Gregor Schmidinger | The Boy Next Door / 2008

forbidden domain

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gregor Schmidinger (screenwriter and director) The Boy Next Door / 2008 [13.59 minutes]

 

A businessman, Mr. Brown (Damon Preston) on the road, sitting in his motel room is watching TV, interreacting to what appears to be a talk show interview, furious at the actor’s statements since, apparently, he is her agent. He seems nervous, ready to pounce, monstrous in his anger and obvious frustrations. What we soon also discover is that he has been waiting for his favorite male prostitute, a beautiful young man, Mark (Michael Ellison) who knocks on the door and receives a kiss and a kind of quick down payment in a wad of bills upon arrival

     A moment later, however, Mr. Brown receives a phone call, an emergency having occurred regarding one of his clients. He tells his trick to make himself at home, that he’ll be back in a short while, and leaves.

     Mark is also wound up, evidently in need of more pills to calm his anxiety, but as we have heard in his hallway phone call, the pills are expensive—perhaps the very reason why he has sold his body to the visiting agent. Clearly he is uncomfortable, if not inexperienced, with the whole thing. He takes off his shirt, finally his pants, and sits on the bed to wait.

    But something unexpected happens. A preteen boy, Justin (Truman Chambers) has just entered the room wondering where his father is. When asked why he is there, the stranger answers, oddly given the fact that he is dressed only in his briefs, “I have a business meeting with your daddy.”

     Mark suggests he go back to bed, but the boy insists he can’t. There’s a monster under his bed. There are no such things as monsters, answers the slightly irritated and now even more nervous call-boy. “That’s what my daddy says,” Justin responds, “but there are monsters.” “And why are you naked?”

     The question says everything, suggesting both the absurdity of the situation and the potential danger both the boy and the man face in their contact with one another.

     But if it hasn’t already struck us, we can only now be fairly shocked by the fact that the agent has gone away on business without even checking in on his son in the next room or even bothered to find someone, in his absence, to look after him.

      “Monsters exist, really,” the child again insists.

    And even the half-naked Mark has to agree, “Maybe you’re right.” Clearly there is something monstrous about a man leaving his child alone without protection.

      Inevitably, the job now falls upon the visitor as he puts back on his t-shirt and suggests the boy might want to play a video game with him, Justin immediately ready for challenge, jumping into the bed with anticipation of an adult actually paying attention to him.

      They quickly graduate to more imaginative bed-bound games, one frame showing their heads rising from behind a pile of pillows like indians or perhaps western cowboys shooting the intruders dead.

      Soon we see them both asleep on different sides of the bed, but when the boy whimpers out of fear in his sleep, the elder slips his arm around the boy’s small body.

     At this very moment the father returns, somewhat startled by what he observes. Yet, his anger is not aimed at his boyfriend but at his son, of whom he speaks almost always in the third person, using in an odd locution: “He knows exactly he’s not supposed to be in here.” Why, we can only wonder, does the boy know “exactly” or even “precisely” except if speaking is stressing the fact of the degree of his “knowing,” hinting, it seems to me, that the child has been previously punished for having entered the forbidden domain—and almost making it quite apparent that the kid is locked up in his motel room with nowhere else to go for the days and nights of their visit. The father summarily dismisses the child, turning to his lover to chide him, “I don’t pay you to be my son’s friend. I pay you to be mine.”

   As the father moves into a deep kiss with his paid lover, the younger man at first accepts the introductory sex move as inevitable, the boy watching through the open door.

    Suddenly, the prostitute pushes his john away, the man astounded by the action, demanding what right he thinks he has for his behavior. Our young “hero” throws the money he received upon the bureau and leaves, pausing outside the door in breathless amazement and some terror for his behavior.

      The child joins him in the hall, standing near to the anxiety-stricken young man who slides down to sit on the floor for a moment in contemplation.

     The child moves closer, holding out something to him: “I’ve got 25 dollars. You wanna be my friend?”

       The action is shocking because we now know the boy has learned that to find love or even someone just to pay attention to you, it has to be purchased.

        But the suddenly wiser Mark resolves the situation by saying, “I’m already your friend.”

        Like the young boy in George Stevens’ Shane the boy cries out, “Please don’t go.”

        The man stands, bending down to the child and hugs him, “You already killed a monster tonight. You know how to do it.”

        The ending lines are a bit disingenuous since it is he who has killed the monster by tossing away his dependencies on both pills and prostitution. But the child has only learned it by reaching out to another human being, something which we doubt he will have the opportunity to do again in the near future. Or, perhaps, he may reach out to someone less pure in his response.

        What is clear is that the secrets the father has been attempting to keep, that he has a son in the next room and that he is meeting up with young males to find love have been exposed. How he will react in the future given the knowledge that such lies no longer will protect him from the consequences is unknowable. When we last see him alone in his room he seems troubled, but that also appears to be his natural condition. Whether or not he will openly embrace his responsibilities as a father and accept truth of his empty sexual life is something we can only ponder.

         This excellent short film was produced by the Bowling Green State University, presumably in conjunction with their film program, representing once again just how important university and college based film programs have become to LGBTQ cinema and to the development of young gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender filmmakers. This is certainly one of the most compelling short dramas of 2008.

 

Los Angeles, September 12, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2021).