Alden Peters' COMING OUT: Leaving the closet, even as you're filming it for posterity

When TrustMovies first heard that COMING OUT, the new GLBT documentary from first-time filmmaker Alden Peters, was all about his "coming out" process as a gay man, and that he had simultaneously filmed the whole thing, my mind and heart sank a bit. It is all too easy to imagine how stupid and sappy something like this could be. The opportunities for narcissism, not to mention the difficulty of finding "truth" as you are filming everyone around you -- while remaining, of course, the center of attention -- seemed awfully obvious to me. And I couldn't help wondering why it didn't also seem so to the filmmaker. Well, maybe he's just very young.

Turns out he is very young -- but also rather charming and bright. All of the above, and lots more, seems to have occurred to Mr. Peters (shown above and below) before, during and probably long after his shoot -- in which, yes, he does come out to family, friends and now to the world at large. The experience of seeing/hearing this happen and what it means to Peters and those around him -- for this viewer, anyway -- proved a surprisingly enjoyable, thoughtful, funny and occasionally moving one.

The person to whom Alden initially spills the beans is his older brother, who claims not to have had a clue that his younger bro was gay, even though as a child Alden dressed up like one of the Spice Girls and filmed the whole thing! Other family members at least seem to have considered this possibility. His mom (above, left) asks him one humdinger of a question on camera, while Dad (below, left, and on poster, top, right), who seems a typically gruff and non-verbal example of American manhood, turns out to be pretty damn fine about it all.

The filmed conversation with his group of best friends is particularly buoyant and telling, opening up the subject of how Alden himself feels about being gay. This proves to be a rather dark grab bag of ideas and feelings,  A good-looking kid who, from certain angles, could pass for a very young Tom Cruise, Peters has already experienced gay sex a number of times, but has kept this, along with so much else, closeted. As he has discovered so far, there just doesn't seem to be a good role model for him to follow. Or maybe it's is just that there are so many different role models to choose from that he find this confusing. Many gays, young and old, may find themselves identifying with these feelings.

As the movie lengthens (it's lasts only 70 minutes), we meet other gays who have or are in the process of coming-out -- the beautiful transgender girl Janet Mock, a young black kid named Eric who comes out online to his dad, along with a sociologist, a journalist and a psychologist, all of whom add some thoughtful insight to the proceedings. Finally, though, we're left with Alden, who, while he is now "out," is still faced with a lot more living -- and decision-making -- to do. If we thought this documentary was going to be merely a silly, sappy endeavor, it turns out to be -- in the words of our favorite current TV character, My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (a show you really must see, if you haven't already: it's streamable via Netflix) -- "a lot more nuanced than that."

Coming Out, from Wolfe Video, arrives on DVD and VOD this coming Tuesday, October 4 -- for purchase and/or rental.

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Alden Peters, American independent cinema, COMING OUT, coming-of-age movies, GLBT documentaries, the closet,

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Romance and history get a good going-over in Jenni Olson's hour-long doc, THE ROYAL ROAD

A combination of California (and U.S.) history, lesbian confessional, geography lesson and meditation on the human condition -- who we are and what we want -- THE ROYAL ROAD, from documentarian Jenni Olson, offers a good deal of pleasure via its unusual tone: quiet, inquiring and a little sad. The visuals, too, are equally quiet, staid & beautifully composed via a stationary camera before which passes a parade of boats, cars, water, birds, but no people.

Ms Olson, too, goes visually missing from the movie, though it is her voice that narrates the film. I would have liked to have seen what our narrator looks like, but I am sure it was intentional that the director leaves herself, along with all other human beings, out of the visual mix. (That is she, shown left.) You can see and hear more of her by watching the charming and interesting interview with the filmmaker by Guinevere Turner and Rose Troche that appears on the Bonus Features of the new DVD -- which makes its debut this coming Tuesday, Sept. 6, via Wolfe Video.

From its outset, The Royal Road (that would be California's famous El Camino Real that links northern and southern California) tackles Olson's pursuit of unavailable women (we hear about an earlier would-be "love" in Los Angeles and then in Chapter Two, a more current one residing up north). At the same time the filmmaker goes into at length the history of California's famous (or infamous) Father Junípero Serra and his bringing Christianity to the early indigenous population. From there, we jump off into U.S. history, the Mexican-American War, the Louisiana Purchase, and the early colonization of America by the British, Spanish and French.

What do these two themes -- personal love and national conquest -- have in common? Perhaps the kind of hypocrisy that would deliberately choose would-be partners who are by their very nature (maybe straight, certainly married) unavailable, and deliberately refuse to see or understand a history in which a country practices war and genocide in order to expand its borders. (God knows, they never taught us kids any of that in my California elementary school history class. Maybe they do now.)

Whatever, Olson's honesty about both subjects is quietly bracing, and when at last she adds the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie, Vertigo, to the mix, the results are even more invigorating. Her final statement (or one of them) about what both she Hitch managed to reveal via their films is smart, funny and as engaging as all that has gone before.

Although much that we see and hear will probably be obvious to history buffs (and therapists who deal with folk who fail at relationships), I did learn some new things from the film: Did you know that both Abe Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant were opposed to the Mexican-American War? And while I thoroughly love Vertigo, I had never made the connection that Olson makes about how the choice of the name of one of Kim Novak's characters, Madeleine, might be a nod to Proust. I also loved her idea that "the re-romanticizing of California's Missionary Era," occurred just as the state's tourism was burgeoning.

The film is full of just such contemplative and thoughtful asides, and those visuals -- a shot of the side of a Northern California house and driveway as the fog begins to roll in, a bird seen in the middle of an empty alleyway -- are so consistently interesting that you won't want to blink. (The fine cinematography is by Sophia E. Constantinou, while the precision film editing comes via Dawn Logsdon of the wonderful Big Joy.)

There is even a short side trip into the pros and cons of nostalgia, with the help of Tony Kushner. One might have wished for a bit more variation and energy in Ms Olson's narrative voice; on the other hand, it makes the film more personal because it's she who is speaking. All in all, if you're of a mind and in the mood for some quiet movie contemplation, you could do well spending 65 minutes with this lovely film.

From Wolfe Video, the documentary hits the street this coming Tuesday, September 6 -- for purchase and/or rental.

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American documentaries, American exceptionalism, American history, California, contemplative movies, crazy love, GLBT documentaries, history, Lesbian films, visual tone poems,

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In MATT SHEPARD IS A FRIEND OF MINE Michele Josue reopens/helps heal an old wound

Can it really be more than 16 years since the murder in Wyoming of an elfin-like kid named Matthew Shepard became national and then worldwide news? More than any other victim of a gay hate crime that I can ever recall, young Shepard became the face, body, heart and soul of gay victim-hood. He stood for it all. "Matthew always wanted to be famous," notes the boy's guidance counselor (himself a gay man), with sadness and irony, during the course of this new documentary. One can't help but wonder, after seeing MATT SHEPARD IS A FRIEND OF MINE -- written and directed by Michele Josue, who was indeed a good friend of the murdered boy -- what Shepard himself would make of the kind of martyr he has now become.

One of the many strengths of the documentary is that Ms Josue, shown at right, sees to it that Shepard becomes much more than mere martyr by filling in many of the blanks a lot of us did not know, unless we followed the case in enormous detail -- and even then I believe that the filmmaker has brought new facts, speculations and ideas to the table.

Josue manages this by bringing to that table a landfall of interviews, mostly with Shepard's family, to whom he was extremely close, and with teachers, counselors and his many friends. Everybody liked this fellow, it seems. So, too, might have his murderers, had they only gotten to know him a little longer and a little better. When they were sober.

For the first half of this 89-minute movie, we hear all about the boy-growing-into-young-man with accompanying photographs, most of them stills. We learn how his family moved to Saudi Arabia due to dad's work and how, because of lack of schools for the English speaking, Matthew was placed in a boarding school in Switzerland. This is where he met many of the friends shown and interviewed in the movie.

These kids (that's Matthew, second from right) took trips around Europe as part of their education, and they persuaded the school's administration to allow their trip to Morocco -- a trip that changed Matthew's life in ways you'll learn when you see the film.

Around the halfway point, we get to the murder itself, bits of which are told and shown, and then the remainder of the film tries to come to terms with what happened and why and what might be done to prevent more of the same. We see those idiotic demonstrators waving their signs telling us that God Hates Fags, and Ms Josue interviews the priest who spoke at length to one of Shepard's murderers, pre-sentencing. That priest's advice to the filmmaker, who is having a very hard time coming to terms with all this, proves illuminating.

Shepard's parents and brother seem a particularly kind and likable family, and when, post-"event," they become involved in the Foundation that now bears their son's name, we realize that this is where the film has been heading: into the territory of redemption. Fortunately, Josue doesn't over-do this angle. She simply offers it up as one of the alternatives involved in moving on.

Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine is a very personal documentary that becomes, over its full length, much more than that. It gives a young man who was mostly seen as victim the chance to live as a more full-bodied character, someone with whom we all might easily have become friends. The movie, from Run Rabbit Run Media opens at New York's AMC Empire 25 on Friday, February 6, then expands to Los Angeles' Laemmle Noho 7 on the following Friday, February 13. 

Update: as of November 3, 2015, the film is available via DVD 

and digital from Education Pictures and Virgil Entertainment. 

There's no excuse to miss out: 

This documentary is worth seeing.

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American documentaries, GLBT documentaries, hate crimes, Matthew Shepard, MATTHEW SHEPARD WAS A FRIEND OF MINE, Michele Josue,

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