Alan Brown | O Beautiful / 2002

abuse, interrogation, and confession

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alan Brown (screenwriter and director) O Beautiful / 2002 [29 minutes]

 

O Beautiful, written and directed by Alan Brown, is one of the most remarkable gay short films of the early 21st century. Released in 2002, this small gem begins with a brutal assault on a high school boy by locals who not only rough him up, but evidently shove a stick up his rectum. Naked from the waist down, Brad (Jay Gillespie) is left alone in a cornfield after, with blood running down the top of his head.

      Within a few seconds, however, we see a truck pulling up, and we can only wonder, along with the boy, whether the assaulters have returned to finish what they’ve begun; we soon discover it is only a fellow classmate, Andy (David Rogers) who reports that, although he was there when the attack begun, we quickly left after and has now returned to help his fellow Spanish class member. So begins what quickly is transformed into an almost absurdist series of antiphons that gradually shift into an angry screed about homosexuality before slipping into a would-be love story that might have involved both boys had it not been proceeded by all else that has just come before it.

      Brown’s script is so inventive that, even if it isn’t always completely believable in terms of the moment-to-moment action, we recognize the honesty of its dark perceptions of American spiritual dilemmas. In some senses both of these boys— despite having just shared an event that represents true evil—are total innocents, or at least are trying to employ their innocence, as US citizens often do, as a shield against their criminal behavior.

      We perceive, moreover, that these two individuals do not merely represent the abuser and the abused, but are individuals who could not be more different from one another, a reality made apparent by Brown’s use of a split screen throughout.

      In fact, the events of the early scenes are not only shockingly humorous in the way that scenes from Pinter or Albee might be perceived, but represent a kind of perverse realism you won’t get in any traditional classroom history or literature course.

      Approaching the naked, still stunned, hurt, and now newly-frightened boy, the approaching kid holds out his hand as if encountering an old friend in a grocery store: “Andrew Perry, I’m in your Spanish class. ¿Cómo está usted?”

      After establishing that he has not returned to further hurt him, Andy again acts in a manner that is totally unpredictable, pulling off his own pants and handing them to Brad to put on. As Brad continues to shiver, he even pulls off his letter jacket, the sacred cloak of all small town sports players and puts it around the boy’s shoulders, trying to once more establish that he wasn’t there for the actual rape:

 

“I left before anything happened.”

“You held me down.”

........

“Why didn’t you help me?”

“Why did you get in their car?”

      And a few moments later, admitting that he was somewhat involved, they almost finish one another’s sentences in their series of recurring accusations and admissions:

 

“Why didn’t you...”

“I should have...”

“Stop them?”

“Stopped them.”

 

     But in the midst of Andy’s stuttering attempt at apology something even stranger happens, as breaks out with the lyrics of “America,” singing the entire first stanza before following it up with the words: “I sang it at the Christmas Assembly. Don’t you remember? I sing at church too.”

  

      In this truly absurdist moment we truly recognize just how much Andy lives in a world defined by patriotic and religious mottos, songs, and slogans. They serve more that even a simple shield but stand truly as a kind of fortress through which the light of reality can rarely reach.

    Brad assures the dense inquisitor that he does not go to church.

    If patriotism and religion were not substantial enough, Andy puts up yet another banner:

 

“We were in the boy scouts together.”

“I quit the scouts.”

“I’m an eagle scout.”

 

    But from even that outpost, guilt returns briefly as Andy returns to the real subject whose symbol stands before him, trying somehow still to explain away the event, Brad, finally having caught his breath engaging him momentarily in an interchange that calls his bluff:

 

“They’re not bad guys.”

“They shoved a stick....”

[pause]

“They’re not good guys.”

[pause]

“You’re not a good guy.”

 

     The important interchange that follows, moreover, goes to the very heart of why Andy has returned. It is clearly not just his concern for his classmate, or even an attempt to salve his guilt, but because he himself has a truly vested interest in knowing about what it means to be gay, something about which he is clearly so ignorant, as most people are in small town across the US, even when today they proclaim that they are not “against” gays. I’ve quoted a long portion of their conversation (although with several cuts) just to establish the heart of Brown’s piece, which, after all, delights in its dialogue rather than it’s simple plot:

 

“Brad, you’re not really like they say.”

[pause]

“You’re not really gay, right?”

[Brad shakes his head yes.]

“Fuck! Why did you have to tell me?”

“You asked me.”

“Well, do you tell everyone who asks?”

“You were the first.”

“But you don’t really know.”

“I know.”

“How do you know you know?”

“Like when you know you’re hungry.”

“Are you always gay, or just sometimes?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

“Well, shit, you’re not always hungry are you?”

  

      Soon after, retreating again a safe fortress, Andy demands that he help him in repeating the Scout Law (“A scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent”), the two beginning in alternation in a manner that is as ridiculous as his performance of “America.” While Brad incredulously plays along for a couple of the cited virtues, he soon banters back all the names that have been hurled at him from people like Andy, other local “scouts”: Fairy, Queer, Faggot, Andy without even thinking, simply joining in with “Queen, Homo, and a couple of other such terms—until Brad breaks the spell of name-calling by reporting what appear to be facts:

 

“The scout master kissed me. He begged me to fuck him. He offered me money.”

“Liar. Shut up!”

 

      Brad continues with stories about their history teacher and even claims that Leonardo DiCaprio is gay (probably on the basis of his having appeared as Rimbaud in Total Eclipse). For a moment Andy seems to be on a verge of a breakdown:

 

“Mr. Reynolds isn’t a homo!”

“Yes he is.”

“He’s married.”

 

      But he quickly regains his stand by volleying back with his Christian ammunition:

 

“If being gay is so normal, why don’t they just come out and say they’re homos?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you why. Because gay isn’t okay with God.”

[pause]

“Gay isn’t a productive thing. Be something else. There must be something else you’re interested in. Join a team. Or the school chorus.”

 

     We have returned to the rabbit-hole with seemingly no way out. Yet Brad seems instinctively to know how to confuse his would-be righteous but actually hysterical opponent by shifting the conversation to the personal:

 

“I wanted to invite you to sleep over at my house.”

[Andy looks confused and somewhat disgusted.]

“I could of hypnotized you.”

“Why?”

“I hypnotized other guys.”

 

      Being hypnotized, indeed, suddenly becomes a key concept in their attempts of communication. It suggests that Brad holds powers over others and forces them to do things they might not wish to, in particular, to have homosexual sex. For Andy the word quickly becomes a way to speak of what he obviously truly desires, to have gay sex with Brad...or anyone who can help him out of his predicament. Lost in a world of apparently protective values, it is as if he had been locked up in a metal corset for which only Brad has the key: his hypnotic powers.

      By this time he has invited Brad into his truck, as he lays back in the driver’s seat, almost as if in a trance:

 

“OK. You can hypnotize me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Come on, Mr. Houdini, hypnotize me.”

[pause]

“...Body at rest. All systems go.”

 

     Brad, finally playing along, demands that Andy begin slowly counting backwards from 100, but when after a few numbers he stops as if truly in a doze, the boy who has just been raped uses the small space into which they have sandwiched their bodies almost as a confessional box, admitting that his claiming he’d had sex with the scoutmaster and the history teacher was a lie, that in fact he has never touched any body.

      Gradually, almost unaware, he has begun to stroke Andy’s chest, who only a moment or two before had unbuttoned his shirt. When Brad pulls away, Andy holds his hand in place, and in a rush of both love and hate, Brad turns to the resistant all-American boy and kisses him hard on the lips. It is not a gentle kiss of love but the answer to Andy’s challenge. Apparently Brad doesn’t even need to hypnotize such willing subjects.

     Andy too recognizing that they have now entered a kind of sacred space, confesses his own guilt, admitting that he had been there all the time, that he had watched as they raped him with a stick, unable to stop what he knew he should.

     But this time Brad can no longer absolve his guilt. Recognizing the significance of his crime, realizing perhaps that he himself might have just as likely been the gay boy the gang brutalized, Andy tells Brad to keep the jacket, and finally, even hands over the keys to the truck his uncle has given him for his birthday, realizing clearly that Brad will need some mode of transportation to take him away from a world in which he can no longer survive. There is no home to return for a male in a small town who has just been raped for being a fag.

     Without even accepting Andy’s proffered hand, Brad takes the driver’s seat and drives away, Andy waving as if seeing off a lover, an image he must have seen in one of the hundreds of heterosexual films shown across US time and space, mouthing the words that one might expected: “Send me a postcard or something.”

 

Los Angeles, April 14, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2022).