Joseph Biggerstoff | 17 / 2022

not like the movies

by Douglas Messerli

 

Joseph Biggerstoff (screenwriter and director) 17 / 2022 [10.20 minutes]

 

This short film of about 10 minutes by Joseph Biggerstoff begins on a college campus, with the young unnamed hero Charlie (Matthew Boyd Moore) observing all his fellow students holding hands with girlfriends, one boy begging his forgiveness for accidentally touching his arm as he passes. Charlie is clearly locked of the world of the human sexual touch.

    At home, sharing dinner with his seemingly loving parents, Charlie is moody, refusing to eat, and begs to be allowed to return to his room for a homework assignment he needs to finish. Actually, what Charlie is completing is homework on a meet-up with a man he’s met on the internet. He shows the lower half of his body in his underwear to which the respondent answers “Nice undies. I’d like to see them on my floor tonight?” When the man asks if he’s “got pics,” Charlie, revealing his naiveté and his own internet interests, presumes the man means porno, and demurs “I don’t take nudes.” But all his internet communicator wants is a picture of his face, which he also describes as “adorable.” When he sees a full picture of the man with whom he’s communicating, Charlie can only express his reaction by saying “Wow, you’re hot.”

     They make an appointment to meet up at a local grocery store with his friend driving within an hour. In the meantime, it appears that the young boy is not totally clueless as he follows the internet instructions of a man explaining how to give oneself a douche. Clearly Charles expects to be fucked.

     When they meet—outside a store whose neon sign announces “Fresh Plus,” as if announcing the existence of the boy who is illuminated by its light—the man looks ever better in person, driving the now excited boy to his “new,” basically unfurnished apartment, where he puts on a movie, apparently mostly for the dramatic love music it contains, while the naïve boy says that he’s never seen the movie before, as  if they were about to watch it; the man admits he’s never seen it through before either. Charlie proceeds to ask him if he’s “out,” another sign that the man should have taken special care in handling his young would-be lover.

     But as the music picks up and swells to a crescendo, he falls upon Charlie’s seemingly ready and writhing body as if he were the kind of ready and responder lovers we see in romantic movies.

     In the very next frame, however, they seem to have finished they sexual act, the older man tossing the removed shorts—which indeed are on the floor—to the boy. Back in the car, we observe the boy holding back tears, turning to the man to say “sorry,” the other replying, “That’s fine,” and finally offering up his name, “Tom.” He holds his hand to shake the boy’s hand in reassurance, but Charlie quickly leaves the auto.”

      It appears that the pain of first-time anal intercourse may have been too much for him, or that he himself could not get an erection and ejaculate. Perhaps both occurred. We cannot know what the “sorry” fully expresses nor the impending tears, but clearly the evening has not gone for the young boy as he expected. Even feeling ready and desirous does not necessarily make result in the fulfillment that porno leads one to expect. Sex, at least this time, was not at all like it appears to be in the movies.

      This film reminds me of a strange occasion with one of Howard’s students in our early days of teaching. He called up and invited himself to our place. But when we sat down to talk, he moved ridiculously close to me, clearly seeking some sort of sexual activity. At first I was simply startled, and didn’t quite know what to do with the young man physically rubbing his leg against my thigh. But finally, both Howard and I, realizing that he was desperately seeking sexual activity, took him to our bed, undressed him, and began to caress him. But two males on either side of him, no matter how gently we were treating him, clearly scared him, and he quickly sat up in utter terror. We recognized immediately his fears, and attempted to calm him, assuring him that this is not what sexual activity is all about, that he would surely find the right situation for him. He quickly dressed and left. I don’t know whatever became of him, but this was surely not the right first experience for this young man, even if he had sought it out.

 

Los Angeles, January 3, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2023).