the land of duck hunts and turkey shoots
by Douglas Messerli
Katy Dore (screenwriter and
director) Odd Bird / 2019 / [9 minutes]
You have to love Katy Dore’s film Odd
Bird if for nothing else but its totally unbelievable audacity.
Clark (Michael Varde), a gay boy with a lover at home, has descended by
into his conservative ranch family home to retrieve a childhood manuscript in
which he artfully depicted himself as a comic book-like figure named “odd
bird.” Based evidently on his current drawings, a major company is interested
in possibly publishing it.
The
second reason, and perhaps even more important for the handsome young boy, is
that he is determined to tell his tough country mother and her boyfriend,
Gunner (Jacob Peacock) whose incessant slaps have tortured Clark through his
youth, that he is gay.
It seems like a very dangerous proposition, particularly when, even near
to his mother’s ranch, he is stopped by local good-ole-boys and checked out
even before he reaches the vicinity of his own former home.
They let him pass, but his call back to his boyfriend is almost
desperate. Can’t he just turn around now and head back home? His boyfriend (the
voice of Brennan Murray) reminds him of the deadline of the possible comic book
publishers.
He knocks on the door, as both the seemingly rough Gunnar and his
tooth-shy mother come out to greet him on the porch, have been warned that he
had something important to share with them. As is the wont of movie-created gay
boys admitting their sexuality, he stutters and stammers, but finally openly
admits to his being gay. His mother, momentarily, is angry. She spits out her
worry that she was afraid that he had cancer or had lost his university
scholarship. But the anger quickly converts into laughter from both her and
Gunnar as she reveals that she’s known her son was gay since he was
three-years-old. As for that lipstick he put on his mouth as a child, it wasn’t
even hers, and she sent packing was so that we would never again touch his son.
Clark grabs the manuscript and rushes back to home, phoning his lover on
the way to suggest he come for a visit, where they might experience a duck hunt
or a turkey shoot.
I don’t believe her. And, despite my strong dislike of stereotypes, why
would any sane gay boy want to pick up a gun, go into a “hide,” and shoot down
a lovely duck? Or want even to join in a turkey shoot? This is a fantasy to
make you believe that we’re all just a grand loving community, which in the
days of Trump, particularly, can be described as just plain hoodwinking. Any
place in which, while driving down a road I might stopped and challenged on my
way home is not somewhere I would want to be. The “oddbird” will surely be
accidently shot in the next Turkey roundup.
Los Angeles, May 16, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(May 2026).
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