LGBTQ Archives – Page 13 of 16

Review: ‘AKA Jane Roe,’ starring Norma McCorvey

May 23, 2020

by Carla Hay

Norma McCorvey and Gloria Allred in “AKA Jane Roe” (Photo courtesy of FX)

Directed by Nick Sweeney

Culture Representation: The documentary “AKA Jane Roe” interviews Norma McCorvey and an all-white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and upper-class who talk about McCorvey and the impact she had on the abortion debate in the United States.

Culture Clash: McCorvey advocated for both sides of the debate at different times in her life.

Culture Audience: “AKA Roe” will appeal primarily to people who have an interest in abortion issues, but the documentary will also appeal to people who want an inside look at how the media and activist leaders can be manipulated by an attention-hungry person.

Before she died of heart failure in February 2017, at the age of 69, controversial abortion-debate figurehead Norma Jean McCorvey participated in a documentary about her life and made a bombshell revelation while making the film. The ailing McCorvey had a “deathbed confession” about her extremely contradictory activism about abortion. That confession doesn’t come until the end of director Nick Sweeney’s absorbing documentary “AKA Jane Roe,” but the entire film offers a fascinating portrait of a deeply troubled woman who will forever be known as a groundbreaking plaintiff in abortion legislation.

A great deal of the documentary includes exclusive interviews with McCorvey and separate individual interviews with advocates on both sides of the abortion debate, as well as archival footage. As the title of the documentary indicates, McCorvey was also known by the alias Jane Roe, the plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which the plaintiff won, and it resulted in making abortion federally legal throughout the United States in 1973. Prior to this Supreme Court decision, it was up to an individual state to decide if abortion could be legal or not in the state. McCorvey was given the alias Jane Roe to protect her privacy, but after the Supreme Court decision, she went public with her real identity.

McCorvey, a Texas resident in the Dallas area, was divorced and pregnant with her third child in 1969, at the age of 21, when she sought an abortion in Texas and was denied. By her own admission, she was also an alcoholic, drug addict and “street person” during her 20s, and she was in no position to be a healthy and responsible mother to a child. And she couldn’t afford to travel to a state that had less restrictive abortion laws than Texas.

McCorvey had already lost custody of her first child, Melissa (also known as Missy), who was born during what McCorvey describes as an abusive marriage to a husband whom she married when she was 16 and whom she eventually divorced. Missy was primarily raised by McCorvey’s mother. McCorvey’s second child from another man was put up for adoption. The child whom McCorvey was pregnant with when she was denied an abortion (which led to the Roe v. Wade case) was also put up for adoption.

Although one might assume that McCorvey’s seedy and troubled background would make her a less-than-ideal “poster child” for the pro-choice movement, the movement selected her because she was the exact type of underprivileged and uneducated woman who was the most vulnerable to getting an unsafe, illegal abortion that could kill her. The Roe v. Wade case, with attorneys Sarah Heddington and Linda Coffee representing the plaintiff, applies to all females. But the plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that when abortion is illegal, poor people tend to suffer the most.

In the beginning of “AKA Jane Roe,” McCorvey tells her life story, by describing her unhappy childhood. She says that her mother was a “drunk” and a “two-faced bitch who didn’t want a second child—me.” She describes her mother as physically abusive to her and “someone who had a taste for the party life and didn’t want to let go.”

Her father couldn’t take it anymore and left the family when McCorvey was young. She became a juvenile delinquent, which set her on a path to becoming a drug addict, drug dealer and hustler by the time she was in her 20s. Andy Meiseler, who co-wrote McCorvey’s 1994 memoir “I Am Roe,” appears briefly in the documentary to talk about her background.

The documentary shows that McCorvey was in obviously failing health while doing these interviews. She’s wheelchair-bound and often wears an oxygen tube, even though in other parts of the movie, it’s clear that smoking is still a bad habit for her. When asked if she misses her family, McCorvey replies bitterly, “You can’t miss anything you never had.”

McCorvey also talks about knowing from an early age that her true sexual identity was being a lesbian. She describes how, at the age of 10, she and a friend named Rita, who was around the same age, robbed a gas station by stealing money from the register, so that they could run away to Oklahoma City. While the two girls were staying at a motel, a maid caught them kissing, and the two girls were arrested and sentenced to juvenile detention, partially because of the robbery but also because they were caught in homosexual activity.

As McCorvey remembers it, being in juvenile detention surrounded by other females confirmed her sexual preference: “I had a lot of girlfriends,” she says of her time locked up with other females. When she got out, she was sent to live with a male relative who sexually abused her. And then she got married at 16 to 22-year-old Woody McCorvey, only because (according to Norma McCorvey) her mother told that if she was having sex with him, she might as well marry him.

McCorvey also admits in the film that she got married because she knew that Woody had a lot more money than she did. She mentions that she always dreamed of becoming a movie star so that she could have a glamorous life. And she says something very telling which also explains her motivations for her controversial decisions: “I learned straight on that if you’re nice and quiet and polite, no one pays attention to you—and I like attention.”

After being a very vocal pro-choice advocate in the 1970s and 1980s, McCorvey went in the complete opposite direction in the 1990s and 2000s, by becoming a born-again Christian and voicing her support for the pro-life movement. Was this conversion sincere or was it all an act? In the documentary, she reveals that it was all an act, which she basically admits that she did for the money that pro-life groups were paying her.

The film takes a responsible journalistic approach by interviewing influential activists on both sides of the abortion debate. On the pro-choice side are Charlotte Taft (who was an abortion counselor at now-shuttered Routh Street Women’s Clinic in Dallas) and feminist attorney Gloria Allred, who had McCorvey as a client in the late 1980s. On the pro-life side are Rev. Flip Benham and Rev. Rob Schenck, who talk extensively about why the pro-life movement is working hard to make abortion illegal again.

Benham is by far the more fanatical of the two, since he doesn’t believe in any compromise in the abortion debate. He also advocates for and participates in using extreme tactics to get people to stop having or facilitating legal abortions. “I’m not an activist. I’m a Christian,” Benham insists, even though he is shown in a lot of footage holding picket signs and shouting insults at people who go into clinics that provide abortions.

Taft calls Benham a “constant harasser.” Benham describes himself as “born-again” and someone who used to be a “drunken buffoon.” He adds, “I wanted my wife to abort our twin boys … But I came to the realization that abortion is murder.”

Schenck says that people in the pro-life movement consider Roe v. Wade to “represent the most loathsome and terrible practices in our society: killing children.” Just like Benham, Schenck worked closely with McCorvey when she switched alliances and became an activist for the pro-life movement.

Taft says about McCorvey’s about-face: “Being friends with Norma was a complicated experience.” The documentary points out that even before McCorvey renounced the pro-choice movement and began to campaign against abortion, she had already alienated herself from much of the pro-choice movement when, in the 1980s, she admitted that the abortion she sought back in 1969 wasn’t because it was a rape pregnancy. She said she lied to the doctor about being raped because she thought it would increase her chances of getting a medically approved abortion in Texas.

Although Roe v. Wade was never about how or why pregnancies occur, McCorvey’s credibility and reputation were tarnished when she publicly confessed that she lied about that 1969 pregnancy being the result of rape. That’s why when there was a major pro-choice rally in Washington, D.C., in April 1989 (an estimated 300,000 people attended), McCorvey was not invited to speak at the rally, even though she was there. She also wasn’t invited to be on stage. Instead, there were several celebrity speakers, such as Gloria Steinem, Whoopi Goldberg, Valerie Harper and Cybill Shepherd.

It was at this rally where attorney Allred first met McCorvey, who would eventually become her client. Allred says of McCorvey being snubbed by the pro-choice leaders at the rally: “She felt that she had been denied the opportunity to be recognized and acknowledged.” Allred and McCorvey did a whirlwind publicity tour to rehabilitate McCorvey’s public image as a pro-choice advocate. But by 1995, McCorvey had converted to Catholicism, renounced her previous life as a pro-choice activist, and became heavily involved in pro-life activities and fundamentalist Christian proselytism.

One of the casualties of McCorvey’s highly publicized religious conversion was her relationship with her longtime partner Connie Gonzalez. Although they had been living openly as lesbians even after McCorvey’s conversion, McCorvey and Gonzalez supposedly agreed to their church’s demands that they no longer engage in any homosexual activity. According to Benham: “One cannot be a practicing homosexual and Christian at the same time. That would be a distinct impossibility.”

In archival footage of Benham baptizing McCorvey in a swimming pool, Gonzalez looks on with a mixture of fear and sadness, as if she knew what would inevitably happen to her relationship with McCorvey. After Gonzalez had a stroke in 2004, McCorvey left her in 2006. When McCorvey talks about Gonzalez (who died in 2015) in the documentary, it’s the only time that the feisty and defiant McCorvey seems extremely vulnerable and regretful. She describes Gonzalez as a “good person” who was the love of her life.

One of the must-see aspects about “AKA Jane Roe” is how the documentary shows the reactions of Allred, Taft, Benham and Schenck when the filmmakers show them the interview footage of McCorvey proudly confessing that she just used the pro-life movement to get money—she received an estimated $456,911 over several years—and she only said what the pro-life leaders told her to say, not because she actually had pro-life beliefs. All of them initially react with surprise, but once the reality sinks in of what McCorvey confessed, they each have different follow-up responses.

The documentary also includes McCorvey getting a major shock of her own, when she’s shown reacting in angry disbelief to the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The morning after the election, McCorvey (who supported Hillary Clinton) is shown excusing herself to go get sick in the bathroom after it was officially declared that Donald Trump was going to be the 45th president of the United States.

As for whether or not McCorvey’s final words should be believed, even after she told so many abortion-related lies over the years, she says in the documentary’s interview footage: “I am a good actress. Of course, I’m not acting now.” McCorvey may not have made it to Hollywood to become a glamorous movie star, but it’s clear that she did get her wish to become a famous actress after all.

FX premiered “AKA Jane Roe” on May 22, 2020. FX on Hulu premiered “AKA Jane Roe” on May 23, 2020.

Review: ‘The Half of It,’ starring Leah Lewis, Daniel Diemer and Alexxis Lemire

May 1, 2020

by Carla Hay

“The Half of It”

Directed by Alice Wu

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional small town of Squahamish, Washington, the romantic comedy “The Half of It” tells the “Cyrano de Bergerac”-inspired story of a love triangle between three middle-class teenagers—one Asian female, one white male and one Latina female—who are in their last year of high school.

Culture Clash: The Asian girl and the white guy are both romantically interested in the Latina girl, but because they all live in a religious and conservative community, the Asian girl is a closeted lesbian.

Culture Audience: “The Half of It” will appeal mostly to people who like well-written romantic comedies that follow familiar tropes, but have characters and dialogue that usually aren’t seen very often in movies of this genre.

Leah Lewis and Alexxis Lemire in “The Half of It” (Photo by KC Bailey/Netflix)

On the surface, the romantic comedy “The Half of It” might seem to be a lesbian twist on “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the 1897 play about a man (the title character) who helps another man write love letters to a woman while secretly pining for the woman himself. However, “The Half of It” (which has a girl in the Cyrano de Bergerac role) is less about who gets the girl in the end and more about what the main characters find out about themselves when it comes to pursuing love.

“The Half of It,” written and directed by Alice Wu, is her first film since her 2004 debut feature film “Saving Face.” Loosely based on Wu’s own experiences, “The Half of It” was worth the long wait for Wu to make her second feature film. The 2020 Tribeca Film Festival jury must have also felt the same way, since “The Half of It” won the top prize (Best U.S. Narrative Feature) at the festival.

Most romantic comedies about teenagers are either one of two extremes: overly sweet or very raunchy. “The Half of It” is neither, although there are some melodramatic moments in the film that veer into some well-worn territory that every romantic comedy seems to have when secret feelings are revealed. Even with these borderline cliché scenes, the rest of the movie is so charming that even the grouchiest cynics might find something to like about the film.

The movie’s central character, Ellie Chu (played by Leah Lewis), would count herself as one of those grouchy cynics in the beginning of the story. The opening scene has Ellie in voiceover mentioning the Greek mythology of soul mates being conjoined in twos and then being split apart, and there is a constant search for people to find their “other half.”

Ellie—who’s a Chinese American student in her last year at high school—makes this wry comment about this “other half” mythology: “Of course, the ancient Greeks never went to high school, or they’d realize that we don’t need the gods to mess things up for us.”

She adds, “If you ask me, people spend far too much time looking for someone to complete them. How many people find perfect love—or if they do, make it last? More evidence of Camus’ theory that life is irrational and meaningless.”

It’s clear at this point that Ellie has above-average intelligence, compared to other people in her age group. She’s smart and funny—but a misfit at her school and in her community. She lives in the small, conservative fictional town of Squahamish, Washington, where the population is predominantly white and Christian—and Ellie is Asian and an atheist.

She doesn’t really have any close friends, and she sometimes gets racist taunts from other students who mock Ellie for her last name. Some of her fellow students also use her, by paying her to do their homework for them. Although she’s an academic whiz, Ellie also has a very artistic side to her: She sings, plays guitar and piano, and writes her own songs, but she’s too shy to sing her songs in public. Ellie plays keyboards in the school’s music group, which requires that all of the group’s class seniors participate in a talent show to spotlight their individual talent. It’s a spotlight that Ellie is dreading.

Ellie has a part-time job working at a booth at a train station. She spends most of her free time alone or with her widower father, Edwin Chu (played by Collin Chou), a Chinese immigrant who has a Ph. D. in engineering, but he has trouble finding work in the United States because he doesn’t speak English very well. It’s also clear during the course of the movie that Edwin is depressed over the death of his wife. The movie doesn’t mention how she died, but her passing has also deeply affected Ellie, who hides her pain with a mask of sarcastic wit.

Because of Edwin’s inability to find steady work, Ellie and her father are struggling financially. It’s one of the reasons why she plans to attend college close to home, instead of Grinnell College, a private liberal-arts school in Grinnell, Iowa, that Ellie’s English teacher Mrs. Geselschap (played by Becky Ann Baker) has been encouraging Ellie to attend. Mrs. Geselschap is a Grinnell alum, and she wants to write a recommendation letter for Ellie to attend Grinell, but Ellie declines the offer because Ellie has no plans to apply to that college.

One day, while Ellie is riding her bike, one of the school’s football players named Paul Munsky (played by Daniel Diemer) accidentally knocks her down. After a profuse apology, Paul introduces himself and asks Ellie to write a love note to Aster Flores (played by Alexxis Lemire), a pretty, popular and smart classmate whom Paul wants to be his girlfriend. Paul, who is a nice person but definitely not articulate, offers to pay $50 to Ellie for the task.

Unbeknownst to Paul, Ellie has a secret crush on Aster too. Ellie immediately refuses to write the note for Paul because—unlike doing homework for other students—Ellie thinks that writing a love note for someone else is too personal. Ellie quips to Paul when she turns down his request: “Get a thesaurus. Use spell check. Good luck, Romeo.”

But when Ellie and her father’s financial problems reach a point where their house’s electrical power is going to be shut off—and wouldn’t you know, the power company needs a minimum of $50 to not shut off the power—Ellie reluctantly agrees to write one letter for Paul. He’s shy about approaching Aster because she’s already dating Trig Carson (played by Wolfgang Novogratz), a handsome but very conceited classmate who’s also very popular at school. Trig is the kind of guy that many people (including Trig) expect Aster to marry someday.

Paul is also intimidated by the fact that Aster is the daughter of Deacon Flores (played by Enrique Murciano), who’s a well-respected and powerful leader in the community. Paul comes from a large, working-class family (that often bickers with each other), so he feels insecure that Aster and her family might think that Paul isn’t good enough for her. He’s also an aspiring chef, which isn’t the image that most people have of a football player. And so, some of the movie is about Paul trying to figure out how much he wants pursue that culinary dream and what becoming a chef will mean for his identity and other people’s expectations.

Aster is the type of person who’s nice to everyone, but her people-pleasing ways have come with a cost, since she’s often afraid of expressing what she really wants. Aster works as a waitress at a local diner, but she dreams of being a professional artist who paints, when her family’s expectation is that she should get married young and start a family. Aster and her family moved to Squahamish from Sacramento, California, so she’s still adjusting to living in a small town.

Meanwhile, Ellie has her own issues with trying to fit in with the community. She was born in China and immigrated with her parents to the United States when she was 5 years old, but she often lies about her background, by telling people that she was born and raised in Squahamish. And although she’s an atheist, she plays organ at the church where Aster’s father is the deacon. It’s implied in the movie that Ellie only spends time at the church to try to get close to Aster.

One of the reasons why Ellie is so attracted to Aster is they both share a love for the same type of literature. The two girls have a “meet cute” moment, when Aster accidentally bumps into Ellie at school and notices that Ellie is reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day,” which is also one of Aster’s favorite novels. It sparks the idea for Ellie to have Paul pretend that he also has a similar taste in books, even though in reality Paul has very little interest in reading.

What started out as one love note turns into a series of letters and text messages that Ellie concocts for Paul to woo Aster. There’s also a sequence where Ellie (pretending to be Paul) and Aster exchange messages by writing on a neighborhood wall—and somehow, they don’t catch each other in the act. Even when their graffiti is painted over, that doesn’t deter them from continuing to write messages on the wall. (It also gives Aster a chance to show some of her artistic painting skills.) Their graffiti messaging ends when an adult at a nearby business catches one of the girls in the act and scares her away.

Ellie recommends that Paul take things slow and approach Aster as an admiring friend. Aster starts to be won over by the charismatic correspondence that she thinks Paul is writing to her. But then, the moment comes when Paul wants to ask Aster out on a date, and the reality sinks in to Ellie that Paul and Aster could actually become romantically involved in real life.

If you know the story of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” then you can probably predict how “The Half of It” is going to end, but there are a few refreshing twists to the movie that aren’t very predictable. Lewis carries the film with an authenticity that makes her the clear standout in the cast. The other actors in the movie do a very good job too, but the Ellie character is the voice (and many people would also say the heart and soul) of the story.

What makes the “The Half of It” better than the average teen movie is that even though it’s a movie about teenagers, the movie isn’t just for teenagers, because it expresses many of the ageless emotions that people have about relationships. There’s plenty of cross-generational appeal in the movie’s soundtrack too, which ranges from Sharon Van Etten’s 2019 song “Seventeen” to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 1986 tune “The Carny” to ’70s nostalgia hits, such as Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now,” John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Can Read My Mind.”

Simply put: “The Half of It” is a much-needed, witty boost to the genre of romantic comedies, which have been struggling for years with mediocre and uninspired stories. And hopefully, it won’t take another 16 years for Wu’s next movie to be made.

Netflix premiered “The Half of It” on May 1, 2020.

Review: ‘A Secret Love,’ starring Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel

April 29, 2020

by Carla Hay

“A Secret Love”

Directed by Chris Bolan

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Illinois and partly in Alberta, Canada, the documentary “A Secret Love” has an all-white cast telling the story of middle-class lesbian couple Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel, whose relationship began in the late 1940s and was kept a secret for decades.

Culture Clash: Donahue and Henschel kept their romance hidden out of fear of homophobic backlash from society and being shunned by family members.

Culture Audience: “A Secret Love” will appeal primarily to people interested in LGBTQ issues and stories about long-term romantic partnerships that survive major obstacles.

Pat Henschel, Terry Donahue and Diana Bolan in “A Secret Love” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

The LGBTQ community has gotten an increasing amount of representation in movies and on television, but rarely does that representation include senior citizens of retirement age. A notable exception is the emotionally moving documentary “A Secret Love.” The film tells the heartfelt and often-sentimental story of lesbian couple Theresa “Terry” Donahue and Emma “Pat” Henschel, who began their love affair in 1947, and kept it a secret from almost everyone else in their lives for decades while living together.

The documentary, directed by Chris Bolan (Donahue’s great-nephew), includes a historical look at society’s homophobia that kept Pat and Terry “in the closet” for most of their lives. But most of the movie is an intimate look at Pat and Terry’s relationship in transition, as they have to decide whether or not to downsize from their longtime house in St. Charles, Illinois, and move to an assisted-living household, since Terry has Parkinson’s Disease.

Terry’s family dynamics play a huge role in what happens. Almost all of Pat’s relatives are dead, so Terry’s side of the family (who are mostly in the couple’s native Canada, where they grew up in the province of Alberta) have a big say in what what they think should happen with the couple’s living situation. The most vocal relative is Terry’s favorite niece, Diana Bolan (the mother of this documentary’s director), who doesn’t hold back when expressing her strong opinions.

Terry says, “I love the other kids, but Diana is special. She’s the daughter I never had.” In turn, Diana gushes about Terry: “I owe everything to her.” Terry said that out of all of her relatives whom she told that she’s a lesbian, Diana was the one whose reaction was the one she was most worried about the most.

It turns out that Terry didn’t have to worry. Diana says that a few years before the documentary was filmed, her Aunt Terry told her that she was in a decades-long lesbian relationship with Pat, who Diana knew as Aunt Pat. Diana said she didn’t care about their sexuality and she gave Terry a big hug.

Tammy Donahue, another niece, had a different reaction. She remembers being shocked at the news of her aunt being a lesbian. “I feel betrayed that she couldn’t have told us sooner,” Tammy says in the film.

Terry says that it was unthinkable for her to come out as a lesbian while certain family members were still alive. According to Terry, she had a very homophobic mother and brother, who probably would have disowned her. Terry was closest to her father, who might have accepted Terry for being a lesbian, but she didn’t want to take the risk of telling him. Terry gets emotional and tears up in the movie when she remembers her close relationship with her father. “I loved my mother, but she wasn’t as understanding as Dad.”

But even though Terry’s closest living relatives accepted her sexuality after she came out to them, the documentary shows that things aren’t always so lovey-dovey in this family. Diana admits that some of the family friction comes from the long-simmering tensions that she’s had with Pat because the two women compete for Terry’s attention. As Diana says in the documentary, any politeness she has with Pat is “contrived” and vice versa. “I think we’re both playing games because of Aunt Terry.” Diana also says that she believes that Pat has purposely kept Terry isolated from her Canadian family.

Pat, who is clearly the dominant partner in her relationship with Terry, also admits that there’s some tension between her and Terry’s side of the family. “Everybody loves Terry. They put up with me because of Terry.” Pat says in the beginning of the film that she’s reluctant to move to back to Canada because she doesn’t like the colder weather there. Terry says she doesn’t care where they live, as long as she and Pat are together. The couple also contemplates moving to Florida. And there’s also the decision of whether or not to have their own home or reside in an assisted-living facility.

As these decisions are being made, “take charge” Diana comes to visit to make calls and appointments, for what she says is the necessary step for Terry and Pat to move because their current house has become too big for the couple to manage. During one visit, which Diana calls her “intervention,” she is also dismayed that Terry has lost an alarming lot of weight since Diana’s last visit.

Diana blames Pat for Terry’s weight lost, and hints that she doesn’t think Pat is properly taking care of her beloved Aunt Terry. It leads to a huge, tearful confrontation where Diana accuses Pat of keeping secrets from her and possibly endangering Terry’s health. Pat denies it, of course, but this confrontation is a turning point for what happens later in the documentary.

Amid all of this family drama, the documentary devotes a lot of time to Pat and Terry telling their love story, while putting into historical context how dangerous it was for them to be open about their romance for decades. Terry and Pat were both athletes who were part of the All-American Girls Baseball League, which included several players and teams from Canada.

Terry was scouted at age 19 and came to live in the U.S. in 1946, at the age of 20. She played for the Moose Jaw Wildcats and the Peoria Redways, while Pat had a stint with the Winnipeg All-Stars. They met at a hockey rink in 1947, when Terry was 22 and Pat was 18.

As members of the All-American Girls Baseball League, they had a little bit of fame, since the league’s games were covered by the media. The documentary has archival footage of newspaper clippings, media photos and film footage about the All-American Girls Baseball League that include Pat and Terry. The 1992 movie “A League of Their Own” (starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell and Madonna) was inspired by this real-life women’s baseball league. The documentary shows Terry signing baseball memorabilia and talking about still be being recognized in public for being a part of the league.

While Terry had a stable home life when she was growing up, Pat’s family background was more chaotic and filled with a lot of tragedy. Pat came from a family of seven siblings. Her older brother Wally was a military pilot who died during World War II at the age of 19. Her mother died two years later, when Pat was 15.

Pat’s father remarried, but she didn’t get along with her stepmother. And then, her father and stepmother died in an accident at a train crossing. By then, Pat and Terry were having a secret romance, but they gave the appearance of being close platonic friends. Terry’s family included the orphaned Pat in their family activities and treated her as one of their own.

Pat and Terry say when they were young, they dated men while carrying on a secret love affair with each other, but they never went as far as marrying any of their boyfriends. Terry had a boyfriend named Bill who would visit from Peoria, Illinois, and she remembers telling him: “You can come [to visit], but don’t bring a ring.”

Pat says she got engaged to a guy, who ended up dying young. And she said that another guy she dated when she was in her 20s also ended up dying young during their relationship. Bizarre coincidence? We might never know, but one thing is clear: Pat had a lot of people close to her in her youth who ended up dying. It might explain why in the documentary, she seems to be have a lot of trouble dealing with the grim realities of Terry’s degenerative illness and keeps putting off the idea of transitioning to assisted living.

Although it might be easy to dismiss Pat as stubborn and domineering, she shows a very tender and romantic side to her in the movie, particularly when she reads the love poems and letters that she sent to Terry. And during a dinner that Terry and Pat have at the home of their longtime friends Jack Xagas and John Byrd (who are also a long-term gay couple), Pat is the one who says she likes the idea of getting married to Terry, while Terry says that she doesn’t think they need to get married.

When Pat and Terry tell stories about the lengths they went to to hide their sexuality, it’s a reminder of the persecution they could have faced for being gay, which are still harsh realities in many areas of the world, including in countries that have progressive laws for LGBTQ civil rights. Terry and Pat also had the added fear of being deported if people found out their secret. It’s one of the reasons why Terry and Pat didn’t go to gay bars, which were frequently raided by police. The couple said that any LGBTQ social gatherings they went to in those days were limited to secretive parties.

The documentary includes commentary from some LGBTQ-rights experts, including Yvonne Zipter (an author and University of Chicago Press manuscript editor); activist Marge Summit (former owner of the Chicago gay bar His ‘n Hers); and Windy City Times publisher Tracy Baim, author of “Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer.” Emmy-winning producer Ryan Murphy (who’s openly gay) is one of the producers of “A Secret Love,” although he is not in the documentary.

“A Secret Love” shows what happened after the “intervention” of Terry’s niece Diana Boland to get Terry and Pat to decide once and for all what they’re going to do about their living situation. (Sensitive viewers should have plenty of tissues nearby for crying during the last third of the film.) The movie is ultimately a testament to long-lasting true love that can withstand prejudice, family conflicts and other life challenges that can often tear couples apart.

Netflix premiered “A Secret Love” on April 29, 2020.

Review: ‘Bad Education,’ starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney

April 26, 2020

by Carla Hay

Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney in “Bad Education” (Photo by JoJo Whilden/HBO)

“Bad Education” (2020)

Directed by Cory Finley

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily on Long Island, New York, and partially in Las Vegas, the drama “Bad Education” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Indian Americans) representing the middle-class and upper-class.

Culture Clash: Based on true events, the movie tells the story of corrupt administrators and their accomplices, who embezzled an estimated $11 million from the school district of Roslyn High School in Roslyn, New York.

Culture Audience: “Bad Education” will appeal primarily to Hugh Jackman fans and people who like dramas based on true crime.

Hugh Jackman and Geraldine Viswanathan in “Bad Education” (Photo courtesy of HBO)

“Bad Education” follows many familiar tonal beats of true-crime movies, but the riveting performances of Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney elevate what could have been a somewhat mediocre film. Based on true events that happened in 2002, “Bad Education” portrays the investigation that led to the downfalls of several people involved in an embezzlement/fraud scam that stole an estimated $11 million over several years from the high-school district in the upscale suburban city of Roslyn, New York. It’s said to be the largest prosecuted embezzlement in the history of American public schools.

The two people at the center of the crimes against Roslyn High School are school superintendent Frank Tassone (played by Jackman) and assistant superintendent/business manager Pam Glucklin (played by Janney), who work closely together and also cover up for each other. As it’s eventually revealed in the movie, they cared about more than just increasing the prestige level of Roslyn High School, the high-ranking jewel in their school-administration crown. They also cared a great deal about increasing their personal wealth using illegally obtained school funds, mostly by billing the district for lavish trips, homes, cars and other personal expenses.

In the beginning of the film, which is effectively bookmarked with a similar scene at the end of the film, Frank is introduced like a rock star at a school assembly, which has gathered to celebrate Roslyn High School’s achievement of ranking at No. 4 in the U.S. for being the highest academically achieving high school. The school has reached this level under Frank’s leadership, and his goal is to elevate Roslyn High School to No. 1.

Frank’s friendly charm and winning smile have made him very popular with his co-workers, parents and students. By contrast, Pam has a prickly and dismissive personality, but her strong alliance with Frank has given her a lot of clout in the school district. Their boss is school board president Bob Spicer (played by Ray Romano), who is Frank’s biggest champion.

One of the school’s goals is a skywalk proposal, which would build a multimillion-dollar skywalk bridge to link the school from end to end. A bright and inquisitive student named Rachel Bhargava (played by Geraldine Viswanathan) is tasked with doing an article about the skywalk for Roslyn High School’s newspaper, The Beacon. At first, when she does a very brief interview with Frank for the article, she thinks it’s going to be a boring puff piece.

Rachel thinks so little of the assignment that she even tells Frank that it will be a puff piece. His response: “It’s only a puff piece if you let it be a puff piece. A real journalist can turn an assignment into a story.” It’s unknown if the real Frank Tassone ever said those words to any of the real student reporters of The Beacon who broke the news of the embezzlement scandal, but those words will come back to haunt Frank in this movie.

While preparing the article, Rachel needs to get some facts and statistics about the skywalk construction proposal bids that the school district received from contractors. She has to get permission from Pam to access those documents, which are in a very cluttered storage area of the school. While Frank was accommodating and gracious in giving his time to Rachel, Pam is impatient and condescending when talking to Rachel for the article. Pam gives Rachel the room key to access the requested documents, but warns her that the area is so messy and disorganized that it will be challenging for her to find the paperwork that she’s seeking.

The storage area turns out to have a treasure trove of documents that Rachel’s assigning editor Nick Fleischman (played by Alex Wolff) happens to notice when he accidentally knocks some of the papers out of her backpack when he impatiently tries to stop her while walking down a school hallway. (It’s one of those moments in the movie that probably didn’t happen in real life, but was fabricated for dramatic purposes.)

Nick thinks she may be on to a big story, so Rachel finds out through further investigation that the documents have a lot of proof that invoices charging a fortune have been billed to the school district, but many of the companies listed on the invoices don’t exist. Rachel gets help from her father David Bhargava (played by Hari Dhillon) in doing the grunt work of making calls to investigate the legitimacy of companies that are listed on the school invoices.

Why does Rachel’s father have that much free time on his hands? In a minor subplot, it’s revealed that he lost his job because of accusations that he was involved with insider trading. In the midst of investigating corruption at her own school, Rachel at one point asks her father if he really was guilty of insider trading. His answer serves to telegraph Rachel’s decision to report what she’s found out.

What happens next has a domino effect that exposes elaborate, longtime schemes orchestrated by Frank and Pam. Because of this high-profile case, many viewers might already know about the outcome. However, screenwriter Mike Makowsky (a Roslyn native who graduated from high school seven years after the scandal) and director Cory Finley infuse the movie with enough suspense and sly comedy to make it a slightly better-than-average telling of a crime story.

“Bad Education” takes a sometimes sardonic look at how manipulative and cunning Frank was in covering up his crimes. He was a man of many faces—literally, since his vanity facelifts and meticulous application of makeup are shown in the movie—and many secrets, which he covered up with a web of lies that eventually unraveled. Even in his personal life (Frank was a closeted gay man), he deceived the people who were closest to him. The movie is also a takedown of the weak-willed enablers who knew about the corruption, but were complicit in covering it up because they didn’t want to lose their jobs and they wanted to keep up the appearance that they had an ideal school district.

Frank also mastered the art of deflection, so that when he was under scrutiny, he was able to turn it around on potential accusers to make them afraid of getting in trouble for not detecting the problem earlier. He also used, to his advantage, the administration’s fixation on increasing the prestige of Roslyn High School, which tied into many administrators’ ulterior motives of raising the property values in Roslyn too.

Janney doesn’t have as much screen time as Jackman does, but she makes the most of characterizing Pam as being more than just a selfish and greedy shrew. The movie shows how she was generous to a fault in sharing her illegally funded wealth with her family. That generosity would turn out to be her downfall, since she allowed certain family members to use school credit cards to fund their lavish personal spending. The family members who were also part of the widespread scam included Pam’s husband Howard Gluckin (played by Ray Abruzzo); Jim Boy McCarden (played by Jimmy Tatro), her son from a previous marriage; and her co-worker niece Jenny Aquila (played by Annaleigh Ashford), who relies on Pam for financial help.

All of these family members are dimwitted in some way—they didn’t do much to hide their identities in the paper trail that exposed their crimes—but Jenny is portrayed as particularly loathsome. At one point in the movie, even after some of the crimes were exposed, Jenny tries to take over her aunt/benefactor Pam’s job at the school. Jenny also makes a pathetic and botched attempt to blackmail Frank, who quickly puts Jenny in her place and reminds her that she’s no match for him and his devious manipulations.

When Pam’s world starts to unravel, Janney uses subtle cues in showing how this character’s carefully constructed façade starts to crumble, as her perfectly posh, enunicated English starts to give way to a very working-class Long Island accent. Pam is so obsessed with keeping up appearances that she makes the mistake of being too loyal to Frank when things start to crash down on them.

“Bad Education” is a very Hollywood version of a seedy true crime story. In real life, none of the people were as glamorous-looking as the actors who portray them in the movie—although, in real life, the embezzlers spent money as if they were Hollywood celebrities. The movie accurately shows that people got away with crimes of this length and magnitude because they were able to fool others by having a “respectable” image. The ending scene effectively illustrates that Frank’s inflated ego and arrogance led him to believe that he was a legend in his own mind—and the results were reckless crimes that destroyed school finances, careers and people’s trust.

HBO premiered “Bad Education” on April 25, 2020.

Review: ‘Almost Love’ (2020), starring Scott Evans, Augustus Prew, Michelle Buteau, Colin Donnell, Zoë Chao, Kate Walsh and Patricia Clarkson

April 10, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Almost Love”

Directed by Mike Doyle

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in New York City, the romantic comedy/drama “Almost Love” has a racially diverse cast of characters (white, African American, Asian and Latino) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A close-knit group of friends go through various ups and downs in their love lives and sometimes have conflicts with each other over upward mobility and what it means to “settle.”

Culture Audience: “Almost Love” will appeal primarily to people who like low-key, fairly realistic independent films about love and relationships.

Augustus Prew and Scott Evans in “Almost Love” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)

It’s not unusual to do a romantic dramedy that’s set in New York City, but what makes the mostly charming but sometimes slow-paced “Almost Love” different from most romantic movies is that the couple at the center of this ensemble movie just happens to be gay. Adam (played by Scott Evans) and Marklin (played by Augustus Prew) are a couple in their 30s who’ve been living together and have been in a relationship for five years. They love each other but the relationship has hit a rut, and certain things happen in the movie that test whether or not they will stay together.

Meanwhile, the other people in their close circle of friends are also navigating relationship issues. Sassy and single Cammy (played by Michelle Buteau, who has some of the best lines in the film) likes to project an image of being strong and independent, but she’s a lot needier and co-dependent than she would like to admit. In the beginning of the film, Cammy has been dating Henry (played by Colin Donnell) for about three weeks when he makes a surprising confession to her: He’s homeless and is desperate for a place to stay. Although Cammy tells her friends that Henry’s homelessness is a dealbreaker for her, she ends up letting him stay at her place and caters to his every need.

Haley (played by Zoë Chao) is also single, but she’s got a different co-dependent problem. A 17-year-old student named Scott James (played by Christopher Gray), whom she’s been tutoring to help him get into a prestigious university, has a massive crush on her. And to Chloe’s surprise, she’s become emotionally attached and maybe attracted to him too. She doesn’t quite know if her feelings are maternal or romantic, but it’s caused some uncomfortable moments, as Scott James makes it clear that he wants their tutor-pupil relationship to turn into a romance.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth (played by Kate Walsh), who’s about 15 years older than the rest of the group, is like a wise and cynical older sister to Adam, the person she is closest to in the group. Elizabeth has been married to Damon (played by Chaz Lamar Shepherd, who doesn’t have any speaking lines in the movie) for about 15 years. Elizabeth confides in Adam that because she and her husband disagree on the issue of having kids (she doesn’t like or want kids, but he does), this conflict over having children has put a strain on their marriage. Elizabeth privately worries that Damon will leave her for a younger woman of childbearing age.

The heart of the story though is the relationship between Adam and Marklin, who are currently in couples counseling. Adam and Marklin have lost a lot of passion in their romance, they’re not as intimate as they used to be, and Adam is very leery about the idea of getting married. During the course of the movie, viewers find out why their relationship has hit a rough patch. When Adam (an artist who does paintings) and Marklin first met, Adam had the life that Marklin wanted. Although the movie doesn’t go into details, it’s hinted that in the beginning of their relationship, Adam had a rising career as an artist, while Marklin was financially struggling in a low-paying job at a CBD dispensary.

But now, Marklin is the one who makes the majority of their household income, because he’s become relatively famous on social media for being a fashion influencer. (He has a blog called The Detailist, where he’s paid to promote luxury items.) Different scenes in the movie also show how Marklin’s work has taken over his life, such as how he allows constant phone interruptions during all hours of the day and night. Meanwhile, Adam has become the one with the low-paying job and stifled creativity: He’s become a ghost painter for an egotistical successful artist named Ravella Brewer (played by Patricia Clarkson in a hilarious cameo), who takes credit for Adam’s work, which can sell for about $100,000 per painting.

Adam is the type of person who tends to suppress his emotions, but it’s clear that the reversal of his financial fortune is starting to get to him. Even though Adam has sold a house that he inherited in upstate New York, he sometimes has trouble paying his share of the bills. And there’s also some tension over the fact that Marklin often gets recognized in public and puts a lot of his life on Instagram. Meanwhile, Adam toils away in anonymity for not much money.

Elizabeth and some other people in Adam’s life keep telling him that he can do “much better” than what he’s settling for, but Adam tells them that he’s okay with the way things are. (He’s really not.) Whatever happened to stall Adam’s career has obviously taken a toll on his confidence.

One of the best scenes in the movie happens in the last third of the film, when Adam meets up with his father Tommy (played by John Doman) at a restaurant. What happens in the scene explains a lot about why Adam tends to be closed-off to his emotions and is reluctant to get married. (Marklin’s family is not seen or mentioned in the movie.)

Marklin, who tends to be more optimistic than Adam, isn’t exactly a perfect boyfriend either. He’s got a big secret that he’s been keeping from Adam. And he knows if Adam finds out, it could be the end of their relationship. Marklin also takes it upon himself to put a bid on buying their first apartment together, without telling Adam until after the fact. When Marklin tells Adam about it, it causes further turmoil in their relationship, because Marklin didn’t discuss this big decision with Adam. They both know that Marklin would really be paying for the apartment since Adam can’t afford it.

“Almost Love” (written and directed by Mike Doyle) has many comedic elements that primarily have to do with Buteau’s potty-mouthed Cammy character. Although she can be bossy toward insecure Haley, Cammy also has a vulnerable side to her. Elizabeth is also something of a firecracker, especially in a scene at a gallery opening for Ravella Brewer’s latest art, where Elizabeth has a confrontation with Ravella.

There are also some slapstick moments in the film because Adam can be clutzy, but “Almost Love” at times has a low-key, realistic energy in how it presents relationship issues. Couples who are going through problems aren’t always getting into screaming matches at each other. Sometimes the unspoken resentments are the ones that can be the deadliest in a relationship.

The original title of “Almost Love” was “Sell By” (which is the title of the movie in some countries outside of the U.S.), and it refers to whether or not relationships have a “sell by”/expiration date. All of the main characters in the film face decisions to either hold on to someone who’s a love interest or dump the person because the relationship has run its course. Some of the decisions are easier than others.

For the most part, writer/director Doyle keeps the film’s dialogue on point, but it can sometimes veer into hokey territory. For example, in a candid scene where Cammy gives some advice to Marklin, she says a memorable line: “It’s always easy to love someone who’s unavailable. Trust me. You can’t curate your past.” But then seconds later in the same scene, Cammy says something very corny about her personality: “I’m so messy, I need a broom.”

And there are some parts of the movie that are very predictable. However, in a sea of movies that badly handle portrayals of adult romances and friendships, “Almost Love” navigates itself quite well. All of the actors in the movie give good performances, but Buteau is definitely a standout scene-stealer. “Almost Love” is a story that can be relatable to a lot of people, while striking a balance between being emotionally moving and comedically entertaining. Just don’t expect anything groundbreaking or fast-paced in this movie.

Vertical Entertainment released “Almost Love” in the U.S. on VOD on April 3, 2020. The movie was released on VOD in the U.K. under the title “Sell By” on March 1, 2020.

Review: ‘Holly Slept Over,’ starring Nathalie Emmanuel, Josh Lawson, Britt Lower, Erinn Hayes and Ron Livingston

March 4, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Holly Slept Over”

Directed by Joshua Friedlander

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the sex comedy “Holly Slept Over” focuses on two middle-class white American married couples and the biracial British free-spirited woman who had an affair with one of the women when they were in college.

Culture Clash: The men are bored with their sex lives and think of ways to spice things up in their marriages, while complaining that their wives are too uptight to agree to their ideas.

Culture Audience: “Holly Slept Over” will appeal mostly to people who want to see a formulaic comedy about a threesome.

Britt Lower and Josh Lawson in “Holly Slept Over” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

The concept of two women and a man in a sexual threesome has been done so many times in movies and TV shows that the comedy film “Holly Slept Over” brings nothing new or clever to this idea. In fact, for most of this approximately 90-minute movie (written and directed by Joshua Friedlander), a hoped-for threesome is pretty much what the men in the movie obsess over, as soon as one of guys finds out that his wife had a sexual relationship in college with a woman who wants to see the wife again. It’s a flimsy basis for a story when the characters are as two-dimensional as the ones in this movie.

“Holly Slept Over” is the very definition of a “sex comedy,” because sex is the primary focus of all the main characters. The film’s opening scene is of friends/neighbors Noel (played by Josh Lawson) and Pete (played by Ron Livingston) barbecuing in a backyard and complaining about their sex lives. Pete warns Noel, who’s been trying to start a family with his wife, that having kids will kill a couple’s sex life. Pete tells Noel that he knows this from experience, because he and his own wife rarely have sex, ever since they’ve been raising children.

Pete confesses to Noel that because he’s had no satisfying release for his sex drive, he’s resorted to ejaculating on his wife’s breasts when she’s asleep. Pete also says that he’s been able to clean off the “evidence” without her knowing what happened. “Maybe I’m a monster,” Pete says unapologetically. “I defiled my wife. It’s the best feeling I’ve had in months.” Meanwhile, Noel’s biggest complaint about sex with his own wife is that it’s too boring.

As this conversation is taking place, Noel’s wife Audra (played by Britt Lower) and Pete’s wife Marnie (played by Erinn Hayes) are in the kitchen having their own candid talk. Audra hasn’t been able to get pregnant with Noel, and she reveals that she’s worried that she might not be able to conceive a child, ever since she miscarried an unplanned pregnancy when she was a junior in high school.

Audra also tells Marnie that she’s gotten an unexpected message from her former college roommate Holly, who contacted her out of the blue after they stopped speaking to each other 12 years ago. Holly wants to see Audra again, but Audra tells Marnie that she’s not interested in seeing Holly again. Audra says that when she and Holly were in college, their friendship ended because Holly was “too wild and free-spirited for me,” because Holly drank too much, did too many drugs, and slept around.

It isn’t long before the truth comes out about the real reason why Audra is uncomfortable with reconnecting with Holly. Audra tells Noel that she and Holly used to be lovers, but Audra describes it as an experimental fling. She insists that she hasn’t been with another woman since Holly, and she asks Noel to keep this a secret between the two of them. Noel is surprised by Audra’s revelation, because he always thought that Audra was sexually conservative.

“Holly Slept Over” uses a predictable trope that’s often seen in stories about two couples. One couple is “nice” (usually boring) and the other couple is “no filter” (usually quarrelling). It’s obvious within the first 10 minutes of the film which type of couple is which. Noel and Audra are both lawyers: He’s a tax attorney, and she’s a criminal-defense attorney. It’s not mentioned what Pete and Marnie do for a living, probably because viewers won’t care.

Another thing that’s obvious in this movie is that both couples have no privacy boundaries, because they blab sexual secrets about their spouses to someone who’s part of the other couple. It should come as no surprise then that Noel tells Pete about Audra’s affair with Holly. Pete then tells Marnie, who then tells Audra that she knows about Holly too.

It’s very easy to see that this movie was written and directed by a man, because the conversations between the two women don’t ring true and sound like they’re from a perspective of someone projecting male fantasies. For example, when Marnie and Audra talk about the affair with Holly that is no longer a secret, Marnie tells Audra that she’s impressed that Audra knows how to “dig clam.”

It’s the kind of talk that sounds like what you’d hear at a frat party instead of an authentic conversation between two adult female friends. That’s not to say that women don’t describe sex in raunchy terms. But when women talk about sex, they aren’t very likely to compare their private parts to sea creatures.

Despite the fact that three of the five main characters are women, a great deal of the movie is focused on what the husbands want and need, and the women’s wants and needs are secondary to the men’s. We know this because most of the complaining in the movie comes from the men feeling deprived by their “uptight” wives who aren’t giving them the kind of sex that they want. It didn’t occur to the filmmakers to show much of the women’s perspectives, since the women’s purpose in the movie is to react to what the men want.

For example, the filmmakers seem to want viewers to assume it’s all Marnie’s fault for losing interest in having sex with her husband Pete. However, it’s obvious within the first 10 minutes of the movie that he’s a selfish jerk in other aspects of life—he’s resentful of parental responsibilities because they take time away from when he wants to have sex—which probably has a lot to do with why his wife is turned off by him. Anyone who somewhat brags about sexually violating his wife’s body without her knowledge when she’s asleep (in other words, she didn’t consent) has some seriously unhealthy sexual issues. It tells you what you need to know about what a lousy husband he is.

Because Pete says he has such an unfulfilling sex life, he tries to live vicariously through Noel, whose marriage is happy in comparison to Pete’s marriage. Pete is the one who plants the idea in Noel’s head that Noel should have a threesome with Holly and Audra. Pete essentially berates Noel into thinking that he’ll be a boring wimp if he doesn’t try to have this threesome. After checking out Holly on Instagram and seeing how attractive she is, Noel confesses that the threesome is all he can think about, but he’s doubtful that Audra will agree to it. The two men then start scheming up ways to try to convince Audra to have a threesome with Holly and Noel.

By the time that Holly shows up about 30 minutes into the movie, it’s very easy to see where this story is going to go. Instead of staying at a hotel, Holly has sort of invited herself over to Noel and Audra’s place when she said she wanted to visit. And they didn’t say no. Never mind that Audra has been “estranged” from Holly for years and there’s no guarantee that their reunion will go well. Audra and Noel have let Holly stay over at their place anyway.

And when Holly arrives at their house, with her suitcase in hand, it’s around 8 a.m.—hours before Audra and Noel were expecting her. (How rude.) Holly tells a surprised Noel when he answers the door that she was so eager to get there, that she drove all night. Then, Holly asks to take a shower and a nap at their place, since she’s already there. Audra, who’s nervously taking a bath when Holly arrives, is a little put off by Holly showing up so early. But Audra and Noel clearly want Holly to be in their home, which sets the tone for the rest of her time there.

Holly’s “nap” turns into her sleeping for 11 hours. (An obvious sign that she’s hasn’t given up her partying ways.) Based on Audra’s annoyed reaction at not being able to hang out with Holly, because Holly’s been in a deep sleep, there’s more to Audra’s feelings for Holly than she’s willing to immediately reveal. When Holly wakes up, she and Audra make somewhat awkward apologies to each other for how their college relationship ended.

Audra and Holly ask each other questions about how their lives have been since college. To no one’s surprise, Holly is still single, sexually fluid, and she’s started her own marijuana edibles business called Holly’s Good & Baked. And guess what? She’s brought a gift basket of samples for all three of them to share.

At some point, Noel blurts out that he knows about Audra and Holly’s past sexual relationship. Audra seems to be horrified and embarrassed that Noel has even mentioned it. Holly then says that she’s done with having flings and only wants to have sex in “meaningful relationships.” The disappointed look on Noel’s face is all that manipulative Holly needs to start turning on the charm and flattery, because she now knows that she and Noel both have the same ulterior motive. Any adult can see what’s going to happen next in the movie.

To its credit, “Holly Slept Over” does not clutter the story with a lot of unnecessary characters. (The cast and film set are so small that this story could easily be a play.) And the movie telegraphs its intentions from nearly the beginning, so at least it’s up front that the potential threesome is the hook for this film. The problem is that the sparseness of the movie is to the detriment of character development.

The movie gives no indication of what any of these characters’ personal interests are besides sex. Pete complains about how being a parent has ruined his sex life, but the movie doesn’t show how he and Marnie are as parents. About 80% of what Noel and Audra talk about are topics related to their own sex life and how Holly is affecting them sexually. Even the marijuana edibles in the movie are only in the story to loosen up inhibitions for what is obviously going to happen.

The actors do the best that they can with the mediocre script that they’ve been given. As nerdy and insecure Noel, Lawson is the only actor in the cast who brings a playful sense of humor to the awkwardness and jealousy that can arise from a couple bringing a third person into their sex life. Some of his facial expressions are sure to make some viewers laugh at loud.

Livingston’s Pete character is the token crude blowhard that seems to be a required character in every sex comedy. Hayes plays Marnie as someone who can be sassy or shrewish, depending on her mood. (And it’s certainly not easy to be married to someone like Pete.)

Emmanuel portrays Holly as a lot more likable than her actions. Holly tends to do a lot selfish and irresponsible things. She’s also good at quickly figuring out what people want and using that to her advantage.

However, Holly is still a stereotypical “unicorn” (swingers’ terminology for a woman who’s open to dating couples) in movies like this—she’s pretty, available, and mostly invited into the couple’s sex life to fulfill their fantasies, but not get in the way of the couple’s relationship. She’s not there for any deeper meaning. And quite frankly, she’s a lot more disposable than she thinks she is—which is kind of like how someone could describe this movie.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released “Holly Slept Over” on digital and Redbox on March 3, 2020.

Review: ‘Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street,’ starring Mark Patton

March 3, 2020

by Carla Hay

Mark Patton in “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” (Photo courtesy of New Line Cinema)

“Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street”

Directed by Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen

Culture Representation: In this documentary which has mostly white Americans and some Latino representation, actor Mark Patton (who’s best known for starring in “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge”) tries to make sense of the circumstances that led him to quit acting in the 1980s, including the homophobia that he says ruined his career.

Culture Clash: Patton places a lot of blame for his career downfall on “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” screenwriter David Chaskin, who gave interviews saying that Patton made the movie too gay.

Culture Audience: This movie will appeal primarily to horror fans, audiences who care about LGBTQ issues, and people interested in “whatever happened to” stories.

David Chaskin and Mark Patton in “Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street” (Photo courtesy of Virgil Films)

Faded actor Mark Patton says that the 1985 horror flick “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” was the best thing that ever happened to his career and also the worst thing. He never starred in another major motion picture again after this sequel got mixed-to-negative reviews. And in the documentary “Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street,” he tries to make sense of what went wrong.

Patton is one of the producers of the documentary, which was capably directed by Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen. Because Patton is a producer of the documentary, it explains why the film is mostly a sympathetic portrayal of him. It’s a compelling story, even though Patton (who still calls himself a “movie star”) at times seems to have an exaggerated sense of importance about his impact on the movie industry. He certainly isn’t the only actor who’s become a “has-been.”

Narrated by Cecil Baldwin (who sounds like he could be narrating a true-crime documentary), the movie starts off with Baldwin’s voiceover saying that “the world wasn’t ready for a male scream queen” when “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” was released in 1985, when Patton was in his 20s. Although Patton’s Jesse Walsh character in the movie wasn’t explicitly gay, he had effeminate mannerisms, and the movie had some homoerotic undertones, which are explained in this documentary.

The basic premise of “Freddy’s Revenge” was that “A Nightmare on Elm Street” villain Freddy Krueger—the slasher serial killer with full-body burn scars, a striped sweater and gloves with knife blades as fingernails—had invaded the body of Jesse Walsh, a nerdy and sensitive high-school student. Jesse has been having nightmares about Freddy after moving into the same house where Freddy terrorized the main female character in the first “A Nightmare on Elm Street” movie. Jesse finds out later that his body has been possessed by Freddy—which is a departure from the first “Nightmare” movie, where Freddy only appeared when the main character was asleep.

In one of his dreams, Jesse goes to a gay bar and orders a drink. He’s seen at the bar by his gym teacher, who later punishes him for underage drinking. Freddy then kills the gym teacher in a homoerotic shower moment that includes the naked teacher getting slapped with a towel on his rear end. And the very concept of Freddy entering and leaving Jesse’s body has also been pointed to as homoerotic. Although Jesse shows a romantic interest in his friend Kim Myers (played by Lisa Webber), many people who’ve seen the movie think that Jesse is gay and in the closet.

“A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” director Jack Sholder, who’s interviewed in the documentary, swears that he didn’t see any gay overtones when he was making “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.” Sholder says that he cast Patton in the starring role because Patton looked like he had the vulnerability needed for the Jesse Walsh character. The movie’s screenwriter David Chaskin is more evasive when he’s asked about any homoerotic content in the movie. Chaskin says that although he didn’t intend for “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” to be a gay horror movie, he understands why people think it is.

Patton was a closeted gay man during his brief acting career in the late 1970s to mid-1980s. After “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” was released to profitable box office but mixed-to-negative reviews, there were minor rumblings in the media about the gay overtones in the movie. Patton says the chatter was enough for his agent to get scared and demand that Mark only audition for roles where he played an obviously heterosexual character.

But except for two roles in television in 1986, Patton didn’t work as an actor again for decades. (He resumed his acting career with a small role in the 2016 independent horror film “Family Possessions.”) As far as a lot of people where concerned, he had disappeared. What really happened?

Patton places a lot of misdirected anger on Chaskin, whom he accuses of getting him “blacklisted” from the industry by “outing” Patton in interviews, where Chaskin would claim that he never wrote the Jesse Walsh character as gay and that Patton just played the character as gay. In the documentary, Chaskin gives his perspective: “‘Nightmare 2′ was a possession movie. I like the concept of an innocent person being invaded.”

But the more Patton tells his life story, the more it becomes obvious that Chaskin is just a scapegoat for what really led Patton to suddenly “disappear” from showbiz. Patton’s on-again, off-again live-in boyfriend—actor Timothy Patrick Murphy, best known for his early 1980s role as Mickey Trotter in “Dallas”—had AIDS, and so did many of their friends. Murphy was “in the closet” about being gay, at a time when almost no working Hollywood actors were openly gay.

In the documentary, Patton candidly talks about finding out around the same time that he was filming “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2” that he was also HIV-positive. Because his lover and many of his friends were HIV-positive or dying of AIDS, and because he didn’t know if or when he was going to die too, Patton says in the documentary that he had a “nervous breakdown,” and he decided to quit acting. After admitting all of that, why does he have so much hatred for Chaskin?

As Patton tells it, Chaskin deliberately and cruelly fueled the homophobia that Patton believes led to him becoming an industry pariah. Patton says that the AIDS crisis was just one of the reasons why he quit acting, but he believes that Chaskin and homophobia in Hollywood were the main reasons. It was also during a time when Rock Hudson revealed he had AIDS, and there was a “gay panic” in Hollywood to not hire actors who were rumored to be gay. (This was during the beginning of the AIDS crisis, when many people mistakenly thought that only gay men could get the disease.)

Even though homophobic ideas about AIDS certainly affected how Hollywood did business, Patton comes across as too paranoid and illogical when he says that Chaskin was out to get him. Chaskin never had that much power to get Patton blacklisted from Hollywood. “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” was Chaskin’s first movie screenplay, and his Hollywood career never really thrived after that. Chaskin has written only three feature-length movies since then (all little-seen independent films), the last one being 2000’s “Love Hurts.”

Furthermore, an untold number of gay actors were in the closet back then who had rumors swirling that they were really gay, but they still kept working. Patton’s boyfriend Murphy was one of them. Murphy’s last movie was released in 1988, the year that he died from AIDS at the age of 29. The reality is that Patton just gave up because of all the personal problems in his life. If he has anyone to blame other than himself, it’s probably his agent at the time, who obviously didn’t have enough confidence that Patton could find work because of the gay rumors.

We’ll never know what would’ve happened if Patton had a better agent at the time. But in hindsight, from the way that Patton describes his epic meltdown, he probably would’ve quit acting anyway, even if he had been getting steady work. He says he left Los Angeles, moved to Mexico, cut ties with showbiz, and spent years in a deep state of depression. He says that by the time he left the entertainment business, he had found out that he had “HIV, cancer and tuberculosis” and he was “bedbound for a year.” With all of these health problems that would affect his ability to work, exactly how is that David Chaskin’s fault?

And when Patton describes how he got into acting in the first place, it’s easy to see why he couldn’t handle the first major rough patch that came along. He never really struggled to get his big break. It all happened very quickly for him.

He describes his childhood in suburban Missouri, where he grew up in a Christian household, as living in an area where people looked just like him (white and wholesome-looking). However, his parents’ marriage was troubled (they divorced when he was 14), and his mother spent time in and out of psychiatric institutions.

In the documentary, Patton says he knew he was gay from an early age, but he went to great lengths to keep it a secret. He caught the acting bug when he would perform at talent shows in school. When he made the decision to move to New York City after high school, Patton says it was the first time in his life he felt he could be openly gay among his friends. (Although Patton’s IMDb page lists his birth year as 1964, more likely he was born in 1959 or 1960, because in the documentary, he says he moved to New York in 1977, after he graduated from high school.)

And how Patton broke into showbiz is the stuff that people dream about but rarely happens. Within days of getting his first agent, he was working as an actor, and he says it’s because he had the right “look.” (In other words, a pleasant-looking boy next door.) Getting work in commercials led to his first big break: a supporting role in the Broadway play “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” starring Cher, Sandy Dennis and Karen Black. In 1982, Robert Altman directed the play and the movie, which had the same stars as the Broadway show.

That kind of luck—co-starring in your first movie with that level of talent at such a young age—almost never happens to most actors. Therefore, it’s easy to see why Patton took for granted that things would continue to go that easily for him. In the documentary, he’s somewhat arrogant in describing how lucky he was to have such smooth sailing in his first few years as an actor. His attitude comes across as, “Of course I got work right away. I was cute and I had a great personality.” He doesn’t fully acknowledge that the opportunities that he got at the beginning of his acting career is not how it happens for most people when they first become actors, even for those who reach the A-list.

Because he never really paid his dues before getting high-profile roles, Patton comes across as a little too entitled in thinking that the ride should’ve kept going that way for him because he thinks he deserved it. Even the biggest entertainers have had career flops and pitfalls. The ones who survive the bad times (such as Patton’s idol Cher) are the ones who don’t give up, like Patton did.

Early in the documentary, Patton quotes something that Cher told him: “In show business, you always have to do what’s best for you.” Patton should also have learned more than a few other things from Cher about how to get through career slumps. (He’s old enough to remember how Cher became a laughingstock of showbiz in the early 1990s when she did infomercials for Lori Davis hair-care products.)

Patton says he decided to return to the entertainment business shortly after he was tracked down in Mexico by the filmmakers of the 2010 documentary “Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy,” which was a comprehensive history of all the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies up to that point. It was through that movie that Patton realized how the “Nightmare” fandom was still large enough that he could start making money by doing personal appearances, such as going to fan conventions that specialize in fantasy/horror entertainment.

A considerable amount of the documentary shows Patton doing just that, as he’s seen interacting with fans, doing Q&As at “Nightmare” events, and traveling with his assistant Bill Nugent from personal appearance to personal appearance. The documentary also features commentary from “Nightmare” fans, some more famous than others. (Podcast host John Fozzie Nelson and drag queens Peaches Christ and Knate Higgins are among those who say glowing remarks about Patton.) Most of them either comment on the “Nightmare on Elm Street 2” movie, Patton’s identity as a gay man and/or how he and the movie helped them accept their own sexuality.

To his credit, Patton seems very grateful for fan appreciation, now that he knows how fickle fame can be. He has this to say about interacting with fans: “They don’t want to know about your problems. They want to see a movie star.” And he offers this response to people who think that doing the convention circuit is degrading: “If it seems whorish to do this, then be a good whore, because you’re taking their money.”

When he’s not traveling, Patton runs a gift shop in Mexico, where he lives with a man who’s described in the movie as his husband Hector Morales, who didn’t know when they first met about Mark’s past as a Hollywood actor. Because Patton is now a passionate AIDS activist and because he seems to have found true love with Hector, it’s safe to say that Patton is in a much better place in his life right now.

One of the best parts of the documentary is when it shows the 30th anniversary reunion of “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge,” which took place at Shock Pop Comic Con in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The reunion included director Sholder, along with cast members Robert Englund (who plays Freddy Kreuger), Patton, Myers, Clu Gulager, Marshall Bell and Robert Rusler.

Patton’s co-stars have good things to say about him, but Sholder is the only one shown on camera giving Patton a much-needed reality check that he needs to let go of all this hatred toward Chaskin. (Chaskin was originally announced to attend the 30th anniversary reunion, but he ended up not going, for reasons that weren’t made clear in the documentary.)

And so, it’s inevitable that near the end of the film, Patton and Chaskin agree to sit down together and hash out their differences, after not speaking to each other for decades. It’s a necessary part of this documentary, since all of Patton’s whining about Chaskin gets very irritating after a while. Ultimately, “Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street” is a cautionary tale about bitterness, and it’s a wake-up call for any actors who think they’re owed a long and successful career in showbiz just because they starred in a couple of movies.

Virgil Films released “Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street” in Los Angeles on February 27, 2020, and on VOD on March 3, 2020.

Review: ‘Saint Frances,’ starring Kelly O’Sullivan and Ramona Edith Williams

February 28, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Saint Frances”

Directed by Alex Thompson

Culture Representation: Taking place in Chicago, the comedy/drama “Saint Frances” has a cast of predominantly white (with some African American and Latino) characters representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A 34-year-old single woman who says she doesn’t really like kids ends up being a nanny to a precocious and often-bratty 6-year-old girl.

Culture Audience: This movie will appeal mostly to independent movie fans with open-minded viewpoints on parenting issues, since abortion and lesbian mothers are major parts of the story.

Ramona Edith Williams and Kelly O’Sullivan in “Saint Frances” (Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories)

The dramedy film “Saint Frances” avoids a lot of maudlin clichés that are found in stories about nannies and instead tells a very funny and sometimes emotionally raw story about how a nanny and a child she cares for make an impact on each other’s lives. The nanny is 34-year-old Bridget (played by Kelly O’Sullivan, who wrote the “Saint Frances” screenplay), an underachiever in Chicago who’s kind of drifting through life with no specific plans.

She’s quit her job as a restaurant server to become a temporary nanny to a precocious 6-year-old named Frances, nicknamed Franny (played by a very adorable Ramona Edith Williams), in the summer before Franny begins kindergarten. Franny’s parents are a lesbian couple in their 40s—no-nonsense attorney Annie (Lily Mojekwu) and sensitive homemaker Maya (played by Charin Alvarez), who’s recently given birth to their second child, a son named Wally.

Bridget is the kind of person who privately says she doesn’t really like kids and isn’t sure if or when she wants to be a mother. She also hates her job as a server, so that’s why she jumps at the chance to try something new by being a nanny. At first, she and Franny don’t really get along too well, since Franny can be hyperactive and bratty, while Bridget can be impatient and unprepared.

And Bridget wasn’t exactly the first choice to be the nanny. During her interview with Annie and Maya, when she was asked if she has any siblings, Bridget replied that she has a younger brother, but they don’t have much in common with each other because, “He’s married, has a house, and is very responsible.” But the nanny who was originally hired was let go due to incompatibility, so Annie and Maya hired Bridget out of desperation, since she was available to start the job immediately.

Meanwhile, shortly before she started her nanny job, Bridget began dating a 26-year-old server named Jace (played by Max Lipchitz), whom she met at a house party and hooked up with that same night. Bridget wants to keep things casual between them and even tells Jace that even though they have sex with each other, they’re not in a relationship. The morning after their first sexual encounter was awkward and comical, because they both found out that Bridget had started her menstruation period during the encounter, and the full effects could be seen in the light of day. Bridget and Jace were both able to laugh about it though.

Bridget’s menstruation and other biological feminine bleeding are mentioned and seen several times in this film. All of that blood is usually played for laughs in the movie, but according to “Saint Frances” screenwriter O’Sullivan, the reason why Bridget’s blood gets so much attention in the story is to realisitically show women’s gynecological functions that usually aren’t seen or discussed in movies.

In an open letter, O’Sullivan explained why she chose to have her Bridget character bleed so much in the film: “‘Saint Frances’ endeavors to normalize and destigmatize those parts of womanhood that we’re encouraged not to talk about. I wanted not only to talk about these subjects, but to show them onscreen unapologetically, realistically. This movie could be called ‘There Will Be Blood 2,’ and a sense of humor is a vital intention of the film.”

For the first time in her life, Bridget is responsible for taking care of a child. She admits that she doesn’t know what she’s doing a lot of the time. And it’s perhaps because of that honesty that Franny starts to warm up to Bridget and vice versa. Franny is a curious child who asks a lot of questions, which have the effect of Bridget examining her own life and beliefs.

That doesn’t mean that things go smoothly in their relationship. While spending time at a park, Franny gets a few unintentional bumps and bruises when Bridget lets Franny out of her sight for a few moments And when Bridget and Franny are at a library, and Bridget temporarily leaves Franny alone at a table to use the restroom, Bridget comes back to find out that Franny has emptied all of the contents of Bridget’s purse on the table (including her tampons) and yells out for everyone to hear: “Are you on your period?”

While she’s adjusting to her new job, Bridget also finds out that she’s pregnant. The pregnancy is unplanned, Jace is the father, and Bridget immediately decides to have an abortion. Jace is supportive and accompanies her to the abortion appointment. The movie makes a point of showing the medical and psychological effects of abortion, since Bridget’s post-abortion bleeding is shown for the rest of the movie. And although she has no regrets about having the abortion, Bridget doesn’t really discuss her feelings about it with anyone, even though Jace asks her to, and that supression of emotions eventually starts to take a toll on Bridget without her knowing it, until it all spills out in a pivotal scene in the film.

Meanwhile, Maya is going through her own personal issues, since she’s suffering from post-partum depression, but she isn’t getting therapy for it and is too ashamed to talk about it with Annie. Bridget sees the signs that Maya is depressed, but isn’t sure what to do about it. It doesn’t help that infant son Wally cries whenever Maya is holding him, but stops crying when Bridget holds him, which makes Maya feel like an inadequate mother.

“Saint Frances” also touches on issues of religion, specifically Catholicism. Bridget says she’s a lapsed Catholic, while Maya is a very religious Catholic. Maya is so religious that she’s been praying as a way to heal from her post-partum depression. Annie is not Catholic, but there’s a scene where Annie and Maya get Wally baptized by a priest in a church, and they have a baptism party afterward.

Bridget, who describes herself as “an agnostic feminist,” thinks “it’s immoral to have children” when the world’s resources are being depleted to dangerous levels. When Bridget’s parents come to visit her, she confides in her mother Carol (played by Mary Beth Fisher) that she has this pessimistic belief about human reproduction. Carol responds by telling Bridget that when she had children, she heard the doomsday warnings too, but “I gambled on our survival.” It’s a powerful moment that demonstrates how two people can disagree about an issue as important as parenthood and still respect each other’s opinions.

Another important scene in the movie is when Maya and Bridget confront issues of public breastfeeding and homophobia. When they’re in a park with Franny and baby Wally, a mother who sees Maya breastfeeding goes over and tells Maya to stop because she doesn’t want her children to see it. The offended mother also tells Maya that she’s probably exposing her breasts to attract the men in the park, and gets a shock when Bridget tells the woman that Maya is a lesbian. The scene, if written another way, could have turned into a cringeworthy, hysterical screaming match. Instead, it turns into a teachable moment for Franny on how to respectfully deal with conflicts and not sink to hateful levels.

There’s also a scene in the movie where Bridget faces some hard truths about her life, when it comes to her tendency to avoid committing to serious romantic relationships and career goals. Her feelings for Jace (who wants to be closer to her than she’s willing to let him) have to be put in honest perspective when she meets Franny’s guitar teacher Isaac (played by Jim True-Frost) and is immediately attracted to him. Bridget is so attracted to Isaac that she impulsively buys a guitar and asks him for “private lessons.”

And when Bridget is over at Annie and Maya’s house, she has an awkward and surprise reunion with a former Northwestern University classmate Cheryl DuBuys (played by Rebekah Ward), who is a successful businesswoman, self-help author (one of her books is called “Resting Rich Face”) and the mother of a boy who’s visiting for a playdate with Franny. A smug and condescending Cheryl tells Maya that Bridget (who dropped out of Northwestern after a year) was someone that her classmates thought would be “the next Sylvia Plath.” Cheryl then asks Bridget to run an errand for her, and Bridget gets a small level of revenge on Cheryl for humiliating her. (You’ll have to see the movie to find out what the revenge is.)

At the heart of the film though is the relationship between Bridget and Franny. “Saint Frances” is the film debut of Williams, who gives an entirely believable and impressive performance as Franny. The child has an emotional intelligence that is wise beyond her years without being annoying. And as Bridget, O’Sullivan’s performance has real depth in showing someone who can be immature and complicated but still a good person underneath her “hot mess” surface.

It also helps that O’Sullivan did not ruin the “Saint Frances” screenplay with over-the-top slapstick moments, which are predictable tropes in many comedic movies that have a child as one of the main characters. And under the very adept direction of Alex Thompson (who makes his feature-film debut with “Saint Frances”), the movie achieves the right balance of comedy and drama while maintaining realism and a consistent pace.

As for the “saint” word used in the movie’s title, it’s not because Frances is an ideal child. Perhaps it refers to the “miracle” that Franny achieves by changing Bridget from being someone who didn’t like to be around kids to someone who begins to understand that kids should be respected as individuals and not lumped into one stereotypical category. And sometimes, a child can see truths in ways that adults try to deny.

Oscilloscope Laboratories released “Saint Frances” in New York City on February 28, 2020. The movie’s U.S. theatrical release will expand to more cities in the subsequent weeks.

Review: ‘Kill the Monsters,’ starring Ryan Lonergan, Jack Ball and Garrett McKechnie

February 18, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Kill the Monsters”

Directed by Ryan Lonergan

Culture Representation: Taking place during a road trip that starts in New York City and ends up in Los Angeles, the satirical drama “Kill the Monsters” has a predominantly white LGBTQ cast of characters doing a modern re-enactment of key points in U.S. history.

Culture Clash: The three main characters represent the United States, while other characters portray various entities that have had conflicts with the U.S.

Culture Audience: This movie will appeal mostly to audiences who are looking for unique LGBTQ stories and people who are U.S. history buffs.

Jack Ball in “Kill the Monsters” (Photo courtesy of Breaking Glass Pictures)

What do you get when you cross a gay threesome with U.S. history lessons? You get the audacious and all-over-the-place satirical drama “Kill the Monsters,” which is made for people who won’t be offended by the idea that three men who have hot’n’heavy gay sex with each other are a metaphor for the United States. It’s a unique concept that works best if viewers really know U.S. history. Otherwise, too much of the story (which is subtitled “An American Allegory”) will be confusing.

Filmed entirely in black and white, “Kill the Monsters” is divided into nine chapters that represent pivotal moments in U.S. history. At the center of the story are three characters who are in a ménage à trois relationship: Patrick (played by Ryan Lonergan) is the sensible and bossy alpha male; Sutton (played by Garrett McKechnie) is the hedonistic partier; and Frankie (played by Jack Ball) is their younger idealistic partner. In order to fully understand this movie, it helps to know from the beginning that Patrick, Sutton and Frankie represent the United States. If not, then only a keen knowledge of U.S. history will help you understand what’s going on during the course of the movie.

“Kill the Monsters” is the feature-film directorial debut of Lonergan, who also wrote the movie’s screenplay. His Patrick character also has the snappiest dialogue in the movie, which has a lot of people talking as if they’re amped up on caffeine or a drug that’s a lot stronger. There are also quick edits and jump cuts that can be somewhat distracting. Clocking in at just 77 minutes, “Kill the Monsters” is a movie that doesn’t give much time for people to digest a scene before moving on to the next scene. In contrast to the modernist short-attention-span editing techniques, the film’s pomp-and-circumstance classical score (with music by Jean Sibelius Music and performed by Iceland Symphony Orchestra) is the kind of music that sounds like it would be in a history documentary.

The movie’s production notes don’t really say which aspects of the United States that Patrick, Sutton and Frankie are supposed to represent, but at the beginning of the film, there’s a hypothetical quote from Benjamin Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.” The quote is shown after an intro scene in New York City’s Central Park, with Patrick and Sutton walking toward Frankie, who’s lying down on a blanket.

One could easily make a case for this theory: The three central characters are symbols for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” one of the best-known phrases from the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Patrick represents life, because he’s the engine that drives a lot of what happens in the three-way relationship. Sutton represents liberty because he’s a free-spirited libertine with decadent ways. Frankie represents the pursuit of happiness, since he has a youthful restlessness that make the other two partners think he might get bored with them and move on to something else that will make him happy. Or maybe that’s overthinking it all, and Lonergan just wanted an excuse to do a movie with full-frontal male nudity and showing three men having sex with each other in several scenes.

In the beginning of the film (the first chapter, titled “1776”), Patrick, Sutton and Frankie are living together in New York City. Frankie is working for an older British woman, who’s difficult and overbearing, so he ends up quitting. This is obviously a representation of the United States declaring its independence from the United Kingdom. Throughout the story, Frankie is battling a mysterious ailment (he’s seen at a doctor’s office), which represents the various social ills that the U.S. has faced throughout the country’s history.

Frankie wants to move west to California because he thinks that will improve his health. Patrick doesn’t really want to move, but Sutton is fine with the idea. So the three men leave New York City and decide they’ll move west by going on a road trip. Frankie also says that the doctor has increased his medications. This happens in the movie’s second chapter, titled “1803,” which represents when the U.S. expanded its territory with the Louisiana Purchase.

The third chapter, titled “1861,” signals the start of the U.S. civil war. And there’s a civil war brewing in this polyamorous relationship. Sutton is abusing cocaine and marijuana. Patrick doesn’t like it and argues with him about his drug use. Patrick gets even more upset when Sutton tells him that he wants Frankie to do drugs with him.

The other chapters cover 1865, the year the Civil War ended; the Compromise of 1877; the beginning of reparations/restitutions in 1900; America’s first full year in World War II in 1942; the end of World War II in 1945; the 9/11 attacks in 2001; and President Donald Trump’s first year in office in 2017.

All of the other characters in the movie that have alliances or conflicts with the United States are played by women. A character named Edith (played by Zuhairah McGill) is a mutual cousin (by marriage) of Patrick and Sutton, and she represents corporate business.

After the trio has moved to California, they live in an apartment with neighbors that include lesbian couple: One of the women is an older German who dominates her much-younger submissive partner, who’s Jewish.

Another lesbian couple in the building are Iranians, and they’re irritated by their Iraqi neighbors whom they think are making too much noise. So the Iranian neighbors ask the trio that represents the U.S. for money to help them to soundproof their apartment from the noise the Iraqis are making.

And there’s the character of Cathy (played by Ellen Etten), who’s described as “a crazy lady from television” that the trio debates over whether or not to put in charge of their business affairs. The character of Cathy is obviously a symbol for Trump.

“Kill the Monsters” is definitely not a film for everyone. The movie’s high concept works well in some areas, but falls very flat in other areas. It would be interesting if this concept is ever made into a play, because the target audience for this concept is really the type of people of a certain education level who like to go to plays. The movie’s explicit sex scenes just seem to be a gimmick to get people to notice the film. “Kill the Monsters” really isn’t about the sexuality of the characters. The movie is essentially a political statement on where America has been and where the filmmakers think the nation is going.

Breaking Glass Pictures released “Kill the Monsters” on DVD and VOD on February 18, 2020.

Review: ‘The Thing About Harry,’ starring Jake Borelli and Niko Terho

February 14, 2020

by Carla Hay

“The Thing About Harry”

Directed by Peter Paige

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Chicago with a predominantly white cast, the romantic comedy “The Thing About Harry” is about two young middle-class men (one who’s openly gay, and the other who’s openly pansexual) who were enemies in high school but start to fall in love with each other, even as they date other people.

Culture Clash: Because one of the men is a commitment-phobic playboy who dates men and women, it causes conflicts over whether or not he’s a suitable partner for the other guy, who wants a long-term, monogamous relationship.

Culture Audience: This movie will appeal mostly to fans of romantic comedies who are open-minded enough to seeing diverse sexualities portrayed on screen.

Jake Borelli and Niko Terho in “The Thing About Harry” (Photo by Parrish Lewis/Freeform)

The romantic comedy “The Thing About Harry,” Freeform’s first Valentine’s Day-themed original movie, puts a queer spin on a story that is very much inspired by the 1989 classic Meg Ryan/Billy Crystal movie “When Harry Met Sally.” In “The Thing About Harry,” two male friends who are obviously sexually attracted to each other try to keep their relationship platonic because one of the pals thinks that falling in love with a good friend is a recipe for disaster. This made-for-TV movie isn’t going to win any Emmys, but it’s a hilarious and sometimes emotionally touching ride that should please fans of romantic comedies.

“The Thing About Harry,” which takes place in Chicago over an approximate five-year period, begins with smart but neurotic Sam Biselli (played by Jake Borelli) an openly gay college student cuddling in bed with his straight female best friend Anatsasia “Stasia” Hooper (played by Britt Barron), a purple-haired sassy free spirit who’s a major commitment-phobe when it comes to dating. While cuddling with Stasia, Sam gets a call from two friends he knew in high school—a straight couple named Chris and Kelly, who ask Sam to attend their engagement party in their mutual hometown of Liberty, Missouri.

Sam says yes, and he plans to road trip to the party in his car. Chris and Kelly then ask Sam to do them a big favor: Give a ride to their friend and former high-school classmate Harry Turpin (played by Niko Tero), who doesn’t have a car. Sam and Harry attend the same college, but they’re not exactly friends. Sam has been openly gay since high school, and popular athlete Harry used to bully him mercilessly because of Sam’s sexuality and because Sam was the type of nerdy kid in school who was a know-it-all teacher’s pet. Sam had the unflattering nickname “Suck-up Sammy” in high school, and Harry was one of the classmates who taunted him with that name.

As far as Sam is concerned, Harry is one of the last people he wants to be stuck with on a road trip, but Sam is such a nice guy that he can’t say no to Chris and Kelly, and he reluctantly agrees to give Sam a ride to the party. Stasia, who has been Sam’s best friend since they met on their first day of college, doesn’t mince words when she tells Sam what she thinks about his decision to spend time with Harry: “You, my friend, are a medical marvel. It’s a wonder you can stand with a spine like that.”

Sam is the type of person who’s a romantic at heart. He believes in monogamy and that a partner should be mindful of things such as a three-month anniversary. It’s one of the reasons why he’s no longer with his ex-boyfriend Malcolm, who cheated on him and definitely was not the type of person who would remember anniversaries. Sam and Malcolm started off as close friends, but as a result of the breakup, Sam has sworn off ever dating someone who’s starts off as a close friend.

When Sam arrives at the arranged meeting place on campus to pick up Harry for the road trip, Harry is almost a half-hour late. Their meeting is somewhat awkward because Sam is very mistrustful of Harry and extremely annoyed at Harry’s tardiness. Harry offers a flippant apology and rambles on that he’s been preoccupied with some of the people he’s been dating, and he’s broken up with his most recent girlfriend. Sam doesn’t seem too surprised, since Harry was a playboy in high school too.

Sam asks Harry if he remembers how much of a hard time he gave Sam in high school. Harry, like a lot of school bullies who’ve grown up, doesn’t remember being as harsh on Sam as Sam remembers it. But Sam reminds him how much Harry’s behavior was mean-spirited and hurtful. Harry is a little taken aback, but then Harry mentions that he has an ex-boyfriend, which leads to Harry telling Sam that he’s pansexual—someone who’s attracted to people of all sexualities and genders.

This time, it’s Sam’s turn to be surprised, since he thought that from the way Harry acted in high school, Harry must be heterosexual. Sam is so shocked that he nearly runs into a truck on the other side of the road. They have a minor car accident when the car swerves into an embankment and has to be towed away for repairs.

While they’re waiting for Sam’s car to fixed, Sam and Harry share a motel room, where Harry confesses to Sam that the reason why he bullied Sam was because he was envious that Sam was open about his sexuality. Harry hadn’t come out with his true sexuality back then, and he said that if he acted nice toward Sam in high school, people would think he was queer “by association.”

After Harry’s confession, the two men open up to each other a little more by talking about their favorite things and their life goals. Sam is surprised to learn that despite Harry’s playboy ways and “macho jock” image, he has a sweet and sensitive side: Harry tells Sam that his favorite movie is “Up” and that his biggest life goal is to become a father. By contrast, Sam says he’s not sure if he wants to bring kids into this world. Later, Harry gives a sincere apology to Sam for being a bully to him in high school.

With Sam’s car back in commission, they continue on the road trip, but Harry ends up ditching him in the middle of the trip to meet up with his most recent ex-girlfriend because they’ve decided to get back together. The engagement party isn’t shown in the movie, but another party is shown that’s a turning point in Sam and Harry’s relationship.

Back in Chicago, not long after the engagement party, Sam and Stasia go to a singles-only Valentine’s Day party. And, of course, Harry happens to be there too. At the party, Harry is wearing an outfit that looks like he just came from a 1992 Kris Kross video: overalls with one of the arm straps unbuttoned. Despite this fashion faux pas, Harry is still the best-looking guy at the party and there’s still a spark of mutual attraction between Sam and Harry.

But talk about bad timing: Harry tells Sam that he’s decided to try being celibate for a while. Sam doesn’t think Harry’s celibacy vow will last, but it makes him feel more comfortable with becoming friends with Harry. Stasia meets Harry for the first time at this party, and although she’s initially suspicious of him, she eventually accepts him when she sees that Sam has forgiven Harry and that they’ve decided to be friends.

The rest of the movie is a “will they or won’t they” guessing game on whether or not Sam and Harry will ever reveal their true feelings for each other while they date other people. “Queer Eye” co-star Karamo Brown has a memorable cameo as a pretentious art dealer named Paul, who dates Sam. In a genuinely funny scene where Sam and Paul join a group of friends at a local bar’s trivia night, Paul shows his true petty nature and Harry surprises everyone with how much trivia he knows. The message is clear: Harry’s not such a dumb jock after all.

Sam and Harry each have platonic male roommates who offer their advice and observations. Sam’s roommate is a middle-aged gay man named Casey (played by former “Queer as Folk” co-star Peter Paige, who directed this movie), who’s like a caring older brother to Sam. Harry’s roommate is a straight guy close to his age named Zack (played by Japhet Balaban), who frequently joins Harry, Sam and Stasia for their friend get-togethers.

Before and after he graduates from college, Sam shows an interest in progressive liberal politics, and he starts his career as a community organizer for a mayoral candidate. Meanwhile, Harry (who’s a marketing major) flounders around after college in low-paying entry-level jobs, such as a sales associate at a clothing store or selling phones at a kiosk.

One of the reasons why Sam is attracted to Harry is that he’s not just another pretty face. Harry is a lot smarter than people assume that he is (although he’s still not as smart as Sam), and he’s a fun and loyal friend. Harry also gets involved with issues that Sam cares deeply about, such as LGBTQ rights. When Sam and Harry go to a party after a Pride parade, something happens at the party that changes the course of their relationship.

“The Thing About Harry,” which was written by director Paige and Joshua Senter, has some unpredictable twists as well as some formulaic aspects to the story. The movie’s biggest appeal is in how realistically the characters are written and portrayed. The whip-smart dialogue of Sam, Stasia and Casey will remind viewers of people they know who can give sassy and sensible romance advice all day to friends, but their own love lives are kind of a mess. And because Harry is a very handsome and commitment-phobic playboy, he has that realistic mix of being charming and frustrating, which are common traits for people who know they have their pick of partners who are competing to fall in love with them.

If Sam and Harry are secretly in love with each other, what’s holding them back? Sam doesn’t want to get his heart broken by Harry, who doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to monogamy and long-term relationships. Harry doesn’t want to fall short of Sam’s high expectations when it comes to romance, and he probably feels that Sam deserves to have a partner who’s on a similar intellectual level.

Despite their differences, Sam and Harry are easy to root for in his love story. The whole point of this movie is to show that when it comes to love, there’s no explaining a lot of attractions. Instead of seeing if a potential love partner fits a list of requirements, many times it’s just best to just go with what feels right if it doesn’t hurt anyone and it makes you happy.

Freeform will premiere “The Thing About Harry” at 8 p.m. ET/PT on February 15, 2020.