Jamison Rockmore (as Jamison Karon) | Sorry You're Sad / 2016

dirge for a life of fun and love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jamison Rockmore (as Jamison Karon) (screenwriter and director) Sorry You're Sad / 2016 [17 minutes]

 

Julian (Jamison Rockmore as Jamison Karon) and Lenox (Zach Gillette) have been a quite happy couple in Los Angeles, until Lenox has gone away to Colorado for law school, leaving Julian behind and taking up, at least for a while with a new lover.

    In the meantime, Julian’s life has been thrown out of whack, wherein the once ambitious celebrity chef is now serving breakfasts naked, except for a front chef’s apron, to older gay men.

     Julian’s best friends are now a sassy black woman named Milkshake (Bri Giger) and a Hispanic woman, Karla (Almarie Guerra), who waxes men’s asses and encourages her friend to marry his dreamboat immediately.

     Today, however, is different, as Lenox is back in town and has called him up, this time as a “friend,” to go out to dinner. White the women insist that Julian attempt to reignite their relationship, Julian perceives the difficulties, and the film itself becomes a melancholy dirge to the end of not only a possibility of returning to the past, but to the closure of their friendship.

     Both men express unhappiness for the end of their relationship, recalling how wonderful their sex life was, and how much they enjoyed each other’s company. But Lenox isn’t able to find a table at the restaurant Julian has suggested, and they walk to the nearest taco stand instead, finally ending up at an utterly boring “hipster” party where the two flirt, dance, and try hard to restart what is clearly over, Lenox finally engaged with another young handsome partygoer.

    Julian moodily escapes the party, and the two have sex nearly in Lenox’s truck. But it now is also clear that Lenox’s life has been reclaimed by his wealthy father, as he admits that upon graduation he has a job offer in Denver and that his father has bought a house for him in that city, having always wanted a Denver property. We can imagine now how Lenox will be forced to marry some socialite, settle down, have children, and lie to himself about his wild past; or, at the very least, how his life will return to a discrete and somewhat closeted existence. Lenox admits that he has already pulled away from the new lover he found in Colorado; and Julian has no room in his world anymore, and the cute former lover knows it.

     He invites Lenox back the party, but he demurs, as Julian walks home along the Pacific Ocean near the Santa Monica pier. He finally strips off his clothes and gets lost into the ocean waves, a symbolic cleansing of himself and death for what he knows he can longer have.

     Without being obvious about its subject, this is a story about a love affair that has been destroyed by class values and the parental pulls of a father determined to have his son rejoin the proper social world of his own values. Not only would Julian never fit into the new world Lenox has had created, but Lenox would no longer be able to endure the sexual and racial differences that Julian’s life would impose upon him.

      Although Lenox expresses his sorrow about Julian’s sadness, it is actually Lenox’s own sadness that is so very apparent; in order to continue with his structured life, he has been forced to give up all the laughter and campy nonsense that Julian embodies. The fun is entirely over for Lenox, just as love has walked out of Julian’s world.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).