Michael Saul | The Best Man / 2013

tandem trampoline dancing

by Douglas Messerli

 

Heath Daniels (screenplay), Michael Saul (director) The Best Man / 2013 [14 minutes]

 

Johnny (Heath Daniels) and Scott (Ethan Le Phong) have moved in together and are getting married momentarily, leading to a conversation of Johnny’s parent’s relationship, their own early sex experiences in a Dayton, Ohio high school which they attended together, their wisdom about having moved apart while attending college, and their pleasure in having once again found one another, now together as a couple of four years. They even recall their first date after band practice, Johnny’s backyard trampoline, and how Johnny wanted to invite Scott to the homecoming dance, etc. When Scott suggests, he should have invited him, Johnny reminds him that they lived in Dayton, Ohio in the 1990s.   

     Scott’s mother has bought boutonnieres, pink and blue presumably as a way of determining, after a conversation about gay sex with her son, which of them is “top” or “bottom.” Moreover, his father wants to walk Scott down the aisle since he has no daughters!

     Johnny’s sister, meanwhile, calls to insist that everyone of at least 4 hors d'oeuvres of every kind; with 20 hors d’oevres at a hundred people coming to the reception, bringing the quantity needed to 2,000 hors d’oeuvres as Johnny suddenly realizes.

     Meanwhile, Johnny has turned on the record player and is practicing dancing. We are homosexuals, he declares. There has to be good dancing at the party. Scott turns it off.

      And suddenly Johnny undergoes a slight panic, realizing that what his family is particularly good at is divorce. Perhaps that’s why gay people didn’t get married before this, he argues, they were smart enough to know it doesn’t work. Here we are doing the most traditional heterosexual think we could possibly do: “we’re getting married.”

      Does that mean you don’t want to be monogamous, asks Scott?

      No, I’m just saying that I’ve had enough divorce in my life….and if getting married means we begin to act like straight people….I don’t want that.

      Scott asks twice: “Do you want to marry me?” Johnny responding yes. Yet, there remains now all the questions in the air.

      Scott: “I can be your boyfriend. I can be your life partner. I can be your lover. I can be whatever you want to call me. I just want to be with you.”

      Their marriage is not about others, he reminds Johnny, “but just the two of us.” We can do all the bullshit in a few hours, insists Scott, but let’s just be us right now. Scott reads out what he’s written: “I love you.” That’s all.

       Johnny admits that he’s written and rewritten to try to come up with the perfect words, but he can’t. His statement is a simple litany of appreciation: “Thank you for being for being you. Thank you for being my husband. And I’ve loved you since that first day on that trampoline.”

       They kiss, exchange rings, and kiss again.

       They no longer have to worry about the wedding ceremony. They are married in their own minds, have already shared their vows without speaking them.

       Michael Saul’s work is not a truly profound piece, not even that brilliantly clever, but it’s a beautifully quiet love letter about marriage nonetheless.

Los Angeles, August 8, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).