Ethan Michael Roberts | Dads / 2016

revelations

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ethan Michael Roberts (screenwriter and director) Dads / 2016 [11 minutes]

 

Every once in a while I just check in at AI to see what they say about a movie I have just watched and am about to write about. I never use any of their highly unreliable commentary, but in this instance it proves to me the complete ineffectuality of the whole system, particularly when it told me, in no uncertain terms, that there was no such movie made or released in 2016, a movie I had just seen for the second time.

      It appears also on Letterboxd and other internet sources, but not, inexplicably, on IMDb, which is perhaps why it never reached the radar of the AI inputters.

      In any event, this short comedy or tragedy, depending upon your point of view, involves a young man Scott (Justin Rose), whose lover Doug (Michael Evanichko) has already arisen from his bed and run off to work or wherever he was planning on going without his wallet.

     Scott, a late sleeper and somewhat of a slacker, who after two years in his apartment seems to not even have bought enough furniture to keep his computer off the floor, goes down to do with laundry in the basement of his apartment building where he suddenly, as he returns to street level he encounters he father (Robert Walker), who evidently having driven a ways to be there, has never before entered his son’s apartment, and is now inviting his son out for breakfast.

    In the toilet, he already sees a great many tissues and a few condoms; and when the son briefly escapes to change his laundry, where he enjoys a joint, the elder explores the apartment finding a partially nude photo on the wall, which he peels away to find the name Doug written on the back.

He also observes that someone named Dougie is calling on his son’s cellphone. And then, quite unexpectedly, Doug shows up to retrieve his wallet, startled to find his lover’s “dad” alone in the apartment.

      The father introduces himself, and Doug responds, making it now quite clear to the unknowing Dad that he and his son are having a sexual relationship, before he hurries off. The elder gradually assimilates the information with little response, except for a rather pained expression on his face.

     Finally, Scott returns, asking his father if he is still hungry.

   This short film is rather to heavily staged, given the arranged series of clues (why does Scott, for example, need the name of his lover on back of his photo as if he might forget it?), including the necessary return of Doug for his wallet. And since we get no verbal response from Scott’s father we can’t truly know what he is thinking or even if he has come to terms with the obvious. However, if you think of it as a rather quieter coming out film, it succeeds in its providing the father all the information he needs to now recognize his son as being queer. Perhaps they will go out for breakfast and, finally, be able to openly discuss what has for long been hidden.

 

Los Angeles, August 12, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).