David C. Jones | Coffee Club / 2011

victims

by Douglas Messerli

 

David C. Jones (screenwriter and director) Coffee Club / 2011 [5 minutes]

 

Canadian director David C. Jones’ short film Coffee Club is a black comedy not only about gay support groups but about all support groups who have stopped identifying themselves for their own shared values and become focused on themselves as victims.

  Yes, most of Franklin’s (Dan Dumsha’s) close friends have indeed been attacked and beaten by homophobes; Trina (Jamie Chrest) sits with a purple eye, Ken (Sean Parsons) has an arm in a sling, and poor Samuel (Minh Ly) has had all his teeth knocked out. But the handsome and charming Franklin has, fortunately, had no direct attacks. He seems to function flawlessly as an attractive young gay man in the city of such homophobic horrors.

      And his friends have determined even before he arrives that this is simply evidence that perhaps Franklin is not really gay. He enters the shop as a friendly man ordering a coffee from the new barista (Nelson Wong), the two of whom lock eyes with immediate desire, and joins the others only to be told by Trina that it appears he is not really gay, and simply cannot share their company any more since he could not possibly have the empathy necessary to comprehend what the others have endured.

      Franklin is confused and insists that he has had some emotional abuse, which is completely dismissed by the victimized others. As poor Franklin is about to get up and leave, the waiter suddenly charges forward and sends him under the table, shouting homophobic slurs, the others suddenly coming to his defense as “a noble man, a beacon of the community,” even as they themselves hit and attack him. They determine to take their business to some other coffee house.

     Slightly bruised, Franklin joins the waiter for a lovely dinner as the two begin a relationship that seemingly the others have now denied themselves—although why the waiter has saved Franklin from such feckless friends is never explained.  

 

Los Angeles, July 15, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).