Jess Maldaner | Warm Smooth Mean / 2015

the man who loved too much

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mark Allen (screenplay), Jess Maldaner (director) Warm Smooth Mean / 2015 [15 minutes]

 

This masterful short might have easily been a feature production if they had simply added more music and deeper mystery and insights into the suicide of River Nelson, a country western singer who paired up with Jerry Lee McCoy (Cameron Dye) and backup singer Dolly White (Carrie Madsen).

    River’s son, Hunter (William McKinney), who was just 10 when his father died, and is still receiving royalty checks, is now finally determined as a young man to seek out the now washed-up singer Jerry Lee to find out what really happened, and how his father came to kill himself.

    He catches up with the singer in a small café where he is now performing, looked after basically by a waiter in the café, Dolly, who brings meals and breakfasts to him when he isn’t too drunk to even eat.

    Hunter arrives at the venue asking for answers, but is immediately rejected as Jerry Lee drives angrily away, the boy now trying to offer him the royalty check which the singer refuses.

     Dolly invites him to Jerry Lee’s shack, saying that perhaps, other than Jerry Lee, she knew his father better than ever, praising him as a man. But Hunter has only heard praises and now as a young adult is seeking out the truth.

     Hunter leaves without any more information than before, but again attends a performance by Jerry Lee, who is so disturbed that he stops mid-way in the performance and leaves, finally shouting out the terrible truth, that his father was queer.

   Again Hunter visits his shack, wherein Dolly presides. There, finally, Jerry Lee admits that their final fight involved River’s desire to give up his entire career just to share the love he felt for Jerry Lee, which he admits was more than anyone ever loved him. But the breakup clearly resulted in River’s self-murder, and Jerry Lee now can never get over that fact, even now ordering Hunter to leave.

     At least, Hunter now has the facts, as painful as he might find the truth. His father, as Jerry Lee, claims might have been better off without him and his mother.

     This film continues in a recent tradition of strong, macho, country-western figures having to deal with their own queerness, including Brokeback Mountain (2005), Pedro Almadóvar’s far-more convincing answer to that film, Strange Way of Life (2023), and particularly the character of country-western singer Will Lexington in the TV series Nashville (2012-2016) and a closely related short film, Jeremy Leroux’s Dominant Chord (2019), as well as others.

     We don’t really know how the son feels about the new revelations, except when he first hears about his father being, he slugs Jerry Lee. But, at least, he now has a reasonable explanation, and will have to live with that reality the best as he can.

      The legend has finally turned all too human.

 

Los Angeles, August 3, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).