Christopher Gotschall | Caught / 2000

sex is fun, love is something else

by Douglas Messerli

 

Christopher Gotschall (screenwriter and director) Caught / 2000 [21 minutes]

 

A gay man, Teddy (Paul Stoval) is throwing a party for friends, a gay couple William (Bejamin Sprunger) and Simon (Robert Mello) a couple, med-student and lawyer, and another single friend Jaime (Chad Lindsey), an aspiring photographer.

    Simon, some years older than his lover, is late—as we later discover he often is—caught up in business. And in the meantime, William flirts with the cute young man of his age, Jaime. Simon eventually does show up, which by this Jaime find almost frustrating since he has clearly hit it off with the med-student, expressing those frustrations with Teddy as he helps to clean up, Teddy agreeing that without Simon and their long relationship in the picture, they might have made to the perfect couple.

     A few days later, in fact, we find William and Jaime together in Teddy’s dance class, rather amicably doing a cha-cha. William explains that Simon has no problem with him taking dance lessons with William as a dance partner since he hates dancing utterly trusts William to be faithful in their relationship.

    But we already perceive what is coming, particularly when after the lesson, as they walk home, Jaime wonders what if they might strip naked and go skinny dipping in the lake they are passing. William is tempted, but suggests he is certain they would be “caught,” that he has rotten luck that way, as Jaime wonders what the public charge against skinny dipping might entail: a ticket, a monetary fine, a night in jail, or something worse. Besides no one might even notice. William asks if he could live with his conscience, Jamie replying, “I love alone. You live with your conscience.” William is almost tempted, but agrees instead to have dinner at Jaime’s place, his lover working late again the evening as he so often does.

     The inevitable fling in bed ends with a call from Simon, with William trotting off home, and a confused Jaime.

      The conjugal cheating which follows would be the subject of most such short films. But Gotschall is obviously a bit wiser than most student filmmakers, and the real subject is not about an irate lover and the end of a long-term relationship, but about the commitments gay men make despite the temptations that help them to sustain relationships based on love and commitment even with they go sexually astray.

       In this case, as the affair continues, with Jaime even going so far as to buy William a toothbrush for his nightly visits, the real focus is on Jaime and his feelings. Almost immediately, as a young single romantic, he falls desperately in love with William, particularly since William actually deals with him in a manner no Grindr date—and this film was made just a bit before such cellphone meet-ups had become commonplace—praising his photography and encouraging him to actually seriously pursue it as a career.

      Yet time and again, when Simon calls, William is quickly out the door on way to his seemingly oblivious lover.

       The tension comes to a head during another party at Teddy’s for Simon’s birthday, which Jaime photographs. But here, seeing him with William for the whole evening, the two openly sharing their endearments, Jaime finally becomes hurt and falls into a funk, wondering during a conversation with his now lover why he remains with a seemingly uncaring Simon and won’t commit to leaving his older lover to share the joyful life Jaime and William have been exploring.

       Regarding Simon’s birthday wish as he blows out the candles, Jaime asks William what he thinks he might have wished for, Jaime quipping momentarily, “probably a new car, more money” or, he adds, on more serious note, “things to work out between us.”

      “When are you going to tell him?” asks Jaime. But William explains that he already has, Simon simply seeing it as a phase he’s going through.

     For Jaime this is nearly unbearable, not at all able to comprehend how the couple can remain together when Simon appears to be so patronizing and William has shown such open love to him.

He clearly wants William to beak off his relationship with Simon and commit himself to him.

     As William explains, however, he owes so much to Simon and they have been together for so many years, he can’t and won’t leave him, Jaime almost furious with such a response.

     But clearly the writer/director realizes, in this case, that gay long-term relationships are not quite like the cinematic views of heterosexual marriages, where the moment the other has discovered his mate to have been “cheating” the hurt partner is off to see his or her lawyer, the relationship have failed.

     Perhaps because of the significant important of sex in the gay world, long term lovers are often much more tolerant for sex outside even a basically monogamous relationship. Gay men, at least those of earlier generations, understood the desires, the pulls of sex while realizing that the solid relationship of love was something separate and apart.

     Of course, such outside relationships sometimes hurt, but they might be tolerated as long as it didn’t lead to precisely what Jaime is arguing for, a break in the more complex interaction we describe as love.

     For Jaime it is the end of the relationship, as he stomps off home, hurt. Unable even to sleep he develops the photos he has taken of Simon and William. And in the pre-dawn hours of the morning, he is surprised when his buzzer announces a visit from Simon.

     Simon has come to reclaim William; Jaime explaining that he is not there and permitting Simon into the apartment to inspect it. Both are now worried about the whereabouts of William, as Jaime shows Simon the contact sheets of his photographs, Simon praising the quality of the photos, and Jaime, amazingly having come to terms with the reality of situation, apologizing to Simon for what has happened.

      Simon thanks him, asking him if William shows up to send him home.

     As Simon leaves, Jaime goes back to his dark room, developing the photo of Simon; later he opens the new toothbrush that Will had never opened, a faint smile appears on Jaime’s face, realizing that the couple’s love is much stronger than the sexual infatuation he and William have had. But also recognizing that William’s, and now Simon’s friendship have given him a precious gift of confidence to actually pursue a career in photography. He has even learned to cha-cha.

      Gotschall’s film is perhaps more honest about gay partnerships and marriages that those many that now imitate the heterosexual couples in film, with wives sending their husbands packing the moment they realize that he has been unfaithful, and husbands describing their wives as sluts when they sexually “stray.”

       The reality has never that simple, particularly in the gay world of my generation, when men, living in a time when marriage was not possible, realized that a true gay relationship was much stronger than a few nights in another man’s bed. Given all the difficulties gay men daily faced just to continue living as a minority in an often hostile society, a long-term relationship was a true commitment that sexual interludes with other’s could not easily sever. To reverse the plaintive cry of the Tina Turner song, gay men often sang out, “What’s sex got to do with it? Sex is just a second-hand emotion.” Honesty, compatibility, and co-dependence mattered more than where the cock might lead one for a few nights.

     Sometimes it seems to me that young gay men have more to learn from those of us who braved homosexual relationships at a time when they were rare than looking to heterosexual marriage as a model. We did not feel ourselves “caught” in our relationships but “saved and protected” by them. Sex is often temporary and fleeting, while love is something far more permanent.

   Moreover, there are many heterosexual couples who have also come to realize that it is not marriage that keeps them together but a deeper commitment of love.

   

Los Angeles, December 25, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).