two dads with a heartbroken son
by
Douglas Messerli
William
Branden Blinn and Billy Bean (screenwriters), William Branden Blinn (director) Without
a Mom / 2012 [14 minutes]
A
man is sitting up in his bed obviously doing work when a car drives up the
house, wheels screeching. The door is pulled open and slammed shut, and finally
as the camera takes us downstairs we watch a young man, Brooklyn (Austin
Stowell), emphatically toss down his keys, throw his basketball to the floor,
and even set down his cased guitar with some anger. He pulls open the
refrigerator door and peeps in, slams it shut, and pulls open a storage
cabinet, taking out some peanut butter and closing it with more noise before
pulling it open and shut again. He goes to the other side of a long counter and
pulls open a drawer only to discover he can’t find what he’s looking for.
All the noise and apparent anger has
brought the man in his bathrobe downstairs to check out the problem as the
young man shouts out the first line of the film: “There’s no fuckin’ bread in
this house!”
The older man sits as the younger
continues to work out his anger in silence. Soon the boy comes and sits next to
the elder, bends his head to his shoulder and breaks out into tears: “Maggie
broke up with me!” The elder holds him quietly, a man we now recognize to be
the father, Hank (Billy Bean). At the same moment we hear another door being
opened to the kitchen. Another male enters: “Hello, I know I’m late. I brought
dinner,” he declares as he throws down a box of large pizza.
The other asks, “Did you remember the
bread?”
The newcomer asks what’s going on, told
that Maggie broke up with Brooklyn. When he suggestion of eating something
doesn’t work, he gets out some scotch and pours out a drink and drinks it,
filling another small glass and handing it to the boy. Even he is a bit
confused, reminding them that they are long argued for him not to drink, but
are now openly offering it. Brooklyn drinks it.
And who we now perceive to be his other
father, Henry (Taymour Ghazi) puts out plates and serves the pizza.
How are two gay males to deal with their
son’s first breakup with a girl? Can they offer something that perhaps mothers
are better explaining. As Brooklyn lays in his bed, he can hear the two arguing
about their methods, their failures, and the difficulties all put within the
context of their very different lives, Hank evidently the work-at-home father,
while Henry is out 9-5 and probably many nights, such as this one, even later.
Hank is pissed with Henry having given him alcohol, while Henry argues he
needed it. He hadn’t given him alcohol last year when he didn’t make the
basketball team, Hank argues. Henry suggests that he knows sports
matters—Brooklyn has made the team this year—but neither of them know girl matters!
When they look up, Brooklyn is standing
in the doorway, asking them to stop. “I don’t need another mom. Everybody wants
to be my mom,” he explains, “including my girlfriend.” So, they silently concur
that’s the problem! “I want my girlfriend, he pushes his fist into his other
hand, “just to be my girlfriend.” When they begin to question him, he addresses
them, “Papa, Dad, stop. I can’t talk about this with you.”
He needs to sleep he suggests, the
strapping young 17- or 18-year-old boy (who looks older) climbing in between
them as they, still sitting up, look around to find positions on the edges
where they might sleep.
Hanks rises first, perhaps to make
breakfast, and Henry rises to ready himself for work. The two sit together at
the kitchen counter for breakfast. The dads, however, have discovered that in
the night their son received a text message from Maggie, and Henry, in
particular, is almost ready to check it out over Hank’s insistence that he
mustn’t. Brooklyn’s arrival forces Henry to put the cellphone down. Brooklyn
sits, and they tell him he’s received a message. Checking it out, he discovers
that she has apologized and now he has no time for breakfast; he speeds off to
tell Maggie (Kristen Clement) that he loves her and of course he forgives her.
They’ll get together after practice.
This amusing and loving short film about
the problems of many new all male (and all female) families throughout world is
the work of director William Branden Blinn who since 2008 has produced a number
of charming and interesting, if not profound LGBTQ movies, among them Thirteen
or So Minutes (2008), Chased (2009), He She We (2010), Triple
Standard (2010), À la Carte (2013), Derek and Cameron (2013),
and Swell (2017).
Los
Angeles, October 13, 2022
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (October 2022).
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