in the murk
by
Douglas Messerli
Bradley Rust Gray (writer and director) Hitch / 1999
Bradley Rust Gray’s 1999 short film (18 ½ minutes) is purposefully “murky” on all levels. Two friends, pretending to be cowboys, are on their way cross country from nowhere to somewhere—we’re never told where they're headed—in a kind of languid hurry, at least if we are to believe the early morning wake-ups by Porp (Jason Herman). Evidently the other, far more handsome friend, Jason (Drew Wood) has a girlfriend waiting.
Presumably, Porp, with green fingernail
polish, is gay, while Jason is straight; at least that’s what we can surmise by
Jason’s accusation of Porp having fucked a guy they previously picked up,
having as evidence found a condom in the back. Porp, on the other hand, asks
Jason if he fucked a woman, evidently at a truck stop, “in the ass,” claiming
that he fucked a girl named Jackie anally, while denying having sex with their hitchhiker.
In another words, even if he’s gay, Porp is evidently not comfortable talking
about it. He even buys a copy of Playboy for his friend so that he won’t
have to think so much when jacking off.
There are two nighttime scenes at the
center of this film in which we can barely see given the purposely poor lighting
of the flick. But presumably in the first Porp is jacking off alone, rather
enjoying it, while the second time around, Porp’s green painted fingernails
seem to have found their way into Jason’s pants giving him a great deal of
nighttime pleasure.
The presumption is that we might be
interested in this encounter simply because it is unlikely, although, as I
wrote long ago in my review of Brokeback Mountain we know that lonely
men, no matter what their sexual inclinations generally enjoy the company of
they’re with if there is none else around to do it with. In that movie at least
we knew for certain that Enis Del Mar and Jack Twist definitely “liked it.” In Hitch
we can’t even be sure of that! If Jason did in fact enjoy the fit of Prop’s
hand around his cock, can we be sure that it was satisfying in any way to Porp?
Not knowing anything about anyone in this film seems to be its object.
I suppose one might say that this is
what being incurably Q is all about. But even those who are intent upon
constantly questioning sexual boundaries do it with more energy and
determination, I hope, than these two drifters.
Los Angeles, January 6, 2021
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (January 2021).
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