Brian To | Audit / 2001

examining his finances, reviewing his self

by Douglas Messerli

 

Spencer Beglarian and Brian To (screenplay), Brian To (director) Audit / 2001 [28 minutes]

 

Even before they enter the dark and drab halls of the Federal building Julie Leer (Judy Greer) and Jack Kroll (Michael G. Kelley) are already arguing. Both are rather terrified about the audit they are about to undergo, but have been told that the authorities are more lenient when the couple both show up and explain their expenses, even though this couple evidently have a tax lawyer.

    Jack tells Julie to take off her sunglasses, that otherwise she looks like a drug dealer, and she, at first resists. And, in fact, she seems as if she will make problems from the start. Julie is a wannabee actor but makes her living as a Feng Shui consultant, helping her customers align their lives in space and rid themselves of clutter in their lives.

    Jack is a beginning actor whose major role of the year was as a dog, which he played part of the time in the nude.

     From the moment that they enter the office, observing the secretary (Sally Kirkland, playing a odd mix of someone with the qualities of Jean Brodie from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie [1969] and Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest [1975]) who in the first major scene of this short film reads the riot act to a man who has just undergone an audit and now owes $8,000.

    Yet she seems friendly to Julie, and merrily sends them off to Richard Valentine (played by the noted transgender actor Alexis Arquette, here playing a male), the auditor.

    For the first moments, any questions posed by Valentine are basically interrupted by Julie as she demands, first to change seats with her husband, and secondly that Richard put away the clutter of pens and scissors spilled across his desk. As she begins to clean them up, he rebels and quickly spills them out upon his desk again, not an auspicious beginning for the couple.

    Soon he gets down to business, questioning Jack about his deductions for props for his roles, one of which has evidently not even been purchased for him, and querying him about whether the play in which he performed a dog was truly a success or a flop. It seems to have been a bit of both, receiving critical notice but sparse audiences.

    Turning his attention to Julie, he cannot explain her deduction of 6,000 for makeup and other expenses as an actor given that she was unable to attain any roles and made no money in that “career.” In challenging her, is clearly ready to categorize her career as a hobby.

     Seemingly stressed by his questions, Julie decides to take a bathroom break, actually in attempt to smoke in a Federal building where no smoking is permitted. In the bathroom she encounters the secretary who immediately comes on to Julie, kissing her and attempting to seduce her, an aggressive lesbian determined to make love to the thin beauty that Julie represents.

    Meanwhile, back in the auditor’s office we discover that, in fact, four years previously Jack and Richard were living together in a gay relationship, and that Richard has basically paid for him to develop an acting career. Obviously, the tension between the ex-lovers is heightened as Jack insists he isn’t and never was gay, and that despite their several years together he never loved Richard, while the auditor reminds him that nonetheless, he licked his ass and fucked him most nights, and even met his parents. He produces a picture of the two together which leads to a bit of name-calling, Jack insisting that, unlike Richard, is his not a faggot until finally he appears to break down and admits that he still has some feelings for him, attempting to kiss him, the auditor backing away despite the fact that he obviously still has the hots for Jack.

    In the bathroom the secretary reveals to Julie her husband’s former relationship with the auditor, and how he supported him for years. At first, Julie refuses to believe it, but upon returning to the office spots the photograph of the two and grows increasingly furious with both of the men, betraying Jack concerning some of his false deductions and putting down the auditor by explaining that, despite his obvious dismissal of her seconding job as a Feng Shui consultant, that she actually brought in $13,000, evidently higher than the amount they had declared. She leaves the two ex-lovers to themselves, furiously leaving the building.

 

    When Jack finally admits he misses Richard, the auditor determines to simply close the case, returning their files without any further changes, Jack giving him a quick kiss on the lips in appreciation for the decision, told by Richard hurry off to his wife to see if he can still salvage the marriage.

     We quickly perceive, however, that Julie had long known of his previous relationship and they had planned all along to use it to manipulate the situation so that all of their false deductions would be forgiven. Indeed, they determine to now celebrate at the Ivy or Morton’s, two of Los Angeles’s expensive hot spots for people in the movie business. Jack chuckles over his success, yet the laughter is clearly somewhat artificial, and when he repeats the celebratory chortle, we perceive it is not so much a real laugh as much as it is a kind of thwarted cry for something that he has lost, a cynical guffaw released in recognition of all that he has been forced to give up simply to find his meager success. His marriage to this empty-headed woman, we perceive, is a sad trade-off for the sake of his career.

     As Julie celebrates their lies, she expresses her hope that he didn’t have to actually kiss the auditor to get what he wanted, explaining that the lesbian secretary had been all over her. But we sense, now in retrospect, that perhaps Jack’s kiss of Richard was not all in jest, that he does indeed miss aspects of their truly loving relationship, a sexuality he is no longer able to express. While he may have been able to succeed in lying about his financial situation, the inner audit he has just undergone is not been so easily resolved.

     It was interesting watching this film in 2025 with the fascinating Sally Kirkland, the former avant- garde actor who was once part of Andy Warhol’s factory who died that year at the age of 84 after having suffered dementia; witnessing a somewhat late work in Arquette’s career after she transitioned from a man into women, but had begun shifting gender roles before dying of AIDS complications in 2016.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).

 

 

Juan Sebastián Valencia | Pink Trumpets / 2024

on the street where you lived

by Douglas Messerli

 

Juan Sebastián Valencia (screenwriter and director) Pink Trumpets / 2024 [21 minutes]

 

Gregory Parker (Ryan Kirby) and Hunter Jones (Douglas Jung) were gay lovers six years before this short film begins. Somewhat inexplicably, they have run into one another again in Hunter’s favorite ice cream place back in the states, despite the fact that he now lives in Paris. The meet-up results in Gregory inviting Hunter back to his cabin in the mountains, the place where they regularly met up years before—at a time before Hunter discovered that Gregory was a married man with two children who had been lying to him and not even provided his real name.

   For Hunter, particularly, but for both men, we soon discover their break-up was a horrific time in which Hunter, unable to remain with his memories in the States, escaped to Paris and in which Hunter, we soon learn, gradually realized that he had loved Hunter and through therapy admitted his sexuality to his wife which ended in a divorce. His wife is soon about to marry again, although it’s apparent that he still sees his beloved children from time to time, and that finally his friendship with his ex-wife has been repaired.

    It is a story told time again about gay men who have not been able to be honest to themselves or others about their sexuality. But in this case the focus is on what happens to the other man to whom he has lied and cheated.

    Hunter begins the visit with insisting that he is intending to stay only a short while, perceiving it almost as a closure to such a painful period in his life. As he announces to Gregory: “I’m not the same anymore.” Gregory responding, “Neither am I.” And surely, despite Hunter’s seemingly charmed life in Paris where he is working now at a high paying job, has found a new friend, and has just purchased a lovely new apartment, Gregory’s life has changed far more radically given his divorce, his open admission to being gay, and his complete remodeling of the cabin house, where he now lives, the cabin symbolizing the only legitimate part of his past life, where the two of them spent their time together.

    If their slow series of revelations of their changes is a bit melodramatic, featuring as it does a rather bland picture of a place in the city, photographed evidently by Gregory of the street where they temporarily lived, this short film nonetheless makes it quite apparent of how the man who wouldn’t even reveal his name, in an attempt to protect his wife, children, himself, and, so he claims, even his gay lover, affected all of their lives for the worst.

     Given the fact that Hunter has found Paris and Gregory’s wife has found a new husband and father for the children, perhaps the only one who remains living in a fantasy world is Gregory, who finally reveals his real name, the fact that he has kept their friendship bracelet (Hunter has also kept his, although he has hidden it upon arrival), and now has only the memories of his life with Hunter left to sustain him.

    Soap operas, the genre in which this work basically functions, are the last bastions of romantic fantasies along with gay movies. Even heterosexual rom-coms are far more cynical these days. For here, after finally confronting Gregory for all the hearts he has broken and the pain he has caused, Hunter admits that he has a bag of clothes hidden in the trunk of his car and is willing still to spend the night—or perhaps an eternity with the man he realizes he still loves.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).