Asher Jelinsky | Miller & Son / 2019

what’s in a name?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Asher Jelinsky (screenwriter, based on a story by Jelinksy and Taylor Townsend, and director) Miller & Son / 2019 [21 minutes]

 

One of the most assured and understated of transexual films ever made, US director Asher Jelinsky’s 2019 film features a young boy working every day with his father as a mechanic. He’s a wizard regarding everything about cars. In his hands destitute old autos turn into wonderfully beautiful machines again, cars that won’t start, reignite like magic given his skills. His father (Ryan Cutrona) is close to him, in fact quite dependent on his son for his business. Even when his father’s computer acts up, Ryan (Jesse James Keitel) easily solves the problem.

      But by night, at a local club, Ryan becomes someone else, a woman in high heels, dress, and earrings who is trying to come to terms with his/her real identity, a dancer who hangs out with transsexual women and who, cornered in an alley, together scare off the drunken homophobes they encounter. The only problem is that one of the drunken figures in the group is Grant (Travis Hammer), a co-worker in his father’s garage. 

     Ryan scurries back to his car, reappearing as the handsome young man he appears to be each day in his father’s garage. But this time, it’s different. Travis clearly is ready to share his homophobic outrage with Ryan’s father, and finally after a long day in which Ryan brings several cars back into service, he does so.

    The final last long scene, in which the father finally fires Grant, consists of a long remove from his son, who tries to make clear that he loves his father before he blandly attempts to escape him with a simple statement: “I’ll see you tomorrow.

     After a long pause and a lot of internet research, his father finally is able to return a quiet message of acceptance as his own return, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” the camera panning back to show the name of the company in which he works: “Miller & Son.”

     Their worlds may be absolutely opposed, but their dependence upon each other and their deep love rules the cruel world of bigots. In this case if you have to ask what’s in a name, it is everything.

      This lovely short film, was the winner of several awards and a popular film in gay film circuit.

 

Los Angeles, March 20, 2025 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema Blog (March 2025).