The only thing worse than being a failure is being a failure with a more successful, less talented friend. But perhaps worse still is when that friend is a lover you’ve taken under your wing Eliza Doolittle-style, never imagining that she could outshine you. So it goes for Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina, in a series of eye-catching wigs and stoically grandiose expressions). When John Orton (Gary Oldman)–before he transforms into Joe, for greater rough trade effect–first encounters Ken in a theater class at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA, as the acronym is poked fun at in the film), it’s evident that the chip on Ken’s shoulder isn’t going to behoove his dreams of prosperity in the realm of the theater. Still, his dark humor, nonplussed attitude and openness about his homosexuality prove a draw for Orton, fed up with the uppity, closed off ways of women when it comes to trying to insert himself into them.
Based on Orton’s diaries and the first biography of Orton by John Lahr, who used the title because it was something Orton had toyed with employing as a title in the past, Alan Bennett’s (also a playwright best known for The History Boys) script is filled with the tensions and warrings specific to an old married couple that’s been together for too long but can’t break it off because of the depths of the codependency.
Framed around flashbacks from the present as Lahr (Wallace Shawn) pores through Orton’s diaries–comprehensive in the way that only a narcissist’s could be–with his wife, Anthea (Lindsay Duncan)–interviews with Orton’s literary agent, Peggy Ramsay (Vanessa Redgrave), and sister, Leonie Orton (Frances Barber), also help them put the pieces of the tempestuous Joe/Ken relationship together, a rapport instrumental to Orton’s creative output, though, alas, a detriment to Halliwell’s. Directed by Stephen Frears before he became revered as the maestro of the biopic, Prick Up Your Ears established just how adept he was at getting into the headspace of an icon. Or at least, someone who would become even more iconic in death. Like Joe Orton, Frears, too, was born in Leicester, establishing an instant connection over being from the literal wrong side of the tracks to Londoners, a.k.a. the only people whose opinions mattered in the art world. One supposes that’s why so many citizens from Leicester have become famous–they want so desperately to get out by the only means possible.
The same could be said for Joe, who took to Kenneth at RADA both out of a natural liking and necessity–which is why he didn’t turn Ken’s hand down his pants away as they watched Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, Joe screaming, “It’s a new era!” And that it was, though not a very productive one. Living on a combination of Ken’s inheritance (both of his parents died years ago) and the dole, Joe and Ken find plenty of time to get into mischief, and not just in the local public bathrooms. After many cumulative hours spent pasting illicit and salacious word and image pairings into library books, one of the stodgier, more discriminatory employees starts investigating further, collecting the evidence of all their checked out library books to launch a case that delivers them a somewhat harsh six-month sentence (harsh because they were gay and the British have always had a very difficult time with that concept in spite of being perhaps the gayest nationality of all).
Without the stifling negativity and oppressive criticism of Ken to hinder him in the isolation of prison, Joe thrives, his writing finally coming into its own in the form of The Ruffian and the Stair, bought as a radio play by the BBC for sixty-five pounds. Ken is immediately threatened by this seemingly all too quick form of achievement, at first assuming the BBC will never get back to him until Ken counters, “They already have.” It only takes this play for everything to start snowballing, Joe’s procurement of Peggy as a literary agent the cherry on top of nonstop validation.
Though Joe does his best to keep things as they were pre-fame, to allow the same place for Ken in his life as before (albeit far more abusively and in the demeaning stead of personal assistant), the burning jealousy Ken experiences leads him to a path of unreturnable madness. As he puts it, “I don’t understand my life. I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was going bald. I’m a homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background…I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint. I was programmed to be a novelist or a playwright. But I’m not and you are.”
Noticing that he’s not listening, that he even sleeps better than Ken, he abruptly chooses to end Orton’s life with nine blows to the head using a hammer. While writing his suicide note (“If you read his diary, all will be explained. KH PS: Especially the latter part.”), he looks over at the first award Joe won and muses, “I should have used this. More theatrical. You’d have spotted that straight away.” And so, even in death, Orton manages to outshine Halliwell, the proverbial Salieri to his Mozart.
Putting none too fine a point on the very thin line between love and hate, Ken concludes to himself that at least, “I must have loved him. I chose him to kill me.” For you can’t be driven to an act so extreme without a strong foundation of unrequited love. In this sense, it was also the shift in power in their dynamic that got to Ken, yearning for a return to the way things were in the beginning, when Joe still actually fancied him and turned to him for counsel.
As Orton’s star escalates and Halliwell is relegated further into the background, he laments, “‘How do you justify your existence?’ I’m Joe Orton’s friend. As if it’s a profession. Well, it’s not a profession. It’s a full-time fucking job.” Unpaid and without the perk of meeting Paul McCartney. That’s no existence at all, not even when one is doing it out of unwavering love and devotion.
