David Dean Bottrell | Available Men / 2006

ultimate bloodbath

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Dean Bottrell (screenwriter and director) Available Men / 2006 [15 minutes]

 

David Dean Bottrell’s short film, Available Men from 2006 has got to be one of the funniest short comedies ever written. But for me to successfully convey the cleverness of the work I’d have to read back the full script, and even then you’d need the original cast to properly bring it off.

    The situation is pure farce. Steve (Brian Gattas), a handsome young gay man who has been having some difficulty in finding someone who wants what he desires, a serious, long-term relationship. His psychiatrist has suggested he get out more often and just “be himself.” He’s scheduled a meeting for a blind date named Robert (Jack Plotnick), a truly mild-mannered shy gay CPA from Glendale also seeking a serious relationship.

       At the same hotel bar, Rob (Richard Rucccolo) an agent who in the past year has lost several of his writers and actors—and his wife—is truly desperate to sign up a truly strikingly beautiful ex-cabdriver who’s written a new hot Hollywood script, Ultimate Bloodbath. He’s never read the script nor seen the writer Stephen (Kostas Sommer), who along with Steve is already sitting at the bar waiting for their appointments.

      Obviously, there’s a mix-up, Rob convinced that Steve the gay man is his date, and, soon after, Stephen presuming the agent who’s after him is Robert.

       In a sense, the situation is straight out of 18th century comedy, as the languages of both the actor and agent sound so similar to gay sexual jargon that they might be misunderstood and more desperately and far more coarsely speaking about the things expect from a gay relationship. The agent Rob, so desperate for a client, recounts the times when one of his partners has wanted always be on top, and, stressed him out, but meeting every day at lunch time to demand more and something bigger, etc. But he’s loyal and will “ride that pony over the finish line, you feel me?”

       The actor/script writer Stephen makes his own demands on Robert, that he not only provide him occasionally with an Asian hooker but that he wants “to be paid. A lot.”

      “Paid?”

      “Why the hell else would I get in bed with one of you guys?”

      The agent confides to Steve that sometimes it gets hard, on rare occasions, and when it does it get hard, “I’m your man..”

      You get the idea.

      The accountant Robert is the first to react, forcing the writer to put down his cellphone, as he takes off his own glasses, and looks him in the eye. He reports that he is “a level 8 Brazilian jujitsu Black Belt master, ranked 139th in the world. If there were any justice, I would take you out behind this building and beat the living shit out of you, you stupid, soulless, arrogant, little bitch….”

       He gets up to leave, pretty boy Stephen following after, pleading “I want to be with you, you got balls. I want to be with you, I want to be with you,” running after the escaping gay accountant.

       Our unsure gay boy Steven follows suite, saying that he thought that he had problems but hearing the sense of desperation in Rob’s pleas, he now knows that he is fairly healthy. At one point in his diatribe, he asks Rob what is it he really like to do it life. The man replies, after some thought, to open a bookstore.

       So, we are told, Rob now works at Round-N-Round Records and has a new girlfriend. At a party Robert and Steve met each other, fell in love, and are desperately now happy. Stephen’s screenplay never came to be filmed. He’s now looking for something else.

       See the movie; I can assure you you’ll laugh a lot—aloud.

 

Los Angeles, November 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).