Bryan Sudfield | Out With A Bang / 2018

false alarm

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robert O’Connor (screenplay), Bryan Sudfield (director) Out With A Bang / 2018 [8.24 minutes]

 

The supposedly happy couple Dwayne and Carter (Aaron Badilla and Jesse Singleton) are lounging in bed when suddenly both get a notice on their phones that an atomic missile is on its way, the end of their world about to occur in an hour and a half.

     Dwayne is suddenly up and desperate to leave, while Carter would rather the two spend their last time together making love. Carter attempts to restrain Dwayne from his desperate attempt to leave until the former is forced to explain that he is love with someone else, a new person he’s been seeing for a couple of months. After finding his keys, he darts out the door in the short time left before the end of their world, perhaps the end of the world as we know it.

    Carter is left behind with no one to help him face his own death.

    For an inexplicable reason, he too rushes out, perhaps in chasse of Dwayne, but finds the car already missing, with their neighbor Donnie (Kofi Donald Gwira), who they have previously described as “their street’s resident bachelor,” sitting in his front lawn, face buried in his hands. He explains his sorrow being is that he has spent his entire time upon his career instead seeking out someone to love.

    Carter invites the hunk to his house suggesting they both can at least face the end together, and Donnie agrees, soon after also taking up Carter’s offer to share his bed.

     We see the two after sex, the ballistic missile about to hit. But suddenly their phones announce it’s all been a false alarm, and Donnie suddenly rises, dresses and wishes Carter well, explaining that he has a proposal to write.

      So once again Carter sits in his home alone; that is until Dwayne reappears. He’s been rejected by his new boyfriend, and they’ve broken up. He begs Carter to just pretend that the last hour or so never happened, to which Carter agrees. However, he can’t resist speaking the truth, that he’s just fucked their handsome neighbor.

     I suppose screenwriter Robert O’Connor and director Bryan Sudfield saw the end of the world as a kind of perfect metaphor for the personal end of one’s love affair, but the comparison is so lame and inappropriate that, frankly, we don’t really care. It’s difficult, in fact, to arose any feelings for Dwayne and Donnie; and although Carter certainly has the best idea of how to spend one’s final moments in life, it’s even impossible to sympathize with someone so nonchalant. At least this trio didn’t rush into the streets and go mad as most such end-of-the-world scenarios portray the final moments of life on earth.

     But this short film is so very absurd, that frankly, even though Carter gets his truly just reward, I didn’t give a damn.

 

Los Angeles, July 25, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).