Harper Bilash and Tristin Hurst | Drive Safe / 2023

an uber driver with a grudge

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tristan Hurst (screenplay), Harper Bilash and Tristin Hurst (directors) Drive Safe / 2023 [11 minutes]

 

A young man, (Jaden Davis) makes un uber call, and when the car shows up he recognizes the driver, Max (Tyler Fewin), as a former high school class mate.

      The passenger, who’s in town for a wedding immediately recognizes Max, but the other boy seems more reluctant about bringing up old times. When asked how Harvard went, Max proclaims, “Harvard didn’t work out.” Actually, he flunked out, he admits.

      When Max hears that his high school classmate is getting married, he attempts to imagine all the women who she might be, but the passenger finally answers, “It’s a guy, actually.”

      

     The passenger admits that high school was a “shit show” that he really hated himself, but eventually he worked it out, changing himself and his life. He even apologizes to Max, explaining, “I was different then.”

       Max, on the other hand, has some serious reservations which he is about to spill onto his passenger’s lap:

 

“Isn’t that great! Well not great. Not great as you calling me homo every chance you got. Not great

as you writing “die” on my locker every single fucking week. Not great as you faking e-mails to my parents, outing me. Not great as fucking me up so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed, let alone do Harvard.” Now fully screaming, he adds, “Not great as ruining my fucking life!”

 

     The rider suggests that Max just drop him off, but Max refuses, declaring “I’m fine man!” Again, the passenger apologizes and suggests Max just drop him off, but Max declares that he’s going to deliver him up to his perfect life while he goes on a life of suffering and failing.

      The former high school bully demands he drop him off immediately, but Max calls him a “pussy,” reminding him that was another word that he used to call him in high school.

       Max finally stops the car and the rider gets out. But almost immediately, he thinks better, suggesting that he drive Max back to his home and that along the way they talk, like two adult individuals trying to work the anger out.

       His first question is a justifiable one: “I’m the reason you flunked out of Harvard? Who the fuck to do you think you are to tell me I fucked up your entire life and not tell me any reason why?”

        But Max tells another story about how the two were friends until suddenly one day it was all over without his former friend ever explaining. “I always thought….”

        The driver finishes the sentence, “…we liked each other. That’s the reason I hated you.”

        Max insists none of this is helping. “Good for you man, you got the perfect life ten years later and I’m still a loser with no friends and no future.”

        The new driver insists he’s not a bad person. “I’ve spent the past 10 years wishing I could have done things differently, being a jerk to everyone, but most of all to you.”

         He attempts to kiss Max, but Max pushes him away. “How many times do I have to say this man. I’ve changed.”

         “I haven’t” answers Max, who gets out of the car, as the other drives away in his Max’s uber car. A few blocks later we see the young man, having realized that fact, stopped and pissed off for again seeming to take advantage of Max.

         We all know that bullying has long-lasting effects. But my first reaction to this short film by Tristan Hurt, the writer and co-director, is that Max was a loser not simply because of bullying but because he was never able to grow up; as he himself admits, he was never able to change. His whining list of unforgiveable grudges were those of a high school boy lost in an ocean of teenage angst.

         But, upon my second viewing, I realized that the movie itself shared my view, adding almost as an appendix a maxim: “You don’t have to forgive and you don’t have to forget; you just become different and then you move on.” Max clearly can’t enact the second part of that sentence.

        This film reads as a sort of gay self-help movie, a bit like its title, a contemporary version of the kind of work shown to classes by well-meaning teachers in middle and high schools across the nation in the 1950s about sexual predators and other dangers.

 

Los Angeles, October 9, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).