Tyler Cunningham | I Was Wrong / 2023

a fan

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tyler Cunningham and Bernard Leed (screenplay), Tyler Cunningham (director) I Was Wrong / 2023 [15 minutes]

 

Director Tyler Cunningham summarizes the guilt expressed in his film of 2023: “I spent my youth avoiding eye contact with most of my straight male classmates just to be able to walk down the hallway in peace. It was during those years that I developed a deep, subconscious fear of all straight men – my bullies. I began lumping them all into a box, making sweeping assumptions that all straight men were violent and homophobic. After a decade of keeping them in this box, I was mortified to realize that I had become the bully and was perpetuating the cycle of abuse.”

      Those are the very views that Peter (Nick Lehmann) brings back home to his small town for his brother’s bachelor wedding party. We’ve seen dozens of films, short and feature, that focus on gays and lesbians being forced, for one reason or another, to return home and face the very people who taunted them as youths—or simply to have once again to face up to the narrow attitudes and close-mindedness of those who never left home.

     Peter is one of those individuals, and isn’t at all looking forward to hooking up with his older brother’s bros, who he remembers as being bigoted, boorish, and limited in the topics of their conversation. Even the kiss he is about to plant on the face of his brother Eric (Alex Esola) upon greeting him is met with a pull-back, and he is suddenly forced to remember where he is and to whom he’ll be trying to communicate for the next day or so.

       He immediately runs into one of his brother’s friends, who when being reminded that for 15 years now Pete has been living in Los Angeles, confidentially confides to him: “Just watch out for the dirty ANTIFA fucks. They’re all over the place down there. They don’t respect this country.”

      No sooner has he turned away from that encounter, than he turns back to greet to newest arrival—suddenly standing face to face with one of the most notable on-line gay porn stars. He immediately excuses himself to call up his best female friend, Elle (Zurah Taylor) to share the news and assimilate the fact.

     He returns to the room to meet up with Jack (Michael Graceffa) believing that he can’t actually be gay while simultaneously being a member of what he has described to Elle as his brother’s “Proud Boy ass friend group,” and seeing Jack now as a “gay for pay” exploitive force, he feels the need to call him out.

      Peter asking Jack what he does, gets back a fairly honest answer: “I’m a filmmaker,” but as he proceeds, he gets vaguer answers, Jack suggesting he does experimental stuff, but admitting that his audience likes him best when he is himself in front of the camera. “And who is your audience,” probs Pete. “Pretty diverse, actually.” “Do you see yourself in your audience. Do you feel your work as contributing to the culture in which you feel yourself to be part of?” Eric cuts off any further examinations, telling his brother that he’s being “weird.”

     It soon turns stranger yet. Getting increasingly drunk, Pete gets on the internet to describe the porn star as a “liar and a gay-baiter,” then proceeds to describe what he believes Jack to truly be.

     As the evening wears on, he happens a conversation between two of the other guys, Dan (Brian Muller) and Taylor (Stephen Stocking), commiserating that Taylor’s three-year engagement has just been called off. Peter’s first question is, “What’s the matter? Did you just get dumped?” They look over at the intruder with a kind startled disgust, Dan suggesting, “Dude, we’re not talking middle school.” Pete’s further advice sounds more like grade school, “Well, you just gotta get out there and start worshiping some new puss.” Both turn away from him with incredulity for the words that have just come out his mouth. When he asks if they want to do some drugs, they both emphatically answer, no, and we are forced to realize that Pete is acting like a teenager. When he leaves, they both laugh, Dan lamenting, “I thought gay people were supposed to ‘get it,’ right?’” Presumably, he means he imagined gay people as being sensitive and empathetic. Pete is an obvious exception to the positive stereotype.

      Pete pulls a full jug of gin out of the refrigerator and trolls Jack’s website once again before returning to the others in mid-conversation about Black Lives Matter, the speaker, Dan again, arguing that he believes black lives matter but that he doesn’t condone the looting.

      Finally, Pete shouts out “Enough!”—as one of them mumbles that the town bully is back. “You guys are so confusing. A few seconds ago, Dan was talking about Taylor’s ‘life journey’ and now you’re spouting about ‘Black Lives Matter” stuff.” He turns on Jack blaming him for sitting around and nodding to all the “offensive” comments when a minority community is paying his bills.

    “Guys,” Pete confides, “people pay to watch Jack get fucked by other guys!”

     Eric suddenly calls an end to his brother’s raves. “Jack his gay,” he states plainly; Jack responding “Guilty as charged. Card-carrying cum-dump here,” the others laughing and chiming in “We love it!”

     Pete is completely nonplussed, demanding to know why his brother never told him that his best friend as a super porn star, Eric responding, “You never asked.”

     “Pete you never come around. You never respond to any of my texts. You’re basically a ‘fucking’ ghost. I never thought you cared what happened in any of our lives.”

     “This is just bullshit. All of you guys used to torture me, and now you’re cool with having a gay friend?”

     Dan answers, “Yeah man, it’s called growing up.”

     Jack admits that it was probably hidden homophobia in his case, the fear of being who he was.

     What is clear is that it is Pete who has never grown up.

     “So Pete,” Taylor slyly interjects, “I take it you’re a fucking subscriber then?” Pete looks down. “It’s all right, your brother is too!”

     “Right, we’re best friends!”

     A moment later Eric discovers that Jack’s account is “blowing up,” and Jack, clicking on, realizes that he’s suddenly lost hundreds of subscribers. Peter has to admit that he might have had something to do with that, finally confessing what he’s done.

     “I can delete all my comments and say I was lying,” Pete insists. But Jack declares the damage is done. Dan suggests the only way for Pete to correct his wrong is for Jack to “hate-fuck his troll on Only Fans.”

     Terrified by the possibility of having sex on line, Pete tries to talk his way out of such a possibility, Jack finally assuring him that “It’s cool, we’ll hire someone and pretend they are a common troll.”

     There’s nothing left for stupid Pete to do but to say “I’m sorry.”

     If this comic skit is basically unbelievable, nonetheless, it clearly points up that gay men and “woke” folk can sometimes themselves be fairly bigoted when it comes to the people they left behind in their hometowns.

     In the past few years, I myself discovered that for all these years when I thought I was the only gay kid in my school, that I was quite mistaken and that more was going on both in the minds of my fellow classmates and in their active lives, while I sat quietly suffering in torture, than I might ever have imagined.

 

Los Angeles, April 4, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2023).