The new Rob Williams film Role / Play centers around an outed soap opera star and a gay marriage activist. Graham (Steve Callahan) sees his career in ruins after a sex tape showing him with his boyfriend is leaked on the internet. Trey (Matthew Montgomery) is also having press problems when the story gets out that he’s divorcing his husband. The two seek refuge in a small resort where they meet and deal with their situations. David Pevsner is the resort owner and Jim J. Bullock is Graham’s agent. Good movie.
Pornography: a Thriller
Pornography: a Thriller revolves around the maybe, maybe not death of a 1980’s porn star in a snuff flick. Mark Anton (Jared Grey) was a famous porn actor who was semi-retired and gets offered a lot of money in the mid 1990’s to do a personal appearance for a fan who wants to interview him. When his agent tries to scam him out of the money, things go bad for Mark forcing him to do the interview he’d planned to skip. We then move to the present day where a writer Michael (Matthew Montgomery) is researching a book on gay porn. He ends up renting [with his is he real or isn’t he lover William (Walter Delmar)]what may be the same apartment where the maybe snuff flick was filmed and finds an old video tape hidden in the wall. His quest to find answers to Mark’s fate drags him into weirder and weirder scenes. Finally, we come to the third tale of Matt Stevens (Pete Scherer), a present day porn star who decides to make a pornographic documentary of the Mark Anton story based on a dream he had, but then the dreams starts to take over. Apperances by Dylan Vox as Mark’s on screen partner and Steve Callahan as Matt’s producer.
Great movie, great cast.
Nine Lives
Nine Lives is presented in a quasi-documentary style and follows nine people connected through largely anonymous sexual encounters. I’d classify this one as “interesting” but it was a little hard to watch between the characters talking directly to the camera and the sometimes jerky camera movements. Some of the characters have some slight redeeming characteristics, but mostly they’re flawed in one way or another and not that sympathetic. The acting was good, but don’t look to this film for light entertainment, although we do get Steve Callahan in a speedo.
East Side Story
In East Side Story, Diego (René Alvaradois) is a closeted, young, Latino man working in his grandmother’s restaurant. He longs to get out on his own, but can’t seem to quite get himself to move on. As he realizes his boyfriend (David Berón) is determined to stay in the closet and his grandmother is not quite as clueless as she seems, he’s given the final push when his crazy aunt outs him to the restaurant staff. Meanwhile, a couple of gay men move in across the street and one of them (Steve Callahan) starts to fall for Diego but has problems leaving his lover (Cory Schneider) even though he’s miserable in the relationship.