In the darkest of dark comedies, it can be hard to tell the heroes from villains.
That might go double for the audacious Down Low, starring Zachary Quinto and Lukas Gage as an epically repressed, recently out gay man and the masseur he’s hired for his first homo happy ending who team up to hide the accidentally dead body of an internet hookup.
Gage — perhaps best known as the White Lotus bellhop who had his salad tossed by Murray Bartlett — co-wrote the script with writing partner Phoebe Fisher, and then encouraged producer FilmNation to pass it along to Rightor Doyle to direct.
“We had known each other for years,” says Doyle, also the creator, writer, and director of Netflix’s provocative comedy series Bonding, loosely based on Doyle’s experiences as a fresh-faced gay New Yorker working for his dominatrix best friend as her bodyguard. One can safely assume the actor-turned-director has seen his share of crazy worker-client situations, and even he was shocked reading the script for Down Low.
“I read the first ten pages and said, ‘I can’t believe someone is going to make this,'” Doyle recalls. “And then I thought, ‘Wait, maybe I should be the one to make it.’ And I think it’s something that, particularly with queer cinema, gay cinema — I love a good, uplifting story, I love a good coming out story — but my sense of humor and the things that I like to watch felt very aligned with this darker, sort of button-pushing version of what it is to be queer or what it is to explore queer identity. And I just jumped at it. I begged to do it.”
For his persistence, Doyle not only got the gig, but then assembled an enviable cast that also includes Simon Rex in a role not to be spoiled, and powerhouses Judith Light, in a drop-dead hilarious turn as a nosy neighbor, and Tony Awards queen Audra McDonald, in a brief but searing appearance as the ex-wife of Quinto’s former closet case.
“She’s incredible,” Doyle raves of McDonald, who shot her part in a day, much to Doyle’s eternal gratitude. “She has been my hero for my entire life. [As a kid,] I saved up all of my money and walked to the nearest CD store and bought Way Back to Paradise, you know? And I told her this, literally, as she’s getting her hair and makeup done.”
While Quinto’s and Gage’s characters try to get away with almost-murder, McDonald’s ex-wife shows up to ensure her former husband doesn’t get off scot-free for upending their marriage, or for living a lie for decades. On the other hand, his sexuality apparently was a revelation to him, too.
As Doyle notes, part of “the beautiful complexity around the movie, but also just around being a human” is that “you can be right and wrong all at the same time.” But these guys are still totally wrong for trying to hide a dead body, right? Even if they do have their reasons? “I’m not here to answer any of those questions,” Doyle offers slyly.
“Good storytelling for me, asks more questions than it answers,” he says. “I would like to leave more curious than when I came. And I hope that this movie does that, whether you love it or hate it. I think the movie wants you to love it or hate it. I think it’s asking you to have a big opinion about it. And I don’t think it’s afraid of you having an opinion. So you can have an opinion, either way. And I think the movie allows for that.”
Serene on the surface, seething with desire beneath, Alain Guiraudie's French thriller Misericordia is fascinatingly strange, creepy, and suspenseful.
Much as the filmmaker's masterful 2013 thriller Stranger by the Lake planted a sinister seed by setting a serial killer loose in a tranquil outdoor gay cruising spot, here Guiraudie upends a seemingly wholesome homecoming in the countryside with dark undercurrents of sex and violence.
Although, beyond a couple of pointed shots of male nudity and one shot of bleeding, there's little sex or violence onscreen. Merely the potential for the former and the threat of the latter linger equally over nearly every scene in this odd chamber piece set in a remote village tucked amid the forested hills of Occitanie in Southern France.
Blessed with a sweet yet sturdy redemption story, Sister Act, based on the hit 1992 film starring Whoopi Goldberg, is a natural fit as a screen-to-stage musical.
The tale of lounge singer Deloris Van Cartier hiding out from her murderous crime boss boyfriend in the last place he'd think to look for her -- a convent full of singing nuns -- eagerly lends itself to set-pieces full of singing and dancing.
Composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater's score of catchy original tunes are paired with a solid book by Cheri Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner, and additional material by Douglas Carter Beane.
It can't be easy to write a play that successfully cries out to the world "Look what happened here! Understand!" Many fall way too hard on the side of over-explaining, feeding the drama with fiction-busting expository and presenting their characters as either heroes or villains to make every point crystal clear.
Their hearts may be in the right place, but they so woefully underestimate their audience that they lose it. The truth is, everyone who has made it to adulthood knows that life is messy and that even the "good guys" stumble and struggle. The plays that can deliver their message amid this human ambiguity are the powerhouses in this tradition, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins being a prime example.
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