Lindsey Haun | Coming To / 2015

 

an odd choice

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nick Roth, Lindsey Haun, and Tony De Marco (screenplay), Lindsey Haun (director) Coming To / 2015 [5 minutes]

 

Tony (Jacob DeMonte-Finn) wakes up naked in a hallway; the only items upon his body consist of a cock ring (so reads the promotional commentary) and a sequined scarf. He knows only that he probably overdosed, evidently an event he’s encountered before—although he later recalls that he hasn’t used drugs in over 7 months. But where he is in this strange building—which he soon perceives in an apartment complex—how did he got there, and what happened that left him in that stairwell are all wiped from his memory. His only sensation, a terribly strong one, is the need to urinate.

 

     As he enters the hallway of the building, he randomly tries doors, all of which are locked. One door opens, the man inside demanding he leave immediately, even his request to use the bathroom met, understandably given his nakedness, angrily denied.

      Suddenly, as his piss trickles onto the hall floor, the idea comes into his head that he’s in Koreatown in Los Angeles, that he may have been drugged, and that he needs to look for Room 1104.

 

    Entering that room, he discovers the bathroom door closed, a shadowed figure showering within. Who is the man in shower? He remembers meeting him and even liking him, but has no comprehension who he might be. On the table in from the couch where he now sits is a wide variety of drugs, in power and pill form, along with a wide variety and drug paraphernalia. The scene reminds him of nearly every apartment in which he has taken meth.

      He calls someone named Joseph, either his companion or good friend, explaining that he doesn’t know where the fuck he is. Joseph tells him that he can’t “go down that road” with him again. But he orders him to put his pants, shoes, and shirt on and leave the place, presumably reporting on the phone where he is once he glimpses a street sign.

      Tony remembers now that they had spent the entire day snorting lines of crystal meth, mixing the meth with GHB (Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid) and squirting it up their asses. Codeine, Xanax, and other drugs followed. He now remembers as well, getting off on the bus on Western and Olympic. He remembers snorting the first line. And then, so he reports in the continued voice over, “I remember Mike. He said he could tell I wasn’t happy. And I told him he was right. And I remember feeling safe.”

      As the elevator doors begin to close, he suddenly pushes them open and returns, one assumes, to the apartment from which he has just attempted to escape. Clearly, feeling safe—despite all the evidence that the stranger’s apartment is no safe haven—is more important to him than kicking his habit. Obviously, he does not feel “safe,” whatever that means in this context, with Joseph. And it is hinted that he sees his relationship as part of the reason he has returned to drugs.

      One doubts that in an apartment filled with the drugs and apparatus we witnessed he will be able to go straight, but that evidently is not the issue. It is still more welcoming than his own home, far preferable to waiting to be picked up by his companion and taken to his Silverlake home. Is there violence in his home? Has he been threatened because of his addiction? We know even less than Tony has known awakening naked in that stairwell. For that matter, we don’t even know if Tony is gay or that Joseph even represents someone with whom he is in a relationship. But the choice our gradually awakening hero has made seems almost to be a matter of life or death. Perhaps he has chosen the latter.

     As thought-provoking as director / actor Lindsey Haun’s short film may be, it seems that if she and her writers had provided us with just a little more information, we might have been able to care about this character’s decision, if nothing else. As it is, we can only shrug our shoulders and say, “well that seems an odd choice.”

 

Los Angeles, May 4, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).