Meet the author Navid Sinaki, film lover, creator of Cinespia

Good morning and thanks for reading the LA Times Book Club newsletter!

I’m novelist and punk historian Jim Ruland, and while I love books, when the temperature rises you can find me at the movies. What’s next? A bright summer read that’s steeped in sex, death, and cinema.

The debut novel by Navid Sinaki, “Medusa of Roses” which will be released by Grove Press next week, ticks all the boxes. It’s a tense story of doomed love, set in Tehran and infused with the poetry of noirish imagist.

When Anjir’s lover Zal disappears, he fears the worst, but his search uncovers complicated truths that put their relationship and lives in danger. Anjir’s compulsion to steal from both friend and foe raises the stakes, making “Medusa of Roses” both hard to put down and hard to put down.

I caught up with Sinaki, who is also an experimental filmmaker and creative director at Cinespia at Hollywood Forever, to ask him about his new book and about growing up “quiet, queer, and Persian.”

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

I was born in Tehran, but my parents moved to the US because of one bombing too many during the Iran-Iraq war. My mother blames Saddam Hussein for destroying her mirror collection: her heirloom dressing table, my father’s antiques with the Shah’s silhouette in the frames, even the Minnie Mouse mirror by my crib (perhaps my first gay icon).

Did you manage to get back to Tehran?

We often visited Iran in the summer, trips I hated as a restless suburban kid because I could only take so many books with me. Plus, their burgers tasted like kebabs, so I had my prejudices. My last visit was when I was 21, a research trip for my senior thesis on pre-Islamic Persian films—swinging B-movies, sex romps, and melodramas from the 60s and 70s. The day before that visit, I had an incredible first date, despite a fortune teller who told me I would never find love the moment she saw us together. So my last trip to Iran was a whirlwind of genre films and speculation.

Did you feel at home during your visits?

I started making queer videos. While it was hard to believe that militaristic customs officials would search me by name, I knew that returning would be dangerous. Although homosexuality is criminalized in Iran (punished by death), the government helps subsidize sex-change surgeries. That legal loophole stuck with me. In Rancho Cucamonga, I didn’t feel safe as a queer kid exploring his sexuality after 9/11.

What made conservative California stand out?

In the SoCal suburbs where I grew up, where street signs celebrated graduates who had joined the armed forces, I was an awkward kid who tried to ignore the fact that I was different—quiet, queer, and Persian. The closest thing I had to a museum was the art section of Barnes & Noble. I learned about jazz at a local coffee shop, Mimi’s Cafe. My arthouse was Turner Classic Movies.

Which writers were your role models?

9/11 was a cock block for a Persian queer kid growing up in the suburbs. There was a certain hostility. The sex was sadomasochistic, and the sexes were surreal. I learned about simultaneity from Jean Genet. I fell into his work because I understood, in my own way, that desire could be poetic and perverse, courtship could be camp and cruel, and survival could be playful. I thrived on his acid humor, with a rich language that twisted the melancholic, the rococo and the blue at once.

What is it like to work as a creative director at Cinespia at Hollywood Forever Cemetery?

Me and (silent film star Rudolph) Valentino have known each other for a long time. I’ve spent countless summer nights near his mausoleum. At Cinespia, 4,000 people gather at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to watch movies projected onto the wall of the mausoleum. Douglas Fairbanks is nearby. Cecil B. DeMille is another viewer. Judy Garland and Johnny Ramone are there, too. At every screening, there’s a photo booth with professional lighting and photographers to give people a chance to get their own close-ups. I’m responsible for the dream job behind these booths, which I see as art installations, not replicas of movie scenes.

How did your experiences as a filmmaker influence the composition of the novel?

As a filmmaker, I am always unwatching: I queer folk tales to imagine a space for myself in them; I use DVD menus as diaries; I reuse clips from 1960s Persian sexploitation films to tell a transgender love story in the form of a movie trailer. Film has allowed me to see myself as a place of discovery, a wandering city. The screen can be an unwatching mirror. I have also learned to redouble my efforts in writing. Maybe I am like Narcissus, who fell into his own reflection. Instead of blossoming into daffodils after drowning, for me roses sprouted from this death.

Week(s) in Books

Francine Pascalcreator “Sweet Valley High” books and irish novelist Edna O’Brien died.

In your review “Kent State: An American Tragedy” by Brian VanDeMark, Chris Vognar analyzes the first sentence of the book“People do not hide the whole truth unless the whole truth is unbearable to them.”

Vognar also reviews Brett Anthony Johnston’s book “We burn the light of day” a novel that explores the human side of tragedy which took place during the standoff between the federal government and David Koresh in Waco, Texas.

Leigh Haber reviews Helen Phillips’ new novel “Noise” and suggests that it teeters on the border between dystopian fiction and a vision of our near future.

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Recommended by Los Angeles writers

“Sex, Death, and Cinema” isn’t a genre (yet), so I asked a few of my favorite LA writers for their recommendations in that category. Here’s what they had to say:

Melissa Broderauthor “Valley of Death” I suggest “Turkish Delicacy” by Dutch author Jan Wolkers. Originally published in 1969, new translation by Sam Garrett was released in 2017 by Tin House.

Matthew Specktor knows a thing or two about cinema. Author “Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, the Crisis, and Los Angeles, California” recommends Charlie Kaufman “Antkind” which he describes as “wild, challenging and fun.”

Steve Erickson “Zeroville” gets endorsement from Nolan Knight. Long Beach author “The Gallows Dome” says: “If you are a movie buff, this is paradise.”

LA Times Book Award Winner Steph Cha recommends “The Song is You” by Megan Abbott and “Everyone knows” By Jordan Harper.

Thanks for reading! I enjoyed writing the LA Times Book Club newsletter this summer, and now I’m passing the baton to another book lover!