Holly Lawrenson Evans | Swimming with You / 2022

second chance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Paul Davidson, Holly Lasrenson Evans, and Taylor Watson (screenplay), Holly Lawrenson Evans (director) Swimming with You / 2022 [11 minutes]

 

Two boys who have evidently spent the day together find themselves now in a parking lot, locked out of their car. Rhys (Dillon McFarlane) has evidently left his keys in the car, so he reports to the British version of AAA. Lucas (Declyn Tracey) apparently has to be at work at 2:00, and it’s now 1:50. What to do?

     While they wait for the recovery car to arrive, they begin small talk, Rhys suggesting that he did have a good time. Lucas suggests that the could get a bus and walk, maybe. But Rhys then argues he would feel even more stranded.

      Obviously, they are at a standstill; they’re emotions are still pent up inside, and, particularly Lucas, clearly pissed, doesn’t quite know how to respond.

      Rhys dares to ask what Lucas actually does at work, and even then Luca challenges him, cynical about his attempts to really “chat.” Yet finally, he admits that he mostly just “plays music over the speakers, stocks the shelves and that sort of thing.”

       As for what music he likes, Lucas admits “mostly indie” stuff.

       Lucas asks if Rhys knows “The Blue Moons,” Rhys wondering does he dress like someone who would know “The Blue Moons?” Nonetheless, Lucas argues he should check them out; he might like them.

       Lucas finally asks Rhys what he “gets up to” on his days.

       “Just studying. Hanging out with my friends. Usual student stuff, you know.”

       Suddenly, we perceive the two have met up with other intentions, given that in his next sentence Rhys replies: “Nobody really knows about this side of me.”

       We now know the two have met up in this wilderness spot from a hookup on Grindr or some such internet connection. The snafu has been on top of their own fears and sexual frustrations.

        Rhys continues: “I’m just trying to figure out what I want, who I want.

        But Lucas pretends to have no knowledge of what his friend is talking about, Rhys quickly responding that he’d appreciate it if he just kept it to himself.

       Lucas responds rather positive, suggesting he might send him a playlist to see if he like it.

      And now even humor enters into their conversation when Lucas points out that Rhys has re-buttoned his shirt improperly. The boys have evidently had some sort of sex or at least a serious make-out session before this disastrous end.

       Suddenly the recovery vehicle arrives, driven by a quite likeable and forceful woman, Lorna (Carla McNeil), who immediately inquire whether they’ve been locked out of their car. Marching forward, bag in hand, she peers into the car, laughing evidently perceiving even by the position of the car seats that the boys have been up to something.

       “So what brings you guys out to these lovely parts?”

       She quickly opens the door, but forces them first to sign some paperwork.

      And suddenly as Rhys moves to his upper pocket of his coat, the keys fall out. He has had them with him the whole time.

       “Fuck you, man” is Lucas’ response, as Rhys attempts to apologize.

       Lorna needs his signature, “Before this kicks off between you two lover boys.”

       This wise woman approaches Lucas, “His first time, I assume.”

       “Isn’t it obvious?”      

       This “savior” offers some good advice: “He’s made an effort. More than most boys, right? All I’m saying is, don’t be too quick to throw him away.”

     Lucas, conflicted, nonetheless pauses to think before knocking on the car window where Rhys now sits. “How about that lift?”

     It’s difficult to find a good relationship at any age, but certainly problematic for two young unsure boys such as these is a perhaps provincial territory. Learning to forgive and love is necessary for any young gay boy on the verge of finally coming out.

     This is a wise little work, if somewhat unbelievable. It still stings the way all early love stories do, and thrives in its openness of heart.

      I might mention, yet again, so many of these fine gay films over the last several decades have been helmed by women directors, in this case Scottish-born director Holly Lawrenson Evans. It should be a lesson to Hollywood and other major cinema productions. Why it took three writers to put together a script, I cannot explain.

 

Los Angeles, July 8, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

 

Lonelyleap Production Company | The Redwood-O’Hare Family / 2015 [commercial advertisement]

fathers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lonelyleap Production Company The Redwood-O’Hare Family / 2015 [2.41 minutes] [commerical advertisement]

 

Later in 2015, Tylenol created two rather straight ads, one about a Nigerian immigrant family, the Ekeh’s, whose son has been offered admission by some of the best of US universities and colleges. This was directed by Adam Hootnick.

     Another ad, The Vincent Family, of August 28, 2015, describes how a young boy’s father was killed in a car accident and then her sister died, forcing to realize at a young age that she needed to adopt their son. Again, Tylenol features a different kind of family to help sell its product.

    But perhaps the most interesting to gay viewers was The Redwood-O’Hare Family, a mixed-race gay couple who have adopted a boy.

     This couple, actor Denis O’Hare and his companion Hugo Redwood, met back in 2000 on line, and immediately felt a rapport, coming together almost immediately. They had discussions about having a family, but O’Hare argues they were on opposite sides. “When you’re a same-sex couple with a child, suddenly you become a sort of walking poster. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that.” He admits, having been raised in a culture where gay people were told that it wasn’t right for them to have children, the forces of those values were still affecting him, even though he wasn’t fully aware of it. So, he realizes, he had to overcome a lot of resistance.

     But the moment Declan was put into his arms, he tears up telling it, he was my son. And realized I didn’t need to seek anyone’s permission to fall in love or raise a son. “I don’t need to ask permission to have a family. I have a family.”

     They show the couple walking their son up to a curtain, which when it drops, reveals a full shelf filled with photographs of the boy, who seems quite delighted, as if even that young he knows he is now home, part of the family. “Nobody has got a lock on the definition of a family.” “We’re the Redwood-O’Hare’s, and this is how we family,” speaks a voice as Tylenol finally presents their closing logo.

 

Los Angeles, July 8, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

Lonelyleap Production Company | How We Family / 2015 [commercial advertisement]

MOTHERS

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lonelyleap Production Company How We Family / 2015 [2.06 minutes] [commercial advertisement]

 

What I believe to be the second in the series of Tylenol ads featuring family, presumably also written and directed by Dustin Lance Black, was a 2.06 minute ad featuring only women, each talking about their role as mothers. The first is an Asian woman who simply announces “I’m a mother,” followed by another woman who declares she has two children. The third reveals that she is “a single mom,” and by the fourth revealing that she has a great family made up of two moms.

    Another states that she “did it through a surrogate.” And yet another that she has a “transitioning son.” The original Asian woman argues “There’s so much discussion about what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable. That word shouldn’t even play in the dynamic of family.” Another argues it all depends upon how much love you give them.

     And so it goes, another woman saying how deeply she bonded when she put her son down to bed with her wife. My son got sick in Brazil, and that’s when I realized “I’m a mom.” “Family is a group of people that create love.” “What makes families stay together, adds yet another, “is love.”

      “I love my son, and I want him to be as happy, as healthy, and successful, as he can be.”

      This moving testament to all kinds of mothers, most of them single or raising their child with a lesbian lover, provides yet a fuller dimension to the notion of family that Tylenol sought out in this series of ads.

 

Los Angeles, July 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

Dustin Lance Black | How We Family / 2015 [commercial advertisement]

redefinitions of family

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dustin Lance Black (creator) How We Family / 2015 [30 seconds] [commercial advertisement]

 

Beginning in 2015 and continuing through 2016, the Tylenol company began a series of ads that featured various US families, many of them gay and lesbian. The initial ad from 2015 was created by Dustin Lance Black, asking a central question "When were you first considered a family? When did you first fight to be considered a family?"

 

      The original ad, if I read it correctly, since there were several ads with little coherent documentation, was a 30 second add, simply asking a series of important questions, but featuring white, black, lesbian, and male gay couples, concluding that “Family isn’t defined by who you are but how.”

     Featuring black, interracial, lesbian, and gay families, this ad broke new ground for queer and multi-racial families even as late as 2015 for a major US company.

 

Los Angeles, July 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

Sami Kali | Dream Burger / 2024

not all gay stories end badly

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sami Kali (screenwriter and director) Dream Burger / 2024 [9 minutes]

 

In this quite charming Swiss gay film made in England, two young boys, Luke (Matthew Rainsberry) and Simon (David Mullenger) have for a long while now been joining one another at their favorite burger joints after tennis.

     But Like, for quite a long time, has been having other feelings about Simon. He has fantasies, realizing that not only he is gay but is attracted to his tennis partner. Among the diners are an elderly couple (Rosanna Preston and Peter Trott) who play voyeurs to Luke’s fantasy confrontations with Simon about his feelings.

     Moreover, it is quite clear that the waitress Mylène is desperately in love with Luke, and keeps reappearing with simply the hope of his paying her a little attention.

      The film begins, early on, with Simon talking about Luke’s backhand being the problem why he can’t release the tension he appears to be feeling. He stands up behind Luke and takes him through the movements to release the tension, a true hands on body action which delights Luke and doesn’t appear to even gain the attention of the others in the room.

      But then Simon is off to the bathroom, while Luke begins to imagine how he might bring up the subject of his infatuation to his friend. How do you tell someone whose friendship you don’t want to lose but who may be terribly homophobic that you feel more for him that just being a burger shop regular?

      When Simon returns, Luke attempts to explain that he has been thinking about a lot of things; he hasn’t been sleeping very well. Simon assures him that thinking is dangerous; he simply needs to act. So Luke responds: “Well, when I think about you, I feel good. And I think we have a good connection.” Simon responds: “I think we have a really good connection,” and before you know it the two are passionately kissing, breaking for a moment only to start it up again.

      The elderly couple are momentarily shocked but truly intrigued, and watch closely as the boys pull down their pants with Luke fucking his friend Simon. For a second, it’s as if this little burger shop has suddenly become a hot sex club.

      Mylène drops a glass and begins to sweep up the broken pieces, wondering if good luck is coming her way. Luke awakens from his reverie.

      Finally, Simon does reappear and in a similar discussion Luke reveals his feelings for his friend. But this time Simon, at first, simply believes it’s all a joke, a routine to shake him up and amuse him, but when Luke makes clear he’s serious, Simon is horrified by having spent all this time with a friend who is actually a fag. A moment later, he slugs Luke and stalks out, blood pouring from Luke’s nose.

             

     But when Simon actually returns, a moment later, from the bathroom, the blood is gone; this too has been a fantasy. Again Luke, this much time much shaken, tries to breach the subject, but much more carefully and hidden. Once more, Simon repeats his mother’s favorite lesson: to act instead of thinking, this time Luke even repeating it along with him.

     This time, however, it is Simon he does most of the talking. “In the toilets I was thinking about something. But it’s stupid, so don’t judge. I was thinking they’re all sorts of burgers on this menu and I always order the same one. And then I was thinking I like coming here, with you. We eat, and it’s like a tradition, and traditions get lost. And I realize—but honestly don’t laugh cause it’s—well, basically…I say to myself it’s not the burgers that I like. [Pause] It’s you.”

     Luke is so flabbergasted that he can only blurt out “Me,” and mumble something like “that’s nice.” By this time Simon is so tongue-tied that he can only say he will meet his friend outside.

    For a second Luke takes in all he has just heard, stands, and hurries off, giving Mylène the kiss she has been so long been waiting for and from which will clearly never wash from her face, as he scurries off to the lovely future, the pop group Moloco/Pond 5 singing “Waiting Line.”

     This film belongs fully to the realm of one of the favorites of the year, the queer series Heartstopper. If this short doesn’t have that series’ depth of the subject, it certainly has caught its spirit. And Luke is almost as charming as Joe Locke.

 

Los Angeles, July 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

 

Neil Fennell | I Don't Believe in That / 2015

coming to an agreement

by Douglas Messerli

 

Guy Olivieri (screenplay), Neil Fennell (director) I Don't Believe in That / 2015 [10 minutes]

 

This rather silly comedy seems to have absolutely delighted a long list of YouTube commentators, but I just couldn’t get up much excitement for a highly contentious debate between two men, Derrick (Rob Maitner) and Keith (Guy Olivieri) who claim to love one another but cannot seem to agree with anything that really matters to each of them.

      Derrick, raised Catholic has become not only someone who disbelieves in all things spiritual that cannot be rationally explained by science, but is frankly cynical also about many so-called moral values. Somehow, despite his insistence on rationality, he does seem to believe in the death penalty, and doesn’t even seem to mind the notion of gas chambers. His lover, on the other hand, has a vague notion of something larger than himself, and finds it comforting to imagine a great being taking of us. Keith, moreover, finds the very idea of a man taking another man’s life as horrific and barbaric.

     When Keith asks Derrick what would happen if he were suddenly to see a ghost come out of the toilet, Derrick argues he would call an ambulance and check himself into a mental hospital for schizophrenia.

       Yet Derrick is apparently so happy with Keith as a lover that he soon after proposed marriage.

     But “marriage” is something that Keith doesn’t believe in. All the straight and gay couples he knows who are married are in unhappy relationships or have broken up. He also loves Derrick, he admits, but he cannot say that in the future things might change, and do so would be a lie.

     So, it seems, this “perfect” couple have directly opposed views on nearly everything; not, I might suggest, a good basis for a long term relationship especially when it might come to a split in political views, which seems inevitable given Derrick’s cynical attitudes compared with Keith’s various moral commitments.

      As the two lie in bed later than night, still arguing and commiserating over their lack of agreement, a toilet ghost does did appear, one that both them can see, suggesting it is not a single delusion. The ghost intends to kill the couple until he realizes that he is been asked to murder a straight couple, and that these two men a gay. “My bad,” he admits, realizing that he has visited the wrong apartment.

 

    The minute the ghost has gone back into their boudoir, Derrick and Keith agree immediately to marriage—in a Catholic Cathedral moreover.

      As a non-believer with a great deal of moral commitment, I can’t quite find either of these figures very compatible, and certainly don’t find the trick of a bathroom ghost as being a very clever ruse to bring them together. It’s clear that writer Guy Olivieri doesn’t have much respect for either of his character’s point-of-view and that everything is simply a comedic device.

     Finally, there doesn’t seem to be much of anything to make this a particularly gay movie, expect that the two men in the bed and living with one another are of the same sex. They might equally have been that straight couple in the other apartment to where the ghost escaped to murder his prey. Am I the only one who doesn’t find this film very funny?

 

Los Angeles, July 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

Jonathan Daniel Brown | Horseshoe Theory / 2017

the end is coming

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jonathan Daniel Brown and Travis Harrington (screenplay), Jonathan Daniel Brown (director) Horseshoe Theory / 2017 [12 minutes]

 

The title of this short film from 2017, Horseshoe Theory, centers about the political theory that argues that the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum actually curve and resemble each other. Only, the examples presented here, a Nazi, KKK-supporting southern boy Bobbo (Jackson Rathbone) and an ISIS supporter Abdul (Amir Malaklou) in this case actually both represent rightest ideologies to my way of thinking, and I don’t quite see where ISIS, who support the most conservative concepts of the Koran, represent some leftist bent.

   It is not surprising, however, that during a meet-up, with coded terms, between the two at a diner near Bakersfield, California, these two men quickly discover they both blame everything on the US government—although today I might be able to imagine that they could be very happy with our current fascist leaders—and discover in their trade of arms that their own hearts and arms quickly open up to one another.

     This is a terribly painful film to watch, however, despite its satirical intentions, given that it connects political extremism left or right, with being gay.

       Or perhaps these two sad boys, who have both destroyed their own families, are not so very gay as just desperate for love, which they rediscover in one another during a rainy night where they shack up together to share drugs, no liquor since Abdul doesn’t drink, allowed in their “holy” texts. Bobbo admits that his groups sells Meth in order to support their cause. And Abdul has a full bag of potent mesquite.

       One might be tempted to read this little satire as a kind of redo of Red River where the moral values of the civilized world have been pushed out onto the edges of a sadly immoral society, the two “cowboys” in this case poking machine guns into each other’s mouths instead of simply showing off their personal shotguns and their expertise with them. Nonetheless, they spend a night with their arms wrapped around one another, and when Bobbo suddenly rises early and begins to drive off, Abdul’s intense cry of “Bobbo,” sounds more like a call for Shane than anything else.

       This time the magic “partner” does return, allowing suddenly the two men to let out all they pent up lust that they might otherwise use to mow down thousands of innocent individuals. Their shared hate is perhaps momentarily transformed into a temporary and most uneasy political spectrum of intense love.

        But, of course, in the real world this isn’t, alas, the way it works, and the guns they have put to each other’s head earlier in the evening might have just as easily gone off, and turned this satire into a standard political adventure story, with the local police detectives dragging their tired bodies off to the Old Desert Café to solve the case of how two such men of such alternative versions of destruction had even found a way to meet-up in the heart of American evil.

       Even if I might say I’m a little amused by the pretenses of this short film, and still can’t admit to truly liking it.

 

Los Angeles, July 6, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).