by Douglas Messerli
Alexandria Lane (screenwriter and director) Hot
Sheet Motel / 2024 [12 minutes]
An elderly semi-truck driver, Merle (Ned Van Zandt)
hauling what looks to be large container of oil or natural gas, finishes eating
his carry-out Chinese meal, pulling out a fortune from a cookie: “You want it?
Take it.” He decides to call it a day, pulling off into cheap trucker motel.
The
crude bar with a few scruffy drivers, a straight couple, a single pool player,
and a young bartender (Jon Edward Cook) who doesn’t seem too happy with his job
is all the place has to offer. Not even a shot of whiskey is available.
Yet there sits a long-haired driver, Ed (Ed
Hattaway), about the same age as Merle. His face lights up when Merle enters,
obviously a long-time acquaintance who he’s run into along his routes several
times over the years.
The two
begin chatting, not about anything important. The last time they saw one
another was El Paso, about a year before, as Ed declares, “The worst food on
the planet.” As Merle orders up a beer, Ed comments, “You want it, take it,”
echoing Merle’s Chinese fortune cookie message, as they toast to “New beginnings.”
Merle wonders what a new beginning might be
for him, Ed suggesting retirement. “Why you’re old enough to be somebody’s
grandpa.”
In what
we begin to perceive is a deeply coded language, Merle answers: “I ain’t nobody’s
grandpa,” Ed assuring him that he believes it. No woman would want him.
They
proceed to tell each other what you might describe as fantasy tales, made-up
stories about haunted houses, and a piano player who keeps appearing in Ed’s
dreams, and a disappearing bar owner in Merle’s tale. Both are stories of empty
and haunted lives, imaginary tales—screenwriter and director Alexandria Lane
herself describes them—by “cowboys who know what’s expected of them in their
lonely, isolated life.” Yet, for one night, she queries, what if life could be just
a little bit different?
Carefully, touching one another from time to time, moving their knees
just a little closer, they clearly reveal that they both would love to “take it”
for just one night.
But
these men, living and working in the deep south, know they need to remain
closeted for their own protection. When Ed asks what Merle’s last name is, he
won’t even tell him.
The men,
who in their gentle conversation, have perhaps grown too personal even in their
impersonal bar talk, decide head off to their rooms on different levels of the
motel. Even if they might “want it,” neither can offer it, let alone “take it.”
Well,
not quite. We see Merle pull out the Gideon Bible that appears in hundreds of
such drab US hotel rooms. He rips out one of his pages, and in the morning
slips the paper under Ed’s door. It reads Merle Dunlap, his full name. Ed
chuckles. Perhaps next time they can truly get to know each other better.
Los Angeles, October 16, 2024
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2024).
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