Joshua Kellerman | Be Gay Tomorrow / 2022

blaming hannah

by Douglas Messerli

 

Joshua Kellerman (screenwriter and director) Be Gay Tomorrow / 2022 [13 minutes]

 

I might almost have included this short dramatic comedy in my grouping of short films I discussed under the rubric of “Family Secrets,” for there is most certainly a couple of secrets that this family has long been attempting to keep from one another.

      As the parents Mary (Stephany Hitchcock) and Frank (Bret Bailey) arrive for Thanksgiving dinner at their recently divorced daughter Hannah’s (Allie McCulloch) new small apartment everything seems to be going wrong. While running out to the grocery store to get a few more items, she has put her eldest son, Allen (Josh Rosenzweig) in charge of listening for the timer so that he might turn the oven off; but as with so many high school boys, he has retreated to his room and his cellphone, while the turkey overcooks and begins to send smoke across the kitchen and into the living room, setting off the fire alarm.

      Hannah arrives just in time to air out the kitchen, turn off the fire alarm, and find her son squirreled away in his room before she sets into scaping off some of the burned parts before her mother calls to tell them they’ll be there in 40 minutes.

      Although she tries to get her younger daughter Nikki (Kealani Petito) to help out, she too is busy with a phone call.

      The final frustration comes when she attempts to get Allen to take down all his gay paraphernalia from his bedroom walls, which he refuses to do, announcing he intends to come out to his grandparents at Thanksgiving dinner.

      Although Hannah seems totally accepting of her son, she demands that he say nothing, and return to his gay life the day after Thanksgiving, hence writer/director Joshua Kellerman’s short film’s title. We, and evidently, her son cannot seem to comprehend why she is so absolutely insistent that he not bring up issue with her parents. After all, he argues these days it not such a big thing.

       But when we finally meet her outward loving parents we soon perceive just why she is nervous. Her father Frank is the kind of grandfather who thinks wrestling with his grandson, far too old now for his playful gestures, is the best thing he might do in order to reintroduce some normative male presence into his life, that and constantly asking him about his girlfriends, the grandmother assuring him that he is handsome enough to get any girl. At one point Allen is so upset with his grandfather’s behavior that he almost announces his gayness despite the constant attempts Hannah makes in interrupt him, calling for more potatoes, gravy, etc, and staring him down in anger and terror.

       Even worse is Hannah’s mother, again seeming to be a caring worried woman, but who we soon discover is constantly comparing Hannah with her successful sister (she has just purchased a Pomeranian) and attempting to prod Hannah to call up her ex-husband to see if he might join them, despite the fact that Hannah reminds her that there is a court-order that they cannot talk to one another. Obviously her husband has been abusive, but for the ever-intruding, passively scolding mother that seems of little matter, since she argues that she should have a man in her life to give her children a much-needed father figure.

      Hannah meets her constant intrusions into the new life she has been trying to build for herself and her children with some justified anger, but that does nothing to stop them, and she is finally forced to take out a few moments in the bathroom just to collect her wits.

      In her absence, however, Grandmother Mary begs Allen to tell her what is the matter, why he is not eating and what is bothering him, attempting to convince just to whisper the problem in her ear; at the moment he finally does, the lights go out. Hannah has not paid the electricity bill.

      With the lantern lit, the grandfather plays a game with the youngest boy, Danny (Townsend Fallica) while Hannah attempts to get on line to pay the bill and return the lights. But her credit card is declined, and her father is forced to hand over his card to her so that she can return the fiasco to some sense of normalcy.

      When the lights do return, her mother now shows her real aggressiveness and interfering tendencies, suggesting she cannot comprehend why Hannah is upset with them, when it is she who has fouled up, admitting that she now knows Allen is gay, surely caused, she argues—typically but mistakenly—by his not having a father figure around the house. It is Hannah, she insists, who is blame for everything. Indeed, blaming Hannah seems to be their favorite family game.

       Finally, Hannah has had enough and orders her own parents out of her house several times as they complain they are only there to help. Hannah finally makes it clear also that perhaps her own parents’ relationship is not very splendid, particularly given the number of beers Frank has consumed during the disastrous meal.

   They leave, Hannah’s daughter suggesting that the entire event was a “real fuck up,” while Allen comes to stand next to his mother in support, as if to reassure her that she has been a good mother and has done the best she could given the circumstances.

       Later, the entire family sits on the couch, eating popcorn, happy once more to be alone without the intruding judgments of others. They are all free once more to happily be who they are.

       Although, one wishes that Allen had been a little smarter about it all and explained to them outright that his being gay had little to do with having no father, but is probably inborn, and if triggered by anything perhaps might be linked to how his father treated his mother previously. But young teen gay boys do not yet necessarily have such wisdom. And Kellerman’s work, although a bit hysteric, is probably fairly near to the truth in some dysfunctional families. If there is any major criticism about this short MLA work he did at Columbia University, I’d argue it is a bit too close to being a Neil Simon comedy such as The Goodbye Girl. But then that’s one of favorite Simon plays and films.

 

Los Angeles, December 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).