Geoff Boothby | Zeppelin / 2014 [music video]

story vs. sensation

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eli Lieb (lyricist and composer), Geoff Boothby (director) Zeppelin / 2014 [4 minutes] [music video]

 

When I began covering music videos in My Queer Cinema, I determined that even if the artist was gay and well-know for his or her queer-based songs if there were no images of a queer other, and if that song might have as easily been interpreted as a heterosexual love song, I would not include it. That particularly effects several gay artists who make it clear that they want to cross-over, or widen their audiences to include, in the case of gay male artists like Eli Lieb, female fans. Shangri La, his 2017 single is just such a piece. It consists only of a partially nude Lieb in a bath tube and occasionally seen drying off through a partially opaque glass bathroom door. Yes there is a sort of male dubbed answer to his shouts of how he “caves in” each time they kiss, the voice could be (and probably) is an electronically manipulated version of Lieb’s own voice, and although those who know his work, as I now do, will be sufficiently convinced that he is singing of a male and of queer love, there is no literal manifestation of gay love, only its suggestion.

     Of course, I’ve accepted simple coding hints in earlier short and, particularly, feature films throughout these volumes. But I feel that when it is a gay artist who will not fully clarify to whom he’s singing that it alters the situation, shifting what is likely a queer story into a possibly heterosexual one, reversing the very process of films which under the code were not allowed to represent homosexual behavior but whose creators nonetheless went out of their way to hint of it. Here the composer of director almost erases any connection to queer love.

     Lieb’s own comments about his writing process are fascinating in this context. First of all, he admits to what I have often criticized him for, his simple and rather pleasing but absolutely unchallenging pop tunes.

      Interviewed by Curtis M. Wong in The Huffington Post, Lieb almost adamantly declares his pop roots:

 

“I write pop songs; that’s really where my strength is. Zeppelin is a straight-down-the-middle, pop-rock song, and some of them get a little more indie sounding. It’s a good mixture of pop and that…”

 

     Asked by Wong how sexuality affects his work as an artist and a musician, Lieb clearly hedges, and makes precisely the demarcations:

 

“It doesn’t impact my work as an artist at all. The only moment when it does is when it comes time to film a video, I’m like, “Oh! I have to have a guy in this, because it’s a love song and that’s accurate to my life.”

     But when I actually write music … the creative process has nothing to do with my sexuality other than the fact that I can get entangled with people in the same way that anybody can get entangled with a person. When I think of myself, my sexuality isn’t the defining part of who I am as a musician. I haven’t written about the struggles of being gay because I’ve personally never felt that.”

 

    Yet, I would argue that a work such as Shangri La is actually more of a love song that is the second work he mentions, Zeppelin. The difference is that the first is all about sensation, while Zeppelin, like Steve Grand’s All-American Boy, with whom Wong compares him and asks for his reaction, is a narrative work. In order to tell his story, he needs the tools of cinema, actors in the plural, location, and camera work that does more than focus on Lieb as a pretty boy in the bathroom.

     Zeppelin may not be musically challenging, but as a narrative if focuses something that most musical videos never have, male cruising, and car sex.

     Lieb’s lyrics make the subject quite clear from the very first stanzas of his song:

 

“T-shirt and jeans I got some wheels

I'll take you where you want to go

I know a place we can park

where you can play every note on your air guitar

'Cause I gotta black dog feeling

drumming on the steering wheel

Singing in the car with you to zeppelin

on this perfect endless night

Trying to build our own stairway to heaven

yeah I've never felt so high

You turn it up we scream along

Take all my love

a summer night with you and zeppelin”

 

    The zeppelin is used as a metaphor here not only for getting high on the sensations of sex but because with its “rigid body, with a long cylindrical shape” (the Oxford Dictionary definition) it resembles a cock. The air guitar, usually referring to an imaginary guitar, in urban street meanings represents, once again, the cock or vagina being fellated. In short, the story demanded another male to play out Lieb’s concerns.

     The sex was so great that by the fifth stanza he’s frustrated that he now sits alone without the pick-up of the summer night, leaving him only with the memories of

 

“Singing in the car with you to zeppelin

on this perfect endless night

Trying to build our own stairway to heaven

yeah I've never felt so high

You turn it up we scream along

Take all my love

a summer night with you and zeppelin”

 

     The images, meanwhile, make it clear that his former car-mate has gone off with someone else.

     In short, the narrative changes everything, not only making a far more interesting musical work than simply forcing the singer to “cave” every time he kisses his lover, but taking us back, like Grand’s memorable work, to a specific summer night when everything went right and he had perfect auto sex, perhaps never to repeated again. Like Grand’s All-American Boy, Lieb’s 2014 Zeppelin is a work about youth, memory, nostalgia, and most of all cinematic story-telling, while the later Shangri-La is only about his inability to resist to his lover’s kisses, an act represented by his rolling-around in the bath.

 

Los Angeles, July 9, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).

 

 

 

Mat Hayes | Cognitive / 2019

preaching death

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mat Hayes (screenwriter and director) Cognitive / 2019 [14 minutes]

Most of this short US film is relayed to a psychologist, Dr. Marston (Jackie Mah) by David (Mat Hayes), who grew up in a fundamental religious family where many a Sunday he heard the preacher, Brother Elymas (Del Shores) attack homosexuals and companies like Disney who seemed, in his warped perception, to actively support them by hiring LGBT individuals and allowing gay men and women to hold hands while visiting their parks.

     Not only does Brother Elymas attack gays, but sees HIV and AIDS as sent by God as an attempt to annihilate gay men, to punish their abhorrent behavior. They are, he concludes, an abomination.

     As David begins to grow up and finds himself attracted to boys, he is accordingly convinced that he too will soon be punished with AIDS, and is horrified and depressed by the fact.  

     If his discussions with Dr. Marston begin with a simple desire to take his now gay partner, Jonathan (Daniel Robaire) and their daughter annually to an Easter church service, he assures Jonathan that the church he has chosen is liberal, totally different from one in which he grew up. But even then, it is difficult for Jonathan, who is Jewish, their daughter being raised Jewish, and David himself to accept the kind invites of the perfectly respectable Reverend Wynn (Jessalyn Gilsig) without a sense of dread and terror.

     Well might David feel that discomfort given what he tells his psychologist. Yes, David is shunned by classmates who, even at his young age “tell him” that he’s gay, a common revelation to young gay boys who might even yet know what that word full means, but more importantly, he is told such behavior by his church is an abomination and will surely end in your death.

     The most significant scene in the film for me, is the one that begins with him telling Dr. Marston: “I knew I wasn’t going to grow up. I had AIDS. I didn’t know when I was going to die, but I knew it was coming.”

      David keeps a journal as a time capsule for his parents after his “death,” beginning with the words: “Dear Mom and Dad, I’m sorry I’m dead. I hope you’re not mad at me. I don’t want to have AIDS. I wanted to make you happy, and to make Jesus happy.” Yet, he doesn’t blame his parents. “You know there’s not an instruction manual on how to raise a gay boy in Alabama,” David tells his psychologist.

       “Well, who do you blame?” Dr. Marston asks.

        And suddenly David stutters out the name of his true bully: “God.”

      He recalls that last Sunday, at the church, he saw a different kind of God, the kind he wish he’d known as he was growing up. His family’s God was a mean god of vengeance, of punishment. From Reverend Wynn he hears a sermon preached about a God of love, of forgiveness.

      Perhaps the recollection he shares with his psychologist explains it all. Asked when did he finally realize he didn’t have AIDS, David recounts a true incident. One day he visits the school nurse (Erica Tazel) because, he (the child version of David performed by Zakary Risinger) claims, he’s feeling well. She asks him “What’s wrong, your head hurts? Stomach ache from the cafeteria food? Or are you just trying to go home early?” To all of these suggestions, he answers, “No, ma’am.”

      She checks his temperature, his tongue, etc. All seems to be fine. She asks if the boys had been mean to him again, which he admits by telling her that they call him bad names. She reinforces him, however, by reminding him that he’s smart and that what they say doesn’t matter.

       With a deep breath, however, he shifts the conversation. “I think I’m dying.”

      Startled by his comment, she can hardly breath out her wonderment before he tells her that he has AIDS, and begs her to please not tell his parents.

       “Sugar, why would you think that?”

       His answer is straight forward. “God.”

       Nurse Alisse turns her head down with tears in her eyes. “Listen to me. Do you trust me to tell you the truth and not lie to you?” He shakes his head. “You’re not dying, and you certainly don’t have AIDS.”

       “But the preacher at the church said…”

       “…I don’t care what that man said. He’s not a doctor, got it. I mean, I’m not a doctor either, but I am a nurse, and I’ve worked with a lot of doctors, so, who are you going to believe? Listen to me, you do not have AIDS.”

       “Do I get to grow up?”

       “You’re going to grow up and do so many wonderful things.”

       Tazel plays this scene with such tenderness, understanding, and emotion that it’s difficult not to cry. Hayes should be lauded for casting her in the role.

        Who might have imagined that a movie in which the major figure is played by a child might be yet another significant film about AIDS.

         There are many queer short and feature films about the problems faced by adults who grew gay up in devout, church-going families. And even noted pop singers, as I’ve just noted in an essay on Steve Grand (mentioning specific works by David Archuleta, John Duff, and Lil Nas X along with Grand’s 2019 song “Disciple”) have expressed their religious doubts in their works. If “love” is one of the major teachings of Christ, it seems not to matter for thousands of US Christian fundamentalists, conservative Catholics, and individuals of other religious sects.

       In Hays’ gentle short, yet another innocent gets swept up in the hatred of his church.

 

Los Angeles, July 9, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).

Patrick Lang | One Man’s Treasure / 2005

a few kinks

by Douglas Messerli

 

Patrick Lang (screenplay and director) One Man’s Treasure / 2005 [5 minutes]

 

This little-known Australian treat of a film in black-and-white, One Man’s Treasure directed by Patrick Lang in 2005, begins with a before dinner cocktail discussion in the living with two friendly apparently heterosexual couples, David and Angela (David Adams and Tamara Lee) and Roger and Elaine (Alirio Zavarce and Caroline Mann).

     After Roger ends his conversation about having to fire an employee, he asks David if he’s still planning to join him on his sailing expedition over the weekend, David almost joyfully responding positively. Elaine says it will be a treat to have the men out of the out of the house so she can go shopping, but David’s wife Angela seems to be angry about something, commenting to her husband “You have such fair skin, don’t forget your make up…I mean sunscreen.”

    

     Soon after, she makes another such insinuation. David finally inquiring whether something is wrong, she reluctantly shares the fact that when she visited the shed the other day looking for a power tool, she accidently came upon an old chest filled with sparkling dresses and tarted-up shoes that she certainly didn’t remember tossing out, realizing moreover that she never wore shoes size 11.

     There is a pause as the room assimilates the fact that David has evidently been dressing up occasionally in drag. Elaine quickly breaks the silence by saying that actually Roger, every once in a while, also dresses up in drag, and she kind of likes it. She has at least gotten used to him putting on the old nylons. Elaine concludes, “I was a bit worried when he started all this business, but I love it now. It really turns me on.”

     “Well, there’s nothing wrong with it,” adds Roger, Elaine adding “he doesn’t drink, smoke, or fool around. He’s a good boy. Just with a few kinks.”

     “I think it’s all about exploring your identity,” Roger concludes. It makes him feel “very virile.”

     Taken aback, Angela summarizes the situation: “So you Roger like to dress up like a woman?”

      “Yes, you could say that, but…generally speaking, well, in technical terms I’m actually a woman.

      Angela literally spells it out: “Let me get this straight. You’re a woman who likes to dress up under the pretense of being a man actually dressing up and pretending to be a woman.”

      Roger concurs, but Elaine quickly intrudes with the words: “But we’re not gay.”

      “I can’t believe this. I simply can’t believe this,” stutters Angela.

      “O darling,” David finally speaks up, “it’s not that shocking. I mean, you weren’t exactly a woman when I married you.”

       “David!”

       “Well, it’s true!”

      “But you’re not gay are you?

      “Oh no!” as all four take up their glasses almost in a toast.

     So if David and Roger, who seem to be looking forward to their upcoming weekend, engage in illicit sex, will their relationship be gay or “technically” heterosexual?

      Lang’s short film deals openly with transgender relationships and the slippery territory of self-designation of sexuality at a time before such issues were generally discussed, finding the humor in—while expressing the joy of—the entire situation.

 

Los Angeles, October 23, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).

 

 

Borga Dorter | Thermopylae / 2005

on the edge

by Douglas Messerli

 

Borga Dorter (screenwriter and director) Thermopylae / 2005 [11 minutes]

 

Mr. Radford (Jon Powell) is a professor of philosophy in the prestigious boy’s high school in the Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes in the 1950s. Although all his students are born from well-to-do families and are impeccably dressed, most of his students could care less about the Greek classics, to which their recent test scores attest.

   The exception is an overeager young man, Andrew Beckman (Andreas Wigard) who receives an A for his paper, and the special attention of Radford. But it is also apparent that Andrew is more than a little solicitous of attention, stopping by the professor’s office after class to thank him for his grade, and staying on a little longer than his comments and questions seem to require. A record player seems to draw his attention and as he and Radford both rise to attend to it, their hands meet and we imagine what quickly happens after a sudden kiss.

     This is the decade in which a great many closeted gay men out of necessity married and even believed themselves to be living happy lives. Yet it is apparent that Radford’s life, with long hours spent in his office, is not filled with spiritual and physical content, most obviously by his sudden lack of judgment. He has just had sex with a young male student and the consequences, if discovered, were even more significant than they are even today with our new puritanical hysteria about all things to do with children under a magically-declared age of consent. Not only would he have lost his job, his wife, and his reputation, but he would have been shunned by all who had previously known him. What would the alternative have been? What job might he be able to obtain with such an offense on his record, not to ignore the fact that he might surely have been arrested and imprisoned.

      Radford, accordingly, spends a sleepless night. And when the next morning Andrews does not even show up to his class he has difficultly even rationally conducting a student discussion, announcing a surprise quiz instead.

      After class he notices Andrew and his father sitting outside the Principal’s office. What else can he imagine. His life is over. And he drives off along the Pacific coast, stopping along a cliff view where we observe him at the beginning of the film, clinging to the guardrail. We can only wonder whether he’s debating a jump or after a long and profound review of the moral principles of Aristotle and others, he will regain his equilibrium and return for his justified punishment.

      What he cannot know is that the meeting has nothing at all to do with him, but with the boy’s failing grades in his other classes. Obviously, he has devoted all his energies to the philosophy class while paying no attention to his other professors and their lessons. Evidently, this is simply a warning, and after the meeting Andrew goes to Radford’s office, knocking on the door but finding it locked. When will his professor return?

      The audience can only ask: will he return? And, if he returns what will he do about Andrew and his feelings for him or any attractive young boy who might enter his classroom in the future?

      Dorter’s film gets much of the feeling of the early-to-mid 1950s right, and Radford nicely acts the role very much in the style of some of the anxiety-ridden male figures of films by Douglas Sirk and others such as Nunnally Johnson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956). However, whoever designed the credits seems to have confused the early turn-of-the-century flourishes with 1950s film design which actually were far sleeker and more adventuresome than what we often see today. One need only think of Saul Bass’ credits for Hitchcock’s Vertigo and North by Northwest.

     As provocative as this short film is, it seems to me to call for a fuller feature treatment.

 

Los Angeles, August 20, 2022

Reprinted in World Cinema Review (August 2022).