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John Paul Pitoc and Christian Campbell
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Politics was not on the agenda. Neither was education. Director Jim Fall's aim with his debut feature film, Trick, was simply to make a sweet, romantic comedy. The fact that the film's two would-be lovers were young men was just part of the story.
Trick is an unabashedly feel-good romance pulled from the reels of golden age Hollywood. At a time when the typical "gay" indie film is gritty and angst-ridden, Trick arrives from somewhere over the rainbow.
Christian Campbell (Neve's older brother) is Gabriel, a shy New York composer who picks up a go-go boy named Mark (John Paul Pitoc). Their first night together is a thankless search for a place to be alone together. Somehow, by night's end, feelings of animal attraction turn into something more human.
Opening to strong box office, Trick has already been labeled by the media as a one-film trend, the beginnings of a "gay gay cinema." Its strong audience reaction has led to a surprisingly contentious debate. The idea of an apolitical gay movie is rather revolutionary, although it's immediately clear that Trick's frothy, carefree and AIDS-free storytelling was never intended to spark political discussion. Trick just wants audiences to have fun. Fall never expected everyone to embrace his film. It's the polar opposite opinions that have caught the 36-year-old filmmaker off guard. Never has such cinema fluff generated such a tough arguement. Fall remains puzzled by what has become the most inverted of debates: Is there such a thing as a gay movie that's too gay?
"The simple reaction is either you're a romantic or you're not," says Fall, speaking from his Los Angeles home. "I think romantic films have always had a problem with cynics. So it's been interesting to me that the reactions to the film have been so insanely polar opposite. Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly use words like revolutionary and breakthrough, which is wonderful to hear, because I think on some levels it is both those things, but then the extremes of Roger Ebert and The Village Voice just ripping it to shreds almost with some sort of angry agenda. It's just very odd to me. I never read such polar opposite reactions to a film. I really don't know what it's about."
Trick carries no political baggage. Gabriel never questions his own sexuality. There is no undercurrent of discrimination or harassment that propels the drama. Trick keeps its storytelling simple. Two men catch each other's eyes and take a chance on love. Seldom has the West Village been portrayed so lovingly. Trick's Romeo & Romeo tale is so sugary, it borders on fantasy, which might be a problem for veteran art-house audiences accustomed to more serious-minded gay dramas. Trick refuses to keeps its feet on terra firma and all its societal ills.
"Either you are a romantic or you're a cynic," Fall says, letting out a short laugh. "You either want it and you get it and it makes you go 'Ah, that's sweet' or you go 'Oh, this makes me sick.'
"All I know is that I've seen Trick screened in a variety of situations from gay film festivals to Sundance to Berlin in Germany to just a regular old paying audience, and it always goes over really well. I can understand not liking it. I don't think this movie should be liked by all. But the tone of some of the reviews are downright angry, and I'm not quite sure what these reviewers are angry about. How can this little movie about two boys who potentially fall in love make people angry?"
Still, it's unnerving to watch a gay comedy where the sexual orientation of the lead characters no longer appears to be the focus of the story. When you think about it, Trick treats Gabriel and Mark so matter-of-factly, it's easy to see Trick as something other than a gay movie. After reading the script, Christian Campbell says it became clear that the romance between Gabriel and Mark could very well be between a boy and girl. Trick's themes of unrequited love are that absolute.
"You could basically fit in a woman and a man and make a couple of slight changes to the script and still have a very lovely script," says Campbell. "There are universal ideas, and this is a very universal idea about love, two people trying to get it on and falling for each other in the process."
Trick has traveled America via a typically circuitous, indie-film route. It premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Positive word-of-mouth began to circulate quickly. It was a surprising start for a film without the typical Sundance edginess. Trick played numerous lesbian and gay film festivals, including a raucous opening night screening at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Festival. The standing-room crowd gave the film a standing ovation. Their enthusiasm allowed little time for debate.
Trick quickly ditches any political tradition on the dance floor. When Gabriel peels his shirt at a sweaty disco, inspired by Mark's carefree attitude, it's clear that Trick tells its tale free of the arty angst found in films such as All Over Me, Swoon and Love! Valour! Compassion! Trick makes it clear from its opening that it wants to be completely accessible.
Yes, Gabriel is a poor music/songwriter, but he sings his troubles away just the same. Forget The Birdcage. Trick's Gabriel is the cuddliest gay protagonist in a long time. He's a flesh-and-blood Tinky Winky.
"That was the original reason that I did the film even from reading the script," says Campbell. "I realized that this wasn't an angry gay film. There were lovely characters in it, and it put a smile on my face. I didn't know that it would get this kind of notoriety and go to this level of success."
Producers decided on Campbell, 27, for the part of Gabriel after they met little success trying to find someone who is gay. Audiences have yet to question Campbell's sexual believability in the part. The bigger question involves why Trick makes Gabriel out to be such a doormat with his luggish roommate.
Adding comic support to Gabriel's one-night stand is Tori Spelling as an over-the-top, wannabe actress.
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Jim Fall
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In a summer that includes few honest gay portrayals, one wonders: Just how "real" is Trick? Just because a film is good-natured doesn't mean that it's unbelievable.
"Why I wanted to make the movie is that I'm gay, and I wanted to see a story that was just a romantic story about two guys," says Fall. "There's no am-I-gay-or-am-I-not-gay issues, or am I HIV-positive this or that? That's just sort of how I live my life, even though I'm 36 and the movie's about twenty-somethings."
Forget the storming of Stonewall. Trick is having too much fun to take itself too seriously. It's difficult to find one political statement in the entire film.
If hardship is the overwhelming truth of gay life, then maybe Trick is dramatically deceitful. Really, when you think about it, Trick's core drama is universal in nature. Everyone can relate to the need for privacy.
"I wanted to make a movie on a very, very small level. The word 'revolutionary' is too much, but I haven't seen any gay films that just started off with characters and didn't apologize or didn't feel a little self-conscious about it, or didn't end up preaching at some point in the movie about being gay or gay rights. I made the movie hoping there was a world and an audience that would simply accept it on its own terms. The story is the most important part to me. The emotions and what the characters go through are the issues, not whether they're gay or straight."
Like some old-fashioned MGM musical, every kiss, caress and touch is choreographed between the two would-be lovers. Even the nervousness appears planned, although Fall was intent on Trick remaining emotionally honest about its protagonists. He wasn't interested in a farcical performance like Kevin Kline's outed, small-town English teacher in the Hollywood comedy In & Out. Free of the AIDS context found in a romantic comedy such as Jeffrey, Trick shares a comic spirit with other light-spirited films such as Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss and Kiss Me Guido.
"I don't have a big problem with movies like In & Out and Birdcage," says Fall. "I got some flack for promoting stereotypes in the movie. Whatever. I know and love these piano bar types, and this is exactly how they are. I think I treated them with respect as opposed to playing them to the opposite extreme like Big Daddy which had this ridiculously unreal gay couple that doesn't even remotely feel gay. These two suits kiss for shock value, and then later in the movie baby-sit the kid. Oh, wow, that's progressive. I think that's gotten a lot of positive comments, but that's Hollywood throwing crumbs. I think movies like Birdcage as broad and clichéd as the images are of these two men, at least it showed two loving men. That's something."
Fall has made several short films before ("He Touched Me," "Love Is Deaf, Dumb and Blind"), although he considers himself as much a theater director as he does a filmmaker.
Fall's love for Hollywood romance is evident. Trick is the most intentionally good-natured art-house film in some time. It's a drastic change from Fall's gay short titled "Shanghai," an angry film about two men cheating on each other. Trick is proof that Fall has mellowed over time.
Trick saw its first incarnation when Fall wrote a similar script set in the same West Village locale. Nathan Lane and Cyndi Lauper were set to star in it, but the money faltered due to the script's AIDS context.
Other films came and tackled similar subject matter: Philadelphia and Jeffrey. The whole AIDS climate has been changed by Protease inhibitors.
Fall moved on fine-tuning a short script called "Gay Boy" over the next three years. The film's $450,000 budget was eventually raised. Meanwhile, Fall had tweaked the script, jettisoning its explicit sex. The lead characters were portrayed in broad strokes. Gabriel is a show-tune queen with an obnoxious straight roommate who wants their apartment to himself for his numerous girlfriends. Mark is introduced as a tough go-go boy, a flirty hunk who appears for the first time wearing nothing but a flimsy thong.
The film's goal is to gradually reveal the characters' other sides. Gabriel begins to assert himself and Mark shows a surprisingly gentle side. In an old-fashioned romance such as Trick, even a go-go boy is bound to have good intentions.
Opening his film slowly across the country (Trick opens Friday in Cincinnati), Fall has experienced receptive audiences. He uses the Internet as an unofficial sound-off board for the film's newfound fans, creating www.Trickthemovie.com as an ongoing chat session. Already the film is generating a lot of attention.
"This is just one step," says Campbell. "There's no revolution in terms of getting crossover appeal. It's not going to happen overnight. It takes time to get the more straight audiences to go out and watch these kinds of films. Trick is probably the most successful film that the media can look to at this point. If Trick is going to set a trend toward other lighthearted films that aren't very issue-oriented and aren't forcing very gratuitous sex in front of you in order to say, 'Get used to it,' if that makes it more accessible to mainstream audiences, then I think we set a very good trend. It all helps to open the mind of the audience."
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Christian Campbell and John Paul Pitoc
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The unexpected attention should make it easier for Fall to choose his next project carefully. He has several projects in mind: a memoir written by a gay man who was drafted for Vietnam and a story about a man and woman who discover each other just as they're dying in a tuberculosis ward. There have also been Hollywood offers: vacant teen comedies.
Trick contains its share of comic farce, and some of the performances lean toward caricatures. But Fall refuses to be an apologist for the film. He never passes moral judgments on his characters. There are no messages about sex. He simply wanted to tell a story with truth, free of the cartoon characters he's seen countless times before.
"Ever since I was a kid -- I grew up in the '70s and early '80s -- there weren't any positive images of gay people in mainstream TV and film," says Fall. "Just the old clichés with the gay person as the butt of the jokes or the killer or he offed himself at the end or he was an insane cross-dressing murderous freak. So it's not a coincidence that my first film is filled with what I think are positive images across the board from the piano bar queen to the go-go boy."
If audiences leave with any theme, Trick keeps it simple: the surprises that occur with intimacy between two people. Maybe it's too old-fashioned a lesson for today's social climate.
These are trying times in the area of tolerance. The brutal murder of Matthew Shepard still hangs heavy in the air. The tragedy of Columbine High is revisited across America's TV screens with the start of a new school year. Yet, NBC's Will & Grace is comic proof that alternative lifestyles can thrive on primetime TV. Somewhere, into this mix, lands Trick.
"I think the timing is great for Trick if people go to see it and leave the movie saying they just saw a movie about these two people and not these two fags," says Fall. "I think that's important, and I think that's my point for making the movie."
The future keeps getting brighter. British actor Rupert Everett is preparing to star as a gay James Bond-like spy in an upcoming actioner. Fall hopes it's part of the next trend of more gay characters of all types in all types of movies.
And if the trend is simply more happy, gay films? Well, Fall is happy to say that it all began with Trick. ©
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