Josef Steiff | Emerald City / 2024

hitched

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Bobrow (screenplay), Josef Steiff (director) Emerald City / 2024 [21 minutes]

 

Paul (Havon Baraka), a black man, and Rigo (Alan Vazquez), a Mexican-American whose parents were deported when he was a child, meet up on their hitchhiking paths, Rigo to nowhere, Paul apparently to the PCH (the Pacific Coast Highway), actually both made-up stories. In truth Rigo later explains he is following the instructions of the goddess of death, Mictēcacihuātl, to whom he daily prays, and Paul, who left a high-paying New York job, was supposed to meet up with some border guards who, at least through his internet connections, totally understood who he was.

      Of course, they’re on a journey that they don’t even quite know they’re taking to the Emerald City, where various van-dwellers have gathered, and, more importantly, a trip into in each other’s arms and bed.

     At first the two, polar opposites in personality, don’t quite get on. Rigo is silent, secretive, gnomic, self-reflective, and spiritual, while the secular Paul is outgoing, friendly, and feisty—particularly when Rigo criticizes both his method of trying to hitch a ride and the cleanliness of his tent. In short, Rigo immediately sees through Paul and perceives what even his new friend doesn’t realize about himself Paul is not simply seeking an escape from his corporate job, but an escape from his own closeted self, not just sexually but in every other way in which he and the society have done everything they can to wipe away his existence, as if he were an invisible man for the 21st century.

     Despite their differences they hook up, traveling together, finally picked up by Penn (Arasha Lalani), an extremely friendly woman of East Indian heritage, and Steve (Bob Riordan), who, in an attempt to describe the duo, throw out a number of famous pairs (i.e. Tonto and the Long Ranger, Bevis and Butthead) until they finally settle of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Both Rigo and Paul recognize themselves in the latter.

    It is this friendly couple who insist they visit Emerald City, where they finally recognize that the voyage undertaken was actually to find one another, as they slip into Paul’s clean tent to settle down for glorious sex.

      Rigo admits to the guide of his true voyage, and Paul asks if he might go along. But Rigo doubts he can go there just because he has nowhere else to go. Yet as he hooks another ride the next morning, he signals to Paul to join him, and the two carry on together as the notorious couple of the old West. We recognize that his couple are a pair that cannot now ever be severed.

      US director Josef Steiff’s movie is beautifully shot, focusing endlessly on the wistful landscape, the beautiful eyes of Vazquez, and the picturesque stature of the handsome Baraka to create a quite memorable short movie.

 

Los Angeles, December 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).