Eugene Kolb | Brad / 2025

exploring alternatives

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eugene Kolb (screenwriter and director) Brad / 2025 [8 minutes]

 

30 year-old Greg (Alex Kramer) has fucked up his relationship with his wife Kacey by sleeping with his ex. Kacey’s kicked him out and is currently not responding to any of his phone calls. What’s a loser like Greg to do but move back in with his elderly parents, Amelia (Ellen Boscov) and Jack (Neil Fleischer)?

    He visits their small two bedroom suburban bungalow, expecting to be accepted, at least temporarily, back into the household and his old room. But, at first, no answers the door bell, even knocking doesn’t seem to work.

    When the door finally opens a handsome man, dressed only in a bathrobe appears, asking for Greg’s name. The stranger, whom we so discover is named Brad (Felipe Di Poi Tamargo) is joined by Greg’s mother at the door, she also dressed in a bathrobe, and not readily able to explain to her son who the man with her at the door is.

    Greg charges in to talk to his father, hearing a thud in the bedroom. He rushes forward only to discover the kinky 21st century staring him in the face. His elderly father, dressed in S&M leather, ball in his month and hands tied behind him has fallen over from whatever position he was previously sitting, lying, standing, and hanging in. As Amelia and Brad rush forward to lovingly check out Jack’s condition, they announce to their son that Brad is their new boyfriend. Greg, if he has any knowledge of the brave new world into which he has just stumbled, has to conclude that his parents have now entered into a polyamorous relationship with a young man with whom they play out S&M games.

   Moreover, once they discover the reason for their son’s visit, although sympathetic, they are not at all ready to abandon their new lives and love in order to allow their lug of a son to move back in with them.

    They have to admit that at the moment they don’t have a lot of space, but his mother does finally offer him the living room couch.

    Horrified, Greg rushes back to his clunker of a car and tries to call Kacey, but her message, “Leave me alone asshole,” is not at all encouraging.

   Returning to the family living room, Greg is beside himself, unable to make sense any longer of everything that’s happened, particularly being a misogynistic loser no longer welcome at home.

   Brad, however, knows just how to handle the situation. When Greg closets himself in his old bedroom, Greg comes to console him, knowing just what a shock everything must now be to him. He gives him a warm, long hug reminding him that things aren’t as bad as they look. Perhaps he can get back together again with his wife, but for know he simply has to concentrate on himself and his own problems. Greg, now in tears, clings tightly to the reassuring stud, his parents peeking it and recognizing that, indeed, Brad now has it all under control.

    “Let it out. Let it out,” Brad invokes like as if he were an expect grief therapist.

    “I fucked up with Kacey,” Gregg sobs.

    “No, it’s okay,” Brad reassures him.

    “What if she never takes me back?”

    The appreciated hugfest goes on for a while before Gregg steps back to realize that he now is sporting an obvious erection. What now?

    Surely, Brad will have an answer for that just as he has provided so much new joy and pleasure to Amelia and Jack. Maybe the couch isn’t so bad.

     This suburban fable turns the American dream on its head before tossing it out the window. Soon all anyone will need is a truly handsome Brad.

   Eugene Kolb’s perverse little comedy, in the tradition of Joe Orton, is a hilarious spoof on contemporary sexual mores that stands along Marty Supreme and Honey, Don’t of this same year in its frenetic audacity.

 

Los Angeles, February 5, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2026).