by Douglas Messerli
Jordan Firstman (screenwriter and
director) Call Your Father / 2016 [20 minutes]
He
may be fun to some, but he’s a total befuddlement to the 50-some-year old. The
minute they sit down for drinks, for example, the boy asking, “How much money
do you make?” Again nonplussed, Greg doesn’t know what to answer, certainly
it’s none of this kid’s business, but Josh insists that whoever makes more has
to pay for the drinks, as if it were a kind of unstated rule. And
immediately Josh orders up two whiskeys, Greg hardly being able to even mouth
the words that he’s “sober,” obviously a former alcoholic who’s stopped
drinking.
So
follows the kind of cultural, social, and generational assumptions that Josh
has established as his personal truths: “I don’t think my generation will be
sober. We don’t crave excess like you guys.”
When Greg dares to suggest it isn’t at all acceptable, Josh shouts back at him,
“It’s acceptable because you didn’t stop me,” an illogical observation with
just enough sense of reason that it appears to be sane, but is in fact something
out of this boy’s private “twilight” zone, a world that pretends to be real,
but is completely manufactured moment to moment in his head.
One
is tempted to immediately declare, given such a vast generational difference,
that we know how the date will end. Perhaps Greg has made a mistake in his
attempt to appeal to a younger generation. With his thin build, his handsomely
angular face he is still good-looking despite his gray hair. And when later
Josh asks to see a photo of him at his age, Greg producing a Facebook image,
Josh describes him as “hot,” just the kind of comment that Greg must have been
looking for in making this date, some sort of reminder that he is still
sexually attractive as a gay man and viable in the world of sex.
When Greg dares to suggest it isn’t at all acceptable, Josh shouts back at him,
“It’s acceptable because you didn’t stop me,” an illogical observation with
just enough sense of reason that it appears to be sane, but is in fact something
out of this boy’s private “twilight” zone, a world that pretends to be real,
but is completely manufactured moment to moment in his head.
One
is tempted to immediately declare, given such a vast generational difference,
that we know how the date will end. Perhaps Greg has made a mistake in his
attempt to appeal to a younger generation. With his thin build, his handsomely
angular face he is still good-looking despite his gray hair. And when later
Josh asks to see a photo of him at his age, Greg producing a Facebook image,
Josh describes him as “hot,” just the kind of comment that Greg must have been
looking for in making this date, some sort of reminder that he is still
sexually attractive as a gay man and viable in the world of sex.
But
as he admits, he certainly wouldn’t have known that Josh found him even worth
his time, given the boy’s instability. When he asks him what he “does,” Josh
replies with a totally straight face and even a bit of enthusiasm, “I’m a
poet.”
Greg
cannot help but release a slight snicker which so offends the younger man that
he stands and leaves the place, Greg trotting along after.
On the street it gets even worse. When Greg asks him whether he
generally dates older men, Josh replies that indeed he does, but his following
statement reveals an utter lack of comprehension of the older men that he may
“supposedly” be regularly dating:
"I do, but I can’t
free them. Most of them are traumatized. You know all your friends died of
AIDS. And that just doesn’t go away, no matter how hard you try. ... I mean you should be fucked. You should fucking closed off as
shit."
When
Greg attempts to suggest that his statement does not at all represent everyone
of his age’s reality, Josh immediately pretends some sympathy, despite his own
stated wish to die soon—after all, he argues he’s a poet—but he too was
traumatized by his friend. He doesn’t know whether or not his friend was gay,
but he committed suicide. Oh, he corrects himself, they did talk about gay
issues once, when his friend asked him what it was like to be gay. Josh replied,
“Well it works for me because I’m really strong, but otherwise I’d kill
myself.” And the next day his friend committed suicide in Josh’s room.
By
this time, I might have been long gone, but Greg, totally speechless, is
nonetheless clearly intrigued by his Ionesco-like monologues, or perhaps they
are a little closer to a particularly witty rendition of Saturday Night
Live.
A
few minutes later Josh runs into a friend on the street, evidently a
transgender individual who prefers the pronoun “they,” reporting that they have
just had a wonderful experience beyond “their” expectations, “they” also
congratulating Josh for his great success. When Greg introduces himself, they
look him over and immediately insists, “You should take up writing. You should
get a journal. It saved my life.”
When
Greg asks what wonderful thing has happened to Josh, he responds, “Oh, it went
viral,” presumably referring to a poem that he had posted on the internet.
Finally, Josh drags him into a small shop with outrageously overpriced
objects, a regular coffee mug saying "I’m drinking Rhianna" going for
$40.00. But a minute later, the boy has absconded with the mug, racing out and
down the street, Greg obviously left to pay and after unable to track down his
whereabouts. Checking out a nearby club where they were planning on going, he
still is unable to find him, and is about to head home when suddenly Josh shows
up again, insisting that he come up to his room, but also explaining that he
stole the mug because Greg was such a bore.
By the time he’s finished having sex, Greg finds Josh back in the other
room with his head in the noose. He insists that Josh remove it from around his
neck, but Josh refuses, insisting he just having fun. Finally, Greg has truly
had enough, suggesting, “You need to call your father.”
Furious
with the lame solution to his obvious problems, he lobs a bomb back at the
older man, insisting that it’s not he who has the problem that demands he seeks
out younger boys with whom to have sex. “I know you’ve been fucking all my
friends.”
We
can’t know the truth of that statement, particularly since it comes from
someone from a different planet than the one in which Greg exists, but again
it’s obviously close enough to the truth that Greg finally admits, “I don’t
want to be here right now.” Josh’s response: “Then get the fuck out.”
Back in his car, finally alone, Greg’s face suggests a kind of
shell-shock, a sense of deep confusion, frustration, any apprehensions of the
situation he may have had seeming to have come true. But then, shaking his
head, he attempts to laugh it off, perhaps simply chalking it up to experience,
while also muttering that he will never do “that” again, presumably meaning
that he will never again give into the desire for a sexual relationship with
someone of another generation. His apprehensions proved all too real, the young
person with whom he had sex appearing to have been some kind of phantom from
another planet.
Los Angeles, January 15,
2022
Reprinted from World
Cinema Review (January 2022).
No comments:
Post a Comment