by Douglas Messerli
Brook Lane, Ivan Blackshear, Matt Mayfield, Dia Felix, Gabe Winter,
Leigh McFadden, and Dulce Ziegler (animators), Samara Halperin (director) Tumbleweed
Town / 1999
In this charming gay cowboy saga, US direct
Samara Halperin and her animators take toy plastic cowboys, a dog, and several
miniature cars and trucks across a desert covered with patches of sand and
animal pellets, animated with small passing tumbleweeds against a miniature
cactus garden into territory where even the most precocious budding gay
adolescent never before imagined.
Arriving in the middle of the desert, god knows how, our cowboy hero
tries to flag down many a car and truck for a hitchhike before he finally lucks
out with a similarly attired cowboy friend who takes him hurling through the
desert night to the Bronco Bar where we watch one hirsute cowboy getting a
blowjob and others wandering off into the night to enjoy the cool pleasures of
the desert.
Inside our cowboy duo, on a floor of popcorn spin in a breathless dance
of blurry pleasure, other similarly besuited cowboys in blue shirts and brown
chaps whirling about in a dizzy swirl. The whorl of it all beneath a glass
disco ball makes for desert magic in a manner no youth could ever have
imagined. Or perhaps they might have imagined it but would never have been
allowed to create such a miniature paradise under their parents’ watchful eyes.
Certainly I, despite the fact that such an age I’d long again retreated into a
world my brain had conjured up from Hollywood images, could never have imagined
what a legion of cowboy men, a Christmas tree ornament, and a record turntable
might
Hold your horses, it gets even better as the two cowboys retreat to a
desert campfire with the driver’s dog, a bottle of Maxwell House coffee, a bag
of sugar, a warming-up pan, a banjo, and, most importantly, a can of Crisco.
Who could ask for anything more?
Los Angeles, November 6, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November
2023).
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