Nick Neon | Zero One / 2019

the alien

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nick Neon (screenwriter and director) Zero One / 2019 [24 minutes]

 

     In many senses the young Jimmy Park (Nick Neon), just returned to his home in New York City from several years away in Seoul, is also a Prodigal Son (see my essay on Prodigal Son, 2017). Growing up in the city he was seen by many of his friends as the most likely to succeed, but now back at home he discovers that many of his former peers have careers and successful sex lives, and have grown into adjusted adults, while his life has seemingly gone nowhere. Should he have remained at home instead of seeking an exciting foreign city in the country of his ancestry, particularly since as a youth he was very popular and was not particularly thought of as being Asian?

     Having returned, he feels like an alien, but simultaneously wonders why he left? Now he most definitely is an outsider and through the fact of his having spent such a long period in Korea, is perceived of as being Asian, something that doesn’t seem to bother his friends as much as it does him. He is also gay, but doesn’t seem to fit into the current club scene.

     In the first frames of the film, he sits talking and heavily drinking with his former close friend Sally (J. J. Mattise); she is a tough black lesbian who nonetheless describes Jimmy as an “oriental,” which he tries to explain is simply unthinkable for an “out girl” to say, her answer representing the clever dialogue in much of this short film: “I’m not a political scientist. The sky is blue, this beer is cold, I’m black, and you’re a half a rug.” “You’re such a dick,” he responds to her. “I love you too pussy.” Her intention in celebration of his return is to get him “Gatsby drunk,” but also wonders what’s going on with him; is he perhaps suffering from “some mid-life crisis” at age 26?

     His answer is revealing: “I don’t know. I thought I was going to come home and feel like, ‘thank god I fuckin’ left.’ But I come back everybody’s doing so fuckin’ great, it hurts. Like, I don’t know I feel like that kid in high school who had such a bright future? That’s me. I’m literally the failed potential kid.”

      Moreover, he seems uncomfortable with some of the newer American gay “assumptions.” When a good-looking young boy (Christopher Schaap) follows him into the bathroom, tells him that he’s cute, and attempts to grab his cock, he pulls away angrily, the other suddenly wondering if he is gay. Reassuring him that he’s “way gay,” but reprimanding him for not having first—the way it was back in “his day”—asking for a name and a handshake at least, the kid yells out “Tom” as our friend is about to leave. He turns back, “I’m James. My friends call me Jimmy. And I’m not going to suck your cock in the bathroom.”

       At home, we meet his father (David Shih), who seems friendly and even accepting of his sexuality. So what is Jimmy’s problem? His father asks him to stay in that evening to that he might have dinner with his sister, Claire, who is about to marry. And we soon discover the source of, at least, some of his problems.

      In the interim he meets another young gay man, a quick date before dinner set up by his friend Sally. This affable good looker, Riley (Taylor Bloom) travels a great deal for a magazine for which he interviews and writes articles about international artists. Since it was apparently the career as an artist which Jimmy had originally planned to pursue, this quick date seems a perfect match.

       But first we have to undergo the horror of dinner with Jimmy’s sister. It’s obvious that the two siblings could not possibly be more different, both seeking to reenter the years-old fights. But Claire (Mallory Ann Wu) is more than argumentative. For example, she insists that her obviously non-religious brother say grace, she apparently being a true believer. And since Jimmy is vegetarian, she cooks up a full rump roast for dinner, mocking him not eating what he used to love before “he started making dinner statements.”

     To retaliate, he goes to the kitchen, bringing back a can of jellied cranberries, which he plops out onto his plate, sharing a portion with Sally, whom he’s invited to the family “celebrations.”

      But far worse, Claire is virulently homophobic, barely able to even tolerate her brother’s company as a queer. The meal, ends disastrously, with Jimmy storming out, and returning late to have a conversation with his waiting father.

      The elder has no answers, but we now see the real problem behind Jimmy’s feelings of cultural, social, and evidently sexual discomfort: he has never come been able to come to terms with his own self which is definitely tied up with family’s Asian heritage and the expectations put upon the only son. If Mr. Park has made peace with his son’s sexual difference, Jimmy himself has not and still feels that he is a failure and embarrassment to the family. “I know that I’m a fuck-up. I know that I’m a failure....I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I can’t breathe.”

      What we see time and again is that the real danger of homophobia is not the perverted values of the homophobe but the way it infects the intended target, strangling their self-esteem and their possibilities in the world. Homophobia turns the victim into a kind of passive homophobe, hating their own sexual desires, which, in turn, make them question all of their joys and pleasures in life.

      His father replies that he’s given him his freedom, “I don’t know else I can give you.” Like the Biblical father in the Prodigal Son tale, he insists that Jimmy has a home to come back to if that’s what he wants. And he offers him love, asking to come sit with him on the couch.

      Jimmy asks the unspoken question behind all his fears and frustrations: “You never wish I was normal.”

      His father answers, “What’s normal?”

      Jimmy’s someone humorous comeback, “A desk job and a girlfriend” reveals the notions of his limitations.

      His dad encourages him to continue to pursue art if that’s what he wants, adding, “besides who says you have to conquer the world at 26?”

      The smart-aleck answer, “Wikepedia,” belies deeper fears. “Does anything get any easier?

      “No,” replies his father, “But you get tougher.”

      He is scheduled to return in a few days to Seoul, and he angrily now returns to his room apparently to pack for the trip; as he attempts to reach up into the closet to bring down something a box falls, out of which spill all his childhood drawings. Inspecting them, he realizes that perhaps he did after all have some talent, and maybe it is worth pursing what he has previously described to Sally as “a pipe dream.”

      Composer Nikolas Thompson’s lyrics seem to suggest that despite his urge to go he will “stay anyway,” perhaps to get to know that nice boy Riley or even have a longer period to get to know the sexy Tom. Like his friends, he may even become a success back home.

      It is clear that the director’s work does, in fact, come from the director’s own encounters with familial homophobia of the sort the film’s sister portrays. As Neon writes of his film:

 

 “Zero One follows a lost youth trying to come to terms with his own self-worth in a world moving faster than ever before. It is about finding hope and redemption within family and old dreams long forgotten. It is about starting all over from zero. This film comes from a very personal place.”

 

Los Angeles, March 2, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).