Stephen Dunn and Peter Knegt | Good Morning / 2014

the day after

by Douglas Messerli

 

Peter Knegt and Oliver Skinner (screenplay), Stephen Dunn and Peter Knegt (directors) Good Morning / 2014 [10 minutes]

 

In a Montreal apartment, bottles are strewn across the counters and cigarette butts fill an ashtray next to a happy birthday card. The numbers 30 have taken a dive into a half-eaten cake. The loud

and annoying alarm-clock is calling out for the totally done-in man, still dressed, lying on his bed.

 

    The man (Peter Knegt), unnamed, has just turned 30, in case you haven’t guessed, and he will soon realize that he has a massive hangover from the night before when he visited a bar into the late hours and then invited someone else back to his apartment.

     But then, quite unexpectedly, he hears a voice, “Are you doing okay?”

     He looks down from his bedroom loft and sees a young boy sitting on his couch, who reports “You were really drunk.”

      He manages to bring himself down the ladder to find out who the boy is. The boy (Oliver Skinner) asks him “Do you remember coming back her with you.”

      [Since there are no character names, and the actors are also the writers, from here on I’ll refer to them by their first names.]

      All Peter can manage is a question: “How old are you?”

   “I’m 17.” Fortunately, in Canada the age of consent is 16. But our fresh birthday boy is still astounded and somewhat troubled.

     Oliver tries to console him, arguing that there are only 6 years between them, Peter evidently having told him it was his 23rd birthday party, a misapprehension Peter now attempts to correct.

      And no, they didn’t have sex, Oliver explains. They made out at the bar and the birthday boy invited him to his place; but instead of making drinks, “you went to the bathroom and started puking your guts out.”

      The cutey has even made them toast. (All Peter had in the fridge was bread, hot sauce, and beer.)

      Oliver observes that Peter’s apartment is small.

      Peter responds: “Where do you live, like in a dorm room?”

     It turns out that Oliver lives with parents, but it’s okay, he assures his senior. They know that I go out, and besides he again repeats, he’s 17. His parents have known he was gay since he was 13.

      But the discussion has really turned to a kind of father-son disquisition. When asked by Oliver when Peter realized he was gay, he responds: “I was a lot older and I didn’t go out to gay bars at 17.” And it’s clear as well, Peter is now of another generation. For his comments don’t even faze young Oliver, as Peter now begins questioning him about his dating life.

     Oliver doesn’t date, but hangs out with “This guy from school.” He goes to the bars with him, but his friend always leaves with someone else.

      “Then why are you friends with him?” Peter enquires like a dutiful elder counseling a youth.

      It later becomes evident that Oliver would like a relationship with the elusive friend.

   In the bathroom Peter encounters the mess of his last evening. And we realize that instead of challenging a young boy who’s stayed with him, so Oliver claims, just to make sure he was all right, he might rather be asking himself some serious questions such as why on his 30^th birthday is he attending a bar alone? Why has he drunk so much alcohol? And, most importantly, why he has invited a 17-year-old boy to come home with him?

      Moreover, we soon discover, Peter has taken this tiny apartment a few months earlier when he broke up with his lover. Why has he not yet found someone else, someone who at least might celebrate his 30th birthday with him.

    When the boy’s phone rings, Peter recognizes the tone to be from Grindr, he suggesting Oliver is perhaps a little young to be using Grinder, especially, after grabbing the phone from his hands he discovers the boy’s message: “You wanna get fucked?” Peter insists he delete that message, but the boy resists his advice, repeating he’s 17, Peter arguing he should instead meet a boy at school or something.

     So this short film goes, as the two struggle through their age differences almost as if Peter were 60 and Oliver aged 10. Neither quite able to understand the logic of the other. Its amazing, but obviously true that the 13 years between them might as well be a chasm.

  When Peter explains that he and his boyfriend broke up after 4 years, Oliver finds it rather “awesome,” wanting to know why they broke up.

     Peter refuses to explain except to note that if Oliver ever finds someone with whom he wants to live together, “you should both delete Grindr,” suggesting that either he or his boyfriend had sexual meetings outside of the relationship which either Peter or his boyfriend could not tolerate.      

     Finally realizing that his probing questions of the young boy he’s found on his couch are perhaps out of order and truly meaningless, he sends the boy on his way.

     But after Oliver leaves, he checks him out on Grindr—which Peter has denied he uses—discovering on the meet-up service the boy describes himself as “Sweet Sixteen.” Peter quickly sends him a message: “Hope you have a good morning, Sweet Sixteen.” 

    The film challenges us to ask questions that neither of the men on either side of their generational divide really dare to ask of themselves. Although Peter has begun to challenge Oliver, he hasn’t really managed to reflect back upon himself. And for the young 16-year-old, the elder’s questions seem—as such challenges from their elders generally means for all youth—something basically to be ignored.

     The problem as one ages, even at the still quite young age of 30, is that, as Action puts it in West Side Story, you were never the same age as someone who now claiming to be 17. Each generation knows that their time is only their’s alone and they have to live it in a way only they can and desire to. Nothing stays the same. You can only live in the moment you are in, no matter how much you might desire to go back again and set things straight or help others not to make the same mistakes.

 

Los Angeles, September 21, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).