Brad Hammer and John Duff | Give a Fuck / 2020 [music video]

if only

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Duff (composer and performer), Brad Hammer and John Duff (director) Give a Fuck / 2020 [3.33 minutes] [music video]

 

What better way for the Howard County, Maryland native, singer John Duff to represent the necessary solipsism of the Covid pandemic days than to issue a video in which the singer performs, often at the piano and dressed in the manner of Liberace, demanding that “tired of his own touch,” he needs “to give a fuck”:

 

“I'm insistent on not hittin

till consistent commitment.

I give a fuck

But if I didn't

I'd give a fuck to you”

 

     There are no men or women pictured in this video to suggest to whom he’s addressing his desires in this work; but then who needs them when dressed in red rhinestones, in pink pants and vest, and wearing a tight zebra-skin bikini. As the painting of a man (himself of course) over his grand piano reveals, he’s definitely into men as he joyously sings out:

 

“And if I'm anything I'm honest

Yeah and honestly, I'm modest if

I'm not Puritan-born-again, void of sin,

Well, Let's pretend

I give a fuck

Cause if I didn’t

I’d give a fuck to you

When what I want is

My touch, your touch

All over

Your touch, my touch

Our clothes off

Nobody needs to know what goes on

Say 'I don’t give a fuck'

But I wanna

I wanna give a fuck

I wanna give all my fucks to you

I want strings

I want rings

I wanna do bad things to you

So tell me that you give a fuck

So we can get in love

Get rough

Get it up

Can’t get enough

I wanna give a fuck

So if you give a fuck

I’m giving all my fucks to you.”

 

   If “Hookie-Pookie,” made in the same year, was not so secretly all about cunnilingus, “Give a Fuck” is most definitely a gay anthem to what the title advocates—if only he could.

   Duff himself attests to two slightly contradictory desires in this video, first to be as outrageously “out” as the celebrities he parodies. As Out Magazine describes it:

“Duff serves TLC realness in purple silk pajamas on a bed covered in used tissues, and gives his best Liberace in dazzling sequins, feathers and lace. For the video, Duff wanted to play "the man who has everything except for love."

     Duff tells Out that he wanted to channel "queer superstars of yesteryear who never got to be themselves" like Liberace in the video. "I feel it's my duty to be as full out as they would've liked to have been, with all of the glamour and pizzazz of their time," he says, "It's like a missing puzzle piece. I mean just imagine how fabulous some of these men would've been in an era where glamour was real."

 

    But, of course, the pandemic didn’t permit the fulfillment of the song’s desire. And, Duff, himself, moreover, is not as promiscuous as his song portrays him to be:

"I wish I was sexually promiscuous," Duff continues in a statement, "That doesn't jive with my value system. I need some real attachment in order for me to feel comfortable in a physical scenario." He adds, "If I found the right situation, I'd love to give a million fucks. Until then, I'm good just singing. I think the kids call me 'demisexual.'"

 

Los Angeles, September 20, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).

Rudi Cunningham | What You Need / 2025

ready, await

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rudi Cunningham (screenwriter and director) What You Need / 2025 [14 minutes]

 

What You Need is yet another student film—this one from Queen’s University, Belfast—wherein the central character is having difficulty in deciding to come out, this despite the fact that as the film begins that figure, Elliot (James Hayes), has just visited a gay bar with his friend Rob (Jarlath Burns).

    Rob, with turquoise fingernails, gently paints just one of Elliot’s nails, more of an excuse to hold his hand, perhaps, in both senses of that word: to help him relax into the inevitable decision he must make, but also to maybe just stimulate the cute boy enough to join him in sex.

    The two, in fact, move toward that goal, Elliott enjoying, evidently Rob’s exploring fingers, but

at the last moment when the investigation might be sealed with a kiss, Elliott once more pulls back, embarrassingly admitting that he’s still “not ready yet.”

    Besides, he queries, what would Matt think?—that individual evidently being Rob’s lover. Rob assures him that not everything need be known, but also begs him never to say anything about his attempts at love-making. Rob takes his leave, with Elliott realizing that he has to do some heavy thinking.

    Over the next couple of days, he mopes around and washes his face off with cold water, as the sexually undecided or simply confused gay boys are wont to do in such films. But it’s clear he has come to a decision, yet receives no phone reply from Rob, who vaguely texts that he’s having some issues with Matt.

    Finally, in a natural space in the woods the two meet up again, Elliott confessing that he finally is ready to act. Sadly, Rob must tell him that Matt his found a job in Australia. There is a long pause. “And he wants me to go with him.”

    As a tear drops down Elliott’s cheek, he congratulates his friend on the good luck of being able to travel and seek out a new life down under. But it is also clear that the door he has so long been waiting to open has now just been shut in his face.

    Rob stands and begins to walk away, turning back for a few seconds in what we sentimentalists might hope is a restorative gesture, a change of mind or heart. But director Cunningham’s short film has been far too honest to employ such a trick. He turns and walks away, leaving Elliott, back to the viewer, to suffer his own sorrow for having waited so long to realize what he needed to do for his personal happiness.

    Surely he may eventually find someone else, but that isn’t the point. At the moment he is the loneliest young man on the planet, again afraid of a future which he has finally grown ready to explore.

    This story isn’t new, but it is so well acted and generally well directed, with beautiful frames of its characters and their spaces, that we almost forget that it is a student work. And even if we might have grown tired of the young boys dithering on the ledge before the necessary leap into life, we realize the possibility of falling still terrorizes most young men.

 

Los Angeles, September 20, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).

Lucas Haviland | Pages in the Wind / 2025

4 days in april

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lucas Haviland (screenwriter and director) Pages in the Wind / 2025 [15 minutes]

 

Bailey (Quinton Walker) sits on a greenyard working on his journal where nearby, so the journal soon tells us, his lover Gavin (Brian Pils) is also working out before taking his daily run.

   Bailey rereads his most recent entries about four days in April. On the 7th Gavin, so we discover, attempted to make breakfast for Bailey, a total disaster which nonetheless created even more love between the two on account of the sweet failed effort to celebrate their anniversary.

      On the 12th Bailey is planning a special night at home to watch their favorite movies. Gavin calls saying he’ll be home late, which of course, ruin Bailey’s plans but do not at all alter their love for one another, as the scene ends with them lying side-by-side in bed, and snuggling up to sleep.

     On the 20th, Bailey comes home from a night at the bar with his female friend Karine (Kelli Fitzgerald), quite drunk since she, whom he describes as a “slut,” spends the entire night ogling and dancing with men. The dramatic queen comes forward in Bailey’s personality, as he wonders whether or not his alcoholism is finally catching up with him. Gavin brings him a glass a water and orders him to calm down as they kiss, Bailey expressing his love of Gavin, the latter suggesting that his lover brush his teeth before another kiss, but not before replying that he loves Bailey as well.

   The night of the 29th is not a good one for the couple, since Gavin has been out at a bar where his friend Austin has posted a picture of him and another boy making love. Gavin attempts to apologize to Bailey, explaining that the boy was drunk and moved in for a kiss the minute Austin began filming; what was he to do with an inebriated stranger hanging onto his body? He reassures Bailey that he loves only him, but our diarist needs some time to think things over.

   As between the other journal episodes, director Lucas Haviland returns us to the greenyard where Bailey sits mulling over his previous entries. Karine calls to report that she’s on her way. Finally, she arrives, Gavin having finished his run, joining them.

    But things have now shifted.

    The necklace that Karine wears around her neck, sports the letter G, and when Gavin joins up with them he kisses the girl, not the boy. We quickly realize that Bailey’s journal entries have all been a fantasy, and that the real relationship is between Gavin and Karine, not between our narrator and Gavin. Bailey’s roommate is actually Karine, not Gavin, who has left his keys in their apartment, which Bailey hands him back.

     Together they invite Bailey to join them in a special evening out with other friends, perhaps, we suspect, to announce their engagement to marry.

    Watching this film the second time, I was surprised not see a montage which I was sure I remembered: the torn pages of Bailey’s little journal blowing off in the wind like the image of the opening credits of Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind. Evidently, in reality Bailey had nicely tucked his little melodrama in his backpack for later fantastical adventures in his nonexistent life.

 

     The two, man and woman, walk off, calling back to see if Bailey is joining them, he wandering like a puppy close behind.

 

Los Angeles, September 20, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).