if you, it's
(11:40):
it's amazing. And so as I was kind of studying
film and learning to teaching myself to write, I adapted
that book as sort of an exercise. I mean, I
love the story, and I thought, oh, this would be
great to do as a movie, but I don't know
that I thought it would really happen. So I think
I looked at it as more of an exercise. I
wrote that script. Script was good. Fast forward. I'm in
(12:06):
LA I've done film school at USC. Right out of
film school, I kind of fell into a job as
an executive a junior executive at MTV Films. I'm in
the industry. I'm on the inside. I'm learning how movies
get made. Studio system. So I'd written Blackbird, had gotten
some good notices, had a couple of agents interested, whatever,
(12:29):
but I knew again, no one's going to make this
black gay high school story.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
In the nineties, so.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I met a black gay British writer director named Ricky
beatle Blair who wrote a movie called Stonewall, the original Stonewall.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So Ricky had.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Come in to meet with us because Stonewall had come
out and in the film festivals, and my boss had
seen it and invited and was like, this amazing guy
is coming from London, you know. And he walked in.
If you've ever seen him, he's just long blonde dreadlocks,
and he had on these tight suede sort of Native
American types, fringe down the side, spaghetti strapped top, you know,
(13:12):
just completely out and you know whatever. We became fast friends,
and he became sort of a big brother and like
an artistic mentor. And I asked him, I said, so,
you know, I've written this Blackbird script. It's gotten some
good notices, people like it. No one's going to make
this thing. I'm trying to decide what to write next.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
What do you think? What do you think I should write?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I'm thinking I need to write something that's going to
sell like and he said very simply, and I've kind
of lived by this. He said, write the story that
only you can tell. And so I think that straight away,
Like that week, I started and I wrote the script
(13:53):
for Punks in like eight days, and then.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I didn't really do much with it.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I was working, we were making movies, and I got
hired by Babyface and Tracy Edmunds to come and work
at their film company. And while I was working there,
by this time, I'm like, okay, you're it's just like
ninety six, ninety six ish. I've been in La now
four or five years going on, and I was like, Okay,
(14:22):
you're getting You're getting farther and farther away from your
goal of being a filmmaker. So if you take this
job working for Babyface, you have to The deal I
made with myself was that I would start making films.
So we had a holiday coming up, and I had
started raising money and my old boss at MTV gave
me some money. Another friend of mine who came from
a wealthy Hollywood family, gave me a little bit of money,
(14:45):
and I was asking Babyface and his wife to give
me the rest of the money so I could do
this short. And we had this meeting like they were
getting ready to go on a tour of Greece for
their Thanksgiving holiday, and we had a little project meeting
and go over everything, and one of the things on
the agenda was me presenting this idea because what I
did was I was going to do a short version
(15:06):
of Punks. So I kind of boiled this story down
into the base, the little basic, and I pitched it
to them. I told them what I needed. It was
like twenty thousand and oven something and I pisched the
idea to them and they said, well. They kind of
looked at each other and they said, well, I mean
the idea sounds cool. Why do the short as opposed
(15:27):
to doing the feature because any was based on the feature.
And I said, well, because I don't have the money
to do a feature. So and then they were like, well,
I mean the story's kind of I mean it sounds good,
like right, well, I mean we prefer to just do
the feature. And I was like, I mean, okay, sure,
that's fun. So I gave them the script, and I
fully expected they're going to come back and be like,
(15:49):
there's no way we can make this movie. And to
the contrary, they came back from this sort of yacht
tour around the Greece islands and their entire family everyone
had the script, the brother, the mother, the grandmother, the dah.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Dah dah, and they just loved it.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
They thought it was so funny and they were excited
and we were off and running and so yeah, so
they paid for they paid for the movie, produced it,
and we made it, and you know, it did what
it did. Obviously, it did incredibly well in New York
and Atlanta, Atlanta and d C. And it was at
the Quad here, it's like a legendary independent movie theater.
(16:27):
So the movie played there. Literally the lines were around
the entire city block to see that film. And so
it did really well in these five or six like
you know, we're black, gay cities. We got into Sundance,
which back then in two thousand was a huge deal,
much bigger than it is even now. And then, of course,
(16:50):
you know, expecting maybe doors to open and things to happen,
and they did not. You know, none of the studios
or any any Hollywood people wanted to buy the film
or distribute the film. And we had you know, Baby
Faith and Tracy Edmonds, we had William Morris our agents.
But you know, this black gay film. Nobody was biting.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
When we come back. Patrick makes Noah's Ark. In two thousand,
Patrick premiered his first feature film, Punks, at Sundance. It
wasn't the success that he had hoped for, but he
(17:36):
discovered that there was a huge audience for his work.
A few years later, he was inspired to build on
that and create Noah's Ark. In two thousand and five,
Noah's Arc premiered on Logo TV, a subsidiary of MTV Networks. Immediately,
the show was a massive success. Fans likened it to
(17:57):
their own version of Sex and the City trade gay
black life in a refreshing way, characters that were quirky
and intellectual and sexy. But Patrick didn't originally set out
to be groundbreaking. He just wanted to make a show
that reflected his own life. I want to talk to
(18:17):
you Patrick about Noah's Ark. Now, so not many people
may know this, but Noah's Ark was pretty difficult for
you to get produced, but you were going to make
it into a web series, it was going to be
a DVD show. Take me back to those hustle years.
What was it like trying to get this show produced?
(18:37):
And was there a point where you almost gave up
on getting it produced? And what was it like to
kind of overcome that?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well, I mean, I don't know, it's interesting to hear
you say that ask the question that way, because I
don't really I don't think it was difficult to get
it produced at all. Really, Well, here's the thing, so
I take it all the way back to being a
child and sort of like having a young mother who
she was twenty one when she had me. I was
(19:07):
just never really told no. So when I came home
at like first grade, and I wanted to play the
cello because you know, my little white best friend who's
her father was a doctor, she played the cello and
every Tuesday and Thursday she would go off to music
class and I would be like, what's that you know?
And she didn't say as I'm sure a lot of
parents would be like, boy, what the.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Fuck are you talking about? If you don't go outside
and play in that yard? Or whatever. We went to
the music store and got a cello.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
And so I was raised with this sort of idea
that I could do what I set my mind to do.
And so with Noah's ark, I'd done Punks. So it's
like I certainly knew there's an audience for this stuff.
I mean, my goal really was just to see myself
(19:52):
on screen, or see my friends on screen, or to
see black gay stories. I wanted to see myself represented.
And so after Punks and and it kind of didn't
break down doors for me, I decided that would be
my jumping point. I'm gonna leave my job. I'm gonna
go do this full time. So right out the gate,
I sold a T show idea to MTV, the network.
(20:14):
It was a college show. I had written this college
this feature script set in college, based very loosely on
my experiences at Brandice, and they decided not to make.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
It, and I was just kind of like, Okay, well,
what am I gonna do?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So I'd gone to Phil Wilson had started this organization
called the Black Aids Institute, and they had this summit
where they invited blacka men from all different disciplines medicine, entertainment, media, journalism,
whatever business to come and think tank for a weekend
(20:56):
at a hotel in Beverly Hills about ways that we
could from in our es help them in the battle
against HIV. In the Black A community, there's a kickoff
party boor Trade at the l Ray Theater on Most Boulevard,
And if you've been in the l Ray, it's got
a sunken danceler in the middle.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
So I'm kind of standing and I'm seeing this whole
crowd of black, gay and lesbian people.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
And as I'm standing there, the thought hit me and
I said to myself very clearly, I'm going to.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Make a show about these people.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Like it's just to me, like, Okay, these people are
coming from all over the country. They're buying plane tickets
and hotel rooms, are renting cars, and there's a market
here that no one's making programming aimed at this group
at us.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
So I said to myself, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Going to do a show Black A sex in the city,
and I'm not gonna pitch it to Hollywood because no
one's going to make this. I'm just gonna make it,
and I'm going to figure out how to make it.
And then I'm going to bring it directly to the
community and they can buy DVDs and that's how we'll
(22:08):
do it. So yeah, so just started doing it. I
Rodney Chester, who plays Alex, who had been in Punks.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I was a friend of mine by this point.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
He worked at a dance agency and so he said,
we can use our offices on the weekend. So we
had the casting in the offices, like over one hundred actors.
I think, and mind you, this is the time when
mainstream actors is nobody's trying to play gay any even
gay actors who are working in Hollywood are certainly not
(22:42):
trying to play gay. So it was a lot of
newer actors whatever whatever, we had these we saw all
these people. I cast it. We shot this six minutes
short with no money. You know, again favors from people.
Oh we can shoot in this store. Rodney's friend owned
the store on Melrose. We shot in there.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It was all these different just the streets and doing it.
Shot the thing, put it on the internet Gangbusters. The
site kept getting shut down. I had to keep buying
more bandwidth because it was being watched that much.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
You could see where it was being watched right in
the world.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
And it was literally all over the world. It would
be like military bases all over the world if people
were watching it. Wow, And so I knew, okay, oh, okay,
well there's definitely a market for this, Like, there's clearly
a market out there, So full steam ahead. Then I decided, okay,
now I need some money. So, thinking back to that summit,
I went to Black As Institute, where I first got
(23:37):
this idea that oh, there's.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
A whole community of black gay men who.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Are successful, who were like doctors and lawyers and Wall
Street people and all this stuff, and they have money
and they are all fans of punks. They told me so.
So I wrote to all of those people and some
other people that I knew, and eighteen eighteen people I
raised you knowsd dollars.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
So thousands of people saw this, and at this point
then we started getting press. And then I got a
call that oh, MTV is launching this game and lets
me a network called Logo and we want to meet
with you. I went into a meeting with the president
and she explained to me that new network smaller budgets.
We don't have the money to develop scripted television but
(24:24):
you've already developed it, You've made the pilot.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
We want to do the show. So I said, okay.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
So the next thing I knew this thing that I
never intended to be on TV. I always thought, this
is not going to be on TV. No one's going
to do it. It's going to be done this way.
So then next thing I knew, we were shooting it
the series in La.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
So, you know, talking about Nozarc, one of the things
that struck me so much is how you approach the
topic of shame. It's interesting because when you think about
the characters, they're not ashamed of themselves, the ones that
(25:04):
are living with HIV, the homophobic violence that happens in
the show. Noah is not ashamed of his sexuality. It's
clear that the way you write the show is that
we as the audience, understand it's everyone else that's ashamed,
it's not these characters. And I wonder how did you
develop that approach, What made you want to take that approach,
(25:25):
because that was a pretty bold approach for these very
stigmatized identities in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
So when I was out of film school and you
were in.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
LA, I met a guy in Mickey's and you know,
and I would go. I was very young, I was
I was very shy. I was kind of a I
wasn't a late bloomer. I wouldn't call it late bloomer.
I mean, if you really know me, then you know
that I'm an introvert and you know that I'm not
(25:59):
the life of the party in a big crowd. But
I would go because again, I'm you know, I'm gay,
and it's interesting and I want to kind of you know,
this is the.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Community, this is what you do.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
So I would go and I just kind of would
watch people, and I kind of be in the corner
and this guy who was kind of tall and very
very dark skinned.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Gorgeous, like model beautiful body.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
He I think he just kind of came up to
me and was like and just engaged me because he
saw me standing alone, and you know, and he was
from Tennessee, He's from Memphis, and so we just became
fast friends. And I think he would I know, I think,
I know, I come. I certainly came to find out
that he was certainly used to picking up guys left
(26:38):
and right because he had that you know who he
looked like Jaimund Hunt Sue and the Janet Jackson leve
will never do without your video. That's what he looked like. Literally,
he looked like that, and so he was constantly picking
up picking up people. But we we it was friends
from the beginning, and eventually we became roommates and I
lived with him in a house in West Hollywood, and
I was with him through the entire experience of getting sick,
(27:04):
being told he's HIV positive, dealing with getting on the medications,
with all the different side effects from the medications and everything.
And I saw him go through this process of coming
to terms with it and activating to this new way
of living. And then at the same time, he's continuing
his sex life and continuing to have just as robust
(27:27):
a sex life as ever. And all we saw about
HIV was death and sadness, and it was a it
was a death sentence. And I literally witnessed someone just
actively living and thriving with the disease. So I really
wanted to represent that. I wanted to see that. I
(27:48):
knew it was important to see that. You watch over
the years and you would see aids kind of it
would creep closer and closer like you of course, you
hear about celebrities, and then in my twenties, I remember
my best friend in high school calling me and telling
me that our friend Tim had died, and hearing about
(28:14):
our high school classmate Jeffrey Lewis who died or this,
and so, you know, just coming closer and closer close
friends being HIV positive, and so it was really important
to see for people to see it's not a death sentence,
because again, what I wanted to show was what I knew,
(28:35):
the people that I knew. Chance in Noah's Ark is
very loosely based on my best friend from college, who
is a professor teaches at a wonderful university political science
and is very kind of a bit straight laced and everything,
and I never saw him on TV or in a film,
(28:55):
and so it was really about showing these people that existed,
that were real.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
In two thousand and six, Noah's Arc became the highest
rated show on its network, but unexpectedly it got canceled.
Logo decided to go in a different direction, and fans
were devastated because the season left off on a major cliffhanger.
But Patrick was able to get a movie deal a
(29:32):
few years later that picked up where the series left off.
It's been nearly twenty years since Noah's Ark has been
off the air, but fans have continued to push for
it to come back, and this year it was announced
that the show will return in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
You know, when the show was canceled, they commissioned a
movie and then and then when that sort of outperformed
overperformed expectations, they then commissioned a spin off. So it
was sort of like Frasier to Cheers where and I
wrote a script where no n Way moved to New York.
(30:11):
And then by the time I finished developing that, they
decided they weren't going to do scripted. Logo was getting
completely out of the scripted game at that point, and
so that didn't go anywhere, and I was completely disillusioned
again with like a Hollywood and the pandemic happened.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
And then someone who had worked who had been.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Our big high up exec at Logo, he was the
number two at Logo, had reached out to me and said, oh,
what do you think about doing something a little Noah's
Ark reunion or something, you know, zoom skyping. And I
was like, yeah, sure, But then I got to thinking
about it, and very quickly I was like, no, we're
(30:53):
not doing that.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
We're going to do you know, Noah's arc.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
So we're going So I wrote a whole script for
the Pandemic where you know, we caught up with all
the characters and we see what they're up to, and
everybody was down to film it, you know. So we
made we shot the Rona Chronicles and it turned out
really really well. I mean we've seen it. It's like
an episode of it's like a full on episode. And
that had like the first night, I think it was
(31:18):
over half a million viewers on the first night, and
that was like better than that's better than cable TV viewers,
you know, So I think that.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Was probably a factor.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
But basically they reached out to me a few years
a couple of years ago and said we want to
commission something, and I said, okay, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That's amazing. So last question, Patrick, you have really spent
your entire career making content and media that is dedicated
to centering black and brown queer stories, and you know,
even when there's been fallout and loss for you from that,
and I wonder what has kept you so faithful to
(32:06):
that commitment all these years.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
I think there's certainly things I could have done that
would have been more lucrative or mainstream. I don't know,
because I look back and think, God, maybe he was
kind of a bit of an idiot, and maybe you
should have done fucking, you know, a procedural or something else.
(32:29):
You know, But that's just not the kind of artist
that I have been or who I was. It was
just what I would, you know. I just did what
I wanted to do. I told the stories that I
wanted to tell, and I was kind of lucky enough
that Noah is our hit big enough that it afforded
me the opportunity to kind of continue working. Obviously, blazing
(32:51):
trails is difficult work and it's often thankless. Often the
ones who blaze the trails don't really get to enjoy
the fruits of that labor, just because it's just kind
of just not how it works. It's beat you down,
it takes its toll, and you're lucky to come out
the other side of it.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
For Patrick, he simply created a show that reflected his
own life, but for many people across America and the world,
he told a story that people saw themselves in for
the very first time with three dimensional characters that defied
tropes and stereotypes. For fans, he validated their friendships, their dreams,
(33:34):
and their love.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Certainly, I've enjoyed hearing over the years from all of
the people who tell me that the work has somehow
influenced them or moved them, or saved them, or helped
them come out, or help them help their parents come
to terms with their sexuality. The scores of people that
have told me they literally were hiding in the closet
watching the little TV or standing by with their finger
(33:57):
on the last channel remote button, you know, in case
someone walked in. Like I've heard those over and over
and over and over, and even as young people continue
to discover the series. So I certainly understand and have
a sense of how important the work is to a
lot of people in the community. And so, you know,
it means it means a great deal to me to
(34:19):
have the work appreciated like that, And in many ways
it is the thing that that has kind of fueled
me and kept me going in those times when maybe
you know, it wasn't as easy, and so yeah, it's
always kind of reminded me of just how important. The
work is And I remember when I was working at
MTV in my early twenties. I remember it was around
(34:42):
the same time. I think I was trying to decide
what to write before I wrote Punks, So it was
the same.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I remember saying to myself and someone that you know,
at the end of at the end of what I
hope will be a long, storied career as a filmaker, like,
what do you want to look back on? And looking back,
I think the fact that twenty almost twenty five years later,
people are still talking about Punks, people are still talking
(35:13):
about Noah's Ark.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
You know that?
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Again, it lets me know that this is important. The
work is important, the work is lasting, the work has
made a significant impact, and for that I am very grateful,
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New
episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
to tell your story, email us but We Loved at
gmail dot com, or send us a message on Instagram
or TikTok at but we Loved. We are a production
of the Outspoken podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We
(35:57):
Loved was originally developed with pushin Industries. Our producers Areshena Ozaki,
Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our. Executive producers
are me and Maya Howard. Original music by Steve Bone
special thanks to Jay Bronson and rockl Willis. If you
loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us
(36:20):
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you next week.
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network. This interview was taped in front
of a live studio audience for our very first live show,
and before we start, I just want to say thank
you so much to everyone who made the time to come.
It was awesome to meet every single one of you,
(00:21):
and I've enjoyed building a relationship with you since we
started the show. Because of you, we also won the
Signal Award we were nominated for a few weeks ago,
so thank you again for that support, and thank you
for writing into the show. I have enjoyed reading every
single one of your letters telling me what you've overcome
(00:43):
in your own life. They've touched my heart actually, and
I want to hear more from you, So follow me
on Instagram and TikTok and message me there at your
Underscoregan sol this. You can also email the show at
butw Looved at gmail dot com. Thank you so much again.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
You watch over the years and you would see aids
kind of it would creep closer and closer like you.
Of course, you hear about celebrities, and then in my twenties,
I remember my best friend in high school calling me
and telling me that our friend Tim had died, and
(01:24):
hearing about our high school classmate Jeffrey Lewis who died
or this, and so, you know, just coming closer and
closer close friends being HIV positive and so it was
really important.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
To see for people to see it's not a death sentence.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
In this episode, we'll meet Patrick ian Polk, often considered
(02:06):
the father of black gay cinema. We'll learn about how
he broke ground in making the first show on television
to center black a Life, how that show got canceled
at its peak, and how his fan base was forever
changed because of it. From My Heart Podcast, I'm Jordan
go and Solves and this is what we loved. When
(02:49):
I came out at twenty one, I had two best
friends that were proudly gay, and even though they were
my age, they mentored me through my coming out. At
that time, I was shocked at just how confident they were,
how proud they were to be something that I was
so ashamed of. I had spent a lifetime trying to
(03:09):
be anything but gay, fixing my walk, perfecting the timbre
of my voice, training myself to look away anytime a
handsome man walked by me. But for these friends, they
did the opposite. They thought the world should conform to them,
and for years I wondered why until I asked. Funny enough,
(03:34):
they didn't know each other, but they both had the
same answer, Noah's Arc. At first, I was like, wait,
the story from the Bible, But actually it was a
TV show that came out in two thousand and five.
It was the very first scripted show about black gay men,
and more than that, it showcased characters that were proudly out,
(03:55):
proudly living with HIV, and proudly black. Despite it being
a rating smash, it unexpectedly got canceled, but in the
nearly twenty years since, new generations of queer people continue
to find this timeless show over and over again. My
next guest, Patrick ian Polk, is the creator of Noah's Ark.
(04:19):
At a time when people in entertainment were losing their careers,
for coming out. He doubled down. He knew from when
he was a kid that he was destined to be
a storyteller. I just want to say thank you so
much for taking time out of your busy weekend to
(04:40):
come and see our show live. Ladies and gentlemen, please
welcome our guests for today's live episode of But We
Loved the Illustrious, the Luminary Patrick Ian Polk. So, Patrick,
we start out every show pretty much the same way,
(05:03):
and I think it kind of gives our audience a
little chance to get to know where you're from and
how you grew up. So take us to the moment
where you knew you were.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Gay, damn right out the box. Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Well, Probably the first sort of piece of pop culture
or entertainment that I sort of connected to on a
on a sort of sexual level was my uncle had
just hundreds of record albums. I loved music as well,
and so I would constantly go through and kind of
(05:40):
pill for records.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
And one of them.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
That I gravitated towards was I was a big fan
of Prince and I still am. It was the nineteen
ninety nine album. On the sleeve that the album was
in is a photo of Prince. I don't know if
you know this picture, but it's like a bed with
purple satin sheets and he's draped laying across the thing,
(06:07):
you know, butt naked with the sheets kind of wow,
just at the bottom of his butt cheeks, you know,
laying you know, laying on his stomach, kind of like
very sexy.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
And that picture was like, holy cow, wow.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I just very distinctly remember, and I definitely kept that album.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So yeah, that's sort of the first kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
But I always understood at a very young age, I
don't know when what it was, and I also understood
inherently that it was not something to share or be
spoken about.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
You grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I wonder if
you have a story that sort of epitomizes what it
was like to grow up as a gay kid in
a town like that in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Hattisburg, I say, is it's like the Austin of Mississippi, Oka.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
So it's a college.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It's less than two hours from New Orleans, so it's
probably would I would argue, the most progressive city in
the state, but it really was. I think around junior
high into high school that I met some other you know,
(07:22):
gay kids. We kind of found each other, or rather,
this one kind of older gay kid kind of found
me and just you know, and befriended me. And then
I remember we were driving home one day. I was
riding with him, and he was just like and suddenly
he just pulls into the guy's driveway and said, we're
just going to his house, and we went to his house.
(07:43):
And then from that day on we were all kind
of friends. And then eventually that guy and I became
like best friends. He's like my best friend in high school.
And he was a star of the church choir. I
was not super religious because I was raised very very
very permanent mom and so I was allowed to kind
of explore. I could do what I wanted in terms
(08:05):
of religion. But he was very much Baptist. Would travel
all over the States, singing at churches and stuff, and
he would be dating men in the church like pastors
and deacons and this and that. And it was just
amazing to me to see kind of this happening. And
there were certainly examples of those kids who just either
(08:26):
completely cannot hide or choose not to hide, and so
you would kind of see those kids and you'd be
kind of terrified for them and at the same time
terrified that people would maybe identify you with that, But
at the same time, there was kind of a quiet
reverence and appreciation because they were the ones that.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Were kind of like on the front lines.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I remember there was a kid in my neighborhood who
rode the same bus and his nickname was Miscotton Candy
and I couldn't even tell you what his real name was,
that was what people called him.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
And he was.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Extremely, extremely flamboyant, and I would watch him and of course,
you know, people would come for him and he would
let them have it, and it was very bold, and
so there was this sort of like respect that he commanded,
and people kind of learned not to don't come for him,
(09:26):
and if he was stupid enough to come for him,
he would really lay into them, like a superhero kind
of thing, and you kind of think, like, maybe one
day I can be like that.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, so fast forwarding a little bit now to the
late nineties, and you've graduated from USC as a filmmaker.
You're out and you write the precursor to Noah's Ark,
which is punks, anyone in your herd of bunks, and
you premiere it at Sundance. And this is at a
(09:56):
time in America where people's careers are ending because of
coming out in the entertainment in the stroom, thinking about
Ellen DeGeneres at that time, and I'm wondering, you know,
this is all happening at the same time, what was
driving you to create a film knowing that these themes
(10:19):
might end your career before it could even begin.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So when I left Mississippi, graduated high school, and I
always knew I would go I was going to go
away to college, like outside of the South, and I
got a full scholarship to Brandeis University in Boston. And
I got on the plane in Jackson and as the
plane took off and I looked out and watched, you know,
(10:43):
Jackson kind of getting smaller and smaller. I said, very
clearly to myself, when you step off this plane, every
person that you meet from this day fourth will know
that you are gay.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Why that came to my mind, but that that was
the thing. It was like, this is what it's going
to be. And then that's what I did. I went
to college. I was out. I remember going to the
bookstore Harvard Harvard Square, the co Op, and there was
a whole section. I remember marveling, like, Wow, there's a
whole sort of section of these are all gay books.
(11:19):
And there was one book that I could see on
the spine had an illustration of brown skin, and I
grabbed that book. And that book was Blackbird by Larry Duplachan.
And it's this amazing coming of age story set in
the seventies, this gay black boy and he sings in
the choir and it's just beautifully written. If you haven't
read the book, I highly recommend it if you, it's
(11:40):
it's amazing. And so as I was kind of studying
film and learning to teaching myself to write, I adapted
that book as sort of an exercise. I mean, I
love the story, and I thought, oh, this would be
great to do as a movie, but I don't know
that I thought it would really happen. So I think
I looked at it as more of an exercise. I
wrote that script. Script was good. Fast forward. I'm in
(12:06):
LA I've done film school at USC. Right out of
film school, I kind of fell into a job as
an executive a junior executive at MTV Films. I'm in
the industry. I'm on the inside. I'm learning how movies
get made. Studio system. So I'd written Blackbird, had gotten
some good notices, had a couple of agents interested, whatever,
(12:29):
but I knew again, no one's going to make this
black gay high school story.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
In the nineties, so.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I met a black gay British writer director named Ricky
beatle Blair who wrote a movie called Stonewall, the original Stonewall.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So Ricky had.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Come in to meet with us because Stonewall had come
out and in the film festivals, and my boss had
seen it and invited and was like, this amazing guy
is coming from London, you know. And he walked in.
If you've ever seen him, he's just long blonde dreadlocks,
and he had on these tight suede sort of Native
American types, fringe down the side, spaghetti strapped top, you know,
(13:12):
just completely out and you know whatever. We became fast friends,
and he became sort of a big brother and like
an artistic mentor. And I asked him, I said, so,
you know, I've written this Blackbird script. It's gotten some
good notices, people like it. No one's going to make
this thing. I'm trying to decide what to write next.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
What do you think? What do you think I should write?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I'm thinking I need to write something that's going to
sell like and he said very simply, and I've kind
of lived by this. He said, write the story that
only you can tell. And so I think that straight away,
Like that week, I started and I wrote the script
(13:53):
for Punks in like eight days, and then.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I didn't really do much with it.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I was working, we were making movies, and I got
hired by Babyface and Tracy Edmunds to come and work
at their film company. And while I was working there,
by this time, I'm like, okay, you're it's just like
ninety six, ninety six ish. I've been in La now
four or five years going on, and I was like, Okay,
(14:22):
you're getting You're getting farther and farther away from your
goal of being a filmmaker. So if you take this
job working for Babyface, you have to The deal I
made with myself was that I would start making films.
So we had a holiday coming up, and I had
started raising money and my old boss at MTV gave
me some money. Another friend of mine who came from
a wealthy Hollywood family, gave me a little bit of money,
(14:45):
and I was asking Babyface and his wife to give
me the rest of the money so I could do
this short. And we had this meeting like they were
getting ready to go on a tour of Greece for
their Thanksgiving holiday, and we had a little project meeting
and go over everything, and one of the things on
the agenda was me presenting this idea because what I
did was I was going to do a short version
(15:06):
of Punks. So I kind of boiled this story down
into the base, the little basic, and I pitched it
to them. I told them what I needed. It was
like twenty thousand and oven something and I pisched the
idea to them and they said, well. They kind of
looked at each other and they said, well, I mean
the idea sounds cool. Why do the short as opposed
(15:27):
to doing the feature because any was based on the feature.
And I said, well, because I don't have the money
to do a feature. So and then they were like, well,
I mean the story's kind of I mean it sounds good,
like right, well, I mean we prefer to just do
the feature. And I was like, I mean, okay, sure,
that's fun. So I gave them the script, and I
fully expected they're going to come back and be like,
(15:49):
there's no way we can make this movie. And to
the contrary, they came back from this sort of yacht
tour around the Greece islands and their entire family everyone
had the script, the brother, the mother, the grandmother, the dah.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Dah dah, and they just loved it.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
They thought it was so funny and they were excited
and we were off and running and so yeah, so
they paid for they paid for the movie, produced it,
and we made it, and you know, it did what
it did. Obviously, it did incredibly well in New York
and Atlanta, Atlanta and d C. And it was at
the Quad here, it's like a legendary independent movie theater.
(16:27):
So the movie played there. Literally the lines were around
the entire city block to see that film. And so
it did really well in these five or six like
you know, we're black, gay cities. We got into Sundance,
which back then in two thousand was a huge deal,
much bigger than it is even now. And then, of course,
(16:50):
you know, expecting maybe doors to open and things to happen,
and they did not. You know, none of the studios
or any any Hollywood people wanted to buy the film
or distribute the film. And we had you know, Baby
Faith and Tracy Edmonds, we had William Morris our agents.
But you know, this black gay film. Nobody was biting.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
When we come back. Patrick makes Noah's Ark. In two thousand,
Patrick premiered his first feature film, Punks, at Sundance. It
wasn't the success that he had hoped for, but he
(17:36):
discovered that there was a huge audience for his work.
A few years later, he was inspired to build on
that and create Noah's Ark. In two thousand and five,
Noah's Arc premiered on Logo TV, a subsidiary of MTV Networks. Immediately,
the show was a massive success. Fans likened it to
(17:57):
their own version of Sex and the City trade gay
black life in a refreshing way, characters that were quirky
and intellectual and sexy. But Patrick didn't originally set out
to be groundbreaking. He just wanted to make a show
that reflected his own life. I want to talk to
(18:17):
you Patrick about Noah's Ark. Now, so not many people
may know this, but Noah's Ark was pretty difficult for
you to get produced, but you were going to make
it into a web series, it was going to be
a DVD show. Take me back to those hustle years.
What was it like trying to get this show produced?
(18:37):
And was there a point where you almost gave up
on getting it produced? And what was it like to
kind of overcome that?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well, I mean, I don't know, it's interesting to hear
you say that ask the question that way, because I
don't really I don't think it was difficult to get
it produced at all. Really, Well, here's the thing, so
I take it all the way back to being a
child and sort of like having a young mother who
she was twenty one when she had me. I was
(19:07):
just never really told no. So when I came home
at like first grade, and I wanted to play the
cello because you know, my little white best friend who's
her father was a doctor, she played the cello and
every Tuesday and Thursday she would go off to music
class and I would be like, what's that you know?
And she didn't say as I'm sure a lot of
parents would be like, boy, what the.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Fuck are you talking about? If you don't go outside
and play in that yard? Or whatever. We went to
the music store and got a cello.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
And so I was raised with this sort of idea
that I could do what I set my mind to do.
And so with Noah's ark, I'd done Punks. So it's
like I certainly knew there's an audience for this stuff.
I mean, my goal really was just to see myself
(19:52):
on screen, or see my friends on screen, or to
see black gay stories. I wanted to see myself represented.
And so after Punks and and it kind of didn't
break down doors for me, I decided that would be
my jumping point. I'm gonna leave my job. I'm gonna
go do this full time. So right out the gate,
I sold a T show idea to MTV, the network.
(20:14):
It was a college show. I had written this college
this feature script set in college, based very loosely on
my experiences at Brandice, and they decided not to make.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
It, and I was just kind of like, Okay, well,
what am I gonna do?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So I'd gone to Phil Wilson had started this organization
called the Black Aids Institute, and they had this summit
where they invited blacka men from all different disciplines medicine, entertainment, media, journalism,
whatever business to come and think tank for a weekend
(20:56):
at a hotel in Beverly Hills about ways that we
could from in our es help them in the battle
against HIV. In the Black A community, there's a kickoff
party boor Trade at the l Ray Theater on Most Boulevard,
And if you've been in the l Ray, it's got
a sunken danceler in the middle.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
So I'm kind of standing and I'm seeing this whole
crowd of black, gay and lesbian people.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
And as I'm standing there, the thought hit me and
I said to myself very clearly, I'm going to.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Make a show about these people.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Like it's just to me, like, Okay, these people are
coming from all over the country. They're buying plane tickets
and hotel rooms, are renting cars, and there's a market
here that no one's making programming aimed at this group
at us.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
So I said to myself, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Going to do a show Black A sex in the city,
and I'm not gonna pitch it to Hollywood because no
one's going to make this. I'm just gonna make it,
and I'm going to figure out how to make it.
And then I'm going to bring it directly to the
community and they can buy DVDs and that's how we'll
(22:08):
do it. So yeah, so just started doing it. I
Rodney Chester, who plays Alex, who had been in Punks.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I was a friend of mine by this point.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
He worked at a dance agency and so he said,
we can use our offices on the weekend. So we
had the casting in the offices, like over one hundred actors.
I think, and mind you, this is the time when
mainstream actors is nobody's trying to play gay any even
gay actors who are working in Hollywood are certainly not
(22:42):
trying to play gay. So it was a lot of
newer actors whatever whatever, we had these we saw all
these people. I cast it. We shot this six minutes
short with no money. You know, again favors from people.
Oh we can shoot in this store. Rodney's friend owned
the store on Melrose. We shot in there.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It was all these different just the streets and doing it.
Shot the thing, put it on the internet Gangbusters. The
site kept getting shut down. I had to keep buying
more bandwidth because it was being watched that much.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
You could see where it was being watched right in
the world.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
And it was literally all over the world. It would
be like military bases all over the world if people
were watching it. Wow, And so I knew, okay, oh, okay,
well there's definitely a market for this, Like, there's clearly
a market out there, So full steam ahead. Then I decided, okay,
now I need some money. So, thinking back to that summit,
I went to Black As Institute, where I first got
(23:37):
this idea that oh, there's.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
A whole community of black gay men who.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Are successful, who were like doctors and lawyers and Wall
Street people and all this stuff, and they have money
and they are all fans of punks. They told me so.
So I wrote to all of those people and some
other people that I knew, and eighteen eighteen people I
raised you knowsd dollars.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
So thousands of people saw this, and at this point
then we started getting press. And then I got a
call that oh, MTV is launching this game and lets
me a network called Logo and we want to meet
with you. I went into a meeting with the president
and she explained to me that new network smaller budgets.
We don't have the money to develop scripted television but
(24:24):
you've already developed it, You've made the pilot.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
We want to do the show. So I said, okay.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
So the next thing I knew this thing that I
never intended to be on TV. I always thought, this
is not going to be on TV. No one's going
to do it. It's going to be done this way.
So then next thing I knew, we were shooting it
the series in La.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
So, you know, talking about Nozarc, one of the things
that struck me so much is how you approach the
topic of shame. It's interesting because when you think about
the characters, they're not ashamed of themselves, the ones that
(25:04):
are living with HIV, the homophobic violence that happens in
the show. Noah is not ashamed of his sexuality. It's
clear that the way you write the show is that
we as the audience, understand it's everyone else that's ashamed,
it's not these characters. And I wonder how did you
develop that approach, What made you want to take that approach,
(25:25):
because that was a pretty bold approach for these very
stigmatized identities in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
So when I was out of film school and you
were in.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
LA, I met a guy in Mickey's and you know,
and I would go. I was very young, I was
I was very shy. I was kind of a I
wasn't a late bloomer. I wouldn't call it late bloomer.
I mean, if you really know me, then you know
that I'm an introvert and you know that I'm not
(25:59):
the life of the party in a big crowd. But
I would go because again, I'm you know, I'm gay,
and it's interesting and I want to kind of you know,
this is the.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Community, this is what you do.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
So I would go and I just kind of would
watch people, and I kind of be in the corner
and this guy who was kind of tall and very
very dark skinned.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Gorgeous, like model beautiful body.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
He I think he just kind of came up to
me and was like and just engaged me because he
saw me standing alone, and you know, and he was
from Tennessee, He's from Memphis, and so we just became
fast friends. And I think he would I know, I think,
I know, I come. I certainly came to find out
that he was certainly used to picking up guys left
(26:38):
and right because he had that you know who he
looked like Jaimund Hunt Sue and the Janet Jackson leve
will never do without your video. That's what he looked like. Literally,
he looked like that, and so he was constantly picking
up picking up people. But we we it was friends
from the beginning, and eventually we became roommates and I
lived with him in a house in West Hollywood, and
I was with him through the entire experience of getting sick,
(27:04):
being told he's HIV positive, dealing with getting on the medications,
with all the different side effects from the medications and everything.
And I saw him go through this process of coming
to terms with it and activating to this new way
of living. And then at the same time, he's continuing
his sex life and continuing to have just as robust
(27:27):
a sex life as ever. And all we saw about
HIV was death and sadness, and it was a it
was a death sentence. And I literally witnessed someone just
actively living and thriving with the disease. So I really
wanted to represent that. I wanted to see that. I
(27:48):
knew it was important to see that. You watch over
the years and you would see aids kind of it
would creep closer and closer like you of course, you
hear about celebrities, and then in my twenties, I remember
my best friend in high school calling me and telling
me that our friend Tim had died, and hearing about
(28:14):
our high school classmate Jeffrey Lewis who died or this,
and so, you know, just coming closer and closer close
friends being HIV positive, and so it was really important
to see for people to see it's not a death sentence,
because again, what I wanted to show was what I knew,
(28:35):
the people that I knew. Chance in Noah's Ark is
very loosely based on my best friend from college, who
is a professor teaches at a wonderful university political science
and is very kind of a bit straight laced and everything,
and I never saw him on TV or in a film,
(28:55):
and so it was really about showing these people that existed,
that were real.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
In two thousand and six, Noah's Arc became the highest
rated show on its network, but unexpectedly it got canceled.
Logo decided to go in a different direction, and fans
were devastated because the season left off on a major cliffhanger.
But Patrick was able to get a movie deal a
(29:32):
few years later that picked up where the series left off.
It's been nearly twenty years since Noah's Ark has been
off the air, but fans have continued to push for
it to come back, and this year it was announced
that the show will return in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
You know, when the show was canceled, they commissioned a
movie and then and then when that sort of outperformed
overperformed expectations, they then commissioned a spin off. So it
was sort of like Frasier to Cheers where and I
wrote a script where no n Way moved to New York.
(30:11):
And then by the time I finished developing that, they
decided they weren't going to do scripted. Logo was getting
completely out of the scripted game at that point, and
so that didn't go anywhere, and I was completely disillusioned
again with like a Hollywood and the pandemic happened.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
And then someone who had worked who had been.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Our big high up exec at Logo, he was the
number two at Logo, had reached out to me and said, oh,
what do you think about doing something a little Noah's
Ark reunion or something, you know, zoom skyping. And I
was like, yeah, sure, But then I got to thinking
about it, and very quickly I was like, no, we're
(30:53):
not doing that.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
We're going to do you know, Noah's arc.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
So we're going So I wrote a whole script for
the Pandemic where you know, we caught up with all
the characters and we see what they're up to, and
everybody was down to film it, you know. So we
made we shot the Rona Chronicles and it turned out
really really well. I mean we've seen it. It's like
an episode of it's like a full on episode. And
that had like the first night, I think it was
(31:18):
over half a million viewers on the first night, and
that was like better than that's better than cable TV viewers,
you know, So I think that.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Was probably a factor.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
But basically they reached out to me a few years
a couple of years ago and said we want to
commission something, and I said, okay, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That's amazing. So last question, Patrick, you have really spent
your entire career making content and media that is dedicated
to centering black and brown queer stories, and you know,
even when there's been fallout and loss for you from that,
and I wonder what has kept you so faithful to
(32:06):
that commitment all these years.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
I think there's certainly things I could have done that
would have been more lucrative or mainstream. I don't know,
because I look back and think, God, maybe he was
kind of a bit of an idiot, and maybe you
should have done fucking, you know, a procedural or something else.
(32:29):
You know, But that's just not the kind of artist
that I have been or who I was. It was
just what I would, you know. I just did what
I wanted to do. I told the stories that I
wanted to tell, and I was kind of lucky enough
that Noah is our hit big enough that it afforded
me the opportunity to kind of continue working. Obviously, blazing
(32:51):
trails is difficult work and it's often thankless. Often the
ones who blaze the trails don't really get to enjoy
the fruits of that labor, just because it's just kind
of just not how it works. It's beat you down,
it takes its toll, and you're lucky to come out
the other side of it.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
For Patrick, he simply created a show that reflected his
own life, but for many people across America and the world,
he told a story that people saw themselves in for
the very first time with three dimensional characters that defied
tropes and stereotypes. For fans, he validated their friendships, their dreams,
(33:34):
and their love.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Certainly, I've enjoyed hearing over the years from all of
the people who tell me that the work has somehow
influenced them or moved them, or saved them, or helped
them come out, or help them help their parents come
to terms with their sexuality. The scores of people that
have told me they literally were hiding in the closet
watching the little TV or standing by with their finger
(33:57):
on the last channel remote button, you know, in case
someone walked in. Like I've heard those over and over
and over and over, and even as young people continue
to discover the series. So I certainly understand and have
a sense of how important the work is to a
lot of people in the community. And so, you know,
it means it means a great deal to me to
(34:19):
have the work appreciated like that, And in many ways
it is the thing that that has kind of fueled
me and kept me going in those times when maybe
you know, it wasn't as easy, and so yeah, it's
always kind of reminded me of just how important. The
work is And I remember when I was working at
MTV in my early twenties. I remember it was around
(34:42):
the same time. I think I was trying to decide
what to write before I wrote Punks, So it was
the same.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I remember saying to myself and someone that you know,
at the end of at the end of what I
hope will be a long, storied career as a filmaker, like,
what do you want to look back on? And looking back,
I think the fact that twenty almost twenty five years later,
people are still talking about Punks, people are still talking
(35:13):
about Noah's Ark.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
You know that?
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Again, it lets me know that this is important. The
work is important, the work is lasting, the work has
made a significant impact, and for that I am very grateful,
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New
episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
to tell your story, email us but We Loved at
gmail dot com, or send us a message on Instagram
or TikTok at but we Loved. We are a production
of the Outspoken podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We
(35:57):
Loved was originally developed with pushin Industries. Our producers Areshena Ozaki,
Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our. Executive producers
are me and Maya Howard. Original music by Steve Bone
special thanks to Jay Bronson and rockl Willis. If you
loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us
(36:20):
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you next week.
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