The official blog of Dekkoo.com, the premiere streaming service for gay men.
Bobby Schuessler over at OUT.com sat down with Curtis Casella, writer/producer/director of the new Dekkoo-original series ‘Paper Boys’ to discuss what Schuessler calls, “…the game-changing new series…”
Be sure to check out the complete interview over at OUT.com.
The first season of ‘Paper Boys’ is now available to binge-watch exclusively on Dekkoo!
Title – ‘Finding Neighbors‘
Director – Ron Judkins
Starring – Michael O’Keefe, Catherine Dent, Blake Bashoff, Julie Mond
Release Date – 2013
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Welcome to dispatch number sixty-nine! I welcome you to please insert your favorite sixty-nine related joke/snortle here… Today we’re taking a look at a lovely feel-good mumblecore film shot in Los Angeles about the struggles of an aging marriage and the trials of struggling creatively. It’s true this film does come from a straight perspective, but a lot of the film’s focus comes from a gay next-door neighbor who has his own gay marriage problems.
Meet Sam, he was once a successful graphic novelist, but lately he’s hit a massive creative crisis which is taking a toll on every aspect of his personal life. His last book was a failure and now he’s in trouble with his publisher because he’s late on his new one. One day while procrastinating at a cafe he meets Jeff, a fellow “househusband” who’s acclimating to the “wonders” of married life (aka boredom). Technically it isn’t their first meeting, but their first pleasant meeting as the previous one was a middle-of-the-night misunderstanding wherein Jeff thought Sam was spying on him. It turns out that Jeff is a big fan of Sam’s early works and they strike up an easy friendship. Sam’s wife is a therapist so as you can imagine she’s constantly trying to analyze his current mid-life crisis. She suspects he’s sleeping with this really cute girl next door and has no clue that he’s really just spending all his time with Jeff.
I thought this movie was pretty darn cute. It definitely has a rough “indie” feel, but you can really tell that a lot of love went into this film. The pressure to constantly be a creative force in your professional life is something a lot of people can relate to and the character of Sam does a great job of relaying that to the audience. I do wish they’d dressed Jeff in clothes that actual gay men would wear and not those horrid button down dress shirts, but hey, straight people can’t do fashion as well as the gays! There are a lot of fun actors in these roles: Sam is played by Michael O’Keefe who was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting work in ‘The Great Santini”. Mary, his wife is played by Catherine Dent who you probably will know from ‘The Shield’. And in the role of Jeff’s husband Paul you’ll definitely recognize the hunky Sean Patrick Thomas from ‘Save the Last Dance’ and ‘Cruel Intentions’.
I’ll leave you today with the director’s statement on the film which will give you a bit more of an idea behind his inspiration for the film:
How does someone remain “relevant” in a youth-obsessed culture? How do people nourish intimate relationships long after the honeymoon is over? Is there a difference in the nature of love in gay vs. straight relationships? How do we maintain a sense of humor and grace while negotiating many of life’s setbacks?
The character of Sam in the story is any one of us who wonders if the creative edge that he once took for granted will still serve him. Mary is any one of us who as the dutiful spouse is forced to question whether the trust in her marriage is well founded. Jeff is any young man whose fixation on his past immobilizes him. Sherrie is any woman reveling in the heady powers of her sexuality, but yearning for more substantial relationships. These characters are people that I know.
I don’t see many filmmakers addressing these questions. But I know that the audience is there. I am the audience.
I’m smack dab in mid-life. Some of my peers are retiring, some “passing by the wayside,” and more than a few are feeling that modern culture has somehow passed them by. And in a large sense it has. But I consider this a great opportunity, because I am a member of one of the greatest underserved film audiences of all time: the aging baby boomers.
The studios produce very little content for this generation. Independent producers provide even less. And all the while, millions of us go to the theaters, rent DVDs and download to our flat screens, week in and week out.
But when I began writing Finding Neighbors, I wasn’t thinking about audiences or targeting markets. That’s really not my forte. I merely wanted to write and create something to which I could relate, something that concerned itself with issues that are close to me.
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Watch it with: Your hus-bear!
Mix it with: Some chardonnay – the perfect suburban drink.
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Title – ‘Another Gay Sequel‘
Director – Todd Stephens
Starring – Jonah Blechman, Jake Mosser, Jimmy Clabots, Aaron Michael Davies
Release Date – 2008
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In the spirit of the Avengers sequel (times 5!?!) coming out this weekend I wanted to touch on a sequel the gay community was graced with back in 2008. ‘Another Gay Sequel’ is the follow-up to the 2006 smash success ‘Another Gay Movie‘ which I profiled way back in Dekkoo Dispatch #20. I’m a big Todd Stephens fan so it was really incredible to hear that he was heading up the sequel. Too many times sequels are usually handed to someone else with the original director either uninterested in the project or just excited to move onto a fresh story. But Todd was eager to thrust us back into the lives of Andy, Nico, Griff, and Jarrod.
We last left our awkward protagonists in a state of pure orgasmic bliss. They’d just fulfilled a group promise to all lose their virginity over the course of a summer after high school graduation. Griff and Jarrod became boyfriends, Nico found an older daddy, and Andy ended up getting double penetrated by Griff and Jarrod’s ex-dates. Not bad for first times! The sequel starts with a ‘gag’ dream where Griff, Jarrod, and Andy all ‘die’ horrible lubed up deaths. Nico wakes with a start in a his bed and realizes it was all a dream… or was it? Because in fact we quickly realize that the actors that played the three hunky guys in the original look a little… different. Welcome to an industry where agents tell their actors that, “if you play two gay movies in a row people might think you’re actually gay”. Nico writes off the change of actors as a good thing, “Actually, they’re a lot cuter than I remember” and everyone immediately gets excited about SPRING BREAK IN FORT LAUDERDALE!!!!
That’s the focus of our gay sequel folks. A rowdy, dirty, and wild trip to sunny Ft. Lauderdale, Florida during spring break where the boys are shirtless all the time and the drinks flow until daybreak. Just like the original our sequel packs in the antics AND the cameos. We’ve got RuPaul, Perez Hilton, Lady Bunny, Brent Corrigan, Amanda Lepore, Colton Ford, Jim Verraros, & Michael Lucas just to name a fair few! The boys first stop after their ‘Snakes on a Plane’ moment on TransAmerica airlines is their adorable retro hotel filled with fellow gays on spring break. There they meet RuPaul or as she’s known in the film, Tyrell Tyrelle, who lets it be known that they’ve stumbled upon a grand event simply known as ‘Gays Gone Wild!’. The objective of the game is to rack up as many ‘fuckstamps’ as possible during the week by, ya know, fucking. Unfortunately there are complications. For one Griff & Jarrod as a couple have to figure out if they can participate, also there’s the Jaspers. The three Jaspers (Jasper and his two cronies: Jasper Chan and Jasper Pledge) are the reigning champions of the competition and won’t give up their title so easily.
Andy, who now brags about his sluttiness with gusto, gets to work almost immediately on collecting his fuckstamps. Nico on the other hand runs into an ‘unlucky tiki’ and thus is out of the game so to speak. Griff & Jarrod start to experiment with being in an open relationship which causes frictions within the group, but also creates an opening for a fantastic 3way cameo with Colton Ford. Sooo funny! Other fun problems include Perez Hilton running around the place trying to convince people to NOT have sex (he was hit over the head with a buttplug) and Andy’ dad (played by the incomparable Scott Thompson) trying to keep up with the boys in the competition. The whole movie is a hoot and while it might not be quite as fantastic as the first which was hilarious and compassionate in equal measures it still does an admirable job at making you laugh and squirm in equal measures. And the hot naked guys are an added plus for sure!
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Watch it with: All of your gay friends!
Mix it with: Mimosas, Martinis, whatever it takes!
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We sat down in late February to talk with John Suazo, who plays the heteroflexible porn star and escort Kip in ‘Coffee House Chronicles: The Movie’, on Dekkoo. We wondered what it was like for a straight guy to be playing gay and bi in various film productions and web series the way he has.
Suazo’s first LGBT role was the J.C. Calciano-directed web series ‘Steam Room Stories’, also on Dekkoo, which was produced by fellow actor Nicholas Downs from ‘Coffee House Chronicles: The Movie’. Suazo said the producers asked, “‘Are you okay with twerking on camera?’ I said, ‘I’ll try.’” A legend was born.
Before he was modeling and acting, Suazo was in the Navy, and he was there when the infamously restrictive Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was repealed. Suazo says, “I had a couple of gay friends in the Navy. After the repeal a couple more came out. But as far as being accepting, I really hadn’t had gay friends until the military. And even though it is a very macho atmosphere, you work so hard and you sweat and bleed next to these people, and it really kind of opens your eyes to the fact that it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s trying to peek at me in the shower or try anything. They’re just people, and good guys.”
When Suazo moved to Los Angeles, before he turned to acting, he found that a number of photographers wanted him to model for them, and demand rose for Suazo as an underwear model. Almost all of the photographers were terrific to work with, Suazo says, and he met a number of gay men who welcomed him into their broader artistic community.
Given the revelations of the #MeToo movement, did Suazo have any experiences with photographers taking liberties during that time? He says, “Any shady experiences I’ve had were very few, and they were when I was brand new to L.A.” But a few times, Suazo admits, he had to say, “That’s not a legitimate project!” Suazo even walked out on one name photographer who was acting inappropriately.
Fortunately Suazo had a number of colleagues and collaborators, gay and straight, who could keep him working with strong professional photographers, and that’s one of the things that contributed to his acting career.
And his LGBT roles have continued. In fact, at press time, Suazo was up for another gay role in a pilot. We asked him whether he senses straight actors having any trepidation taking on gay roles like they may have had in decades past. He replies with a wink, “Not real actors!” Then he adds, “I have met one or two out there that don’t want to take on a gay role or wouldn’t feel comfortable doing a scene where they have to be in love with a man. But every role you take on its not you, it’s not your real life. You’re playing somebody else.”
Suazo recalls that one straight actor was accused of being gay on social media. “An interviewer asked him ‘If you’re straight, why haven’t you defended yourself?’ And he said ‘I don’t see the need to defend myself against something that’s not offensive.’”
And how about actors outing themselves as LGBTQI in today’s Hollywood? Suazo says, “Actors are far more comfortable being out.” He adds, “I come from Arizona and, growing up in a red state, it was not quite as accepting of different lifestyles. I could see the difference in California and Los Angeles where I’m surrounded by artists, and the culture and the atmosphere here is based on people expressing themselves. So I think it’s wonderful we’re very comfortable being who we are.”
And now Suazo has numerous productions under his belt, including multiple LGBT ones. And in case it isn’t clear, he loves his gay fans! Suazo gets recognized from his various productions, especially in his neighborhood of West Hollywood. Do those fans ever overidentify with his gay or bi characters and get flirtatious? Well, Suazo admits sometimes he has to resort to saying he has a girlfriend. That way, he says, he positions it as “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Suazo has been working on honing his already sharp comedy skills since his ‘Coffee House Chronicles’ shoot. He says, “You hit your beats better when you are taking it very seriously. And when you have some very funny writing behind you.” High praise to his shows’ writers!
As we wrapped up our conversation, we found out one last detail: that John Suazo has stunt driving experience. And he even went to stunt-driving school briefly. Now we wish there had been a chase scene in ‘Coffee House Chronicles: The Movie’.
Watch ‘Coffee House Chronicles: The Movie’ on Dekkoo!
It’s the summer of ’75 in Sines, Portugal. Al Berto, the writer, embodies an entire moving generation. He and his friends exude youth, eccentricity and hope for the future – but right after the fall of Portugal’s dictatorship system, the country is not yet ready for his love story. ‘Al Berto’ is now available on Dekkoo two months before DVD!
A funny, sincere, slice of life about a couple just trying to figure it out. Mateo and Will invite their friends over for Will’s 30th birthday. After a few surprise visitors, they get through the day, but realize that doubting your partner isn’t nearly as scary as doubting yourself. Stream ‘Turtle Hill, Brooklyn’ now on Dekkoo!
A small-town loner’s fascination with the new kid in town leads him into something much more sinister than he could ever have imagined. Watch the gay short film, ‘Bugcrush’ now on Dekkoo.
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Coming next week: From the Award Winning filmmaker Tadeo Garcia comes a love story for our time.
Set in Sri Lanka, where old colonial laws permit the imprisonment of gay and lesbian people, ‘Frangipani’ tells the story of two young men and one woman entangled in a lustful – and incredibly dangerous – love triangle.
Twelve year old Erik goes swimming with Sofie and her dad. Sophie wants Erik as a boyfriend but he seems to pay more attention to her dad. Watch ‘ Breath’ now on Dekkoo!
Co-written and directed by stand-up comedian Jason Stuart, ‘Mentor’ follows a middle-aged gay Jewish man and a straight, starry-eyed kid who form a friendship while trying to make a name for themselves in the cold, hard business of Hollywood.
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Coming next week: A film about Portuguese poet Alberto Raposo Pidwell Tavares arrives on Dekkoo weeks before DVD!
Ian McKellen delivers an award-winning performance as Hollywood horror director James Whale. It’s 1957, and Whale’s heyday as the director of ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ and ‘The Invisible Man’ is long behind him. Retired and a semi-recluse, he lives his days accompanied only by images from his past. When a handsome young gardener (played by the beautiful Brendan Fraser) enters the picture, the pair develop an unlikely friendship. Watch ‘Gods And Monster’ now on Dekkoo!
When the fifteen year old Bram meets Florian at a house party, he immediately falls for him. There’s only one problem: nobody knows Bram is gay. Watch ‘Turn It Around’ now on Dekkoo!
A successful stay-at-home graphic novelist, has hit a mid-life and creative crisis. When his wife begins to suspect an affair she is surprised to learn he’s spending all of his time with his gay neighbor. ‘Finding Neighbors’ is now available to stream on Dekkoo!
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Coming next week: A gay story from Sri Lanka, where being gay is illegal.
When John discovers his sister’s fiance is Jack, his childhood crush, passions ignite and his life spirals out of control…losing his job, his playboy reputation and his underwear, all while rushing to the altar to finally confess his love! ‘John Apple Jack’ is available to stream now on Dekkoo!
Pepijn and Sjors’ steady, seven-year relationship is shaken up after they allow a young student named Cas to sleep on their couch. Watch ‘CAS’ now, exclusively on Dekkoo!
A mischievous disabled girl absconds to London to find love and opportunity, but finds an unlikely outcome in her life when she hooks up-with a washed up male escort. Watch ‘Little Devil’ now on Dekkoo!
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Coming next week: A wonderfully acted and taut love story of two outsiders.
Maki is a young gay music student who’s completely smitten with his classmate Ruiku, who plays piano with incredible passion but is cold and distant to everyone. Maki decides to do whatever it takes to get Ruiku to return his feelings. ‘Melody of Our Love’ is available to stream now, only on Dekkoo!
In the gay short comedy ‘Bed Buddies’, gay friends wake up after sleeping together and try to make sense of the unclear line between friendship and love.
Friends and filmmakers Tim (26) and Nicolaas (29) go in search of the boundaries of their own sexuality. They’re both gay, at least, they think so. But how sure are they? What would it be like to experiment with the other sex? Is their sexual identity really as fixed as they think? Watch ‘Gay Meets Girl’ now on Dekkoo!
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Coming next week: A positively adorable, uplifting, sexy and very funny romantic comedy!
Title – ‘Jayson Bend: Queen and Country‘
Director – Matt Carter
Starring – Davis Brooks, Paul Norton, Tom Read Wilson, Djalenga Scott
Release Date – 2013
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We’re all familiar with James Bond 007, but have you ever met Jayson Bend 009? If not you’re in for one heck of a gay ride – a really, really, reallyyyy gay ride. Matt Canter decided to put a queer spin on the old James Bond formula and created ‘Jayson Bend: Queen and Country‘ – rip-roaring queer adaptation of the James Bond we all know and love (except ‘Quantum of Solace’ – does anyone like that one?).
Exploding dildos, smoking condoms, and a car with built in Grindr?!? Sign me up! When I first watched the film I remember rolling my eyes for the first few minutes, but then… the opening credits sequence. My god the opening credits sequence is PERFECT! It’s exactly like every other 007 movie except they replaced the sexy girls with guys (and references to hair products – more on that later). It’s truly a stroke of genius and executed outstandingly. I could sit through 10 minutes of it. After that I was ready for anything and boy does JB keep the hits coming! After Jayson recovers a microchip from a murderous salon employee, he’s informed by ‘L’ that it contains genetic data that might be related to a satellite being sent into space by the owner of a mega salon corporation. What?? Uh, ok. Yeah sure. Let’s get to the gadgets!!
Sure enough JB delivers and we get to head down to G’s lair of fun gadgets where we get to see the condom that can fill a room with smoke in 1 minute, the wristwatch that can control his car, and some tracking stickers. Soon we’re whizzed off to Switzerland where Jayson can track down a cute Chinese geneticist who might know more about the potential evil plot. Helping him out is Alec DeCoque – just wait until you hear him pronounce his name – a cute Swiss guy who might be Jayson Bend’s match!
Just like any James Bond movie worth its salt (I’m looking at you ‘Quantum of Solace’!) intrigue, danger, sex, and… more sex awaits our hero Jayson Bend who will stop at nothing to protect Queen and Country! Watch it on Dekkoo tonight!
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Watch it with: A large group of friends that appreciate a good smoking condom gag.
Mix it with: Isn’t it obvious? Apple martini – shaken, not stirred.
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Discover great gay stories. 