Broderick Fox | Love, Death, & Cars / 1999

BEST FRIENDS

by Douglas Messerli

 

Broderick Fox (screenwriter and director) Love, Death, & Cars / 1999

 

This short film begins with Max (John Fairlie) and Haley (Michelle Beauchamp) arriving late to Max’s friend Kyle’s (Larry Sullivan) book reading in Los Angeles. Indeed, he’s already finished, promising to read only one more short work, not really a poem or a story, but a kind of brief memory of his and a friend’s trip to the Grand Canyon, a journey never completed, but during which he discovered what love was.

       Kyle is delighted to see Max, who introduces him to Haley, who Kyle discovers—evidently for the first time—is Max’s companion. A dark tension immediately is expressed about their relationship, with Max, evidently surprised by the short work, telling Kyle to leave his life out of his writing, Kyle arguing that it was also his life.

       What we already suspect, with the help of quick images of flashbacks of the two beautiful boys, the hot golden sun, and Max’s red Cadillac Le Mans is that on that Grand Canyon trip, as they later describe it, is that Max kissed Kyle: “we screwed around and everything’s been screwed up since.”

       We immediately grasp that Kyle, who moved off to New York, is gay, and Max, despite his loving relationship with Haley, is now a medical doctor, still having difficulties regarding his gay and bisexual feelings.

        What this reunion accomplishes by the bringing of the two back together, is that Haley, incognizant of their previous relationship, invites Kyle to stay with them. Quickly, however, she figures out what his bothering her lover and insists that he take up Kyle’s suggestion to make the trip they never accomplished to the Grand Canyon.

        Kyle evidently has an interview regarding his new book on a local TV station, and Max, now a photographer, is opening a new show. But in the midst of the opening, Max gets a call: Kyle has passed out on the air. He rushes to the hospital to find Kyle basically all right; yet he tells him his previous cancer has returned and he doesn’t have long to live, the reason evidently for his return to Los Angeles and his visit to Max.

        The trip to the Grand Canyon, obviously, must be repeated if the two are to sort out their emotional and sexual problems. But Max is still terrified that he might lose Haley in the process.

         What Broderick Fox’s well-directed short makes clear is that Max has indeed loved Kyle from their high school days, comparing every woman he meets with his friend. Yet when he met Haley he felt truly comfortable with her and in love, a sign I might suggest of his true bisexuality, but a situation not fully explored—if often assumed—in those earlier days of LGBTQ cinema. When he finally admits his love, but demands of Kyle to tell him what he wants of him, the solution suddenly appears to be quite simple. Kyle simply wants his continued friendship. They once again turn away from their destination both returning to the doctors in their lives, having finally been able to lay their fears to rest. They can remain best friends without sexuality being the central issue. And Max, perhaps, can finally recognize and admit to Haley his bisexuality and his love for her.

        I find this film one of the most honest portrayals of bisexuality I’ve seen. Too bad, however, that the gay boy has to once more get sick, with death on the horizon. Couldn’t they have come to terms with these issues without killing off another queer?

 

Los Angeles, August 29, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).