Paul Hasick | Not Alone: A Hallowe’en Romance / 1995

the real thing

by Douglas Messerli

 

Paul Hasick (screenwriter and director) Not Alone: A Hallowe’en Romance / 1995

 

Canadian director Paul Hasick’s 1995, 26-minute short Not Alone: A Hallowe’en Romance engages us in a slightly misleading manner. Given the film’s titular hint that the subject of film has something to do with the day of ghouls and goblins, along with the fascination the leading male, Scott (Michael Donald) has for pumpkins and an odd introductory scene in which he is lying in bed alone when suddenly we hear an invisible voice asking whether he wants some mushroom soup, a bowl of which suddenly appears on the stairway newel post, we are led to suspect that Scott’s gay nighttime visitor may not be the “real thing.”

      Scott, who works as a hospital lab technician now working on urination samples but hoping that he can eventually be involved with AIDS testing, lives with a lesbian roommate, Gwen (Elizabeth Foulds), who’s a painter. And the next morning when the two finally join up to discuss their daily schedules which include plans to attend a protest march for gay bashing that evening, she describes the woman whom with she slept the previous night, but notes that she hadn’t heard Scott bring back the boy with whom he’s apparently had sex, a fact she intuits by his sudden determination, among his daily duties, to take his sheets to the local laundromat.

      Indeed Scott refuses to say much little his late-night date except to recount the mushroom soup event, which occurred evidently after their “perfect” sexual encounter, the stranger’s immediately-after-sex comment cited as a reason why he won’t being seeing his beautiful visitor again. 

       Gwen hints, however, that his reaction is typical. Every male he finds truly attractive immediately becomes further evidence of why he cannot find the someone he is looking for in his search for a long-term relationship. One might suggest that Scott has serious problems with his self-esteem, since he is also quite attractive in a “Teddy-bearish” kind of way. And Gwen hints that his problem in not finding the man of his dreams is because every time such a man shows up he appears to him to be unattainable.

      But clearly Scott’s night-visitor, real or imagined, has become a kind of obsession, as soon after, in brief glimpses we see the stunningly beautiful “ghost” completely naked. At another point we watch the couple engaging in sex, noting the night time visitor’s tattoos which from time to time appears upon the palm of Scott’s hand—another reason we begin to suspect that this “perfect” sex partner was a holiday hallucination.

       As the roommates, Gwen and Scott take to the Toronto streets, stopping for a moment by the famed This Ain’t the Rosedale Library bookstore at its then-location in the Church and Wellesley LGBTQ neighborhood before they reach the laundromat, Gwen posts another of her designed posters for that evening’s event at the bookstore, as they also note a message of hate to “fags” scrawled on a nearby wall.   

     Along their route we gather threads of information about each of them, in particular about how Gwen quite openly seeks out regular sexual partners, while Scott always finds a reason to come home alone or, as we have suggested, can’t believe anyone who might join him for sex could be interested in serious relationship.

       We also witness a phone message conversation in which Scott’s mysterious man of the previous night, Greg (Giovanni Smaldino) so enjoyed the experience that he wonders if he might meet with him again that evening, Scott having told him that he had to work during the day—yet another of Scott’s dodges from the “perfect” men of his life.

       At least now we have the reality of the beauty from the night before confirmed, or do we? In the grocery store Scott becomes so completely enticed by a small-sized pumpkin, literally stroking it’s plump belly and its erect “hat,” which along with a splice in the film of someone feasting on several gourds like Bacchus, we again wonder whether or not the voice of Greg is real or not.

     His non-existence seems to be confirmed when Scott returns home to find Gwen painting, with no suggestion that he’s had a telephone message. He excuses himself to shower, while Gwen begins the meal, the viewers noting that he has indeed purchased the small pumpkin by which he had been so enticed.

       He returns downstairs to find the movie that he planned for after dinner, Pillow Talk, already playing and, more importantly, that they have a guest for dinner, Greg. Gwen has, apparently, intercepted the message, called him back, and invited Scott’s sex partner over for the evening. If at first Scott is totally annoyed by the now very real-life being reentering his everyday reality, as he begins to observe Greg’s demeanor—his seemingly real interest in Scott’s career, his acceptance of him even when he admits that he’s lied about having to work, and finally, when he discovers that Greg also been one of the few attendees at last year’s Hallowe’en evening march—Scott falls in love with the guest of last evening all over again. The romance of the evening, we can now be assured, will not all be a ghostly affair but a night made up of very real flesh and bones.

      As the trio leaves to join others in the anti-hate protest, we observe Gwen grabbing up a carton of eggs, just in case she needs help in responding to the expected bashers. But we recognize her more for being the necessary medium for love. As the characters in Richard Quine’s 1958 romantic fantasy Bell, Book, and Candle about the whirlwind relationship between a witch and regular human being, perhaps love has always something to do with magic.

      Certainly it’s a far better philosophy than what Rock Hudson’s character expressed  presumably about heterosexual relationships in the 1959 film Pillow Talk, which serves as this film’s introductory epigram: “Why does any man destroy himself. Because he thinks he’s getting married!” Finding Greg, Scott seems to discover that he no longer needs to become a ghost to find lasting love.

 

Los Angeles, April 11, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2022).