Do I Sound Gay?

Impact Partners presents...

A Think Thorpe/Little Punk production.

A film by David Thorpe.

Do I Sound Gay?

Yes, I think you do sound gay.

Not as much as I do, but..

Yes.

Ah, no, en Frances no.

In English, I don't know.

Yes.

Not at all.

Really?

It's your tone,

which is, like, intellectual,

so people can read it as gay.

I would have just, maybe, lumped you in the artsy-fartsy.

You sound creative.

You have, like, the "S" in the front of the mouth,

which is part of the gay-man stereotype.

There is something slightly melodic.

I think it's the nasality.

I would definitely rate you as a metrosexual.

- No. - Not at all?

No.

You sound like a human being, male.

It's, perhaps, more the fact that I'm gay as well

so I kind of pick up on that.

You don't sound, like, gay

maybe because I'm steeped in gay.

You could sound gay if you...

if you wanted to made... make it a very, very...

cast a very wide net.

We enunciate.

And if that's gay...

Muah!

It's gonna be a beautiful day.

This is me, David.

I'm a writer, I live in Brooklyn, and I live alone.

Well, not totally alone.

Recently, I split up with my boyfriend,

and he moved out.

Okay.

I'm so excited about today.

I don't know, it's exciting to think, like,

"Okay, I'm taking control of this problem

that... that is really bugging me,"

and, um...

I don't know.

Like, I feel like it might make me a different person...

Which would be cool,

because I'm not totally satisfied

with the person that I am.

All right.

I'm not satisfied

because I'm in my 40s and still single.

I'm not the most confident person at the moment...

Which might be why I've become obsessed

with sounding gay.

Right after the breakup,

I escaped to a gay beach town on Fire Island

to drown my sorrows.

- So I had a friend come in... - Oh, my God!

You will not believe what happened to me the other night.

He was like, so where we gonna go tonight?

It was a Friday night.

The train was packed with loud, chattering gay men.

Get me to the front of the line. I will kill you.

And there was this, like, magical tutu

that popped out from, like, nowhere.

Okay, so I'm stuck there with this guy

at the end of the car...

The darkness amplified

the shrillness of the voices around me.

He was like, "Hey, girl. You look fierce."

And I was like, "Me?"

And he's like, "Yeah, you."

Wrap it up, I've got stuff to say about my grandma.

They only have this place...

I started to feel repelled.

There was this girl there,

and she's, like, a little tragic...

Why did we all insist on sounding

like a pack of braying ninnies?

And I had to like rush downtown..

She was walking and I was like, "Oh, my God,

like, totally hurting me with chai."

I didn't choose this gay voice.

Why would I?

My mother is driving me absolutely crazy.

I mean, she has had the same dowdy haircut...

Who could respect, much less fall in love with

an old braying ninny like me?

Stop!

I think it's that way.

Willem Dafoe,

Gregory Hines,

James Gandolfini,

the great Joey Mclntyre from New Kids on the Block,

and, of course, Tony Danza.

Well, this room is definitely very reassuring that...

that I couldn't be getting better help.

Although, it does make me feel like I'm learning how to act.

Hi, how are you?

Hi David, I'm Susan Sankin.

- Nice to meet you. - Thanks so much.

- Yeah, you too. - We're gonna go this way.

Okay, great.

So as you and I are speaking, I'm going to be doing

a phonetic analysis of your speech.

Just speak the way you typically would,

as if you were speaking to a friend.

Okay, uh, sorry I'm a little nervous

so I hope I talk normally, but, uh, I'm sure I will.

Um, so yeah, I mean,

as I've mentioned to you on the phone,

um, I hate the way I talk.

I'm a little mystified as to why I talk the way I talk.

It's almost like my voice shuts down when I'm nervous,

particularly if I have fear

about just making myself visible as a gay person.

Like, all of this sort of stops moving and...

Okay.

People code-switch a lot.

So if you see a young... perhaps a young little girl

who's three years old playing with a doll,

well, when it's time for that doll to go to bed,

they use their parent voice.

They lower their pitch.

They use the stern voice.

So what happens sometimes is,

when people do a lot of code-switching,

they get bogged down in it

and they forget what they used to sound like

or what the opposite side was.

I didn't... I've never really thought about it that way

as just being a part... we do so much code-switching,

and I feel like I'm all over the map,

and sometimes my voice comes out one way,

and sometimes it comes out the other way.

- And I'm like... - Mm-hmm.

- What's my real voice? - Mm-hmm.

I will confess I'd love to, like,

learn how to sound straight.

Like, I think that just a normal,

unremarkable way of talking, like, it...

I just... it would be nice to be able to speak like that.

All right.

I have a great picture of what's going on with your speech...

Okay. Good.

And also what you hope to accomplish.

Okay.

So what I hear

is a little bit of nasality.

Mm-hmm.

I feel like I sound so nasal,

and so many other gay men sound incredibly nasal,

and, like, I think it's one reason

people find too many gay voices at once

kind of grating because of that nasality.

Yeah.

You do do a lot of up-speak.

You end up... you always end up up.

Even if you're making a statement,

you're ending up up here.

Sometimes it's the holding onto speech.

"Phone, so, alone, no."

Okay?

You just hang on that.

So we're going to keep it short.

So just try Oklahoma.

Oklahoma.

Ocean.

Ocean.

Au gratin.

- You threw me with that one. - Au gratin. A little French.

- You threw me with that one. - Okay.

Okay. Sorry.

Au gratin.

Um...

Uh, au gratin.

Good.

I see that your work really lies

in terms of your rhythm and intonation,

the sing-song pattern,

and in finding the voice that's comfortable for you,

that will work for you.

So that you can code-switch, but volitionally.

So that you're not getting stuck,

you have a go-to voice.

- I would love a go-to voice. - All right?

Excellent. Thank you so much.

It was a pleasure, David.

You know, when she showed me how I speak, um,

you know, when she showed me how my "O" sounds, like "O-o-o."

You know... that's... I don't think that's really particularly

how I want my Os to sound.

I don't know that anybody

really wants their Os to sound that way.

Oakling.

Oakum.