Juliana Antonius | Velvet / 2022

an affair to remember

by Douglas Messerli

 

Juliana Antoninus and Damon Beirne (screenplay), Juliana Antonius (director) Velvet / 2022 [10 minutes]

 

One thing that doesn’t get mentioned very often is just how different the world is in gay and lesbian filmmaking, where many women, mostly students, get an opportunity to write and direct film—so much rarer in the commercial film industry.

     Juliana Antonius’ Velvet demonstrates, in seems to me, very much the vision of a young romantic female. I seriously doubt that even young femme film boys, such as the character Ben (Achilles Mulkey) in this movie, would fantasize about Edward VI, the boy king of British history, and after work as a bartender each night, put on a royal red velvet cloak and crown, and take up a scepter before returning home. He explains his fantasy as emanating from a shared love of history with his disappointed father, who clearly thought his son was not at all living up to his expectations of what a man should be. For Ben, the boy king Edward became someone he could inhabit in his imagination, allowing the young royal—at least in symbolic terms—to come to full adulthood free from his kingly expectations.

      It perhaps also takes a female’s imagination to conjure up a disappointed bar-goer like Marcus, whose date having not shown up, is charmed by the young transgender boy, particularly since Ben himself has a fetish for velvet, the material which covered so much of her mother’s untouchable furniture.

      In this romantic fantasy, the two come together for after-hour dancing, kisses, and a bathroom blow-joy, although with promises of another date and more encounters.

    Ben has finally found an adult king to sweep him up into his arms and carry him off to sexual heaven—although it might have been nice if Marcus had sexually reciprocated the joyful pleasures that Ben provided. Next time, we imagine, when returning the velvet robe he might also return the sexual favor.

     This is a nice gay—excuse the slightly misogynist terminology, but I couldn’t resist—“chick flick.” In truth, I’ve watched movies such as An Affair to Remember (the standard, Nora Ephron definition of such a film posited in her film Sleepless in Seattle) dozens of times with nary a dry eye. Accordingly, I don’t see this as a denigrating term, although I have to say, that I can’t imagine this series of events in real life.

 

Los Angeles, January 7, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (January 2025).

Théo Gosselin, and Lucas Hauchard and others | Nevada / 2020

old friends

by Douglas Messerli

 

Thibault Lévêque (screenwriter) Théo Gosselin, and Lucas Hauchard and others (directors) Nevada / 2020 [20 minutes]

 

Nevada is not so much a coherent movie as it is a series of images of several down-and-out friends, mostly from Normandy in France who perform as a mix of drifters and tourists, which the close-knit cast and crew mostly are. The film begins with a seasoned drifter, Emmanuel Rosario, and quickly drops him for almost the entire remainder of the film, as it focuses on the two French gay boys, Victor (Victor Mieusement) and Matt (Matthieu Brochec) who have been lured to the desert outpost of Nevada—most of it shot in the former mining town of Ely—by another French friend, Thibault (Thibault Lévêque), who is definitely on the skids. 

     He has evidently encouraged the two of them to come to help him work on the construction of a new motel, but after one night in a town that consists of a casino, some cheap motels, a strip club and a diner or two, they receive a note from Thibault explaining that the job has been a lie, and he had just needed there to help save him.

     We don’t know precisely what his position is in relationship to them, possibly a former lover in a kind of polysexual friendship or simply a long-time friend; but as Victor and Matt, drunk of their minds, wrestle, attempt to cut their hair, and fall into sex back in their motel room on this cold, snowy night, Thibault almost freezes in the cold, the two finding him outside their motel room door the next morning.

      They give him a hot bath and warm him up under blankets as cuddle up to him in order to save his life.

     Victor rises and runs off, obviously with a strong feelings of betrayal and confusion, Matt chasing after. Emmanuel arrives in town, while Victor discovers that, in fact, there actually are jobs open for construction, hitching a ride with his two friends in the back of a pickup truck driver by a woman. They stop to pick up Emmanuel, also hitch-hiking, and presumably all four will find work wherever they headed.

      As I mentioned, however, it isn’t the rather purposeless plot that matters. As Anaïs Viand observes in the on-line magazine Fishbite: “A group of friends, idyllic landscape, a reflection on the American dream…. And all this in 20 minutes.”

     Lévêque is a little more specific: “Nevada is the story of an unreliable guy in great emotional distress who calls two of his friends to join him in the USA, under the pretext of motel renovations. A false plan. Because once there, the misfortunes follow one another. Then begins an initiatory journey around friendship, love, trust, and reconciliation."

     This is Kerouac territory, without a full “on the road” experience.

 

Los Angeles, December 6, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).

Bruce Leddy | Wizard of Oz (Alternative Ending) / 2004 [Mad TV]

a judy garland nightmare

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lauren Dombrowski, Sultan Pepper, and Dick Blasucci (screenplay), Bruce Leddy (director) Wizard of Oz (Alternative Ending) / 2004  [4.13 minutes] [Mad TV]

 

Poor Dorothy, the Wizard has just flown off on his balloon, and Dorothy (Nicole Parker) has been left high and dry without a way to return home to Kansas in Episode 22 of the ninth year of this comedy series. The Cowardly Lion encourages her to stay with them, but Glinda (Stephnie Weir) the good witch suddenly shows up in her pink-colored bubble to answer the poor Midwestern girl’s problems.

    Glinda tells her that, of course, she’s always had the power to return home to Kansas, the fact of which Dorothy is obviously a little bit confused and perhaps even upset about. Even the Scarecrow wonders why she had never told her before, to which Glinda replies, “She wouldn’t have believed me,” and Dorothy responds, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

     Dorothy argues that even if Glinda had told her to lick the “Lollipop Guild,” she would have done it, but now she’s rightfully pissed off, the Lion reminding her that she then would not have met them.

    But Dorothy is adamant that as a teenage girl, skipping down the road with the three of them, she might have been far better off without their help during which she always felt she needed to keep her hand between her legs. But the Tin Man insists she didn’t have to have been afraid of him, to which she responds, “Believe me I picked up on that right away, Tinsel Toes.”

     We have now moved into a quite alternative but perhaps appropriate different version of the famous and beloved story.

     So how do I get home, you witch? “Just click your heels,” Glinda assures her.

     But Dorothy is now about an inch away from punching her reluctant savior, “Baby Talk,” in the face. When the Tin Man protests, Dorothy describes him as a homo, particularly after being told all she needed to say was “There’s no place like home.” Or, as Glinda explains, there were many other ways she might have hurried back home: she could have clapped her hands or winked your eyelids, or sneezed—the list goes on. Dorothy is furious at “the psycho crazy bitch,” on the attack, choking her secret savior to death.

     Dorothy pulls away the lovely Glinda’s wand and goes for her throat, as The Tin Man, madly clicking his heels and repeating the magic charm “There’s no place like home,” wakes up in bed with his Hispanic metal lover, admitting that he has had the most insane “Judy Garland dream.” His lover realizes he needs a little TLC, pouring a jigger of oil down below where suddenly he blows off steam from the top of his head, with a “Whoop-de-do!” and pleasurable return to love and protection.

     Now that I recognize it was not the Cowardly Lion nor even the dancing Scarecrow, but the Tin Man seeking his heart who was the gay boy in this saga, I am finally content to describe The Wizard of Oz as a certifiably gay movie.

 

Los Angeles, January 3, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

 

Bob Mizer | Monte Hanson / 1967 || Monte Hanson Outdoors / 1967 || Monte on the Rooftop / 1967 || Monte on a Cycle / 1967 || Monte in the Pool / 1967

full monte

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bob Mizer Monte Hanson / 1967 || Monte Hanson Outdoors / 1967 || Monte on the Rooftop / 1967  || Monte on a Cycle / 1967 || Monte in the Pool / 1967

 

Suddenly, after a number of performances with Bob Mizer throughout the early 1960s, including his highly homoerotic exercises of Military School Initiation (1963) and his erotic wrestling duo with Tony Gallo (1964)—as well as Mizer’s almost pornographic sex wrestling rapes of Tijuana Bandit of the same year—all performed with the necessary posing penis pouches (almost invisible I might argue, given the fact that even Facebook put me into their monthly prison because of the presumed nudity their algorithmic preceptors couldn’t detect as giving their performers' cover), in March 22, 1967 Monte Hanson went naked, showing off his cock in a determined way to arouse the gay male public that could no longer be described as an expression of aesthetic male athleticism. A couple of years later Mizer would ponder the question of “Why the Wooden Indian Wouldn’t,” but he had already made it clear in 1967 that he would no longer obey the codes of Hollywood productions.

      In that lovely film Monte Hanson the model quickly stripped down and took it all off, revealing a good-looking cock which he proudly showed off for 13 long minutes, an innocent porno film to which Mizer and so many others had been pointing to since they began their male infatuations. Something in this moment changes so radically that I think even the gay community couldn’t quite fully embrace it. Monte Hanson was there for you to love, suck off, even stroke his quite cute butt. He was totally available in a way that no other movies before permitted their male models to be. Monte Hanson had gone full “monte” and was ready for your love and attention. Mizer had broken the code without even bothering to register its existence.

     In Monte Hanson Outdoors of that same year, Mizer moved into depiction of what he was now describing as the healthy life of nudism. But anyone who loved boys knew that nudism in the world of 1967 was not at all perceived as being truly healthy and that Monte’s butt and cock where on the screen merely to please and tease them. The handsome and more than willing Monte begins, as usual now, with stripping off his pants, pouring a little lotion over his body to entice the eye into what you might imagine your hands applying to his muscular motion, and then, breaking down what appears to be a ball of twine intended to tie him up in your arms, into a jump rope which, of course, displays the movement of his balls and cock. Oh Bobby, you’ve gone back clear to the roots of gay cinema in Eadweard Muybridge and the painters before that such as Thomas Eakins.

     Monte lifts weights to help make his cock dangle in delight. The workout movie has become something else, to which any gay man lifts his eyes in recognition of the weight lifted from his shoulders. Mizer winked, and winked and finally put it all up front. “You like this, don’t you, and so do I.” Monte Hanson was there not for any other reason than pure sexual pleasure. The ropes of his possible entanglement become a workout device to excite us further into his sensual pleasures, a development of the muscles and everything else we want to tie him up into for our sexual satisfaction. God, does Mizer know his sexual tropes! He’s been studying them for so many long years.

    And finally in Monte on the Rooftop, this time in color, he gets it all wrong, posing his model on a rooftop of rocks, where he pretends to be a mustachioed muscle builder, showing off the positions of those who spend their entire lives attempting to establish their muscular emptiness as the later Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger would establish as the substance and sustenance his entire career. Forget it; we already know muscle builders have a lot of muscles (although poor Olson can’t compare with them in that regard), but generally tiny penises, which he has plenty to shout about. But even Monte’s cock seems to have gotten smaller in color. Now he is kind of Saga hero, pulling out a ridiculously sunny sword which doesn’t at reflect positively on him since Mizer has fucked up, mistaken his beefy black-and-white heroes for color-film heroes, something he simply couldn’t get out of his head since his really trashy color films of the late the 1950s such as Aztec Sacrifice and Slave Market. These, the precursors of all of John Waters films, for which I bow down to Mizer in thanks, miss the point of his black-and-white voyeuristic looks at the beautiful post-World-War II boys which shuffled off into this Hollywood palace.

   I wanted to go there and fuck up all the beautiful 1950s and early 1960s boys he put out to touch; but the later the 1960s and 1970s colorized gay boys he presented to me were so far less interesting that I couldn’t have imagined even putting my hand into their inviting unzipped denims. What had happened to sex?

     As Olson makes quite apparent, it’s hard to sit on rocks. The newly identified Monty had to throw away his identity again to become Monte on a Cycle (1967), no gimmicks here. Monte is on his motorcycle, now fully in mustache and long hair, older than in any other movies he made the same year. He puts himself in position as only Kenneth Anger might have imagined him, the slide of the cock to the leather of the bike. He’s ready to ride with anyone who might want enjoy this now slightly older hippie off into the impossible space we recognize is the end of his career. Poor Monte, now merely a representative of his former sexual self-assured cock, an empty shell of what we all know we will quickly turn into when we take ourselves too seriously as he surely now has.

    In the final quick movie, Monte Hansen in the Pool (also 1967) we get another glimpse of his rose tattoo upon his butt, as he quickly struggles back to surface to dangle his penis in our nose, while in the background far cuter new boys seem to present complete hardons. Alas poor Monte is a stringy-haired mess from another generation.

 

Los Angeles, January 2, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (January 2025).

Lily Dommart | Before You Go / 2019

the open hatred of gay desire

 

by Douglas Messerli

 

Burbs L Burberry (screenplay), Lily Dommart (director) Before You Go / 2019 [13 minutes]

This film, which takes place evidently on the Isle of Man in 1972, begins with Eddie (Joshua Moore) bicycling up to his friend Jack (Liam Rice) to express a notion that repeats throughout the film: “Ready whenever you are.”

     What apparently Jack is not ready for is the imagined kiss that Eddie places on his lips. Jack is heading off to become a fisherman, in all inevitability leaving his friend behind forever as he heads off to the difficult work of sudden indentured adulthood. He doesn’t at all want to be a fisherman like his father, which requires him to move to an entirely other world, on a new island.

    As Eddie asks his friend, “What do you want?” they come together in a deep kiss; but obviously given the repeat of the same scene, that is not what actually happens in the reality of their world. Jack can only reply, “I don’t know.”

     But Eddie tries to push their love just a little closer to real-life experience, noting that he will miss his friend, and “You don’t realize about how much you love something until you are about to leave,” that something clearly including one another.

     Eddie insists that he is not going to forgot his friend, but both know that Jack’s dramatization of the event is serious. Eddie insists, however, that he now needs to go to Paul’s (Jeremy Theobald) to return some books.

     Paul, evidently a former teacher of the two, has loaned out a copy of Orwell, which the intelligent Eddie is not entirely pleased with, not being a fan of dystopias, he claims, while Paul thinks it a semi-realistic viewpoint from the view of 1948. We are obviously talking about his 1949 fiction, 1984, which concerns Orwell’s fears of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of individuals within their societies, a book we might well imagine as significant in 2019, if not the 1972 date of this movie.

     Of course, Eddie’s right in his complaints that even the conception of a state having that much control over what we like, how we think, and what we feel, is unappealing. But what he doesn’t comprehend is that he, himself, is a product of just such an estate. But he is convinced that the government isn’t out to get him.

     Eddie asks Paul what he most remembers about university, Cambridge, to which their former teacher replies: “The people I guess. They were some of the best people I’ve ever met.” He made friends there, although of course no longer sees them. Cambridge was the home of homosexual relationships during the period in which Paul must have attended, the world of spies recruited from the intense relationship between friends. Nothing of this is spoken about in Dommart’s movie, but it’s there nonetheless, just as is the invisible relationship between the would-be lovers Eddie and his friend Jack who is about to be thrown from the intellectual towers into a work-a-day world. 

     This film, as much as it is about homosexual relationships, is also about the British class system, which in 1972 these young men still had to face, a world not that much different, in fact, from E. M. Forester’s Maurice or Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. The Manx boy Eddie is facing just the forces that separated school chums from both Oxford and Cambridge in those now cinematically rendered tales.

      Paul admits that there was someone at school which changed his life, and whom he has loved very much, but hasn’t spoken to for years.

      “Why?” asks Eddie.

      “Because that was the way of things back then,” Paul expresses his cowardice. He never jeopardized their friendship.

      “You could have had that time together,” Eddie insists, while Paul, still the coward, expresses his excuse, “He wouldn’t have wanted me.” Paul suggests that Eddie might benefit from reading some Isherwood, and hands him a book to bring back at Christmas.

 

      But if you might think Eddie, the intelligent student would support his obviously gay mentor, you would be mistaken, and, in fact, we have been wrong in our perceptions all along. It is Jack who argues that Paul has certainly never told anyone else about his sexual desires, and that besides what might they do? Eddie, on the other hand, is invested in reporting him, although he doesn’t want to become involved in anything like this; “I don’t want it on my record.” Moreover, it’s irresponsible for his being around kids, although Jack argues it doesn’t truly bother anyone. To Jack’s insistence, that “He’s never hurt anyone,” Eddie comes back with the terrified and angry: “Jesus, Jack, you always come out with such stupid stuff!”

     The coward is Eddie, not Jack who is about to be sent into the heterosexual workhouse with a woman surely identified as his mate for the rest of his life. It is Eddie, the supposed intelligent and perceptive one, desperately in love with Jack, who cannot break away from the deep, dark fears of the dear, stupid heteronormative Britain.

      Why are you doing this, Jack wonders. “Mr. Kelly practically got you into university, and you’re ready to disown because he’s in love with another man.” Jack points out that he respected him an hour ago, but now he is ready to hate him, although he is still the exact same person, and Eddie is the exact same person, and—he adds, shifting everything in this taught little melodrama—“I am still the exact same person.”

      “What have you got to do with this?” asks Eddie, knowing full damn well Jack has everything to do with Eddie’s homophobic terror. Jack almost moves into a kiss, until Eddie again demands to know about his involvement. Jack stands, picks up his backpack, and answers the only way someone can to the Eddies of the world: “Nothing. I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

    “You just get to leave,” Jack shouts back to Eddie’s pleas to stay, “but the rest of us don’t. We’ve got to sit behind and figure out what to do with the rest of our lives.” Everything is expressed in the image of Jack having to lift his leg over the wire fence of where previously they have sat in appreciation of the homeland’s beauty, he escaping to someplace where he doesn’t truly want to be.

      Of course, Eddie shows up to say goodbye, with a summary hug before he pulls away into a new world that he is clearly not prepared for. To himself, Jack mumbles, “See you at Christmas….Eddie.” But we know that they won’t find a way to truly get together again. In 1992, The Isle of Man decriminalized homosexuality, 20 years after these 18 or 19-year-old boys had permanently broken the love of their childhood. Eddie, perhaps, found his way into a gay relationship, while Jack was stranded, wishing for a past that could never have existed, just as for their teacher Paul Kelly. Class had everything to do with British homophobia, as Forester, in particular, recognized.

     Dommart’s short film is a far more profound study of the British problems with homosexuality than many a feature film and documentary.  

 

Los Angeles, December 31, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).