someone to watch over him
by
Douglas Messerli
Eddie
Grey (screenplay), Nic Cory and Eddie Grey (directors) The Singing Telegram /
2022 [13.30 minutes]
Matt
(Eddie Gray), out of work, thought he would take up a pleasant “side hustle” by
becoming a singing telegram boy. In the first scene he sings, replete with balloons,
to a woman who, it turns out, is grieving at a wake after a funeral for her husband
or current boyfriend; the message, he quickly discovers, is from her ex-boyfriend.
The second delivery we share with him is at
a “digital experience marketing agency,” where an employee (perhaps the boss)
(Chad Burris) explains “We create lifelong experiences that live both in the
physical and virtual world.” Matt is asked to sing a birthday message to Tina
in front of all the employees, which might have been fine, except that Tina is
a dog:
Hello, my name is
Matt
I’ve got a message
for thee.
The office sent it
to you via me.
A singing telegram,
NYC.
(Matt claps)
Happy birthday dear
Tina
The team, they all
love ya.
We’re gonna have a
good time
and make a big scena
for Tina,
the one with the
perfect demeanor.
As Matt tries to tell Daniel, he’s so tired
of trying to turn every negative into a positive. But Daniel’s help amounts to little
more than more doubletalk: “Maybe, I don’t know, you gotta figure out a way to
level up.”
What is he talking about, Matt asks: he
reads books, he meditates, he “journals” every morning for an hour.
These are obviously two men trapped in a
world that speaks a meaningless meta-language that attempts to mollify reality
by a kind of current New Age gestalt. Even Matt realizes that what he does for
a living is embarrassing and he has literally nothing going for him.
That outburst however, causes the not very
bright Daniel to announce that perhaps it is time for him to go stay with his
parents for a little bit. He can offer his lover, apparently, nothing but
meaningless patter, the kind Matt himself delivers to others every day.
Matt’s next message is from Stephen, sung
to a man and woman who in the middle of the street are engaged in a deep
kissing marathon, totally oblivious of his message. We’re never told whether or
not the man is Stephen.
Matt appears next in a kitchen with a
woman, Angela (Jennifer Tulchin), who’s waiting for her lesbian lover to return
so that Matt can sing his message. Her lover, Emily (Kaye Tuckerman) marches
in, whereupon Emily blows a party whistle, to which Emily replies, “You know
how much I detest surprises!” Seeing the eager Matt about to sing, she tries to
take back her comment.
Matt is prepared to sing a poem written
by Angela, but Emily suggests “You don’t wanna hear a poem by your wife set to
music.” She asks Matt if she wants to hear the poem, to which Matt honestly
replies, “I doubt it very much.”
A
rapport between Matt and Emily is immediately established because of his honesty,
and she invites him to sing what he would like to express, creating his own “concert.”
“What would you want to sing?”
Thinking perhaps of his own missing
lover, more than what Angela might sing to Emily, Matt performs a rendition of
the Gershwin brother’s famous song, “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
For the first time in this little film,
Matt has met someone truly authentic, a person who puts someone else before her
or her lover’s own concerns, and the result is truly beautiful and touching.
Earlier in the film Daniel has
complained that Matt—whose parents live in Syndey, Australia—has not even attempted
to introduce him to them. In the final scene we see Matt sitting on their
apartment stoop, as Daniel finally returns home. Balloon in hand, Matt rises
and begins his singing telegraph spiel: “Hello, my name is Matt, I’ve got a
message to thee.”
The message, which he displays on his cellphone, is an invitation to Sydney,
obviously to see his parents, but also a full commitment to their relationship.
Now, if only Daniel could become smart enough to watch over his little lamb.
Los
Angeles, August 17, 2025
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).
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