Anders Helde | You Can Play / 2015

a night to remember

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dennis James Clarke (screenplay, based on a story by Clarke and Anders Helde), Anders Helde (director) You Can Play / 2015 [19 minutes]

 

Star football quarterback Brandon (Kellan Rhude) has everything going for him, including a possible professional football position in Florida. But as a local phenomenon he no longer feels like he’s a person but is a commodity performing for various figures such as Coach Barnes (Cazimir Milostan).

     His best friend, and the boy he secretly loves, his wide receiver, James (Carson Boatman) is literally shoved aside as the press hones in on Brandon. And at a local bar he is shanghaied by an old town veteran who refuses to even let him hook up with James, as James seems to be comfortably making friends with a girl.

     Finally taking James aside Brandon suggests he doesn’t necessarily want to go to Florida. James however makes it clear that he has been given an opportunity to leave the town he calls a “shit hole,” and angrily reminds his friend that everyone on the team would die to have his opportunity.
“Don’t disrespect us.” Even James, it appears, sees his friend as a kind of model, a hero that the entire community can look up to for escaping the world in which they will be left behind.

     In short, it is yet another story about a young man being forced to leave the society and the one he loves for another larger world of responsibilities than even he ever imagined while growing up.

     But the anger in his own friend’s distancing of him has finally boiled over, and the two boys end up in a fight, broken up by the bartend.

     Yet, when they meet outside as friends again, Brandon finally opens up: “Nobody cares about me. Nobody cares what I want.”

     James responds that he was feeling the same way when Brandon walked into the party that evening. And of course, having been pushed aside several times, he certainly might feel that way.

     Brandon asks if his friend wants to go back in and hook up with that girl, James responding, “Liza? No not tonight. There will always be a Liza around, especially in this town.”

     Finally, unable to hold it in any longer, Brandon leans over and kisses a surprised James, immediately regretting it and jumping into the car, curling up in a corner in shame. Instead of bolting, however, James joins him, moving over and kissing his friend back. They both slightly laugh as Brandon drives off with James as his passenger.

     It’s the day of the big game, the coach providing a standard rousing lecture, arguing they have one final test, one last chance to go out there and show everyone. You know the speech preached in locker rooms across the nation, the coach cheering on his team. This coach wants them all to take each other’s hands and feel the power (Brandon and James slightly smiling in joy).

     As the Demon team shouts out and race to the field, Brandon looks around the room, perhaps realizing that this may be the very last time he can truly take in the world from which he had come.

Presumably, he and James have also had a night to remember.

 

Los Angeles, March 14, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).