GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
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GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
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Tumbledown TLA
Releasing, Director: Screenplay: Starring; Unrated, 80 minutes
The Endless Possibility Water Bearer Films, Director: Screenplay: Starring; Unrated, 85 minutes
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Todd Verow
Nine months ago, when I reviewed Bad Boy Street (2012), I wrote that I never thought I would ever use the words warm and fuzzy when describing one of Todd Verow’s films. I’ve just watched Verow’s latest, Tumbeldown and last year's The Endless Possibility Of Sky. You won’t find the words warm and fuzzy this time. |
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There are some heavy scenes in this film but I’ve come to expect that from Verow. Other queer films I see are instantly forgettable. Not his, and not this one either. Despite flaws, I can’t get Tumbledown out of my head and I am not going to forget it anytime soon.
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One can never accuse Todd Verow of holding anything back in his films. The Endless Possibility Of Sky (2012) is an extreme – and I mean extreme – study of drug addiction that makes Danny Boyle's Trainspotting look understated. |
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More
on Todd Verow : Brad Hallowell also appears in: Michael Vaccaro also appears in: Philly also appears in : Theodore Bouloukos also appears in: Berlin
Film Festival Essay: |
With Tumbledown (2013), the bad boy of queer cinema is back. His latest film is a collaboration with one of his frequent stars, 
The setting is an un-named small town. Rick (Hallowell) is a likeable young bartender who picks the wrong couple to hang out and have a threeway with. Jay (Verow) is renovating a cottage up on Tumbledown Mountain and stops at the bar with Mike (Faulkner), his bored younger lover. Rick scores drugs for them. A few weeks later, he receives a call from Mike. He invites Rick to spend the weekend with them and also asks if he can bring some “party favors.”
Rick says that he doesn’t do boyfriends but he’s attracted to Mike and their hormones are effervescing. This doesn’t go un-noticed by Jay, especially during an idyllic swim in the nearby lake. A threeway was, in all probability, always the weekend’s goal and - when it happens – Rick and Mike have already started when Jay comes in. Rick rightly, but maybe too brusquely, tells Jay to put on a condom before he fucks him. The two younger men are clearly into each other and they barely notice the third person in their bed.
Two weeks pass. Rick gets another call, from Jay this time, inviting him up to the cabin. Mike is not there, and Jay thought that he would be driving up with Rick. Jay’s behavior is suspicious and Rick, though uncomfortable by Mike’s absence, doesn’t really notice. But then something happens – I will not disclose what, but most readers can probably make a ballpark guess – and a very confused Rick awakes the next morning in Jay’s bed. With no memory of what has happened, he flees the cabin. 
A few months later, a package arrives at Rick’s door. It contains a small video camera with a post-it note that says “play me.” Again, I won’t reveal what is on the tape (even if the trailer does) but the look of shocked pain on Rick’s face, in tight close-up, will remain with me for a long time. It reminded me of those anguished faces that fill the screen in so many of Ingmar Bergman’s films. They say that acting is all in the eyes and his express more emotions than a soliloquy from Hamlet. 
We’ve just watched Rick’s version of the tale. But now we wonder if we’ve really seen the truth when screen titles begin to crawl over a peaceful shot of the lake. We’re told that this is based on a true story, that the names have been changed to “protect the innocent and the guilty,” and also that people “believe what they want to believe, remember what they want to remember, and tell the truth they want people to believe.” Jay's and Mike’s accounts follow.
Jay’s friendly demeanor has already been stripped bare to expose the monster beneath. But, in his version of the story, Jay initially comes across as sympathetic. He grows jealous with good reason. He finds the two young lads kissing in the woods, and Rick pushes him away this time when he joins them in bed. And then Mike vanishes for two weeks. Jay is genuinely concerned when his calls aren’t returned, but he’s also convinced that Mike is with Rick. He’s mad and he’s jealous but that doesn’t excuse his malicious revenge. Jay tries to play the victim card but the path that his anger leads to isn’t pretty and it’s captured in real time - in one excruciatingly long and unbroken camera take. A similar long take climaxed Verow’s earlier film, 
Verow likes to provoke. He has been on my radar ever since I was first freaked out by 
I never expect Hollywood gloss when I watch his films but - and this was true of his previous 
Verow often plays games with the truth in his movies. The fractured narrative of 
One of the problems with having extras on a DVD is that they can change your perception of a film. Especially when an alternate ending is included. The film itself ends ambiguously, but the ten minutes added to the alternate ending does reveal what happened and now I can’t distinguish between the two when I think about Tumbledown. Much of this alternate ending is very well executed; its inclusion suggests that the director is still attached to it and wishes his audience to see what he filmed (before deciding to cut it). There’s nothing wrong with that but it can muddy your feelings about the finished film. I’m finding it almost impossible now to stop thinking about the cut ending instead of the real one. For this reason, I am avoiding the deleted and extended scenes until I finish writing this review. 
For Drew (
Christian watched a lot of friends die during the 80s and he binges on drugs because “you can only live in fear for so long before you become a zombie.” He has anonymous sex in a restroom stall while waiting for his HIV test results. He enjoys a brief fling with Rob (Rob Ordonez), a homeless club boy with a blue mohawk. Rob is a lost soul, and willing to go home with anyone for a place to sleep. Rob’s friend, Bruno (Brandon Aguilar), is a porn star. Drew, the film’s main narrator, thinks they are “the new sexual outlaws.” The difference now is that it’s all about the drugs and not the sex.
They all hang out in the hellish apartment of one Mistress DaTina (
It is a clear sign that you are doing way too many drugs when you to want to hang out in this nightmarish nook. The rooms are draped in black garbage bags, the bathroom is covered in aluminum foil (a playful reference to 
The Endless Possibility Of Sky is fragmented, like the characters’ lives (not to mention the title). Flashy cinematography, including some unique kaleidoscope effects, enhances the drug-fueled plot. Crude animated sequences by Katie Armstrong add a Yellow-Submarine-on-acid vibe to the movie; look for images like the Empire State Building morphing into a hypodermic needle. This is not a conventional movie by any means. James Derek Dwyer's background score is, at times, oddly composed of Christmas Carols in radically different instrumental arrangements. “Jingle Bells” played slowly in a minor key on the piano sticks in my head. 
The parties alternate with scenes of Drew coasting through life in Watertown. He picks up a couple of guys, drives his car around a lot, has a wank in the shower, goes grocery shopping and does laundry with his shirt off in a late night Laundromat. Rob keeps going home with the wrong guy. He overdoses and is found by an older man (
The story meanders but it’s never boring – it’s just a little over-the-top at times. (Actually, more than a little.) A lot of this is interesting; his films always are – but - to be honest, The Endless Possibility Of Sky is all over the place and could use a little more focus. Obviously the film was supposed to be shocking, and it certainly succeeds on that level, but some of the events are just a little too extreme to be taken seriously. 
Perhaps to establish an air of some authority, the film opens with a writer scribbling in his notebook about the denizens of DaTina’s den. “The details may be fuzzy,” he writes, but “the shards of truth are there.” The writer is as stoned as his subjects, and that makes the narrative suspect. Multiple unreliable narrators probably muddy the waters even further. Impaired observations, exaggerated by the drugs, may account for how over the top the ending of this film is. This is melodramatic tragedy on an operatic scale. Hell, it’s almost Kabuki. 
Yet, flaws and all, I can’t get the film out of my head. Sky is an ambitious film even if not always successful. Some might call this porn with a plot but the sex in Verow’s films is always important. There is a lot of explicit sex, some of it hot, but I noticed that not all of it is especially erotic this time. It is worth noting that many of the scenes in DaTina’s den are eventually drained of all sensuality. These guys are just mindlessly fucking and, as it all becomes more and more meaningless, the photography of these naked men becomes less and less flattering. As things get more and more ugly, so do these “sexual outlaws.”
As is usually the case in his films, the credits list Verow as producer, director, cameraman and editor. He’s also billed first as writer along with his longtime creative partner, John Derek Dwyer, and star Brad Hallowell. And, like the next film he made, (the much more polished