Micah Stuart | For Years to Come / 2023

untold stories

by Douglas Messerli

 

James Patrick Nelson (screenplay), Micah Stuart (director) For Years to Come / 2023 [27 minutes]

 

Johnny (James Patrick Nelson) is sitting on the front porch of his home, exhausted from the crying “actresses,” (his mother had evidently been an actress) fawning relatives, and others who have attended his mother’s funeral memorial in his father’s home. Having given up his sublet in Brooklyn in order to return home for his mother’s last days as she lay dying of cancer, he now can’t wait until everyone leaves. Nor, for that matter, can his father (played by Veteran TV actor Richard Riehle).

     Two of his own friends bring him a plate of tatters and matzah, evidently the male being someone with whom Johnny once had a gay relationship, but who now seems to be with a female who plans to “peg” (meaning to fuck her companion with a strapped-on dildo) Johnny’s male friend, perhaps that very afternoon. Here was a couple I wanted to get to know more about. You are these friends? Were they originally a gay and lesbian duo who fell in love?

     When he finally returns to the house to find his father puttering around, he also encounters one straggler, his mother’s hospice nurse, Edward (Jason Wayne Wong). Edward soon leaves, but not before handing Johnny his card in case he or his father need any further information or help, both Johnny and his father characterizing him as attractive, the son describing him as “kind of hot.”

      Johnny and his father, it is clear, have never been close, although inexplicably he has told his father that he is gay, but kept the fact from his mother, and he wishes he had shared the information with her, asking his dad if she knew. The question remains unanswered.

      Moreover, when he told his father, the elder’s only response seems to have been that he should be “Will instead of Jack,” referencing the TV series Will & Grace where Jack “was the really queeny effeminate one,” while Will “was the more straight acting one.” Obviously, this is a family who watches a lot movies and television.

      But when Johnny attempts to get to know his father better, wondering what he did each day when Johnny’s mother went off the work, his dad provides only a vague answer. All we know is that he seems to be some sort of writer.

       When the conversation turns to his mother’s final condition, however, and Johnny attempts to know why she didn’t see a doctor earlier, the father describes the fact that she didn’t want to see a doctor and besides they cost a lot of money, which the family didn’t evidently have since they paid Johnny’s own hospital bill (earlier he describes himself as nearly dying, but now is find if he injects himself with a shot every so often, he’s fine; presumably that suggest diabetes).

        Hurt by what he feels is an accusation that he was, in part, responsible for his mother’s death, Jack leaves the house for a short walk and a lot of thinking. What will his father do now, he surely wonders, and how will he return to his own life?

        The next day he does follow through with a call to the hospice nurse, the two getting on very nicely, as the nurse admits that Johnny’s mother actually wanted them to get together (he signifies a sexual relationship by linking his fingers), and indeed that begins to happen that very later evening, as they kiss, both admitting to having enjoyed one another’s company.

        Returning home, Johnny discovers his father still up with his laptop in front of him, and when Johnny leaves the room, the elder opens it up again. What we quickly discern is that Johnny’s father is a porn writer, at work on a porn story or script.

        The short work of 27 minutes is filled with what one might describe as the beginning of a story or stories that we might like to hear, and we have no choice but to imagine various further intrigues between Johnny and Edward, and both men and his secretive father, discovering perhaps that they all have severely misjudged one another.

       It helps to know that Nelson wrote this “film” as a TV pilot, hoping it might get picked up as a series. The work, in fact, has that feeling about it, with all sorts of tendrils and roots already sprouting from a seedling that hasn’t fully developed into a full plant. Certainly, given the excellent acting of the pilot, and the titillating possibilities of blending porn and a traditional love story, this might have made for an excellent series. All we have, alas, is the outline for imagined continuations.

      Rob Watson in the Los Angeles Blade, nonetheless, liked the first episode enough to write:

 

“If you’ve ever laughed through your tears—or cried during a kiss—For Years to Come is the kind of film that knows exactly how you feel.

     This 27-minute gem isn’t just another coming-out tale or quirky indie. Instead, it’s a heartfelt, sharply written slice of queer cinema that blends grief, humor, and romance without ever feeling forced.”

 

      To me, it sounded a little too much like a TV series, while I might have enjoyed a “quirky indie.”

 

Los Angeles, July 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).