Adam Salky | The Dare Project / 2018

the last real kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Brind (screenplay), Adam Salky (director) The Dare Project / 2018 [34.26 minutes]

 

Salky’s film was not only well-directed and excellently shot with brightly hued colors by cinematographer Rick Siegel, but through David Brind’s script offered its millennial audiences something they related to, a good-looking gay hero who, only mildly bullied, was able to break through his sense of outsiderness, if only briefly, to spar with, challenge, and even initiate sex with the most popular, rich boy school jock, an act that had indeed come to define such fulfilling early “coming out” films such as British director Simon Shore’s Get Real (1998).

      In fact, this short film became so very popular that the director and writer were encouraged to do a short sequel, released with the first film, in 2018, titled The Dare Project, which featuring the same cast members brought them again into contact in the thirteen years since their first encounter.

     Unfortunately, although both actors have kept quite trim bodies and in Fleming’s case has developed into an even more handsome Ben, the new screenplay has not dated as well. We don’t know what Ben now does for a living, only that invited by a company head, Rob (West Liang) to Los Angeles with hopes of joining his “team,” probably something to do with filmmaking. After all Ben might now be a brilliant lighting director. But we do know he is openly gay, inviting in a Grindr or some other app’s hookup to his hotel room.

      At the party Rob gives for him, he runs into Johnny after all of these years, this time not a major player in the hierarchy, but only invited to the event as the fiancé of Samantha (Rachele Schank), a friend of Rob’s wife. White Ben is apparently quite successful, at least important enough that a wealthy man, once again with a full-sized pool attached to his moderne-style house, this time throwing a party in his honor, Johnny, as he puts it, is “between jobs,” and clearly not very happy about it.

      This time it is Johnny who seems somewhat more interested in Ben than the other way around, particularly after denigrating his own body, when Ben assures him that he still looks good and that he has “something special about him.” But this time when Johnny sits down on a chaise lounge and, as in days long gone, removes his shirt, Ben imagines that the straight guy is flirting with him, as opposed to the past. And we can only wonder whether that may be true when Johnny sends his girlfriend off so that he might stay at the party and further talk with Ben.

      But Johnny’s conversation does not revolve around “dares” as much as it does about regrets, and one gets the feeling that his probing about Ben and his gay life has less to do with sexuality than with an attempt to comprehend where he went wrong in his own life.

       An outsider might possibly suggest that Johnny is still not being honest with himself, that he is still a kind of poseur, pretending to be exclusively heterosexual when he may be at least bisexual if not gay. But there is something different about the challenges he arouses in Ben, a deep desire to know not only where he has gone wrong but why his life is so pedestrian, the complaint so often of schoolyard princes, who ruled their insular kingdoms at 17 only to discover no one was there to support their reigns outside the school parking lot. Their “act” was only embodied in their flesh.

       Ben manages to make a few shallow dares* but seems only vaguely interested, having become more prickly, even self-satisfied despite what we discover through his own words has been an empty life since he has never been to find someone special to love. After only a few moments of conversation, it becomes clear that Johnny is no longer a possible candidate, and although he is still curious, the magic between them has dissipated even while they try awkwardly to conjure up once more that special evening back in high school.

       Moreover, their chance at reacquaintance is interrupted by Rob’s attempt to provide everything that might lure Ben to Los Angeles, in this case a true hunk of a man, Justin (Adam Hagenbuch), a part time actor and a full-time beauty who’s been sent into the pool obviously to warm up the waters for Ben. For a moment, Ben can’t believe his eyes, wondering if muscular apparition is even real, but when the male model truly comes on to him, he can only whimper “What makes you think I want to go to bed with you,” beauty answering something to the effect that he has seen himself in a mirror.     

     Ben takes a piss break to seek out Johnny before he leaves, discovering him in midst of another leave-taking. They resume their impossible conversation, with Johnny finally breaking the ice a little further by asking Ben if he could change anything from the past, what might it be. Ben replies, “I guess I’d start with a kiss instead of a blow-job.” Johnny reminds him that he did get a kiss, Ben arguing that he actually didn’t: it was just a joke, a play kiss. Suddenly Johnny seals that past with a real kiss, a long full kiss instead of simply a smile, and a standardly polite invitation to look him up next time Ben’s in town.

       Ben has no other choice but to return to his friend ordered-up from the Hollywood stable as they begin to fall into the empty chat preceding what we imagine will be another pleasant evening in the sack for Ben. But neither of these men, it is quite apparent, can truly “get” satisfaction. At least this time there’s the possibility that Ben may stay in town and even take up Johnny’s “dare”— but for what purpose we cannot quite imagine except to quell our curiosity whether the kiss will actually be followed up with serious sex, an uninterrupted blow job. 

Los Angeles, June 3, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2022).