Interview with David Furnish

David Furnish, DVD cover for the director's cut of Tantrums and Tiaras

Just over fifteen years ago, David Furnish attended a dinner where he met pop superstar Elton John, an evening that would forever alter Furnish’s life. Two years after that fateful evening, Furnish had quit his job at a prestigious London advertising agency, moved in with John, and, as he famously documented in Tantrums and Tiaras (his first foray into filmmaking) joined John on his 1995 world tour.

This week, a director’s cut of Tantrums and Tiaras is being released, the first time the film has been available in any home format in the U.S. Furnish recently took time to talk with AfterElton.com about why he made the movie, how it changed his relationship with John, and what it’s like to be one half of the highest profile same-sex couples in the world. He also discussed John’s recent controversial comments about California’s anti-gay Proposition 8, which passed in November taking away the right of same-sex couples to marry in that state.

AfterElton.com: Elton recently did an interview with USA Today where he said he didn’t want to be married. He said he was very happy with civil partnership and that if gay people want to be legally joined together, they should just get a civil partnership. He also said part of the reason why Prop 8 failed was because gay people in California went after the word ‘marriage.’ That set off quite a controversy over here. Has any of that come to your attention?
David Furnish: Yes, it did. Elton and I have had loads of discussions about this. I think there’s a couple of sort of mitigating factors that haven’t been brought out in the discussion. I think one is that a civil partnership in Britain affords many more rights than a civil partnership in America. That was something that neither of us was aware of.

I think the point Elton was trying to make was, America is very much a divided country at the moment. I think there are extremely religious, very fundamental religious people who have very strong views and very strong beliefs and they are very vocal. And I think there are a lot of people [for whom] religion doesn’t necessarily play such a big part in their life anymore or they’ve learned to look at the Bible and religion as more than an evolutionary concept.

AE: So let me clarify: when Elton made those comments to USA Today, neither of you really understood that most of us here in the U.S. don’t have access to any kind of civil partnership and that what you have in the U.K. is dramatically different than what we do have here in a few states?
DF: Yeah. Elton was saying ‘What we have in the UK, I am perfectly happy with that. I don’t want to be married because in effect there’s no need’ is the point he was trying to make. He wasn’t saying he’s anti-gay-marriage. I just think – and look at the last election and look at the heated debates and how religion just always seems to keep coming to the fore, which wasn’t really meant to happen in politics. It was sort of meant to separate the two and the two seem to be so strongly intertwined now that it just gets in the way of making really positive social change from time to time.

Photo Credit: Film Magic/Bruce Glikas

AE: You still have Canadian citizenship, right?
DF: Yes, I still have my Canadian passport.

AE: Do you agree with Elton on the sense that marriage is too conflicted of a word and we should go for civil partnerships, or since as a Canadian citizen you actually have the right to be married . . .
DF: I think we have to look at these things in an evolutionary context. And I think if we really want – I think gay people have to ask themselves why they want to be married, in inverted commas.

In the case of Elton and I, it wasn’t a question of having a union blessed by God, which is the way some people define marriage. We wanted to be in a position to have the rights and benefits that married people have and to feel protected, and also to feel supported and accepted as a couple by society. That was very, very important to us and something that really settled in after the civil partnership. Because we feel that level of contentedness from our civil partnership, because we feel protected and supported, would we want to get married? I think the answer is no, because we don’t see the need.

AE: I am your age and have been with my partner for 16 years. Call it macaroni and cheese – just give me my rights. But to play the Devil’s Advocate, isn’t there truth to the argument that if you have two separate but “equal” things, you create a second class of status for us? Maybe it’s because of our terrible history of “separate but equal” in America, but I worry that civil partnership will never be equal to marriage.
DF: I think inequality, everywhere we get it in life, is wrong. I really think everybody deserves to be treated equal and fairly, across the board. I guess I’m also a bit of a pragmatist too in a sense that I think we have to acknowledge that for a lot of people this is a big deal and a big change and that sometimes you have to look at these things on a step by step basis.

I think you want to get to a situation where same-sex couples in America get to something that gives them exactly the same rights as married people. That’s the full equality we should be going for. But it may be one of those cases where we have to do it in steps as opposed to getting in all in one go, because it seems to be such a divisive issue that continues to really, really divide people.