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PAGE 32 Q-Notes April 1995 Father and son film as good as the sum of its parts ... . .. _ • ^..11. UJ« : by Brent Hartinger Special to Q-Notes When Australian David Stevens first wrote his gay positive play. The Sum of Us, he never expected it to be produced, much less made into the motion picture currently playing the aters nationwide. To write the play, Stevens says, “I locked the door, and I let my heart, mind and typing fingers take me where they would.” But because they took him to an intimate story about a gay man, his gay-positive father, and their dual search for love, Stevens “accepted the fact that The Sum of Us would never be performed.” Since the play was so personal and poten tially controversial, Stevens, an Oscar nomi nee as the co-screenwriter of 1979’s Breaker Morant, was reluctant to let anyone even read the work. But when his US agent wanted to see examples of his other work, he showed him the play. “I was safe,” Stevens says. “If it wasn’t going to be [produced] in Australia, there was no chance it would be done in the US.” To Stevens’ surprise, within a week that agent had found a home for the play. After that initial Los Angeles run, the play eventu ally made its way to New York. Along the way, the play found a champion in the form of theater director Kevin Dowling. “Immediately after reading the play, Kevin flew out to see me, and he bought the stage and screen rights the next day,” Stevens says. “He’s been the play’s best friend ever since.” From the start, Dowling saw the play as a movie, with himself as the co-director (with Geoff Burton). But initially, Stevens resisted the idea of re-writing the play into a movie. “I didn’t know how to handle, in cinematic terms, all the plot points in the film,” says Stevens. Stevens—who says he is pleased with the finished product—was right to be concerned. The resulting movie plays very much like a film of a play, rather than a movie. It has lots of dialogue, not much action, and a surpris ingly predictable plot. Still, the movie portrays what may be filmdom’s most gay tolerant father. Harry Mitchell is so accepting that he even buys his son gay porno magazines. And he’s so deter mined to help his son, Jeff, find true love that he even walks in on him in bed in the heat of passion with another man to offer a few words of encouragement. “I knew Harry would be a contentious character for some,” Stevens says. “But I have met such fathers.” Part of the reason he wrote the play, he says, is to show that such gay affirming parents do exist. “Harry is a simple guy who is pretty happy with his life,” adds Jack TTiompson, the well known Australian actor who plays the role. “Ifonlyheand his son could find compan ions.” The film is also unique in that it offers a non-stereotypi cal gay character in Jeff, a rugby playing plumber who still lives with his father and is determined to make a life for himself of quiet domestic ity (despite his notoriously bad luck with men). “I didn’t want to write a stereotypical ‘gay’ character, or a character who was part of the ‘gay scene,”’ Stevens says. “I metseveral ‘Jeffs’ in Australia, young men who were happy with their social milieu. They wanted to be accepted for what they were within their own domestic life. They didn’t want to cut themselves away from family and friends and find a new life in Sydney or Melbourne.” The part of Jeff is played by Russel Crowe, the handsome Australian actor who made a strong impression as a vicious skinhead in 1992’s Romper Stomper (and also appears in the current Sharon Stone western The Quick and the Dead). “Russel was really an eight year old kid in a 28 year old’s body,” Dowling says. “He’s very sweet.” Indeed, his sensitive perfor mance is one of the best things about the film. While the movie’s pro-gay message is sometimes a little heavy handed, it is a well intentioned denunciation of homophobia. Better still, for once homosexuality is not presented as either a “political” issue or as the side light of some heavy AIDS-themed drama. Gayness is presented as a simple matter of relationships: love and sexual relationships Jeff (Russell Crowe, right) and Greg (John Poison) test the romantic waters in The Sum Of Us between people of the same sex, and family relationships between gay people and their relatives. The Sum of Us is about “family values” — Australian style. “I certainly have no wish to preach to the converted,” Stevens says. “What I want people to feel when they see the film is to have a damn good time. And perhaps come away feeling they know just a little bit more about the human experience. Most of all, I want them to hear a love song.” But while Jeff’s father in the film is very accepting of his son’s homosexuality, the parents of Greg, Jeff’s love interest, are any thing but loving. “Greg is just an ordinary guy who had a suppressed upbringing and couldn’t really talk to his parents about his homosexuality,” says John Poison, who plays the character of Greg. “Most of the gay people I know are just ordinary people who are attracted to the same sex. I believe that is one of the great strengths of this film—this it is about ‘normal’ people.” Initially, the film was to be a joint venture between investors in both the United States and Australia, but when the American financing fell through, the movie became, except for its American direc tor, a completely Australian produc tion. This was fine with Stevens. When he first learned the play was to become a movie, he thought to himself, “For a movie, they’ll want it set in America.” Fortunately, he says, “my ‘love song for Australia’ was to re main that, with all its slang and dialect and specific cultural atti tudes.” Part of the film— told in flashbacks — involves the 40-year relationship between Jeffs grandmother and her lesbian lover. “The story of the grandmother and her girlfriend. ..is my grandmother,” Stevens says. Other details in the movie—like the encoun ter with a dmnk woman on a train — are also autobiographical. “I am not a young writer, but The Sum of Us is what I know.” Still, Stevens says, much of the rest of the movie is fictional. “I am not a 24 year old rugby playing plumber, and I certainly never had the relationship with my father that Jeff has with his.” For director Dowling, the message of the film is simple: “Whether straight or gay, fa milial or romantic, love is love.” 1831 South Boulevard Charlotte, North Carolina 704*373*9604 • • • THE LEGENDARY SHOWBAR OF THE SOUTH Bar Opens Nightly at 8:00 pm Showtime at 12:30 am Thursday - Sunday, dance to the Hot Sounds of DJ Mike Weant • • • Coming In May, Ms. Oleens Pageant '95 Coming In June, Ms. Mecklenburg America '95 APRIL Saturdays 4-7 Gypsy Starr - Big Birthday Shana Nicole 4-14 Veronica Leigh Sharon Taylor Deedra Thornton 4-21 Simply Liz Boom-Boom LaTour 4-28 Kasey King Tiffany Storm Ashley Jordan 4-1 AIDS Benefit with Bands 4-8 Josh (Hot Rodz) with Ms. Gay Texas, Whitney Page 4-15 Tracy Morgan, Kasey King Ashley Jordan, Tia Douglas 4-22 Tiffany Storm, Veronica Leigh, Gypsy Starr Jamie Levi 4-29 Kerri Nichols, Paris LeBon Neely O'Hara Daily Specials Sunday Bar opens at 3pm, no cover 'till 8 pm. 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Q-notes (Charlotte, N.C.)
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