Dating – Page 26 – Discover great gay stories.

New This Week – 6/1/18

Nathan, 16, lives alone with his father Stephane. A newcomer in high school, he is invited to a party and falls in love with Louis, a boy in his class. They find themselves out of sight and kiss each other, but someone takes a picture of them. Soon, the photo is published on Facebook and a storm overtakes their lives as they face bullying and rejection. ‘Hidden Kisses’ is now available to stream on Dekkoo!

Two friends, just beginning to explore their sexual identities, reveal intimate details of their lives. Is it curiosity, braggadocio or flirtation? Stream the gay short ‘Summer’ now on Dekkoo!

Manchester’s famed queer hub Canal Street comes to life in this documentary series that focuses on the exploits of people who ‘live, work and play’ around the village. Binge watch ‘Queer Street’ now on Dekkoo!

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Coming next week: “…The film examines – with a joyous vibe – the exploring of one’s identity and sexuality through fashion and partying” – Vague Visages

DEKKOO DISPATCH 071 – ‘PAPER BOYS’

Title – ‘Paper Boys‘

Director – Curtis Casella

Starring – Kyle Cabral, Nathan Brown, Kai Liu, Sarah Elizabeth

Release Date – 2018

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Hey Dekkoo’ers! It’s almost June which means the shirts are about to come off! Although technically here on Dekkoo we almost always have guys with their shirts off and you don’t have to leave your couch to stare at them. Today on the dispatch we’re very excited to feature the newest member of the Dekkoo Original Series family: ‘Paper Boys‘!!! Wooooo!! It’s always super exciting for us to show off new talent and rising star Curtis Casella who directed all 6 episodes of this new series that takes a close look at a young creative gay man and his immersion into a new life in San Francisco.

Cole is your typical creative type. Shy, cute, and looking for love. For circumstances we’re unaware of (maybe something to explore in season 2?) Cole decides to use the excuse of an engagement party in San Francisco of his best friend to actually move to San Francisco. He’s a cartoonist and even before he gets to say hi to his hunky best friend who he’s staying with he’s already pounding the pavement to look for a job. Daren, the hunky best friend seems to have it all. A nice apartment in expensive San Francisco, a tech job, and an adorable wife-to-be named Rebecca. Everything seems to be going great until Daren confides to Cole that the engagement is actually something he doesn’t really want to happen. Everything so far has seemed pretty typical right? Well here’s the twist: Daren finds an old sketchbook of Cole’s and gives it to him and once Cole starts drawing in it he discovers that everything he draws happens in real life!!

I blew through all 6 episodes in two sittings and thought it was a really touching tale of a shy gay boy just trying to figure out this new stage in his life while at the same time trying to support his best friend that he obviously harbors some feelings for. The plot twist was a super cute addition to the ‘drama’ that naturally occurs in their every day lives. The diversity of the cast was refreshing and the setting of San Francisco was used even better than it was in ‘Looking’ I thought.

The director sat down with OUT Magazine for an interview and had some really great remarks about race, gay relationships, and queer content:

Tell us about the reasoning and importance behind showcasing a gay-straight male friendship? You often don’t see this story in media.

CC: The gay-straight friendship is somewhat autobiographical for both Kyle and me. Both of us have really close friends who are straight, and we felt like it was something we didn’t see often enough in gay media. It’s really interesting to see the vast differences in life experience between gay men and straight men. My best friend was having a hard time meeting friends and asked me how I made them when I moved back to San Francisco, and I said, well, I have Grindr, and gay bars, and circuit parties, and I just see people again and again and friendships come naturally. And he says, “yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work the same for me.”

In some way, it was also aspirational. Like, if we could show a friendship that was platonic between a straight and gay man, it might normalize it to an extent that it’s perhaps not normalized now. I think there is still an undercurrent of maybe tension in gay and straight relationships – like this feeling on the part of straight men that gay men might either threaten their masculinity, be secretly attracted to them, or both. And we wanted to show a friendship between two men that didn’t have any of that. Where they were like brothers.

The cast is highly diverse. How important was it for you to represent a range of people from different backgrounds to tell this story?

CC: This was one of our most important goals. Kyle is Filipino, and we both have pretty diverse groups of friends, so we felt like it was essential to include a diverse cast in Paper Boys. First, we both were cognizant of the fact that people of color don’t see themselves represented enough in media, so that was one facet. But this also allows us to address issues in the gay community that just wouldn’t ring honest with a cast of white characters – like the racism that exists in dating and hookups, internalized homophobia that some still feel, and themes that white audiences – probably myself included – wouldn’t even think about because of the privilege we’re born with.

That’s also why having a diverse cast is only half of it. I know that there are some things that I can’t see, or that seem innocuous to me but may not be to people with different lived experiences from me. So having writers, editors, cinematographers of color is essential too. We had one line in the 6th episode – which we’d written before we’d cast our series – where Charlie says that Daren and Rebecca would have had beautiful children. It was still there after a couple of rewrites, and when we went into rehearsals, the actress who played Rebecca pointed out that she often had people say that to her and her husband (who was white), and it had a clearly racial tinge to it. That honestly never occurred to me, and we decided to drop the line from the scene because it didn’t advance the story, and wasn’t true to a character who, having grown up with Rebecca, would have seen some of the racism that Rebecca experienced and would not have wanted to perpetuate that.

Dekkoo is changing the way queer men experience content, what has it been like working with the streaming service?

It’s been amazing working with Dekkoo – they’ve been incredibly accommodating and want to let us tell our story the way we want to tell it. Plus, I think having a service that’s targeted towards queer men is important. Netflix is great, but much of the gay content on there is of the B-movie variety, with a few notable exceptions. So it’s great to have a platform like Dekkoo, especially one that works with independent filmmakers like us.

We’d love to know what you think of a new Dekkoo Original Series that we’re super proud of so be sure to leave comments on the videos and let us know!

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Watch it with: Your best friends 🙂

Mix it with: Red Wine.

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DEKKOO DISPATCH 070 – ‘SHORT FILM ROUNDUP!’

Title – ‘Protect Me From What I Want‘

Director – Dominic Leclerc

Starring – Naveed Choudhry, Elliott Tittensor

Release Date – 2009

Title – ‘Prora‘

Director – Stephane Riethauser

Starring – Swen Gippa, Tom Gramenz

Release Date – 2012

Title – ‘Nightswimming‘

Director – Dominic LeClerc

Starring – Linzey Cocker, Tim Dantay, Harry Eden

Release Date – 2010

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Hey there! The dispatch was away for a couple weeks while I was out scouting for the best in queer cinema at the Cannes Film Festival to bring to Dekkoo, but I’m back! We’ve been adding some great short films to the Dekkoo universe lately and I wanted to feature three of them in this week’s dispatch:

‘Protect Me From What I Want‘ is a really sexy and romantic film from the UK (one of two in this week’s dispatch). I’d seen it before a few years ago when it first came out, but watching it again was a much more intimate experience than I remembered it being. The story revolves around Daz and Saleem. One night they meet while cruising each other on a busy street. Daz is clearly the more experienced of the two and tries in vain to get Saleem to kiss him. After Daz continues to initiate sex Saleem runs away and we get to briefly see his very traditional Indian family giving us the cue that not only is Saleem nervous about having gay sex, but he’s also tormented anti-gay pressures from his family. Eventually Saleem seeks out Daz once more and they go to Daz’s house where Saleem finally submits to Daz’s charms. But what happens once the experience is over? Can Daz hold onto someone so conflicted with their inner desires?

‘Prora‘ takes us on a journey through the ups and downs of young friendship when sexual desire enters the picture. Prora’s title is the name of the setting of the film – a beach resort built by Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1939. It was envisioned as the affordable holiday destination for the everyday German laborer. After the war began in 1939 construction stopped and was never completed. The location choice by director Stephane Riethauser is really fantastic. The beautiful outside area contrasted by the bare, distressed interior of the buildings is a great metaphor for the two boy’s friendship throughout the story. The story is really very simple. Two boys – one French, Matthieu and one German, Jan are having a carefree Summer holiday near Prora. One day while drinking they decide to explore the inside. There Jan eventually shows his same-sex attraction to Matthieu which causes… friction to say the least.

‘Nightswimming‘ is a bit of an erotic puzzle. Also hailing from the UK this film explores the nature of repressed desires and inter-generational experimentation. Two young kids break into a swimming pool. On patrol is an older gentlemen who hears the commotion and goes to investigate. Upon finding the handsome boy with his apparent girlfriend he takes pity on them and grants their request to stay overnight. Over the course of the night he observes the two of them playing around and becoming intimate. The boy is obviously showing off a bit especially since at one point he calls out for the guard in jest so the guard can witness him stripping off the girl. Eventually the two separate and the boy starts talking to the guard. The conversation starts with the incredibly funny line “I’ve run out of fags. Got any?”. There’s also an incredibly sexy shower scene with full frontal nudity so if that’s your thing get on that!

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Watch it with: Your gay short film loving friends!

Mix it with: White wine.

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New This Week – 5/18/18

After his boyfriend Norberto breaks up with him and runs away to Iceland, heartbroken Bruno decides to set out to find him. He soon meets Arnau, a handsome local tour guide in Reykjavik, who is determined to help Bruno in his exceedingly idealistic search. Their trip will become a grieving process for them both, until they reach the remote island of Grimsey. There, Bruno will have to learn what love really means in order to move on with his life. ‘Grimsey’ is a available to stream exclusively on Dekkoo, months before its release on DVD!

Prora, on the Baltic Sea. Mysterious, endless. In this deserted former Nazi holiday camp and communist military complex, teenagers Jan and Matthieu embark on an adventure that puts their friendship at risk. Watch ‘Prora’ now on Dekkoo.com!

A look at the many roles played by eclectic 77-year-old actor/activist George Takei, whose wit, humor and grace have helped him to become an internationally beloved figure and Internet phenomenon with 7-million Facebook fans and counting. ‘To Be Takei’ is available to stream now on Dekkoo!

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Coming next week – A studied examination of how one man folds jarring events into the everyday fabric of his life.

New This Week – 5/10/18

In a brash decision, Cole secretly moves to San Francisco under the guise of his straight best friend’s engagement party. But when his friend, Daren, reveals his engagement was an accident, Cole uses the mysterious powers of a forgotten sketchbook to try to put both of their lives back on track, whatever the consequences. The new Dekkoo-original series ‘Paper Boys’ is available to binge watch now, only on Dekkoo!

When two runaways are caught breaking into a swimming facility in search of shelter a kind act sets off an emotionally charged situation. Watch ‘Nightswimming’, now available on Dekkoo!

On the way to his hometown of Red Lodge, Montana, for the holidays Jordan proposes to his boyfriend of two years, Dave. The engagement should only enhance their holiday cheer, but things take a turn when Dave suddenly changes his mind and says “no” to marriage. Watch ‘Red Lodge’ now on Dekkoo!

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Coming next week: Mr. Sulu beams down to Dekkoo!

OUT.com – “Paper Boys: The Gay-Straight Friendship Story We Haven’t Seen Yet”

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!

DEKKOO DISPATCH 069 – ‘FINDING NEIGHBORS’

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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New This Week – 4/27/18

Set against the background of a broken U.S. immigration system, ‘A Place to Be’ is a love story between two young men, Abel & Diego. When tragedy strikes and Diego’s immigration status is revealed, Abel and Diego discover the power of love during uncertain times. From the Award Winning filmmaker Tadeo Garcia comes a love story for our time. Watch ‘A Place to Be’ now on Dekkoo one month before DVD!

The story of the only heterosexual flamingo and his desperate attempt to find love. Watch the wonderful animated short, ‘Flamingo Pride’ on Dekkoo!

David, the host of a local gay radio show in Buffalo, New York, struggles with self-doubt when his single sister asks him to be the father figure for her soon to be adopted Brazilian child. Stream ‘The David Dance’ now on Dekkoo!

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Coming next week: A brand new chilling homoerotic thriller.

DEKKOO DISPATCH 068 – ‘ANOTHER GAY SEQUEL’

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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Dekkoo Delivers Diverse, Queer, and Magical Dramedy Series “Paper Boys” May 10

(New York, NY) April 20, 2018–On May 10, Dekkoo.com, the global streaming media service catering to queer men, will launch the six-episode first season of “Paper Boys,” a romantic San Francisco-based dramedy about discovering who you are–and, with a newfound magical power–becoming who you want to be.

Watch the official trailer for ‘Paper Boys’ at Dekkoo.com!

“Paper Boys” tells the story of Cole, who, in a brash decision, secretly moves to San Francisco under the guise of his straight best friend’s engagement party to escape a dead-end career and the memories of a passionate summer fling with a boy in New York.

But when he arrives, he runs into the former fling and old feelings resurface. And after his friend, Daren, reveals his engagement was an accident, Cole uses the mysterious powers of a re-discovered sketchbook to try to put their lives back on track, whatever the consequences.

About the Creators
“Paper Boys” was created by Curtis Casella and Kyle Cabral. Casella writes, directs, and edits, and Cabral directed the first two episodes and plays Cole.The two initially met when they both lived in New York City, and became friends when they realized they shared a passion for storytelling.

Casella and Cabral (above with cinematographer Dan Chen) self-funded the first two episodes out of their own pockets and funded episodes 3 & 4 with Kickstarter. They had shot and released the first two episodes when Dekkoo stepped in to finance, expand and release “Paper Boys” as their fourth original series. Previous Dekkoo original series include “Feral,” “Love is Blind” and “I’m Fine.”

Cabral describes the somewhat-autobiographical “Paper Boys” as “the story of a young, gay Asian-American artist who moves from New York to San Francisco looking to jump-start his career and relationships, and discovers he has a magical power that allows him to reshape his life through his art.”

In real life, Cabral is a director, producer, illustrator, and animator who has created cinematics for video games (The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones) as well as his own queer art.

Three-quarters of cast, crew Asian-American, African-American, Latino, trans
In addition to being that rare queer series centered around a gay-straight male friendship and the struggles of millennial friends at disparate stages of their careers, diversity was also important for the creators, so nearly three-quarters of the cast and crew is Asian-American, African-American, Latino, or trans.

“There isn’t much media out there that explores these issues from the point of view of a queer person of color, or even a person of color,” says Cabral, who is Filipino-America. “One of the things that is really important to us is that ‘Paper Boys’ isn’t seen as just a series with gay people of color, but a series with gay people of color with a story and characters audiences like and want to see more of.”

When asked if they planned to expand the show to appeal to straight audiences, Casella says, “I don’t really care about that, to be honest. Straight people have literally every other show on TV that represents the varying experiences of being a straight person in today’s world. I think Kyle and I are proud for people to think of ‘Paper Boys’ as a ‘gay series’. There should be a lot more gay media!”

Watch the official trailer for ‘Paper Boys’ at Dekkoo.com!