We Heard You, But What Did You Say?

Trigger warning: This review quotes some racist dialog from the film in the sixth paragraph.

Surprisingly, this title wasn’t already
taken by Treasure Island Media.

Though its title suggests it’s about turning a man’s ass into a cream horn, THE BREEDING is actually about BDSM race play (because of course that’s a thing). It’s the kind of movie that might have had quotes from critics scattered about its poster, labeling it “controversial,” noting that it “pushes the envelope” and is “thought provoking.” But despite The Breeding winning the award for best feature at the 2018 Harlem International Film Festival, few critics bothered to review it.

But The Breeding doesn’t need such validation from critics. Its very premise is controversial, and it pushes the envelope not only in its subject matter but sexual content, too, crossing into NC-17 territory more than few times. And the movie is thought provoking, but the thoughts it provokes are less likely to be about racism and the fetishizing of Black men than about how fucking pretentious it is.

The main character, Thomas (Marcus Bellamy, so sexy and so sleepy), may be an erotic cartoonist by trade, but he’s sexually frustrated in life. Though his boyfriend Amadi (David J. Cork) always seems ready for sex, even after a rough day at his TV job, Thomas is never in the mood — at least, not with Amadi. Instead, Thomas goes looking for more extreme experiences outside the relationship, leaving Amadi’s balls to get ever-bluer. When we first meet Thomas he’s in a “confessional,” detailing his erotic dreams.

You’d never guess they aren’t in a church.

Thomas drowsily shares his fantasy with the white “Father,” his dialog perfectly suited for a drinking game: “I want to do things with his body [take a shot], with our mouths. I want to kiss his body [take a shot], I want his breath on my body [take a shot]. I want to kiss his body [take a shot]. Make love to his body [take a shot], worship his body [take a shot].” And now you’re shitfaced. This dialog may be intended to have a poetic rhythm, but it just had me thinking Thomas has a really limited vocabulary. That Thomas tends to respond to all questions with a listless yea only re-enforces that opinion.

Thomas takes the first of many masturbation breaks.

When not going to tea room confessionals or turning down his boyfriend’s advances, Thomas spends his days sketching sexy scenarios featuring characters with outrageously swollen crotches and taking frequent masturbation breaks. “The thing I love, more than anything in the world,” Thomas shares in a voiceover, “is a big. Black. Dick.” But it’s the white dick of Lee (Joe MacDougal), who cruises Thomas in the men’s room during an art opening at Lee’s ex-wife’s gallery, that has piqued the horny artist’s interest.

In a text conversation the two men hash out what each other are into (“Do you sub?” Lee asks, to which Thomas responds with one of many yeas), then engage in a bit of phone sex. I knew it was a bad idea when Thomas told Lee he didn’t have any limits, thinking that that’s a good way to get roped into blood or scat play. But Lee’s kink isn’t as infectious or smelly, though I would argue it’s just as icky. “That’s what those lips are made for, suckin’ on white men,” rasps Lee. This line causes Thomas to stop mid-jerk, but only briefly. Then Lee takes things into a more Aryan Nation direction: “Yeah, that’s what that monkey mouth needs.” Understandably, Thomas hangs up.

Research.

He isn’t totally turned off, though, and, after Googling “gay black white slave sex” and “race play,” he goes to a sex party where he reconnects with Lee, the pair engaging in more conventional sex. Wanting more, Thomas goes to Lee’s apartment the following day, only to end up locked in an electrified cage with a ball gag stuffed in his mouth, held prisoner until he acknowledges Lee as his master. Getting out is suddenly more important to him than getting off. 

“You know what would make this hotter? Racism.”

Jackson is hot for BBC.

There’s a pointless subplot involving a white gay artist Jackson (cockatoo-haired Patrick Kuzara), whose work will be featured alongside Thomas’s in an upcoming show, but who also works for the gallery curating the show. Jackson is into Black men, but his interest in them doesn’t go beyond sexual objectification. In one scene he hooks up with a couple of young hustlers he met through Craigslist (how quaint). They attempt to rob him and Jackson stabs one of the men, possibly fatally. Other than being questioned by a cop about a noise complaint, however, Jackson faces no consequences.

Lacks Focus, Often Literally

Part of what makes The Breeding such frustrating viewing is it’s simultaneously heavy-handed and vague. Director Daniel Armando and writer Dane Harrington Joseph thought it was important that we see Thomas acquire a discarded birdcage, but it’s solely to provide some obvious symbolism. You can practically see the thought bubble over the actor’s head: This could be a visual metaphor. Yet the fate of the hustler Jackson stabbed (we see Jackson mopping up blood, but no body) is left to audience assumption. 

Nice package, though.

Complicating things further is Armando’s bombarding us with every technique he can think of. Split screens, jump cuts, soft focus — he uses them all, repeatedly. He is particularly fond of gelled lighting (especially red) and using a hand-held camera, so much so that half the movie feels like you’re watching it through a veil of blood while on stormy seas. It’s Carrie’s Homoerotic Poseidon Adventure. I’m not against using any of these techniques, but here they’re used in such excess they distract from, rather than enhance, the story. Buy a fucking tripod! shouldn’t be the dominant thought one has when watching a movie about race play.

Thomas is a prisoner of red gelled lighting.

Focus!

I was going to write a paragraph about how, on the bright side, The Breeding has a lot of sexy moments, praising Bellamy’s physical charms if not his somnolent performance, as well as mentioning the appeal of some of his co-stars. However, as I started to write it I wondered if that could be construed as showing the same reductive attitudes the film is condemning. Or is it? Maybe the sexy scenes were simply meant to celebrate the beauty of Black men. Or maybe it’s to drive home the conflicts between being sex positive and woke. Or maybe it’s as simple as #BlackLivesMatter.

And that’s ultimately why The Breeding fails: its creators are so preoccupied with being artsy and sexy they lose sight of their message, whatever that’s supposed to be. We’re given no insight into why Thomas is drawn to this particular brand of BDSM, other than he’s bored. Boredom might explain his wanting to play outside his relationship, and even why he’d want to experiment with BDSM, but his willingness to subject himself to Lee’s Mandingo experience was a mystery to me. If it’s meant to be viewed metaphorically, to spark a conversation about racism in the gay community in general and within interracial relationships specifically, well, that message didn’t land, either. But, hey, at least Armando got to show off all those neat lighting and camera tricks.

In this Case, ‘Watchable’ is High Praise

Don’t be dissuaded by the text, “A Rob
Williams Film.”

I wanted to churn out one more post before the year ended*, so I went on Tubi and entered the search term “New Year’s.” From those results I picked the 2013 indie horror movie, Antisocial, about a group of college students attending a New Year’s Eve party just as an epidemic is sweeping the globe, like, all of a sudden. The virus was of the zombie-creating variety because 2013, but otherwise a movie about a New Year’s celebration derailed by an epidemic seemed ideally suited for 2020. Also, the title spoke to me.

Then I checked out the external reviews on IMDb and saw that plenty of other people had already reviewed this movie, and that my lil’ ol’ blog would likely get lost in that long list of other blogs. So, I passed on zombie horror in favor for the gay holiday comedy SHARED ROOMS, a choice made with such haste that I didn’t even notice that I’d selected a Rob Williams movie. Well, I knew this day would come eventually.

In all fairness, Rob Williams isn’t the worst writer-director to pick up a digital camera. Even his weakest movies aren’t as bad as the works of Jeff London, or that Tommy Wiseau of gay cinema, Sam Mraovich (that said, Ben & Arthur is a must-see for fans of bad movies, regardless of how one identifies sexually). But his earlier movies — Long-Term Relationship and Back Soon — left me hoping that before Williams made any more films he might consider taking some classes in how that’s done.

Well, maybe he did. Williams showed marked improvement with his 2010 romance Role/Play, and Shared Rooms is better still. Keep in mind, though, that the bar Williams needed to clear is pretty low. 

Shared Rooms follows the three different sets of gay Los Angelenos during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve of a much happier time (2016, presumably, the same year this movie was released; alas, we still can’t escape a reference to the soon-to-be-former-President of the United States). The movie opens with Cal (Alec Manly Wilson) and his screenwriter husband Laslo (Christopher Grant Pearson), making catty comments to their dinner guests about mutual friends who have adopted a baby. “They go from gay dates to play dates,” Cal quips. Their guests, Blake and Ivan (respectively Eric Allen Smith and Christopher Patrino, both men mugging so hard they risk popping blood vessels) then sheepishly announce that they’re having a baby through a surrogate. (“We’re pregnant!”) 

The nuanced acting of Eric Allen Smith and
Christopher Patrino. 

 

 

Woodstock becomes a real boy!

Later that evening, Cal and Laslo reaffirm their commitment to remain childless. “But,” Cal adds, “we can keep trying the old fashioned way.” As fate and plot devices would have it, however, the couple must reconsider their decision to give fatherhood a pass when Cal’s 17-year-old gay nephew Zeke (twitchy Ryan Weldon) shows up on their front doorstep, kicked out by his mother for being an “abomination.” Cal, who’s sister’s homophobia lead her to cut him from her life before Zeke was born, feels the teen is owed a safe space. Plus, the boy can whip up an all-the-carbs-you-can-eat breakfast in no time. (Seriously, movie, coffee cake, stacks of toast and pillars of pancakes? Even Honey Boo Boo would consider that excessive.)

If your breakfast for three can’t be shown in a single
shot, you’re eating too goddamn much.

Elsewhere, Cal and Laslo’s accountant, Julian (Daniel Lipshutz), is entertaining lanky, salt-and-pepper stud Frank (David Vaughn). Frank is not Julian’s date, as it first appears, but a paying guest, renting Julian’s roommate’s room (unbeknownst to the roommate, naturally) while he’s out of town on business. That said, Julian is quite eager to provide Frank with some extra personal service, if Frank would just pick up on the signals.

Julian’s signals aren’t exactly ambiguous.

But then the roommate, Dylan (Robert Werner), returns much earlier than expected, complicating Julian’s plans to seduce Frank, to say nothing of his clandestine subletting scheme. Dylan’s pissed that his room is being rented to strangers (“You call them strangers, I call them customers,” Julian says), though not nearly as angry as he should be. It turns out Dylan’s harbored a secret crush on Julian ever since they moved in together. Being forced to share a bed with Julian for a week might be what it takes for his deceptive roomie to see him as more than one half of the rent payment. Personally, I found Julian’s charms to be strictly physical (as played by Lipshutz, Julian is so oily it’s a safe bet he’s embezzling from his clients), but then Dylan wouldn’t be the first gay man to let a nice ass cloud his judgment.

Dylan considers a midnight snack.

Finally, there is Sid (Justin Xavier Smith, delivering every line in a mocking drone), who has arranged a Christmas hook-up with Dylan’s ex, Gray (yet another actor with three names, Alex Neil Miller), through the Grindr-like app Manhandler (or is it Manhandlr?). Sid is so eager to get down to business that he greets Gray in all his full frontal glory, and quickly helps his sultry-voiced trick out of his clothes, giving us another penis to admire, albeit briefly. The pair remain naked for most of the movie as Gray stays for a second round, then a third, and ultimately until New Year’s Eve. When the couple isn’t fucking they’re discussing David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, (“I read every chapter, every footnote, every end note, and I can’t even begin to tell you what it is about,” says Gray), spirituality (Sid believes in God; Gray’s an atheist), and Americans’ hypocritical attitudes about nudity (Sid tells of an actor friend who refuses to do full frontal nudity for acting roles but posts dick pics on Manhandler). These conversations, plus more personal revelations, soon transform their impersonal sexual encounter into a full-fledged relationship.

Justin Xavier Smith and Alex Neil Miller go
full frontal early but not often.

The three storylines converge at Cal and Laslo’s New Year’s Steve-Not-Eve Party, where Williams doesn’t tie things up with a big red ribbon so much as slap one of those dollar store self-adhesive bows on top before wishing us a Happy New Year. 

Laslo and Cal toast the conclusion of Shared Rooms.

Still Room for Improvement

As I said, Shared Rooms is one of Williams’ better movies. Unlike the aforementioned Long-Term Relationship, Shared Rooms almost manages to pass itself off as a made-for-TV movie rather than the work of a beginning YouTuber. The issues with pacing, tone and acting that plague his earlier movies aren’t as abundant this time out. Though the movie has its sluggish moments, particularly during the Sid and Gray scenes, it makes more efficient use of its 75-minute runtime. There are fewer tonal shifts, too, though the Zeke storyline threatens to take this bubbly gay rom-com into turgid melodrama territory, but thankfully Williams settles on letting it become A Very Special Episode with jokes about butt fucking.

Alex Neil Miller’s hair is on purpose, apparently.

It’s the cast who get the most credit for making Shared Rooms pleasant viewing. Wilson and Pearson are well matched, making their characters believable as a couple as well as funny. Pearson’s mocking the script he’s writing for a Lifetime-esque Christmas movie is a particular high point (“And the award goes to…something other than this crap.”) Werner and Miller were also standouts, as much for their persistent bed heads as their acting. What did they do that caused hair and makeup to refuse brushing their unruly mops, I wonder?

Just because this is one of Williams’ stronger films doesn’t mean the director has fully overcome his weaknesses, however. Though his script has plenty of funny moments, it has just as many hack jokes (“That’s what he said.”) that even his best actors can’t save. Williams also continues to be way too reliant on contrived situations, being especially fond of characters withholding information for dramatic/comedic effect, e.g., Zeke’s inability to make direct statements about, well, pretty much every fucking thing, be it his identity or his underwear preferences (yet freely sharing that he’s a bottom). Williams isn’t the first screenwriter to resort to hack jokes and plot contrivances, of course, but they don’t do his movie any favors.  

This looks sweet, but it’s a totally impractical way
to watch a movie. Does Sid not own a TV?

Still, it’s good to see Williams is learning from his past mistakes. As it stands, Shared Rooms is a pleasant little gay rom-com, with enough laughs and gratuitous nudity to put one in a forgiving mood when confronted by its shortcomings. It’s not essential viewing, but it’s watchable, and for a Rob Williams movie, watchable is high praise.

*A goal I obviously failed to achieve. Happy 2021, regardless.

Have Yourself Straight-Friendly Gay Christmas

Another holiday, another obligatory post about holiday-themed entertainment. My original plan was to review a Christmas-themed gay porn movie from the 1970s, except I couldn’t find one. Oh, there are plenty of Christmas-themed scenes, but no one seemed to think there was a market for a holiday-themed gay feature during porn’s Golden Age. There’s the new shit, of course, but I really wanted to review something that had a little more narrative than “Santa fucks an elf.”

Maybe later.

So, I went in the opposite direction, checking out instead three TV movies released this year that feature LGBTQ storylines. And while the networks releasing these movies are getting much praise for including LGBTQ characters, it should be understood that these movies go to great lengths to scrub away all the sexual from homosexual. Though, to be fair, the straight characters aren’t exactly dripping with erotic intent. In the world of these movies, romance just means, to borrow a line from a friend of mine, holding hands and thinking pure thoughts.

Let’s start with the Hallmark Channel’s THE CHRISTMAS HOUSE, which premiered this past November. Last year, Hallmark sparked the ire of One Million Moms (which is, reportedly, significantly fewer moms than that) when the network aired an ad for the wedding planning site Zola featuring (gasp!) a lesbian couple. Hallmark pulled the ad, then faced an even bigger backlash. Hallmark, no doubt flustered by the discovery that homosexuals buy shit, too, re-instated the ad and committed itself to creating more inclusive content, of which The Christmas House is a direct result.

Hey gays! Here’s a movie just for you from your
friends at the Hallmark Channel.

Psyche! The Christmas House is really about these two.

However, I wouldn’t nominate Hallmark for a GLAAD Award just yet, for while The Christmas House includes gay characters, its primary story is decidedly hetero, and very, very white. The white hetero in question is Mike Mitchell (Robert Buckley, of iZombie and One Tree Hill fame), the lead actor of a cheesy TV legal drama Handsome Justice. The Christmas House even opens with a scene from the fake show—a daring move, as the self-aware cheese of Handsome Justice is barely distinguishable from the regular cheese of the Hallmark Channel. After the show wraps for the holidays, Mike learns its current season might be its last. He barely has time to process this news before getting a call from his parents, Phylis (yes, just one ‘l’) and Bill (Sharon Lawrence and Treat Williams, respectively), insisting he move his visit to upstate New York up a couple weeks to help them transform the family home into one big gaudy holiday display, the titular Christmas House. It’s a tradition the family hasn’t kept up in years, but Mom’s just retired from her teaching job and wants a project. (Dad retired a few years earlier—from what, we don’t know, but he must’ve been making bank to afford his wife’s facelifts and transform his home into Busch Gardens’ Christmas Town.)

Also roped into this project are Mike’s brother Brandon (Jonathan Bennett) and his husband Jake (Brad Harder). Brandon and Jake are trying to adopt a baby, but fuck them, what about Mike getting back together with his childhood crush, Andi (Ana Ayora)? The recently divorced Andi, with her pre-teen son Noah (Mattia Castrillo) in tow, has moved back to her mother’s place next door to the Mitchells. She’s also Mike’s parents’ real estate agent, a revelation that suddenly has Mike getting nostalgic for his childhood home and re-examining his choices. What’s the life of a C-list actor when he could live an upper-middle class life in suburbia with the just-remembered love of his life?

Jonathan Bennett and Brad Harder wait for a seat at the table.

The Christmas House is pretty much everything I expected from a Hallmark movie: a big bundle of clichés slathered with a glistening glaze of schmaltz. And yet, I didn’t hate it. Buckley is an engaging lead (not to mention very easy on the eyes), well-matched by smoky-voiced Ayora. Lawrence manages a passable Florence Henderson-as-Carol Brady impersonation, while Williams, whose character is fond of bad jokes (“What do you call a Christmas tree that knows Kung Fu? Spruce Lee.”), is endearingly goofy. Bennett and Harder, both out IRL, are fine, but they’re just there to help Hallmark earn brownie points with the LGBTQs and not much else. Their characters could be cut and the story wouldn’t be affected in the slightest.

At least the Paramount Network had the decency to make its gay cast members the leads of DASHING IN DECEMBER. Too bad that’s like if Lehman Brothers named their first Black CEO on September 14, 2008.

Speaking of heartless financial firms, one of Dashing’s main characters, Wyatt Burwall (Peter Porte) works for one. A conversation with Wyatt’s hard-ass boss during an office Christmas party reveals that Wyatt’s on track for a Big Promotion, provided he puts together one more Big Deal, because at this firm, promotions are transactional. To hammer home that Wyatt’s got no work/life balance (and that he works for an asshole), his boss is slightly miffed that Wyatt’s going to Colorado for the holidays to see his mother, whom he hasn’t seen in two years, but is calmed when Wyatt explains he’s taking his laptop along. Happy Holidays! Then Wyatt cruises the party’s hunky bartender. I’m sure they later sneaked away to snort coke and blow each other in a supply closet, but the movie chose not to expose audiences to such trashy behavior. Maybe they’ll include that part as a Blu-ray extra. (Note to Paramount: You most definitely should include that part as a Blu-ray extra.)

“Meet me in the supply closet in 15 minutes.”

Though Wyatt hasn’t seen his mother in two years, his reason for returning home isn’t entirely sentimental. It seems the family’s horse farm has been in dire financial straits since Dad died, and Wyatt wants to convince his mother to sell before she sinks all her retirement savings (and his financial assistance) into this money pit. He’s so determined, in fact, that he presents his mother Deb (Andie MacDowell, aging naturally and looking all the better for it) with a sales proposal during dinner on his first night home.

Andie MacDowell’s part is more like a spokesmodel
than a character.

The moment Heath knew he
would destroy that ass.

Employed by the ranch are Blake (Caroline Harris), who dated Wyatt in high school before he came out and is seemingly the only Black person in Colorado, and Heath (Juan Pablo Di Pace), who may be Colorado’s only gay person. Or so I assume, given his masochistic pursuit of Wyatt. Though the two men exchange interested glances when Wyatt first arrives, Deb’s son is clearly more interested in establishing himself as an insufferable douchebag than pursuing a holiday romance. He keeps “accidentally” calling Heath “Hank,” insults the wine Heath brings for dinner (“You can’t drink this!”) and shows little concern for the employees who will be displaced should Deb decide to sell. Heath is understandably put off by Wyatt’s negging, but…dat ass! Wyatt eventually becomes a little less resistant to Heath’s charms, though for much of the movie he seems to view Heath more as a rival for his mother’s approval than a potential romantic partner. More perplexing is Heath’s continued interest in Wyatt. I, for one, think personality counts for a lot, so if, say, Chris Hemsworth were to treat me like shit, he’d immediately go from a 10 to a 4. I would be open to one night of hate sex, however.

Because the Christmas movie genre mandates that there be no surprises, Wyatt and Heath not only become a couple, but Wyatt manages to save the farm, too, his solution so simplistic and obvious that you’ll question how these characters hadn’t driven the farm into bankruptcy years earlier.

Dashing in December is a prime example of why “TV movie” is a pejorative in so many people’s minds. These movies usually trade in clichés, but few are so nakedly insincere. Dashing looks so much like a 90-minute commercial that I half-expected Andie MacDowell to turn directly to the camera and urge viewers to wrap themselves in savings at Kohl’s while modeling one of her shawls. In fact, it’s remarkable that in this movie that appears specifically crafted for product placement has only one moment that’s blatantly shot to appease a sponsor.

Subtle.

Dashing isn’t all bad. Di Pace manages to manufacture a dimension-and-a-half more for Heath from the single one supplied by writer-director Jake Helgren. Plus, he gets bonus points for making the line “You could use some holiday spirit” sound sexually suggestive. And unlike the other TV Christmas movies I watched, Dashing at least acknowledges that its gay main characters have carnal desires, such as when Wyatt, dressed only in holiday-themed boxer briefs, walks into the bathroom and surprises a freshly showered Heath in his holiday-themed boxer briefs. The POV camera pan from Wyatt’s crotch to his rippling torso makes it clear Heath has more in mind than holding hands.

Or maybe Dashing in December was just trying to sell boxer briefs.

Finally, there’s Lifetime’s LGBTQ Christmas movie offering, THE CHRISTMAS SETUP. I’ll confess that I didn’t go into this with an entirely open mind. I, like a lot of people, don’t hold Lifetime TV movies in high esteem. This is the network that gave us Liz & Dick and Drew Peterson: Untouchable, after all. Granted, I enjoyed both those movies, but only because I watched them ironically. I fully intended to watch The Christmas Setup ironically as well.

There’s certainly nothing about The Christmas Setup’s story that makes it unique. Once again, we have a New York-based gay son with a demanding career — an attorney this time out — angling for a promotion. And once again, that son, Hugo (Ben Lewis), leaves town for the holidays to visit his mother, who resides in a slower-paced, gentler town (I’m not sure if that describes Milwaukee, but it’s not Manhattan, so sure). He brings along Madelyn (Ellen Wong), his BFF, because what else is she going to do, visit her own family? Oh, fuck no!

Patrick (Blake Lee) sells Christmas trees
and creates wood.

But if Hugo and Madelyn think they’ll have relaxing visit, Hugo’s widowed mom Kate (Fran Drescher) has another think coming to them. She’s chairing the neighborhood Christmas festival and she’s already volunteered her visitors to assist in setting it up. I can relate; this is the kind of shit my mom likes to do. However, unlike when she volunteered my brother and I to assist at one of her church events, Hugo does not yell at his mother about having no respect for his time, as well as saying a lot of things that he’ll regret later, and Kate does not scream things like, “Well, I’m sorry I’m such a horrible mother!” before bursting into tears and then locking herself in the bathroom for an hour. No, Hugo just makes a few halfhearted protests before doing what his mother asks.  

One of the things Hugo’s asked to do is take a Christmas tree delivery from Patrick (Lewis’ real-life husband Blake Lee), and I’ll have to admit that would make me pretty agreeable to having my Christmas break hijacked. Patrick is one of those impossibly perfect people that only exist in fiction: handsome, financially independent (he created an app, sold it and was able to retire in his early thirties), and genuinely nice. I’m sure he has an eight-inch cock, too. The attraction between the pair is immediate, but Hugo can’t seem to get out of his own way. At one point I found myself shouting at the TV, “C’mon, does he have to slap his dick in your face for you to get a clue?” Also: “Can that be in a scene, please?”

“So, are you two ever gonna fuck?”

I wasn’t the only one waiting for Hugo to get a clue. Kate has been steering Hugo into Patrick’s orbit, hoping her son will get a boyfriend for Christmas, hence the movie’s title. She’s not as overbearing a matchmaker as she is a Christmas festival chair, and her restraint pays off as the two guys find their way into a sweet romance. She even gets a bonus match-up when her older son Aiden (another out actor, Chad Connell, who really does a pair of pants justice) comes home and takes a liking to Madelyn. 

Halfway through The Christmas Setup I was suddenly struck with the realization that, holy shit, this movie is actually good. It’s no holiday classic (in my book, that would be Christmas Evil and/or White Reindeer), but it was by far the best of the 2020 Christmas LGBTQ movies I watched for this post, and that’s largely attributable to the cast’s performances. Real-life partners don’t always have the same chemistry on screen (#Bennifer), but the romantic sparks between the charmingly adorkable Lewis and the oh-so-fuckable adorable Lee are palpable. Drescher is an actress I generally prefer in small doses (I can take only so much of her foghorn of a voice, which sounds a bit rusty these days), yet even though The Christmas Setup exceeds that dosage I enjoyed having her around. I just wish writer Michael J. Murray had given her a sarcastic edge to take full advantage of Drescher’s strengths. (We’ll overlook that someone who fought to ensure The Nanny reflected its titular character’s Jewish heritage is playing a character who’s positively moist for Christmas.) 

Awwww! They’re so cute, I want to slap them.

Above all, even though The Christmas Setup’s story isn’t much different from Dashing in December’s and its script not much wittier than The Christmas House’s, it’s clear everyone involved is committed to the project, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Good job, Lifetime! But I’m still plan on making fun of your movies in the future.

Xmas Excess, Moms and Empty Cups

The three 2020 Christmas TV movies had a lot more in common than just including gay actors and characters. All three exist in a world where the so-called War on Christmas has been won and Santa has been named Dictator for Life, with Gretchen Carlson his second in command. In this world, if you don’t spend at least $75 grand on Christmas decorations you’re a motherfucking Grinch and should go back to whatever godless nation you came from. The characters in Dashing at least have a business reason for decking the halls so extravagantly, and yet they are the most restrained, creating what I imagine a Crate & Barrel holiday theme park would look like. And neighborhood Christmas festivals aren’t exactly known for their understatement, so The Christmas Setup also gets a pass. But the Mitchells in The Christmas House need to seriously re-think their priorities. How about dialing back the decorations a little bit, maybe donate the $50,000 savings to a food bank or homeless shelter? Or do I not understand the true meaning of Christmas?

I also found it interesting that while all three of these movies hyped their inclusion of gay characters and talent, both in front of and behind the camera, they didn’t strike me as being made for gay audiences. Instead, I think the target audience is their mothers. All three movies make visiting and helping mom the catalyst of their respective stories, and all three, with their sweet, sexless romances and mild humor meant to be cute rather than funny, seem designed to warm Mom’s heart more than truly reflect the lives of the gay characters. Granted, a lot of this is attributable to network branding (the Hallmark Channel isn’t exactly known for edgy content), but I think a truly gay Christmas movie would have more sexiness and sarcasm than straight sugary sentimentality.

Hallmark, Paramount and Lifetime were ready to present
LGBTQ characters, but still reticent about showing hot beverages.

Finally, what’s up with the empty cups? In every one of these movies characters drink from obviously empty coffee cups. In the rare instance liquids are poured into these cups at all, it’s a fraction of the amount a person would normally drink. I’m sure if any P.A. brought a producer or director of any of these movies a cup containing four tablespoons of coffee they would get a dressing down that would make Tom Cruise’s recent on-set tirade seem like a polite reminder about workplace safety. They might even be killed. The only time these movies — and TV in general — seems to show an interest in accurately reflecting how people consume beverages is when characters are drinking alcohol. Only then can characters pour liberally and often.

Think Twice Before Signing the Lease

Me thinks the cover artist
was working from a
one-paragraph synopsis,
not the actual manuscript.

“The bedroom doors were always open!” proclaims the front cover teaser copy for Charles Beardsley’s 1974 novel THE APARTMENTS. Signet’s back-cover copy ups the ante with a breathless description that’s just slightly more subtle than a guy intently staring at you while stroking his hard cock through his 501’s:

In a swinging California apartment complex where anything went, these desperate men and women sought to fill the aching void in their lives with the pleasures of the flesh — and the apartments exploded in an orgy of dark desires and scorching shock!

The Apartments is down to fuck! Well, how could a whore like me resist?

Alas, once I got the novel alone it never could quite get it up, for while the novel was promoted as detailing all the bed-hopping at a Bay Area apartment building, Kumquat Gardens (yes, really), the cover copy neglects to mention the numerous unsexy chapters about the building’s older residents grappling with aging, retirement, poor health and their imminent mortality. But I get it: old people bitching about the cruelties of aging doesn’t make for enticing promotional copy (“In a swinging California apartment complex, senior citizens grudgingly anticipate death”). Yet the cover copy also fails to mention the killer loose on The Apartments’ grounds, a pretty significant omission considering people like reading about murder almost as much as—if not more than—they like reading about sex.

I can’t blame the Signet marketing team for taking the easy way out and just hyping the book’s sexier parts. Lord knows I struggled on how best to synopsize the book. On the surface, it looks like a Burt Hirschfeld-style potboiler, with a bunch of different characters brought into each other’s orbit by virtue of being in the same location, à la Aspen or Key West. However, the paths of Beardsley’s characters seldom cross. Making matters worse, they barely exist in the same genre, The Apartments bouncing from sexy soap opera to slice-of-life character study to supernatural thriller and back again.

In the sexy soap opera parts of the novel, we meet Phil and Peggy Carlin, a young-ish married couple whose libidos are so demanding they have turned, quite cheerfully, to swinging. Among their playmates are a pair of vacationing contortionists, Don and (groan) Donaldine (“The air of nonchalance with which Don gave a startling exhibition of autofellatio was enough to make the couple stars of the porno film scene—which is exactly what happened.”); Fran and Fred, whose excessive vocalizations during sex lead Phil and Peggy to refer to them as the Orals; and Pete and Phyllis Begley, whose marriage might not survive their swinging lifestyle (“I never realized when I voted yes on Proposition Orgasm that I’d feel soiled,” complains Phyllis).

Of course, there are rules to Phil and Peggy’s extramarital activities, chief among them being “no single sex for either partner outside the weekly quartets.” However, when Peggy encounters Ahmad, the hunky Iranian student who lives in Apartment 12, she begins to wonder if rules weren’t made to be broken.

Another sexy soap opera storyline involves young Midwesterner Lane Larrabee and the man of his dreams, Shaw Wing, whom Lane jokingly calls the Incredible Doctor Oh Man Screw, because Shaw is Chinese and political correctness hadn’t yet been invented when this novel was written. More significant than Shaw’s ethnicity (about which Beardsley makes a huge fucking deal) or sexuality (treated rather matter-of-factly) is his being an asshole. He not only agrees to an arranged marriage with Carol, to please his traditionalist parents, he does not tell Lane about it until after the wedding. Though marrying someone behind your partner’s back seems like a justifiable cause to burn all his shit on the front lawn, Lane agrees to continue a clandestine affair with Shaw, getting together for lunchtime trysts while Carol is at work. But when Carol gets pregnant, Lane realizes he’ll always be Shaw’s side piece. Again, Lane could just dump the bastard. It’s not like he couldn’t find another man (dude, you live just minutes away from San Francisco). Instead, Lane plots to get rid of Carol by any means necessary — only to discover Carol has plans of her own.

Moving to the novel’s slice-of-life dramas, we have middle-aged Beatrice Ohara, who’s been in a bad mood ever since her husband went to visit his family in Japan and never returned. Living and caring for her sharp-tongued 83-year-old mother, Miss Maerose, only makes Beatrice more embittered. Needless to say, she’s not pleasant company. Her mother, a former madam, is more entertaining: “I shall take my cane and rise and show all of you soft-ass idiots that I’m from tough pioneer stock and not daunted by the likes of old age.” However, a fall during a walk on the apartment grounds lands Miss Maerose in a convalescent home, where she—and Beatrice—awaits her death. But Miss Maerose isn’t going without getting the last laugh.

Also living amongst the middle-class residents of Kumquat Gardens is multi-divorced, fabulously wealthy Madeline Chabot, because, as we all know, rich people just love living near the less affluent. Madeline is also a busybody, and she’s decided to make retiree Shelby Dick her next project (and possible romantic partner), his poor heart and small bank account be damned.

Meanwhile, octogenarian Dean Meredith, a former reporter, gets sidetracked from writing a follow-up to his bestselling memoir when he receives threatening letters urging him to drop the project if he values the lives of his family. Though this story thread develops some real tension as Dean searches for the source of these threats, Beardsley quickly deflates it, choosing to emphasize Dean’s “betrayal” of his wife, Crystal, by keeping these threatening letters from her.

Rounding out the slice-of-life dramas is Luise Gerber, a middle-aged college professor and obsessive dream interpreter about whom you will not give one fuck, and Noah Langford, an aspiring artist, paid by his wealthy parents to stay away from them, whose art projects include following random people then writing about what he witnesses—a stalker’s journal as art—and a gallery “show” during which he jacks off inside an enclosed wooden ramp as gallery patrons mill about.

Finally, under the heading of supernatural thriller/WTF, we have Fog, the spirit of a Costanoan (a.k.a. Ohlonean) out to possess someone so he can avenge the murder of his pregnant wife by Spanish settlers, a murder that occurred in the same spot where Kumquat Gardens now sits. It’s all pretty dull—until the killing starts.

A Literary McMansion

Beardsley has a gift for characterization, and there are moments in The Apartments that suggest he could’ve easily turned it into a biting satire of early ’70s culture. He’s not an untalented writer, but he is an unfocused one. The Apartments doesn’t read like a cohesive novel but rather like seven or eight different novellas spliced together and stuck under one roof, forming an ungainly literary McMansion. He’d have done better to jettison the more boring characters (bye-bye Luise) and make Fog’s murder-spree-by-proxy the narrative’s driver while expanding on the tawdry lives of the apartment building’s more interesting residents. Also, maybe reconsider Kumquat Gardens as the building’s name?

Perhaps my biggest frustration with The Apartments is its squandered potential as great trash. It’s as if Beardsley is trying to split the difference between his literary pretensions and commercial greed. As a result, many of the “dirty” parts are disappointingly tame (alas, the building can’t be dubbed Cum-Twat Gardens), while the more serious character studies are long-winded and pointless.

I bought The Apartments shortly after reading a positive review on Charles Beardsley’s 1978 novel, Marina Tower, on the now dormant The Ringer Files blog (are you OK, Kurt?). The Ringer Files’ high opinion of Marina Tower was enough to convince me to give Beardsley’s work a try. This was more than five years ago.

In the interim Joe Kenney posted a less enthusiastic review of Marina Tower on Glorious Trash. Though I don’t agree with many of the political views that creep into Joe’s reviews, his take on Marina Tower pretty much mirrors my takeaway on The Apartments (and thus, through trash fiction, common ground is achieved). In fact, based on the Glorious Trash synopsis, Marina Tower is pretty much The Apartments relocated to Los Angeles, so if you’ve read one you don’t need to bother with the other.

And I won’t be bothering with another Beardsley paperback anytime soon, no matter how hard the cover tries to seduce me. I didn’t hate The Apartments, but it didn’t exactly make me want to move in, either.

Cigars, Loud Jackets and Poontang

This an instance where you can judge
a movie by its don’t-give-a-shit cover art.

There were many ways I could’ve spent the U.S. Election Night: Obsessively checking my phone for updates, watching TV news to see how many different ways anchors could say, “No, not yet,” or just getting drunk. I chose to watch a shitty 1993 direct-to-video thriller, SOUTH BEACH.

Fred Williamson stars as Mack Derringer, a retired pro football player who now runs a private investigation agency with another ex pro football player, Lenny (Gary Busey). When we meet them, they’re playing a round of golf, smoking cigars and talking shit. The two pals are seemingly without a care in the world, even though they have plenty of reasons to worry. As Lenny points out, they haven’t had a case in five weeks, a payment is due on Mack’s houseboat and their bar tab at their favorite watering hole, The Sports Page, “is as long as a tapeworm.” Mack isn’t worried, though, telling Lenny that “big things can happen at any time.”

Then Lenny leaves for a Jamaican vacation, and though his timing is questionable his departure helps ensure the amount of Gary Busey in the movie is kept to a tolerable level. Mack then takes his wheelchair-bound mom (Isabel Sanford) to the mall. He leaves her parked outside a store while he goes shopping in what looks like a Hallmark card shop, but Mama Derringer just can’t stay put, rolling to the jewelry store next door, where she witnesses a robbery in progress. 

Fred Williamson chews more cigars in South Beach, but
Gary Busey chews more scenery.

An alarm goes off and Mack rushes out of the Hallmark store, his gun drawn, though he has no idea the reason for the alarm. I mean, for all he knows, it’s a fire alarm. Anyway, Mack blows away the mullet-headed robbers, police Det. Coleman (Robert Forster, who worked with Williamson in the far superior Vigilante) lets Mack know he’s sick of his shit, and Mama Derringer hams it up for the local TV news.

Meanwhile, Mack’s ex-wife Jennifer (Vanity), who manages a phone sex business, is being stalked by one of her callers, a guy identifying himself as Billy. Jennifer dismisses the stalker as an annoyance, until she shows up at work one day, wearing a slinky black dress with matching opera gloves, as one does, and discovers the naked corpse of her dim-bulb co-worker Suzi on the office floor. 

It was Nightclub Wednesday at the office.

You might think, as I did, that hunting for Suzi’s killer/Jennifer’s stalker would become the main driver of South Beach’s story, but that’s merely a B-plot. At the Sports Page, while cutting up with his buddy Jake (a barely recognizable Peter Fonda), yet another former pro ball player, Mack is approached by Francesca (Sheree Deveraux, who, despite what her name and acting style suggests, did not do porn). She wants to hire Mack to protect her from a jealous ex-boyfriend. He reluctantly agrees, because pussy, and accompanies her to a party aboard a yacht.

It’s a set-up, of course, and before the party is over Francesca has disappeared and Mack is framed for a murder. With Jake’s help, Mack goes hunting for the person who framed him, getting occasional too-convenient-to-be-true assists from Lenny. He might also try to find out who’s after Jennifer, and, what the hell, go after the people behind that jewelry store robbery since the helmet-haired daughter of the store’s owner (Shay King) so obviously wants to get into Mack’s Dockers. 

Shay King’s movie career consists solely of
supplying South Beach’s nudity.

These three storylines—Mack being framed, Jennifer’s stalker and the jewelry store robbery—are loosely wrapped up by the end, but don’t ask me to explain how because the movie sure doesn’t, not coherently, at least. But South Beach isn’t about the destination; it’s the meandering journey, during which our leading man models loud jackets, chews through about thirty cigars and considers all the sweet poontang he’s offered, including the well-seasoned meat pocket of Stella Stevens (watching the 54-year-old throw herself at Williamson is only slightly less cringey than the scene featuring Marquis Ross’s beachside rap performance).

Stella Stevens is actually a more age-appropriate partner for
Fred Williamson, but the movie pretends she still looks
like her 1960s self (right).

A Black Burt Reynolds

South Beach seems to be going for a vibe similar to one of Burt Reynolds’ ’80s crime movies, a mix of gritty action and smartass humor. It certainly sold me on the idea of Williamson as a Black Burt Reynolds. His ’stache isn’t as iconic and he lacks a signature laugh, but Williamson projects the same blend of no-bullshit machismo and easy-going humor as Burt. I could easily see him playing the lead in Stick or Heat.

Peter Fonda and Fred Williamson are just
a couple of zany bros.

Unfortunately, I could just as easily see Reynolds in South Beach, which more closely resembles the DTV shit he was making by the late 1990s. Michael Thomas Montgomery’s script, with its muddled plotting and underwritten characters, is partly to blame for the movie’s poor quality. I say partly because I suspect there were more than a few sequences that were improvised, e.g., the opening golf scene. And, honestly, can any scene involving Gary Busey really stay on script? Casting Busey in a movie after his 1988 motorcycle accident is like giving your best man a microphone at your wedding reception after he’s downed his sixth glass of Prosecco with a cocaine chaser. Semi-coherence is the best you can hope for.

But most of the blame goes to the director… Fred Williamson (IMDb lists Alain Zaloum as a co-director, though his name doesn’t appear on the movie’s opening credits). As cool as he is in front of the camera, Williamson isn’t so capable behind it. South Beach is sloppily made, with flubbed lines and visible safety rigging. There’s also an over-reliance on close-ups and waaaaay too many shots of Williamson grinning into the camera and handling a fucking cigar (seriously, I think he’s a fetishist about those things). 

One of the few scenes in South Beach that’s not
shot in close-up, and it captures the stunt man’s safety
rigging and filming equipment in the background.

 

 

South Beach has an interesting cast, at least. The movie can now boast that it stars three Oscar® nominees (Busey for The Buddy Holly Story, Fonda for Ulee’s Gold, and Forster for Jackie Brown), plus an Emmy winner (Sanford for The Jeffersons) and a Golden Globe winner (Stevens, but the category was Most Promising Newcomer, the Hollywood equivalent of being crowned homecoming queen). Vanity never won any awards but she boned Prince, so that’s got to count for something. I always found her a welcome screen presence, and wish she was more of one in South Beach, her next to last movie before she quit cocaine and show business to become an evangelist (no one ever turns to God when things are going great). Rounding out the cast are cameos from Henry Silva and Flash Gordon star Sam J. Jones. The movie also has the distinction of having a high body count amongst its cast: Sanford, Forster, Fonda, and Vanity are now all deceased, and yet Busey is still with us.

Unless you’re a fan of the lead actors you could probably skip this one and re-watch one of their better movies. That said, there were worse things I could’ve watched on Election Night.

Fun fact: South Beach features four actors who have posed
nude for Playboy/Playgirl: Stella Stevens, Fred Williamson,
Vanity, and Sam J. Jones.