A MORMON LOVE STORY 06.19.15 1 OP-DOCS ANIMATION TITLE: The New York Times Op-Docs presents People walk up to a psychiatrist’s office in the 1970s.Tom Clark (VO)The psychiatrist had me do tests. Tom Clark (on screen) And he said, “Well, you have a very high feminine quotient.” [Laughs.] And I looked at him and said, “I could have told you that without taking the test.” Photo of Tom as he looks out the window of a commuter train. Tom Clark (VO) He prescribed the anti-psychotic Thorazine because I was attracted to guys. Six months later, I was on a Mormon mission. Tom’s super 8 home movie footage: Tom in a suit replete with missionary tag, standing outside the Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah, 1973. TITLE: ELDER: A Mormon Love Story Super 8 movie footage of Pescara, Italy in 1973-74 combined with still photos of Tom as a missionary. TITLE: Pescara, Italy, 1974 Tom Clark (VO) So the expectation is you are a missionary every moment of these two years at the exclusion of interaction with family, friends, you don’t date. There wasn’t anything of any sort other than proselytizing. We were the first Mormons who had ever basically set foot in Pescara. It was beautiful; it was springtime. But I could not shake the sadness. A sunset. Footage of Tom looking out the window, a prostitution sign in Italian, people walking the street at night. Night time was a torture. And as I would sit there wide awake all night long, I would look out the window of the apartment. I would watch the prostitutes get picked up, dropped off again. And in some ways they were more real to me than anybody else around me at that point. I shared a sense of being the bad one. Super 8 footage of missionaries setting up signs for their church meetings. A MORMON LOVE STORY 06.19.15 2 Tom Clark (VO) One Sunday, late in the summer, this group of Italian kids came to our meeting. More Super 8 footage of young people at a Mormon meeting. Then a cut back to the missionaries’ sign. TITLE: “Mormon Meeting” Tom Clark (VO) At the end of it one of the guys came up to me and introduced himself and he said, “That is a rather strange choice of music that you played for the prelude and postlude music.” And I said, “Why?” MX: Theme song of the film “Death in Venice.” INSERT: Clip of the film DEATH IN VENICE (1971). TITLE: DEATH IN VENICE (1971) And he said, “Well, that’s the theme song for Death in Venice - Morte aVenezia - which is, of course, a very famous classic about an older gay man who falls in love with a young boy in Venice during a cholera epidemic.Photo of Gianni in 1973-74. Tom Clark (VO) Gianni was absolutely stunningly beautiful. He was very brooding, and he was a Communist and so he was very intense. Everything about him had gotten hold of me. Super 8 movie of Gianni attending a Mormon meeting, very quiet and serious and then Tom and his companions fooling around on the shores of Pescara. Tom Clark (VO) One of the fundamental rules of Mormon missions is that you have to be with a companion 24/7, 365. Gianni and I wanted to be together - we wanted to be together all the time - but I had to have an excuse. Tom and Gianni at a Mormon party together. Tom Clark So we argued for hours and hours and hours about Communism versus Mormonism. One of these arguments one night got so loud that one of the companions said, “Would you guys just like go outside the front door cause you are keeping all of us awake, here.” And, of course, as soon as we got outside the front door we stopped arguing.