Dominic Haxton and David Rosler | Teens Like Phil / 2012

the uncle dying in the woods

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dominic Haxton and Cherise Pascaul (screenplay, based on the original story by David Rosler), Dominic Haxton and David Rosler (directors) Teens Like Phil / 2012 [20 minutes]

 

This work begins with a young handsome teen, Phil (Adam Donovan) in bed listening to what now seems to be a totally fatuous and inappropriate message from the hippie-Zen British speaking guru of Berkeley Alan Watts speaking via radio station KPFA to a young man whose life is centered around the body: “The physical world is transient. It falls apart. And bodies that were once strong, smooth, and lovely in youth begin to wither, become corrupt and turn at last into skeletons.”

     Phil, utterly ignores him and begins his morning exercises. But as Watts talks about St. Paul’s beating his body into submission, all Phil can recall is another recent instance when his former friend, Adam (Jake Robbins) intruded into the shower to beat him.

     Phil is a terribly bullied student who seems to have no way out of the relationship he once prized with Adam, now transformed into an ugly event given Adam’s own sense of sexual fear and guilt. Since Adam himself is faced with his school friends teasing him for Phil being his BBF (best boyfriend) he tags Phil’s locker with the word “Fag” and goes out of his way to daily torture him, at one point grabbing, blindfolding, and forcing him under the shower in front of the other boys.

      One teacher (Virginia Bartholomew) is already aware that her best student seems to be having problems and perceives from his essays that it’s obvious that he’s struggling to come to terms with his sexuality; and she meets with the school Principal (Domenica Galati) in order to encourage a counseling session. But it’s clear, as in so many situations of the day, that the Principal is resisting making such an arrangement formal.

      Asked by his teacher to write a Janus-like report on how the past effects the future, Phil goes back into his earliest days with then friend Adam. The two boys out the woods encounter Phil’s uncle Mike (Ken Burmeister), a large framed older man who seems passed out on the forest floor for most the movie until he suddenly appears to be dead. He is a source for the teenagers for weed, but also for a stranger entertainment. Mike, apparently, is a gay man who still has a pack of photos of friends from his younger gay days which intrigue Phil and Adam, particularly since some of them are nude males. Adam seems to be open-minded about it, suggesting it’s just who you fall in love with, and together the boys share their first sexual experiences, with Adam suddenly kissing Phil, the latter of whom seems utterly startled by the event.

      Presumably it is the subject of his classroom essay, the teacher stopping by to check whether he’s given more thought to the meeting with others she’s arranged. But embarrassments continue. Now that boys’ relationship has utterly changed, his mother who hasn’t comprehended the alteration, attempts to offer Adam a ride home, Phil trying to make clear to her he’s longer a friend. Adam makes up an excuse that his brother is coming soon to pick him up.

       In contemplation of events, Phil goes out into the woods again to recounter his once more drunken and nearly dying uncle. At dinner his parents are insistent upon knowing where’s been and why he is late, creating further tension for the young man. Phil does not comprehend why his parents can’t take care of him, but their reasons too reek of homophobia. And Phil realizes it, perceiving the man was yet another example of Watts’ assertion that we “are all always falling apart, under decay.”

    The very thing which as a young man Phil is most aware of, his own body, seems to berated now by all those around him, a distant radio voice of KPFA Berkeley, the example of his own uncle, the torture he must now endure from a former friend, and his own parents who can’t be bothered by an old, decaying gay man like his mother’s brother.

      We witness other events between the two boys, far more deeply sexual, one in which after jumping upon Adam laying on the bed, Phil is called a bitch, his lips painted red with lipstick by Adam, his mother entering his room to discover the scene.

     We now hear the pompous Watts announcing that sexuality is what you can’t get rid of. “Do what you may, life is sexual.” If the body is of no importance, is constant decay, a young boy like Phil might ask, what is sexuality all about? Why do we have desires for the beautiful body that won’t exist for long, just like his brief “gay” relationship with Adam, if there can be no consummation, no growing into what that sexuality might mean?

     Why is a young man like Phil not only confused but frightened of attempting to even try to resolve the mess that has ended with Adam attempting to dissolve any sexual connection to Phil that still might remain, his beating the boy brutally, dragging him out into the open of the locker room, and pissing upon him? In confusion and frustration Phil tears up one of his uncle Mike’s treasured photos, only to discover that Mike has finally died. To where can Phil turn for love? Feeling like he may have lost the brief time when his body is still young, smooth, and beautiful, what choice does he have?

     Like so very many of the short films of the early 21st century, Phil determines to commit suicide, hanging himself in his bedroom.

     Of the films I’ve reviewed to date from the first three decades of the current century, bullying and self-harm are the major subjects of an extraordinarily large number of works, these primarily involving just peer abuse—which is to say nothing about the numerous films in which parents have themselves tortured and abused their gay children or the youths suffered larger attacks on them by social and religious institutions.

     I thought to list them within this essay but when I gathered the list, including some 32 works to date, I determined to group them in the footnote below.* The fact that these sorts of films have continued in profusion beyond 2020 is even more disturbing. Bullying in school or elsewhere is still one of the major sources of child abuse for young gay men and women. And, although they represent perhaps a smaller number of individuals, it is even worse in terms of percentages for young crossdressers and transsexuals.

     Fortunately, Phil fails at self-murder, and his mother is there is save him. Three months later he reports to a group of sympathetic friends in counseling that he is coming out of the hole in which he has been. Alan Watts pronounces that “if you can be truly honest about loving yourself. And if you don’t pull any punches and you don’t pretend you’re anything but exactly what you are, if you can do that you have no further problem.”

      Sorry, I need to check in on the young boys who have numerous further problems as these films give evidence. Society, parents, peers, and religious officials all work terribly hard to make young gay men feel they’re not only wrong in their feelings but that the feelings are a simple aberration that do not really mean anything and do not truly exist.

      We can declare all the freedoms in the world, but as long as restrictions remain within family, society, state, and church, young boys, girls, and those who can’t even identify their gender will have to suffer and risk the possibility of being destroyed.

      Although Teens Like Phil may not be the best film of its subject and time, it nonetheless gets immediately to heart of the problem. Nothing has truly changed between the past of the now lost Uncle Mike and his young nephew. They are linked to death instead of life. It’s only when you can make room for that uncle dying in the woods that you can allow young gay boys to grow up normally in your house.

 

*Alan Brown, O Beautiful (2002), Alexandra T. Steele, Like a Brother (2002), Brian Rowe Lonesome Bridge (2005), Boys Grammar (2005), Jaime Travis, The Saddest Boy in the World (2006), Matthieu Salmon Weekend in the Countryside (2007), Lisa Marie Gamlem, Benny’s Gym (2007), Soman Chainani, Kali Ma (2007), Evan Randall, The Letter (2008), David Färdmar, My Name Is Love (2008), Laurie Lynd Verona (2010), Venci Kostov, The Son (2012), Manny Mahal Room 303 (2012), Jansen Franklin, Live to Tell (2012), Adam Baran Jackpot (2012), Christin Freitag Beat Beat Beat (2013),  Dylan and Lazlo Tonk Caged (2013), David Tjen, It Gets Better (2014), Michael Ledesma Losing Your Flames (2014), Nate Trinrud Goodbye, Charley (2015), Chris Coats, Good Boy (2015), Dean Loxton,  Dániel (2015), Iver Jensen, We Remember Moments (2015), McGhee Monteith, He Could've Gone Pro (2016), Olivier Perrier, Faggot (2106), Eric Bizzarri Cold Hands (2017), Jovan James The Jump Off (2017), Gjertrud Bergaust Hunt (2018), Olivier Lallart, Fag (2019), Michael Beddoes, Sequins (2019), Ethan McDowell, Queer (2019). And certainly when I finish these early millennial volumes there will be numerous others.

 

Los Angeles, August 20, 2023 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).