cooking up a treat
by Douglas Messerli
Tom Keegan (screenwriter and director) Sweet Life / 2001 [4 minutes]
Two gay men (Tom Keegan and Davidson Lloyd) in their
30s or early 40s wake up in the morning, immediately leap to their feet, and
race into the kitchen.
There they toss eggs (one landing on the
floor), pour in milk, add lots of butter and flour, heaps of sugar, whip in a healthy
amount of liquor (brandy perhaps), and begin to stir, tossing in a book, a
ukulele, a pair of men’s shoes, one high-heeled slipper, and consider even
tossing in a whole suitcase, but think better of it.
They put
the pan into the oven, turning on the heat and a timer to at least an hour.
Then then return the bathroom to shave, shower, and brush their teeth, both
patting their rather well-fed rounded bellies.
They
proceed to dress, one opening the oven a crack just to peek in, the other
quickly pushing it shut. And back in the bedroom they continue to put on
suitcoats and bowties.
In their
living room they begin to blow up several balloons, we, as observers, now
wondering if they about to celebrate a party with the sweet treat waiting to
come out of the oven. They kiss again, they dance a little out of joy.
In part, we were right. For when the timer
rings, they both hurry into the kitchen and carefully pull out the huge baking
pan in which now sits a blonde-headed baby girl (played by, so the credits
tells us, the “Connor Keegan-Loyd baby”) with whom, soon after, they celebrate
with kisses, hugs, and finally, a tug into bed between the two of them, all
this accompanied by the bouncy musical score of Tom Zehnder.
They have,
indeed, concocted for themselves a sweet life, and shared their treat with us.
Los Angeles, October 25, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October
2025).
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