the ideal man
by
Douglas Messerli
Adam Baran (screenwriter and director) Love and Deaf / 2002, 2005 release
Adam Baran’s eight minute Love and Deaf is, unfortunately, one of too many LGBTQ short films based on a two line gag, this beginning with a question: “What do you do with a Chatty Cathy?”—the camp name based on the blonde haired, blue-eyed Caucasian doll born in the Mattell Toy Company in 1959 who lived a mere six years in the arms of young girls throughout the US.
Joe (Rich Delia) is a cute gay man who
evidently simply cannot stop talking even while his lover Brad (Brett
Hemmerling) is performing fellatio. So fed up with the constant discussions of
invitations, previous boyfriends—who obviously suffered his previous bouts of
logorrhea—and whatever passes through his lover’s head, Brad determines to
leave Joe in the very first moments of this work, frustrated that even while he
attempts to describe the problem to the boy he thought he loved, Joe pushes
back with further regrets and explanations, promising to stop talking. He later
says to himself, “I don’t talk so much. If anything I don’t talk enough.”
Enough said.
We next see Joe our on the New York
Streets walking through a park where he decides to visit the local public
bathroom. I don’t know where Joe has been up until this morning, but he seems
totally unaware that the NYC public loos are a notorious visiting spot for men
seeking gay sex.
To his surprise and, perhaps for the
first time in his life, the sex is so very perfect that the can only groan in
pleasure. “Wow,” he declares, “that was amazing! Seriously man I’ve had blow
jobs before but that was incredible. That was the best blow-job I’ve ever had!”
The next line is this little film’s
reward: “Hey, you wanna go out some time or do you just do bathrooms?”
Only silence greets him. But finally a
small card is pushed through the hole—drumroll for the second line of the
skit—“Dear Sir, I am deaf. Thank you for everything. Have a nice day.”
At the very instant that Joe reads the
message, the stranger bolts out of the bathroom, Joe in pursuit. He chases down
a park path and eventually runs into an entire group of handsome young men gathered
in two rows, a tour guide on their side who tells Joe as he signs, “Wherever
you were, you make everyone wait. Next time please be quicker.” The camera pans
to one of the group whose tea-shirt reads “Queers without Ears.” The impatient
tour guide speaks and signs yet again: “Are you coming or aren’t you?”
Our flabbergasted hero pauses, looks
again at the group, and smiles, joining in their tour recognizing the
red-cheeked handsome boy as his bathroom friend. Speechless for the first time
in his life, Joe takes the hand of his new boyfriend and walks off with the
others in perfect bliss.
This trifle might be the perfect match
for a double-billing with Robert Fiesco’s short David of the same year,
which features a gay boy who can hear but cannot speak.
Los Angeles, February 19, 2021
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (February
2021).
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