Name Dropped

Xtra contacted some folks who appear in both memoirs to check their own memories of time spent with Carole Pope and Sky Gilbert.

Diane Flacks, performer/writer: “Carole was one of the most generous persons I’ve worked with. She’s a diva, but she’s a kindly diva. Sky completely jumpstarted our being embraced by the theatre community. He had the big pecs, the big brain and the big chip. He was sexy to be around.”

Moses Znaimer, head of City TV, Much Music and Queer Television: “Desperate Carole. Trying to breathe some life into herself. I was going with Andrea Martin at the time and I suppose she saw herself as something of a rival. I remember her as this ugly unpleasant woman…. As for Sky’s book, the passages about me are complete fabrications. I’ve never had any conversation with him. I might have nodded at him at a party. I never saw the play [Gilbert says he sent] and I would never say those things; that’s not how I talk. He’s implying I’m homophobic. Do you know I produce Queer Television?”

Moynan King, performer/writer: “I hung out with Carole for about a year. I was living with Clinton Walker at the time and she actually stayed with us for a month or so. I did my play Bathory [which is being published by Broken Jaw Press] at that time and she offered to work on it. I’m really surprised at her feelings towards it in the book. I thought she liked my play. I mean, she was working for practically nothing, you’d expect she’d actually like the work…. Sky is a mentor of mine. He loves the theatre more than anybody I’ve ever met. He believed in the ideas I was exploring when a lot of people were intimidated.”

Sarah Stanley, Buddies’ second artistic director: “What Carole writes about the wine and the cigarettes with the Diva show is all true. I remember Carole’s desire to get things together and my relationship as a midwife to that desire…. I love Sky Gilbert. I can’t help it. I wish he liked me more. The transition was hard on him and it was necessary for me to be the focus of how hard it was for him. I know where it’s all coming from.”