Holiday Hits: Shared Rooms

A sexy, feel-good romantic comedy, Shared Rooms explores the meaning of home and family through three interrelated stories of gay men finding connections during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Laslo and Cal (Christopher Grant Pearson and Alec Manley Wilson), a married couple, take in a teenage relative who was kicked out of his home after his parents discovered he was gay; Sid and Gray (Justin Xavier Smith and Alexander Neil Miller), two men looking for a quick hookup, end up finding a much stronger connection; and Julian and Dylan (Daniel Lipshutz and Robert Werner), a pair of roommates, are forced to share the same bed for the week – much to the delight (and horror) of the one harboring a secret crush on the other.

Directed by Rob Williams (3-Day Weekend, Make the Yuletide Gay), Shared Rooms brings together these three interrelated tales of gay men seeking family, love and sex during the holiday season. You can check out the trailer below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Make the Yuletide Gay with Dekkoo!

College senior, Olaf ‘Gunn’ Gunnunderson (Keith Jordan) is head-over-heels in love with his ultra-gay sweetheart Nathan Stanford (Adamo Ruggiero). Though they don’t want to part ways, the boyfriends are each headed off for Christmas break, returning home to their families.

Nathan’s cold parents won a trip to Israel, but somehow “forgot” to tell their son. When he hears that he’s to spend the holidays alone, he decides to make his way to Wisconsin to be with his sweetie and family. When he gets there, there are a few surprises: Gunn is in the closet; Gunn’s mom, Anya is a major Christmas freak who says “Dontcha” frequently; and Gunn takes after his dad Sven – anatomically speaking – a fact learned when Gunn’s stoner dad greets Nathan at the door in an open bathrobe.

With constant double-entendres flying from Anya’s mouth and Gunn Sr. always stoned, no one seems to notice that Gunn is gay and dating Nathan. With the closet walls closing in on Nathan, he decides to flee back to his empty home – the Gunnunderson’s are a little too insane even for him!

Giddily exuberant, this gay holiday classic from writer-director Rob Williams’ is romantic and filled with laugh-out-loud jokes. Make the Yuletide Gay is guaranteed to get you into the holiday spirit.

Watch the trailer for Make the Yuletide Gay below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

 

 

DEKKOO DISPATCH 050 – ‘MAKE THE YULETIDE GAY’

Title – ‘Make the Yuletide Gay

Director – Rob Williams

Starring – Keith Jordan, Adamo Ruggiero, Hallee Hirsh, Kelly Keaton

Release Date – 2009

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It’s that time of the year again folks. Time to take out all those ornaments and take down a few of the more racy photographs you’ve got hanging on your walls before your parents show up. The holidays have always been friend and foe to the gay community. While we’ve been able to make the best of them by celebrating the season with friends and lovers it also reminds us that we sometimes can’t be with our families because we’ve been kicked out or ostracized. Luckily things have been getting a lot better (especially for younger gays) and our families have started to accept the idea that Christmas can include handsome hunks in love.

That’s the topic of this week’s CHRISTMAS SPECIAL Dekkoo Dispatch! The straights have ‘A Christmas Story’, but we’ve got ‘Make the Yuletide Gay‘ to… make the Yuletide gay-er? I mean let’s face it. Christmas is pretty darn gayyy. You’re decorating a tree, wearing silly sweaters, making eggnog cocktails, and waiting for a stranger to come into your house in the middle of the night to give you a ‘gift’. These are all homosexual activities that the straights have claimed in the name of Christmas! But I digress…

Make the Yuletide Gay‘ has been a yearly holiday viewing tradition for many homosexuals I know since it came out in 2009. It’s universal tale of acceptance, love, and family-above-all attitude is exactly the kind of vision of Christmas that we all hope becomes a reality for everyone. The story revolves around the adorable couple of Olaf (aka Gunn) and Nathan. In school they’re completely out and proud. Olaf even sports an HRC t-shirt at the beginning of the film. Snazzy! For winter break they head their separate ways with Olaf travelling to his family in the Midwest and Nathan going on a cruise with his parents. Once we arrive there we quickly realize that Olaf, while out in school, is definitely not out to his family. Of course there’s a twist – Nathan suddenly shows up on his doorstep without knowing he’s still in the closet. Thus begins a movie full of the comedy of hiding in plain sight.

I say hiding in plain sight because a lot of the movie’s comedy plays on the parents being a little ‘thick’. The mother, played by Kelly Keaton, is so gosh darn adorable and nice. While watching her I couldn’t help but think of Stephanie McVay in ‘The Edge of Seventeen’. She’s the ideal Christmas mother: constantly baking cookies, making hot cocoa, and telling embarrassing stories about her son to his boyfriend. The father, played by Derek Long, is a stereotypical ex-hippy stoner professor. He’s extremely calm, rational, yet also completely out of it. Thus jokes made by Nathan about usually taking the ‘top’ bunk fly right over their heads to hilarious result. The other character I should mention is Abby. She’s the next-door neighbor that Olaf’s parents are trying to set him up with. Awkwardness definitely ensues.

This is absolutely a perfect movie to watch with just about anyone, but especially your mostly-accepting to totally-accepting family over the holidays. It’s definitely PG to PG-13 so you won’t have to worry about your mother fainting over a sex scene.

We at Dekkoo wish you all the best over the holidays and we’d be remiss not to remind you that the gift of Dekkoo is a totally amazing present for any gay, young or old.

 

 

 

 

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Watch it with: Family, Friends, Aliens, you name it!

Mix it with: Spiked Eggnog

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