Hoang A. Duong | Tom Clay Jesus / 2001

the man that got away

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hoang A. Duong (screenwriter and director) Tom Clay Jesus / 2001 [17 minutes]

 

Tom (Scott Saffer), a good-looking gay man brings home Clay (David Ojalvo) for a night of sex. The two truly enjoy each other, and we recognize them almost immediately as a perfect couple.

    But this is still a long 13 years away from when gays in the US could get married, and accordingly, despite AIDS, there was still no strong cultural pull in the gay community to couple up, even though Clay leaves Tom his telephone number with the hope he might call him with the hope that a fuller relationship could develop.

     A month goes by, however, without a call. When they meet up in a bar again, Tom has already committed himself to go home with another man (Charles Kaiser), yet seeing Clay he goes over to him, hugs him, flirts for a few minutes, and orders up a round of drinks, before kissing him goodbye, Clay reminding him that he still has his number to call him.

     When Tom’s new pick-up asks who he had greeted at the bar, Tom replies “a friend.”

     Clay meanwhile often appears to sit home alone nights awaiting Tom’s call. The only call we observe him receiving, however, is from his mother concerning his father’s failing health.

      Tom, we can imagine perpetuates his life of pick-ups, although he too, we perceive, remembers the smooth skin of Clay, recalls they raucous time in bed together.

       Clay ages a bit from his youthful cuteness, becomes somewhat lankier, and grows a beard. Still no call from Tom.

      One day while taking his clothes to a local laundromat, he spots Tom inside. He almost turns around, fearful of encountering him again after all these weeks. But his desire is still potent, and he enters without greeting his former lover.

       Tom appears not even to recognize him, but is still quickly attracted, introducing himself to whom he perceives as a stranger. Clay, a bit flabbergasted, looks up at the wood-paneled wall, where hangs a portrait of Christ, as he turns his eyes back to Tom, naming himself Jesús. Tom invites him home.

       There Clay’s discovers near Tom’s computer the blue slip of paper on which has so long ago written his name and number. When he asks who Clay is, Tom once more replies that he is a “good friend.”

       The two begin their foreplay, Tom clearly intrigued now by finding himself with a man he believes is a Latin lover, responding to Jesús’s further query about his “friend” that he, Jesús, is a better lover than Clay.

       As they get into bed, Tom tops Clay, asking what he prefers sexually. Clay pauses before answering “I want to go home.”

         A bit taken aback, Tom suggests that he too has other work to do. Clay stands and quickly leaves.

       We see both men pacing back and forth in their one-room apartments, both troubled by the recent situation for different reasons, Tom clearly surprised by the rejection and Clay/Jesús torn by the decision he has made to break with his phantom lover.

         Tom takes up the blue slip of paper and calls Tom’s number. Tom nervously answers, somewhat delighted that Tom has finally chosen to call. But when Tom speaks, he tells him simply that he has a wrong number.

          A very smart commentator on the IMDb site, with the moniker of Atlantis2006, likens it to French psychoanalyst/psychiatrist Jacques Lacan’s description of “phantasmatic desire”:

 

“As Jacques Lacan explains in Ecrits, the nature of the object of desire relies deeply on a most effective assertion: one's greatest desire is to be the object of desire of the other. In "Tom Clay Jesus", the lives of Tom and Clay get seemingly interwoven at first. There is a promise, a longing for an ideal that would henceforth consolidate a meaningful relationship. But as one could guess, ideals are not an easy item to come by, whether it is an abstract ideal or the ideal man.

     …Desire is mediated by this phantasmatic distortion that forces Tom to overlook his newfound partner and makes him to rapidly feel attraction towards Jesus, a bearded stranger he meets two months after the first scene.

     When Tom fails to see beyond his phantasmatic obsession he disqualifies Clay as an option. But when Clay can relinquish this failed status, and in fact has the power to personify the very phantasm Tom so eagerly awaits, he also sees Tom under a new light. Perhaps then, the shifting of what Lacan denominates "object a" in regards to desire, eliminates the possibilities of a steady relationship.”

 

       He’s probably right in his analysis, but you don’t need Lacan to explain that when you keep overlooking the one you really love and, finally, can’t even recognize him when he offers himself up to you in a slightly different manifestation, then it’s time for the other to call the whole thing off! As sad as it is, Clay better start looking for another man to replace his former heartthrob. And if Tom is smart, which he clearly isn’t, he should rethink his life of one-night stands. As Tom ages, Jesús won’t be the only one who turns him away.  

 

Los Angeles, November 3, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).

 

Kevin Lewis | Discreet / 2025

nominally gay

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kevin Lewis (screenwriter and director) Discreet / 2025 [14 minutes]

 

Wesley (Bailey Plumbley) is a handsome young man who clearly has a very low sense of self-esteem. He desires another young man he sees in the gym, Matt (Jason Diers), a rosy cheeked confident hunk—at least so it appears.

    Wesley goes on line, hoping to hook up with Matt, and apparently succeeds, since, after he tries out a couple of practice runs on his own internet, we see him knock on an apartment door, Matt answering. Obviously, they’ve made a Grindr date.

     But something from the very start makes it clear that things are not right. Matt cordially offers him a drink, which Wesley turns down, Matt bringing him a beer anyone, “just in case.” Wesley introduces himself just has he has in his trial runs. But before he can ever ask about his potential sex partner, Matt excuses himself to change clothes.

     Left alone for a moment in the living room, Matt follows him down the hall to the bedroom, asking Matt to tell him about himself, a question that the other dismisses, “Do you really care? Let’s be honest, that’s not what you’re here for.”

     But Wesley insists he really does care.

   Finished with his change of a sweatshirt, Matt suggests he put on a movie, with Wesley excusing himself to use the bathroom where he swallows some mouthwash and washes up his face as if the cold water might bright bring him relief.

    Matt puts on what appears to be a murder mystery, turning to Wesley for a kiss, while the latter barely responds. On the second try, however, Wesley is more responsive, but as he goes to touch Matt’s cock, it is the ruddy muscle boy who pulls away, clearly not sure he wants to pursue the sex he has arranged for.

     When Wesley asks if he’s done something wrong, he answers no, it’s his fault, nonetheless still indicating his uneasiness. Wesley simply answers, “It’s not over yet,” referring presumably to the movie, not to their sexual evening.

   In fact, instinctually Wesley makes the right move, snuggling up to Matt, placing his head on his chest.

    Later, as the two lay in bed, perhaps after sex, Wesley rises, rustles through Matt’s dresser drawers and pulls something out which we cannot see.

    In the next frame he has lathered up the hair on his chest, ready to take a razor to it to render himself as hairless as Matt is. And we suddenly realize it has been sex that he has desired, but Matt’s body itself. He wants to be someone else, so uncomfortable is he in his own skin.

     He starts the hair removal slowly, but his pulls of the razor quickly become longer and sharper before they grow frenetic. Although the mirror image we see does not show us his full chest, we can only imagine that he is now severely lacerating himself, rasping away his skin; blood, we can imagine, must be pouring out from some of the cuts.

     We don’t see any blood, just the blood red sweatshirt he has stolen from Matt’s drawers which he has now put on as he walks down the street.

   The film has certainly been discreet if not the character himself, who in his acts has revealed a desperate longing to become someone who he is not. These are the signs of a killer—foretold perhaps in the image of a gun in the movie the two watched. We don’t know what has become of Matt, but we do now know that Wesley is a kind of quiet zombie, desperate to come alive in the form of someone else.

      I think this might be a fascinating double feature with another “nominally” gay movie titled Discreet, Travis Mathews’ feature film from 2017, which also ends in a death.

 

Los Angeles, November 3, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).

 

Dave Fleischer | Betty Boop for President / 1932 [animated cartoon]

we want betty!

by Douglas Messerli

 

Seymour Kneitel, Roland Crandall, and Bernard Wolf (animators), Dave Fleischer (director) Betty Boop for President / 1932 [animated cartoon]

 

Betty Boop is running for President against Mr. Nobody, who argues:

       

         Who will make your taxes light?... Mr. Nobody!

         Who'll protect the voters' right?... Mr. Nobody!

         Should you come home some early dawn,

         See a new milkman is on:

         Who cares if your wife is gone?... Mr. Nobody

     In short, Nobody truly cares! In Nobody’s world even a pitcher of water has to pour out its own glass to quench its thirst.

     Betty, in contrast, believes that “this country is in need of a lot of heidi ho, boop-a-doop, and chocolate ice cream!” Moreover, she speaks a rather socialist line (“some of you have money and some you have no / If you send me to Washington, I’ll split up the dough!”); although briefly channeling Al Smith and Herbert Hoover in her speech, she argues also for several visionary causes, namely limousines for street cleaners, trolley service in which the cars themselves scale the giant skyscrapers to permit easy entrance, a giant umbrella that lifts up to protect the entire isle of Manhattan every time it rains, private booths for dogs at fire hydrants, and perhaps, most revolutionary of all, punishing all men on death row by transforming them in the electric chair into effeminate queers who go mincing away into a life ever after, a fate surely worse than death.

     At least the former thug is slimmed down, his face and teeth shined up, and his shoes polished all with the switch of the current—a sort of early version of the transformations promised on the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy series.

     Although, like many others before and since her presidency she cannot ever get the elephants and asses to agree on anything, she is still hailed by the common man as she marches through the streets with numerous sleepy animal friends on inauguration day. Betty is a hit, the crowds repeating their cry, “We want Betty!” The President Elect offers up every single citizen a large mug a beer at film’s end, 13 months before the actual end of Prohibition.

      Four days after the release of this short, animated film, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected the President of the United States.

 

Los Angeles, April 8, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2022).

 

Rudolph Ising | Freddy the Freshman / 1932 [animated cartoon]

cheering on beauty

by Douglas Messerli

 

Isadore “Friz” Freleng and Paul Smith (animation), Rudolph Ising (director) Freddy the Freshman / 1932 [animated cartoon]

 

Employing the Cliff Friend and Dave Oppenheim song “Freddy the Freshman, the Freshest Kid in Town,” Ising’s animated work revolves around the raccoon coat-clad Freddy and a canine meanie, evidently the “big man on campus.” Freddy crashes a college pep rally, where he’s greeted by some and jeered by others such as a canine meanie, evidently the “big man on campus.”  The very next day Freddie goes on to become the star of the school football game.

     Various contingents of the student body cheer on their team during that game, including a Jewish group yelling “oy, oy, oy oy oy,” interrupted by a lone sissy, clearly an odd duck, who insists, “No, bah, bah, beauty, beauty, beauty,” while the more conventional fans in the stadium shout “Hold that line, hold that line.”

 

Los Angeles, April 21, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2022).

Hugh Harman | Ride Him, Bosko! / 1932 [animated cartoon]

no time for heroes

by Douglas Messerli

 

Isadore “Friz” Freleng (animator), Hugh Harman (director) Ride Him, Bosko! / 1932 [animated cartoon]

 

It’s utterly fascinating that the very first Warner’s animated short and its first “Looney Tune” creation was devoted to monkey-mouse-like creature named Bosko whose great love was a kind of Minnie Mouse look-alike named Honey.

     In this very first eight minute work from 1932, however, Bosko rides into the Wild West, having at moments to carry his exhausted horse, successfully making it to Red Gulch, a tough western town where, we’re told through a title-card, “men are men nine times out ten,” precisely the statistical percentage of homosexuals out of the total population.*

      Bosko is greeted with a shoot-out so intense that it cuts one tall lanky hound dog down to the size of a puppy. Bosko, himself puppy sized, finds bullet holes have turned his hat to a something that looks like Swiss Cheese. But once inside the bar, he’s greeted with a friendly-like hoot of “Howdy!”

      Inside he finds a piano player accompanied by a banjo player and a fiddler performing a rendition of “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” that is so very appealing the new man in town cannot resist a tap dance.

       The piano player gives the end of the song such an emphatic flourish that a foamy mug of beer sitting on the edge the keyboard flies into the air, pouring its entire contents into his mouth. Clearly this hooch is hot lightning, setting his stomach on fire and burning away his pants to leave behind a tattered garment looking a bit like a pair of female bloomers. He, suddenly revealed to have mascaraed eyes with long batting eyebrows and lipstick-covered lips, acquires limp wrists and goes strutting off like a suddenly just “gone queer” queen. Evidently, he was a sissy who couldn’t hold his liquor.

     Bosko ratchets up the piano stool and takes over the keyboard, shouting out “Hi boys,” before tickling the ivories so effectively that even two Kings, a Queen, and Joker in a poker deck jive in a chorus as the free-wheeling Deadwood barroom is filled with ambiguously gendered dancing couples.

     Meanwhile, the stagecoach is also coming round the bend holding the soon-to-be new girl in town, Honey. Around the corner, however, are the villains waiting to rob the coach, which roars so quickly past their gun-slinging leader that he and is horse are twisted into a coiled lasso.

     But a moment later they’re on the chase, eventually gaining ground, the stagecoach in its desperate rush throwing its driver into a prickly cactus and leaving his lead horse a skeleton. Poor Honey, precious cargo, is dizzily rocked back and forth in the rocky flight.

     The driver, once the thorns are our pulled of his ass, seats himself on the skeletal remains of his steed and heaves himself into town to breathlessly report: “The stage is robbed!”

      After a few futile attempts to leap upon the saddle, Bosko’s horse noses his way under his rider’s rump and they off to save the day, jumping huge boulders like caveletti. Honey screams out the window of the coach, and Bosko moves a few more frames forward as we suddenly perceive the camera panning away to reveal a small screen set upon a table, around which three men are grouped—director Hugh Harman, animator Friz Freleng, and producer Rudy Isling—watching their animated creation while adding sound effects.

      How are we going to get Bosko to save Honey, asks Isling? a question for which the other two apparently don’t have an answer. Well, we have to do something, Isling insists. But Harman declares it’s late, time to go home, and three exit, leaving their very first creation without a chance of becoming the hero who might save the day. No he-men around, apparently, in this “looney” world to come to the rescue. “That’s All, Folks!”

 

*The Gallup Poll recently announced that for the younger US generation, the percentage of those identifying as LGBTQ is now 1 out of every 6, although gays and lesbians are still very much in the minority, bisexuals making up most of the increase. More recently to this information, journalists have reported that there has been a much steeper rise, particularly in those identifying as transsexual individuals.

 

Los Angeles, March 2, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2021).

 

 

Wilfred Jackson | Barnyard Olympics / 1932 [animated cartoon]

getting nowhere fast

by Douglas Messerli

 

Wilfred Jackson (director) Barnyard Olympics / 1932 [animated cartoon]

 

This Mickey Mouse cartoon gathers most of the barnyard animals for a true series of Olympic-like events, featuring a mad quadrathlon which includes running with hurdles, pole vaulting, rowing, and cycling.

     It begins with some boxing and wrestling bouts, and a parade of three animal athletes in race walking which with its requirements of looking straight forward without any visible contact, one foot always flat on the ground, and no bent knee or legs gives the walkers a characteristic swivel hip rhythm which encourages one pansy fan, who interpreting it as a queer trot, rises up, hanky in hand, to call out a “you-hoo” from the grandstands.

 

     Most of the rest of this short involves how the smallest and seemingly weakest of the barnyard creatures, Mickey, competes against the large, muscular Tomcat Pete in the main event. Despite Pete’s constant attempts to cheat, spinning Mickey backwards from the start, tying his boat to a stump, changing the arrow on a mountain pass that sends most of the cyclists over the cliff, destroying his tires, and finally, tossing a large wad of gum to the truck forces Mickey, now near the finish line, to remain pasted in place. 

    In each case, however, the backward movement somehow propels him back into the competition, and finally even send his over the line before Pete as the winner, delighting Minnie and her friends.

    But frankly this race gets rather boring quite quickly. Even diehard sports fans might want to sit this short 7-minute film out.

 

Los Angeles, November 2, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).

 

 

 

 

Wilfred Jackson | Egyptian Melodies / 1931 [animated cartoon]

walk like an egyptian

by Douglas Messerli

 

Albert Hurter, Harry Reeves, Ben Sharpsteen, Cecil Surry, Rudy Zamora, and David Hand (animators), Wilfred Jackson (director) Egyptian Melodies / 1931 [animated cartoon]

 

In this enjoyable-to-watch picture a spider, after a moment or two of debate, decides to enter an Egyptian tomb, and we follow along as he moves down several flights of stairs where he discovers mummies who quickly exit their cases and do a line dance. Even the hieroglyphics come to life.

    Who knew that the oddly positioned half limp hand children have for centuries witnessed in the pictures of their schoolbooks (if you recall, Jem attempts to teach Scout to “walk like an Egyptian” in To Kill a Mockingbird) was really an early version of Bobby Watson and his chorus boys doing a line dance? Walt Disney shows you how to be a proper sissy without even having to say the word “gay.”

     Soon everything is set into the motion which becomes very scary for our incy spider, he speeding out of that sphinx as fast as its eight little feet can carry him.

 

Los Angeles, April 20, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2022).