Mario Galaretta | Alonso's Deadline / 2007

postponement

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mario Galaretta (screenwriter and director) Alonso's Deadline / 2007 [6 minutes]

 

It is simply by coincidence, by fascinating to me nonetheless, that one day after finishing viewing the 1979 French melodrama Confused Feelings—a tale about an elderly professor of the early part of the 20th century falling hopelessly in love with a handsome young student without finding a way until it is too late to tell him of his love—that I should come across Mario Galaretta’s 2007 short film about a professor of neuroscience, recently widowed so the film unobtrusive reveals through a funeral announcement sitting on his desk. As in the earlier film, this man is similarly unable to express his latent sexual attraction to a person of lower rank, in this case a school janitor.

   This professor, Dr. Alonso (Glen Caspill), is a stickler for keeping all deadlines, refusing the excuses of one of his pupils (Pedro Salrach) early in this work for not having been able to print out his required paper by its due date. Without even hearing the student’s explanation of a computer glitch, he basically fails the would-be doctor by rejecting his explanations: “As you know…every deadline is absolutely final.”

    Yet, much to his own surprise, he has slowly been observing the comings and goings of the handsome young janitor (Bradly Mena), who while working not only often catches Alonso’s eye, but himself stares back with an almost flirtatious mien, at one moment while the professor is lecturing, taking out several moments to stare into the window to the doorway wherein the professor is describing  the tiny brain membrane that evolved in mankind to develop neurons that account of his brain development. His stare temporarily interrupts the doctor’s train of thought.

   A couple of times in this film we watch Alonso staring through the blinds of his window as the janitor arrives for work. Another time he makes several trips around the spot where the hunky worker is scrubbing the floor so that the boy might offer him his friendly facial greeting.

    He stays later and later into the evening so that he remains at his desk with the janitor enters his office to empty the waste paper baskets. At one point he seems about to speak, but misses the opportunity, only to finally speak up and call him back: “Excuse me….”

   The janitor turns back, facing him once again with his more that friendly smile, and for a pregnant moment we wonder what Alonso will finally say, but only a vague greeting issues from his mouth: “Have a good evening.”

     The janitor responds: “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

     But we are certain that when tomorrow arrives the professor will once again miss his own deadline to express his feelings for the young man. Given the gap between their age, social positions, and possible intelligence, to say nothing of their same-sex genders, he are certain that, like the professor in Confused Feelings that the next day he will again miss the deadline to admit his attraction or love of another human being until it will be too late and meaningless to express it.

    In the century that has passed between these similar attractions and even within 28 years between the release of these two similarly-themed films, nothing has truly altered. No matter of the level of their mental capacities they are afraid of breaking down the barriers that stand between their confessions of their sexual desires and attendant emotions.

 

Los Angeles, November 20, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).

 

 

Earl Duvall | Buddy's Beer Garden / 1933 [animated cartoon]

double vision

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jack King and Frank Tashlin (animators), Earl Duvall (director) Buddy's Beer Garden / 1933 [animated cartoon]

 

Bearing a great deal of structural resemblance to Dave Fleischer’s 1930 Betty Boop cartoon, Dizzy Dishes—including a female singer, an overworked waiter, and a fat brute of a customer—this cheerful toon takes us into Buddy’s beer garden which appears to be influenced by the Munich October Fest beer halls, with legions of drinkers sitting in rows gulping down lagers of beer, skillfully delivered up by the bartender and Buddy, along with servings of pretzels stacked up on the tail of Buddy’s pet dachshund. A German brass band, made up of elderly fat men, oom-pah’s out ditties, featuring a diminutive member who occasionally leaps out of the Tuba’s players horn to add in jazzier renditions of their songs and accompaniments of trumpet, maracas, piano, and bass drum solos. Free tongue sandwiches lap up the nearby bowls of mustard.

 

     The customers and staff themselves join the performances, one patron turning his spaghetti into the strings of a harp, and at another moment Buddy playing a tune on the beer steins. The cigarette girl, Cookie, sells her cigars and cigarettes to the brute, who tries to get fresh, before performing a hot Latin number which gets everyone excited.

     To end the evening, Buddy announces a special guest appearance, with, soon after, a look-alike  

Mae West slowly sashaying into the performing circle to sing "I Love my Big Time, Slow Time Baseball Man.”

      The Brute gets aroused and drunkenly stumbles over to kiss her, the goat in a poster advertising Bock Beer coming alive to butt the fat boy’s ass, sending him flying, and in the process sending Mae up a tree, the wig, dress, and other accoutrements slowly falling away to reveal that this Mae West is actually Buddy in drag.

 

     As many a gay man, and notably critic Parker Tyler have long argued West is the consummate drag performer, so in this little cartoon offering we almost suffer a moment of stereoscopic vision observing a drag performance of the noted drag queen.

      Buddy’s voluptuously bustled behind, we discover, was actually a large parrot in a cage, whose nose quickly mutates into a lookalike Jimmy Durante, parroting that performer’s declaration: “Am I mortified!”  

      In their study of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Warner Brothers Cartoons, Jerry Beck and Will Friedland declare that “Buddy is not only Warner’s greatest pre-Bugs Bunny authority on cross-dressing, [but] in this particular film he’s the closest thing the ‘30s have to Pee-Wee Herman.”

 

Los Angeles, November 20, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).