Of
the many great films that will be screened during the 26
th annual FilmOut
San Diego LGBTQ Film Festival this weekend, one stands
out as a true crowd-pleaser with virtually universal appeal. It is
Bookends, which will make its San Diego
premiere with lead cast member Noam Ash present as the fest’s Closing Night
film on Sunday, August 23rd at the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA).
Opening
Night at Balboa Park’s Natural History
Museum tonight features Test, an
intense drama about a competitive bodybuilder’s gay awakening. Its cast
includes Brock Yurich (who also wrote the screenplay), Tony Award nominee Tammy
Blanchard, and actor-singer—and Glee
alum—Matthew Morrison.
The
ever-timely subject of family figures into quite of few of the acclaimed movies
to be shown. These also include the Welsh gay romance On the Sea; entertaining documentary Hunky Jesus, about the annual Easter pageant in San Francisco
presented by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence; Out of the Woods, a relationship drama that boasts such big name
cast members as Frances Fisher, Bruce Davison and Mimi Kennedy; Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders, Jeffrey
Schwartz’s fascinating documentary that revisits the controversy surrounding
William Friedkin’s 1980 thriller Cruising;
and the sexy Israeli tale A Man Walks
Down the Street. Complete
film info and fest passes or individual tickets can be found at
filmoutsandiego.com.
The mission of FilmOut San Diego,
according to the organization’s website, is “to empower LGBTQ+ individuals and
communities, and to amplify LGBTQ+ voices in film and media by providing an
inclusive space for diverse and impactful storytelling in San Diego. FilmOut
enlightens, educates, and entertains through our annual film festival, select
film screenings, and special events, where we celebrate the creativity,
resilience, and complexity of LGBTQ+ experiences, values, and culture. FilmOut
is dedicated to promoting visibility, fostering dialogue, and supporting
emerging and established LGBTQ+ filmmakers as we work toward a more inclusive
and equitable media environment.”
This writer’s absolute favorite
festival entry that I was able to screen in advance is the previously mentioned
Bookends. It follows Nate (played by
Noam Ash, who also wrote and produced the movie) who is forced to leave his
fabulous New York City life behind and move in with his grandparents after a
bad breakup. He quickly becomes determined to escape the confines of retirement
community life and his grandparents' relentless attempts to “improve” him. But
when his Holocaust survivor grandfather, Saul (award-winning veteran actor F.
Murray Abraham), shows signs of cognitive decline and his grandmother refuses
to acknowledge her husband's early dementia, Nate finds himself torn between
his desire to flee, family responsibilities, and an unexpected romance with his
grandparents' handsome doctor (Charlie Barnett, who recently appeared in the
San Diego stage production of
Hedda
Gabler).
Noam Ash first gained recognition
as creator of the hit web series My Gay
Roommate and subsequent TV pilot Boy•Friends,
which garnered over 11 million views and received critical acclaim from both Vanity
Fair and The New York Times. He guest-starred in HBO Max’s The Other Two, as well as starred in and executive produced The Influencers on Amazon Prime. Bookends,
which was directed by Mike Doyle, serves as Ash’s debut feature film. Of note,
it won the Anti-Defamation League’s Stand Up Award at the Santa Barbara
International Film Festival earlier this year. Not bad!
The attractive and engaging Ash
recently sat down with this writer via Zoom to discuss his latest, undeniably
significant achievement…which also might give viewers a renewed appreciation of
Nutter Butters.
Hi Noam, and thanks for your time. I just
loved the movie. I expected and it kind of starts out like a typical gay rom
com, but then as it goes on it becomes more and more poignant, and insightful,
and touching, and moving. There are so many layers to it and I loved that.
Thank you so much for saying that.
We worked hard on that. Not a lot of people notice this but there is a bit of a
visual aid that also happens at the beginning of the movie, that’s setting you
up to think you’re going to see something you might have seen before. It’s in
16:9, which is the aspect ratio of a TV show. Then as soon as Nate gets to his
grandparents’ we shift into cinematic, so there’s a whole visual thing that
happens.
Wow, that’s interesting. I don’t think I
noticed that.
It’s very subtle but if you go
back and look you’ll see that, when it starts out, it fills your entire screen
like a TV show would. And then, right after the title sequence, it expands into
a cinematic (widescreen) aspect ratio.
Ok, I might have to watch it again. That’s
very cool. It really struck me that Bookends
was like a labor of love between you writing it and starring in it, and then
the whole cast seems so involved. Talk a bit about what inspired you. I
understand there’s some kind of autobiographical elements to it.
You know, my relationship with my
grandparents was and is one of the greatest blessings of my life. It’s inspired
by a lot of the lessons and wisdom that I learned from them, so it’s
autobiographical in that sense. The whole structure of the movie is complete
fiction but I did live with my grandparents for a year after a breakup, and it
was wonderful. It was honestly one of the best years of my life so far. So I
took those conversations and lessons and some of the more poignant experiences,
and then wrapped them in this fictional world that we created, this retirement
community and all of that.
When you say it’s a labor of love,
it really is. The film was born out of the love for my grandparents and I think
that is a big part of how we were able to, frankly, punch far above our weight.
We are a small indie movie but we have F. Murray Abraham and Caroline Aaron
(who plays Nate’s grandmother, Miriam) and Charlie Barnett, all of whom are
absolutely brilliant. We didn’t know when we set out that we’d be able to do
that. We were fortunate that one of our producers who is also our casting
director, Henry Russell Bergstein, sent the script to (F.) Murray and his
agents. He did a lot of work to prepare me ahead of time. He was like “Listen,
you’re going for the best of the best; sometimes it can take months for them to
read and, if they say no, don’t be disappointed because there are plenty of
other options.” No, it was like a week later that Murray called and he loved
the script and wanted to do it. I think that love is the thing that brought
everyone to the table.
The cast is
great and I wanted to ask in particular about working with Murray. How was
that?
Murray
is a master of his craft and also the nicest, most generous human being. I’ll
never forget, first day on the set, there’s flutters and nerves from everyone.
Everyone from the director to the crew to myself. You’re starting on a new
journey that you really have no idea how it’s gonna go. (laughs) And of course,
the first scene that I shoot is the very poignant scene with Murray where he
has his moment of dementia and he forgets an important detail about my
character’s life.
It
was quite the scene to start with. (laughs) Murray shows up, donuts in hand for
everyone. He introduces himself by first name to every single crew member.
Before we start shooting for the day he starts with a joke. He just puts
everyone at ease, and he really made us all feel like family. And so that first
day there were definitely those jitters—I mean I was like, “Oh my God, we have
a legend in our midst”—and that admiration and respect never went away. It only
increased but then it also became sort of like this person that I now know and
love and feels like family.
That reminds
me of one of the lines from the movie that I actually wrote down: “We’re
family; we take care of each other.” Which is so simple and obvious on one hand
but so profound on the other. When you were writing this or developing it, did
you see yourself as the leading man or central character? Were you part of the
package deal, so to speak?
(Laughs)
I am a writer-actor-producer-creator, depending on the project. I started in
YouTube and had a web series called My
Gay Roommate that I wrote and starred in. It was back when no one was doing
web series (beginning in 2012); it was a very novel thing to do. It started as
short, 3-5 minute episodes, expanded to 10 minute episodes, then we sold it and
made it into a pilot. But then I’ve also sold other shows that were not
vehicles for me, and so for me it really just depends on the story and what
serves the story best. (Bookends) was
a story that was so personal to me that I knew on a cellular level what I
wanted it to feel like and look like and so, yes, I always envisioned myself in
this role.
Nice. Your
film has been playing various film festivals thus far. What have been some of
the responses or reactions you’ve gotten?
It’s
been really incredible. The festivals we’ve played have really spanned the
gamut. We premiered at Santa Barbara, which is a phenomenal, general audience
festival. We then played a whole bunch of LGBT festivals, a lot of Jewish film
festivals, and then a lot of international festivals. We played in Amsterdam
and Torino, we’ll be playing in Spain later in the season. What’s been really
cool for me to see is how every audience sees it differently. A lot of the LGBT
film festivals really see it as a rom com and as a romance between Nate and Dr.
Green and everything that happens around them. A lot of the more general film
festivals really see it as an inter-generational story, with the main drive
being Nate’s relationship with his grandparents.
For
me as a writer, that’s really cool because when we set out I wanted to make
sure that we don’t water the story down; I wanted it to simultaneously be a
story of romance, AND an inter-generational story, AND touch on issues of end
of life, AND also be really funny and not compromise on any one of those
elements. So the response has really been phenomenal and so gratifying to see
how widely it’s resonating, and how different people find their own entry
points. The older crowds that have watched it very much identify with Miriam,
some with Saul. A lot of the younger audiences are like “Oh, my parents are
going through this; I am a caretaker” or “I just got out of a relationship that
may not have been right for me.” So that’s been really heartening, to just see
how differently it’s received from all these different angles.
Charlie
Barnett (Dr. Green) is so adorable, and you guys are hot together! How was he
to work with?
Incredible.
You know, we really lucked out on this production. Every single person was just
lovely and really showed up wanting to do this story justice. That goes for
everyone from the director, Mike Doyle--who turned the movie into something far
beyond what I could have imagined—to our cinematographer, Tari Segal, who was
just nominated for an Emmy for Margo’s
Got Money Troubles. Charlie was wonderful, and we all just clicked.
One of the
other technical elements I really appreciated in the film is the music score. I
loved the score and the songs.
Yes!
Dabney Morris, the composer, is absolutely extraordinary. The way he works is
also very interesting. He composed live to the edit, so as Mike was editing the
film with our editor Dabney would sit in and play live to how they were putting
the movie together. The score is all live performance that was captured. He is
sensational.
Wow! What are
your long-term plans for the film?
We’re
about midway through our festival run. We have a whole slew of them coming up
including San Diego. If you would be so kind to include bookendsmovie.com? That
gives people a list of all of our upcoming festivals and tickets to them, and
also an opportunity to sign up for our mailing list. We are looking tentatively
at a February 2027 theatrical release, so our plan is to be in theaters and
then it will make its way to the streaming services and VOD and all that good
stuff. We’re really, really excited!
The Most Reverend Chris Carpenter is editor of Movie Dearest and chief contributor. He has been reviewing movies and theatre since 1996 and also contributes to Rage Monthly magazine (ragemonthly.com). He is a founding member and former Vice President of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Critics (galeca.com) and currently serves as a nominating/voting member of its New York-based Theatre Wing. Reverend Carpenter has been an ordained minister since 1995.
