Dave Twigg | My Shadow Is Pink / 2021

loving support

by Douglas Messerli

 

Scott Stewart (screenplay), Dave Twigg (director) My Shadow Is Pink / 2021 [7 minutes] [animated video]

 

Within the first two minutes of this short film, the young boy has twice rejected the advances of his pink shadow, offering him a pink horse and attempting to engage him in activities that are obviously preferable to our young hero. But the pictures above him showing a fairly disgruntled father, his arm around his son, discourage him from entering into his true desires.

    When he finally reveals to his pink shadow the cause of his distress, the photos over his own desk, the shadow quickly dons a tutu, causing further dismay in the young boy.

     Finally, the boy reaches out to his shadow, pleasurably wrapped up in a dance of joy.

     The shadow offers him a dress, which in wonderment he admires and almost puts on the very money his large, drooping mustachioed father enters the room. The father looks about, takes in what’s happening, and the door slams as he leaves. The boy is heartbroken.

    Yet suddenly the shadow points out that it’s dress as your shadow day. Where such days happen is not clear; perhaps in Canada, where this film was made, only. Certainly such days are not permitted in the USA. But it’s a lovely thought, one that truly might open up children to their other possibilities.

    The boy does precisely that, dressing up in a tutu. But then he imagines himself at school, his father looking scornfully at him. The boy enters a room where the father stand and exits just as quickly.

      But there is true remorse in the father as well, as he opens the door to his son’s room, also appearing in full tutu, this time with a blue shadow accompanying him.

   He hands the smaller tutu made for his son over to him, a true act of sharing and complete acceptance. The boy kisses him.

      The words appear, “You are loved exactly as you are.”

      How we wish that were true for all young people.

      Canadian Scott Stuart wrote the story, so I have read, inspired by experiences with his own son, who loved Disney’s 2013 film Frozen based in The Snow Queen, and enjoyed wearing dresses.

     

Los Angeles, November 8, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2026).

 

Pierre Stefanos | Bedfellows / 2010

ken dolls

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pierre Stefanos (screenwriter and director) Bedfellows / 2010 [15 minutes]

 

Told as a fairy tale, Pierre Stefanos’ Bedfellows is essentially yet another fantasy of the heterosexual American Dream played out with gay figures, like a closeted child playing with toy men trying to plan out how he might exist in the future.

     Narrated by Tim Gualtieri, it tells the story of Bobby (Paul Caiola), whose heart was broken by a cheating boyfriend. Bobby only now, after eight long months, has returned to a gay bar to pick someone up, thoroughly depressed for even having to reenter the gay bar world. But from across a crowded room, a handsome stranger, Jonathan (Bret Shuford) buys him a drink.

      The two go home, have great sex, and stay the night together, while Bobby—obviously desiring a similar life to his own parents but obviously even better—dares to dream of his mock-heterosexual future. The two fall in love, get married, adopt a black son and attempt to have a surrogate child. The only tragedy seems to come to the female surrogate who loses the baby. But don’t worry, they soon after adopt as Asian girl. They obviously have high paying jobs living in a mansion that seems to be located in some posh neighborhood in Long Island, and their children grow up, the boy Damian heading off to college while the girl Li having a baby, although it’s Bobby who cries over the loss of “their” baby. Even the roles of gender seem not to be altered. No hidden feminist message here. Women are made to have babies.

     Sure, the boys argue, but they bring each other flowers and make up. Their love is strong and they end the film by sitting on the terrace sipping cocktails, hands around each other’s waits.

      Waking up, Bobby finds his cuddling friend gone. It’s clear, so the narrator tells us, that his meeting with Jonathan was just a one-night stand. But when he enters the kitchen, there is Jonathan who has made Bobby and a himself a full breakfast, scrambled eggs, French toast, bacon, and orange juice. This could be the start of something big, so the narrative hints.

      The only original aspect of this heteronormative fantasy is that it was made in 2010, five years out from same-sex marriage becoming legal in the US.

       Of course, a great many gay men want to live out just such a fantasy, and in some senses, I, who have been now married nearly 55 years, have lived in such a world, sans the perfectly diverse little family Bobby and Jonathan have created. But today many a gay couple have, in fact, made their lives over in the very image this tale dreams of.

       I have to ask, however, why does this appear on a disk called “Best Gay Shorts?” What is gay about Bobby’s life and why does this little fantasy represent one of the best short films of the gay world? Except for the fact, as the narrator mentions in the very first line of this film, that the lovers both have penises, what does their being “gay” mean in this fairy tale? What does their being two men in love really matter? Something like this dream must cross the minds of millions of straight couples every year.

       Frankly, the difficulties my husband and I have had as being two males living together is far more interesting that Bobby’s imagined reality. The feeling of not being part of the normative straight world has made me a more complex figure than the toy men Bobby and Jonathan appear to be, like two Ken dolls with all the benefits of Barbie and her friends. Seeing this film in 2024, I see nothing original in this picture.

 

Los Angeles, February 20, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).

Guy Shalem | Something Real / 2012

get real

by Douglas Messerli

 

Guy Shalem (screenwriter and director), Jeff Marx and Mervyn Warren (music and lyrics) Something Real / 2012 [9 minutes]

 

Gosh, just when I was complaining that US gay films were missing the musical theater mix-ups of Canadian LGBTQ films, Guy Shalem released his all-star musical tribute Something Real, taking us into a West Hollywood, California gay bar to encounter a lot of unhappy men in search of the film’s title.

      Alas, Shalem’s 9-minute short is basically a one-liner. Filling the screen with celebrity gay figures—most of whom would not be recognized outside of the gay film circuit—Shalem poses the age-old and shallow question: “Isn’t there something better to do with my life than stand around with a drink in my hand seeking out someone with whom might I go to bed for the night?”

      Apparently not, for the large cast milling around the film’s frames, including Lucas Bane, Jordan Black, Vincent De Paul, Jacob DeMonte-Finn, David Devora, Drew Droege, Maile Flanagan, Roy Jenkins, Rex Lee, Micah McCain, Joe Michaely, Sam Pancake, Jack Plotnick, Jesse James Rice, Jeffery Self, Tony Tripoli, and Bruce Vilnach.

     Shalem begins his film with a sort of narrative, a couple breaking up. Which leads, obviously, the narrator to take his sorrows out to the bar, where he encounters his ex-lover once again, but makes the same mistake in not turning around to say he’s sorry. Wow! What a plot.

 

     Now it’s time to rev up the music, turn up the colors, let everyone who’s here shout out their cliches for not wanting to be here, and half-way through the film turn on the echo chamber to let everyone join in on that stupendous single hit with the profound lyrics:

 

Anacrusis: “Despite the noise can we find something real?” [repeat 12 times]

 

This guy’s cute, that guy’s hot

This guy’s into me, that guy’s not

 

What are we doing

Numbing the pain

Going through the motions

This is the game (what’s your name?)

 

[Several choruses follow]

 

….This is the game, this is the dance

Looking for action

Not romance

 

Closure: “Despite the noise can we find something real?” [repeat 4 times]

 

     Now wasn’t that fun?

 

Los Angeles, May 13, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).