Keith Forelich | The Toilers and the Wayfarers / 1995, general release 1997

the heart of the heart of the country

by Douglas Messerli

 

Keith Forelich (screenwriter and director) The Toilers and the Wayfarers / 1995, general release 1997

 

This truly wondrous short film of 1995, which sounds a bit like a mass-up of two of Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun’s works, is one of the most truly honest and probing films of the 1990s—and looking back now, there were so very many.

     In the German-founded small town of New Ulm, Minnesota, where most of the elders and many of their children still speak German, Phillip (Andrew Woodhouse) and Dieter (Matt Klemp) live their out their last year of high school in a kind of paradisical, homoerotic paradise, without either of them quite realizing how temporary that Preslapsarian world will be. Both love one another without their realizing the erotic nature of their love—that is until Philip truly does realize his sexuality, intensely kissing Dieter on one of their naked swimming encounters. Dieter, whose parents are strict disciplinarians—as it appears most of the German ancestors are in this town, including the school coach (Douglas Blacks) who loves to spank the butts of his naked boys who misbehave in any manner in his school exercises—simply doesn’t know how to respond to his now openly gay friend, forcing Philip to escape to the only true paradise boys such as him can imagine: 1995 nearby Minneapolis, the largest city in their imaginative and affordable existence. These boys never to seem to have ever heard about Chicago, to which they also may not have had enough money for the bus fare.

     I knew Minneapolis well in these very years (for some time in the 1970s my parents even ran a motel in the suburbs), and for a midwestern community it was rather wondrous, with several tall skyscrapers and plenty of good eateries, bars, and run-away boys, as well as a healthy, supportive, and protective network—although little of that is revealed in this film. It was, and still is a kind of model of what US cities might be, as has recently been revealed it its citizens’ demands that ICE (the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) leave after the meaninglessly killing of two its citizens.

      Meanwhile, back in the dying community of New Ulm, an elderly childless German woman, Anna (Joan Wheeler) has decided to adopt her young German nephew, bring him to the US, and fill her life with the German world she has left behind.

     Of course, she hasn’t a clue about what has happened to those young men left behind in the new German society, of which Udo (Ralf Schirg) is a prime example. As she soon discovers, although he is delighted by the fact that his aunt has brought him to “America,” he is simply a drunk who loves to watch US television.

    Through the connections Dieter’s family have, however, with the old Auntie and her German memories, not only is he invited over for dinner to meet Udo, but is asked by his well-meaning but utterly clueless father to look after the German refugee.

     Alone and isolated without his friend Phillip, a relationship, inevitably occurs between Dieter and Udo, although Udo is totally heterosexual. Yet he offers a kind of replacement figure for Phillip, but far more challenging of the restrictions the younger boy has allowed to be placed upon him.

     Although Anna is soon quite disgusted with her adoptive relative, when she suddenly dies, he inherits some money, spending it almost immediately on a red Cadillac car, offering to take his new-found friend Dieter on a near naked drive. Already the narrow-minded gossips have been whispering about their relationship, suggesting homosexuality; and Dieter’s father not only pulls his son out of the automobile but treats his now 16-year-old son like a child, paddling him naked just as the coach has previously.

     This time Dieter is accepting no apologizes, realizing that it is finally time to leave this closed German community with the new German immigrant, suggesting they escape to the magic emerald city of Minneapolis.

     And so begins the remarkable on-the-road sequence, where almost immediately, the police on their tail, their car is discovered and impounded. Dieter manages to sneak into the garage and retrieve the remaining money that Udo has inherited, but soon after, buying a new car that breaks down only a few miles further on their magical journey, results in even further jeopardy. They

finally reach the city of their dreams, where almost immediately Dieter meets up in a café with his former friend and is finally able to reaffirm their love through sex. Udo, drunk, runs into one of the most notorious of the cities’ male whores and is immediately relieved of his small bankroll.

     Dieter discovers that Phillip has finally learned how to survive through male prostitution, and after following him into the empty warehouse which he has made his home, perceives that as a wanted sixteen-year-old, he has no other choice but to display his beautiful young body to the ready older men who might enjoy it. Certainly, he can no longer depend on Udo, who apparently joins of the two of them in their temporary home.

     Dieter becomes rather well-known as the pretty boy to seek out, and finally, as one might expect he is busted by a handsome police officer, Lt. Scallion (Michael Glen) who calls his father. But when Dieter’s parents are told why he was arrested, they are no longer interested in him returning home, and the boy is left, as Scallion describes it, in a “hard place,” locked into detention unless he provides the address of the man they perceive as being behind his corruption, Udo.

    The young criminal attempts to explain to them that Udo has nothing at all to do with what Dieter has done, but they cannot dismiss the idea of an elder abuser, even while we know Dieter, now even a scofflaw, but a true social failure, cannot even protect himself. Demanding that he call his parents, Dieter dials Udo to tell him to pack up and leave immediately before they discover his address.

    Udo does so, but now he is living with a sick, feverous Phillip. AIDS is not even hinted at, but we can only suspect the worst, and the movie has already brought up that possibility with an earlier question from Dieter concerning the dangers of his behavior.

    Udo heads off. Finally, Dieter reveals the address, allowing him to be removed from handcuffs, but escapes the actual entry into his illegal abode, locking the door behind him. There he discovers the sick Phillip and for the first and certainly last time gives his body and love entirely over to his ill friend. It is perhaps one of the most beautiful sex scenes I have ever encountered in a gay movie. These boys were destined from the beginning to become lovers, and for a truly amazing moment they fulfill their destiny.

    But, obviously, Dieter cannot remain in Minneapolis, and soon is on his way to New York City, where all gay boys of the period end up, me two decades earlier.

     In the station he runs into a rather wise older, bearded man (also Douglas Blacks), who for reasons unknown is also on the run, warning him not to blame himself, and, most importantly, never to look back: “If you look backward, you stumble over the future.” Yet he bemoans the possibility that the bus might stop in Milwaukee (also a place where I lived for a year), obviously his version of Minneapolis.

    We have no idea whether our young hero will be able to survive New York City, and the more experienced man suggests he return immediately to the Germany that he observes the boy reading about in a book left to him by Udo. But that book is a picture of that country that existed before World War I, left to him by his auntie, not a real world to which Dieter might escape. The real world is clearly going to be difficult, perhaps in 1995 urban living in New York City was even impossible. If that beautiful young kid could only have been born earlier so that he might have escaped there maybe three decades earlier in 1969 when I did, he might have survived. But Dieter is of his generation, and we can only pray for him, even though I don’t truly believe in prayers.

      While the reviews of this film were sympathetic with it’s clearly amateur perspective, they were also somewhat harsh, Dennis Harvey of Variety arguing the story was “haphazard” the character-development representing more than the first-time director Keith Forelich “could chew.”

      Steven Holden of The New York Times was even harsher in his assessment that, “Except for Schirg's sullen, dissipated Udo, who is mesmerized by American television and flashy cars, the performances are excruciatingly inept and self-conscious in the film.” Holden assessed the script to be “meandering, dramatically flat.”

     But Gary Morris, writing in Bright Lights Film Journal understood where the heart of this movie lay:

 

“Philip’s departure paves the way for Dieter and Udo to follow, which they do after one of Helmut’s ‘fatherly’ beatings. But, typical of big city cautionary tales, the trip is disastrous. Dieter’s parents alert the police that the “faggot” Udo has seduced and kidnapped their son. Udo blows most of his money on a lemon that breaks down on the highway. He loses the rest to a street hustler, and ends up homeless and scrubbing floors. Dieter fares no better, following his pal Philip into the grimy world of homelessness, hustling, and police entrapment. Philip becomes “sick” suddenly, and while his problem is never specified, it’s obvious this is a code word for AIDS.

     Still, there are glimmers of beauty and points of connection in these seemingly dead-end lives. Udo meets a grandfatherly German mechanic who confesses he doesn’t understand homosexuality but knows Udo “has a good heart” and lets him stay with him. Philip and Dieter make love in an abandoned apartment. And in one of the film’s best scenes, Dieter confounds the police by speaking German to alert Udo that he’s in danger.

   The Toilers and the Wayfarers gains from fine cinematography, nicely evoking the soulless uniformity of the heartland and the promise of the neon streets of Minneapolis. Writer-director Froelich coaxes sweet, unmannered performances from his actors, with Ralf Schirg and Matt Klemp most effective as Udo and Dieter. And he gets especially high marks for his honest treatment of a subject that’s never been welcome but won’t go away: the sexuality of queer teenage boys.”

 

    I loved this film and teared up both times I watched it for several moments, a movie which spoke from William Gass’ “the heart of the heart of the country” I know so very well, and in which as a young gay boy I grew up, escaping, as thousands of others, both its dreadfully intense love and it inevitable punishments as soon as I possibly could.

 

Los Angeles, July 15, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).