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).

 

Douglas Messerli | Provincial Loves [introduction]

PROVINCIAL LOVES

by Douglas Messerli

 

Given the fact that so many millions of young men and women throughout the world who having grown up in rural areas move to urban areas, it should come as no surprise that the genre of leaving an early close friend or loved one behind is as old as literary history. One might even argue that the Odyssey is just such a story, although its hero spends most of his time struggling to return home. But as writers throughout history have observed again and again, you cannot really return home; nothing is the same and you would have been a different person had you stayed “back home of the farm,” especially after having seen “gay Paree.” 

      My collections of queer essays have already contained a great many stories of provincial loves. But it was still interesting to me that the genre had even migrated into the 21st century queer films I was observing. Some I have collated into other variances of the genre, such the French film by Olivier Peyon Lie with Me (2022). Others simply speak for themselves. But I have collected 4 of these films and one music video, with only the video representing a US production. The others, French, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch— Bernard Alapetite and Cyril Legann’s Like a Brother (2005), David Velduque’s No Place Like Home (2017), Alice Rohrwacher’s Italian-based Happy as Lazarro (2018), and Joren Molter’s Dust (2018)—represent the usual pattern: a young man has fallen in love with a local boy, often a lifetime friend; yet his love is not reciprocated, even rejected, sometimes violently, and he has no choice but to move away physically or, if nothing else, as in Dust, socially. The video by American singer Kyle Mottsinger expresses it quite clearly, he even attempting to imagine what his life might have been like had he remained back in the country with the truly handsome hunk he left behind, where, he now realizes, we would not have been able to survive in that “parallel universe.”

     What all of these boys and young men quickly realize is that in some way their must move on to different worlds, to spaces that are not as enclosed or dismissive of their sexuality. Generally, their move to urban settings is what permits them to become who they really are, changing them so completely that when they re-encounter their boyhood crushes, they can hardly recognize the young men they have become.

     I might easily have been able to make a selection of films representing this genre from every couple of decades, but I finally chose these particular works because I wanted to reiterate just how important this form has been to the gay imagination. And these films seemed to all suggest different versions of the common experience.

     After I had left home, and gone off to the university in Madison, Wisconsin, I suddenly was visited by a young woman who I had taken to prom. It had not been a serious relationship; I had once visited her on her family’s farm and had a lovely day riding a horse with her. At the prom, since she was the class photographer, she carried a large camera around her neck. I don’t know whether or not we even danced together. But suddenly it did become apparent that she had taken my attentions quite seriously, and had come all this way from Wakesha in an attempt to reignite a relationship which had never been. I took her for sandwiches, and we walked around the campus for a short while, but what could I tell her, that I was gay, had never been truly interested in her, had never been in love? It was a sad experience, both for her and for me. Nothing was said; she made no pleas; did not attempt to remind me of our “special days.” But I realized, and suppose she eventually she did as well, that there was no going back—at least for me. I have always wondered what she had hoped to achieve by her surprise visit, just as I wonder what Romain might have imagined happening by his meeting up again with Sebastien/Zack in Paris in Like a Brother. My “girlfriend” returned home, disappointed I fear, while I never looked back.

 

Los Angeles, August 3, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).  

Tyler Willam Milliron | Parallel Universe / 2019

leaving the hunk behind

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kyle Motsinger (music and lyrics), Tyler Willam Milliron (director) Parallel Universe / 2019 [4.30 minutes] [music video]

 

In this song by genre-breaking singer Kyle Motsinger, he wonders what might have happened if he had settled down with his gay lover in the small town in which he grew up, realizing that he would simply not have known the joys of his escape to New York City. He realizes that even for the hot lover he has left behind in the country, he couldn’t have survived. As he puts it in the song:

I couldn’t stay here

Even for a guy

In the middle of nowhere

I think my dreams would die

 

Opportunities I couldn’t find here

In a town not ruled by courage but by fear 

 

In another universe

You moved with me

We rented an apartment

In the heart of NYC

 

We’d explore the city

Side-by-side

End our days making love

Completely satisfied

 

    Now, back visiting his home town he realizes the had he remained there he would have indeed lived in a parallel universe.

 

Chose the road less taken.

I’m glad I did!

That poem by Robert Frost

I read it as a kid

Followed it to New York

One September day

Leaving my hometown

Eight hundred Miles away

Being back I wonder

What my life would be

If I lived here in the country

What would become of me?

 

In a parallel universe I stayed                       

After college I moved back to town

No other plans were made

 

Got a job

Got a dog right by my side

Settling for a slower life

Completely satisfied!

 

Wouldn’t know any better

Any worse

In that parallel universe

 

…..

 

In a parallel universe I stayed

We bought a house together

Front porch, sipping lemonade

 

Deep in love

You here by my side

Two country boys, the simple life

Completely satisfied

 

Couldn’t ask for someone better

To converse

In our parallel universe

    And he finally realizes that if he hadn’t chased his dreams, left the hunky hometown boy beyond, he would have not survived.

 

If I hadn’t chased my dreams, put myself first

I’d be in that parallel universe

I’d be in that parallel universe

 

    This film clearly reveals how sometimes a man has to leave his provincial lover behind or convince him to more on into the larger world.

 

Los Angeles, August 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).