Jesse James Rice and Mike Macdonald | Never Gone / 2020

a ghost never laid to rest

by Douglas Messerli

 

Cameron Becht, Mike MacDonald, and Jesse James Rice (screenplay), Jesse James Rice and Mike Macdonald (directors) Never Gone / 2020 [6 minutes]

 

Although the movie itself simply credits this film to Jesse James Rice as both screenwriter and director, IMDb adds other names to this short work about a grieving man. They also seem to have a list of other characters who do not appear in the film. So, I can imagine there might have been a remake or a later, extended version which I have not seen.

    Shane (Jordan Sorenson) arrives back home with groceries, greeted by his gay companion (Brian Sounlath) who is busy cooking. Yet we quickly realize his lover is there only in his memory, that the apartment is actually empty.

     In a fury Shane throws his groceries to the floor, only to turn back into the living room, again filled with his former companion’s presence as he announces a TV movie he wants to share with him.

     As Shane attempts to escape into yet another room, his partner declared he has just douched for sex.

   There is clearly no escape from his memories, and he finally falls apart, wailing and crying, as the dead ghost of his lover tries to comfort him about the accident which killed him.

      Soon, however, he realizes he is alone yet again.

      A friendly neighbor knocks and the door, and insists that she enter just to be with him for a while in order to comfort him in his time of deep pain.

      This is a truly simple statement of the suffering a gay spouse, just like straight couples, encounter when their loved one disappears suddenly from their lives.

      There is nothing astounding or innovative about this film. It’s simply a statement how a room filled with the other’s presence is gone and missing, even while the survivor realizes the memories will never leave him and that he must suffer the experiences now missing from his life over and over again.

 

Los Angeles, July 31, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).