Elliot London | 306 / 2010

working his way through school

by Douglas Messerli

 

Elliot London and Gregory Phelan (screenplay), Elliot London (director) 306 / 2010 [10 minutes]

 

In its promotional statement on IMDb and other such services, this short film directed by Elliot London claims to explore what is normal in one’s life. Or rather, who is normal. Its example is a student, Eric Hays (Brian Estel), who evidently works at a bar most nights, begging a friend to take his shift for the evening.

    As he showers and shaves, dresses up in a suit and enters an apartment hallway, we can easily guess that his alternative job that evening is as private call-boy. He enters the suite of an older man, (Scott Lynch Giddings) who serves him a glass a sherry before Eric stands, strips away his tie and shirt to be momentarily fellated by the older man before he quickly and quite forceable pushes Eric to the couch and fucks him, handing him a towel to clean off before taking a quick exit, all of this without a word.

 

    The music-laden film (with a heavily-influenced score by Debussy, posing as new work evidently by Mark Chiat) hints at a shocking twist: Eric returns home and after a long shower, moves into the bedroom where a woman (Raquel Houghton), the Sam of an earlier refrigerator door clue is asleep. He gives her a kiss.

   I suspect the scripters and director imagined we might be shocked, asking as they do: “Who is Eric Hays? Or more specifically: What is Eric Hays hiding?”

    Frankly, there’s absolutely no evidence that he’s hiding anything. And moreover, there are hundreds of such male prostitutes who claim not to be gay and live with a woman, often out in the open. Such relationships have been the subject of so many queer films that it seems as if the vast majority of young men working as male-on-male sex workers claim to be heterosexuals off the clock. Polish director Wiktor Grodecki’s trilogy Not Angels But Angels (1994), Body Without Soul (1996), and Mandragora (1997), among many other such films, long ago established that boys and men doing sex for hire general don’t prefer to be described as being gay.

     If London means to surprise us he should have watched a few dozen films about the subject for embarking on his own work. Moreover, as a commentator named “Johnny” on Letterboxd argues: “If the absence of dialogue was an intentional artistic choice, it needed to be counterbalanced by a more daring visual or conceptual approach. Instead, 306 opts for safety: clean visuals, minimal risk, and ultimately, little emotional impact.”

     This film has some lovely cinematographical moments, particularly when Eric is being wined and fucked, but it has hardly anything else to offer us. No news here, and most definitely no surprises.

 

Los Angeles, September 17, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).