Boy Culture: Is This Really All There Is To Gay Culture?

Boy Culture, based on the novel by Matthew Rettenmund, is yet another entry into the rather tired “gay hustler” genre. It chronicles a young man's sexually drenched relationship with his two roommates while also purportedly telling the story of his learning to take a chance with romance. The film additionally contains a subplot involving the hustler's deepening sexual entanglement with one of his regular elderly johns.

Adapted for the screen and directed by Q. Allan Brocka, whose previous work includes the made for television movies Camp Michael Jackson, Porno Valley and the hugely popular film Eating Out, Boy Culture does not live up to Brocka's previous work.

Revealed in sarcastic “confessional” voice-overs throughout the film, we experience Boy Culture from the perspective of its main character, a highly successful but emotionally cold, gay hustler who prefers to be known only as “X”. X, who at 25 is “aging” as a hustler, now seeks something more substantial in his love life.

The movie also includes X's extended gay “family,” his easy-going, randy roommate Andrew (for whom X has the hots), as well as his other roommate, teenage “chicken” Joey, who in a way functions as X's and Andrew's “son” (though “houseboy” may be a more on-target term).

The threesome's daily routine seems to pretty much rotate from random sexual escapades in their sex-den apartment, to workouts at the local gay gym, to appearances at their local gay pick-up bar, and then back to random sexual escapades in their apartment.

It is only when X starts hooking up with his mysterious new older client, 80 year-old Gregory, that he begins to drop his emotional defenses. Although the enigmatic Gregory pays X for each session, he refuses sex with X until such a time comes when he's convinced their sexual desire is entirely mutual. This unusual scenario catches X off-guard.

Until then, for his own hidden reasons, Gregory conducts what are basically quasi-psychiatric therapist-patient sessions with the handsome hustler. Via a kind of classic “transference”, X starts to find himself actually attracted to his 80 year-old client/therapist. This situation becomes his training wheels for being able to develop genuine romantic attraction for Andrew, the one X really wants.

Are you still following? Yes, this film strains credulity, and in more ways than one.

The problem lies in the film's script; in how the original book has been adapted for the screen; and in the script's conception and depiction of gay life. As writer/director Brocka acknowledged in a Q & A session to the audience at the film's premiere in NYC on April 26, getting a good, workable script out of the book was the single biggest difficulty in making the film. It took many attempts, many re-writes, and lots of time.

Despite all of that effort, the final script still feels wrong.

Once the flash of all the handsome gay eye-candy and erotic appeal wears off, the essential weakness in the film's script and message becomes apparent. As adapted for the screen, it's not really about gay love, romance or relationships. It's really just about gay sex.

Much of Boy Culture is spent showing guys taking off their shirts, cruising each other, commenting on each others “size” and/or sexual prowess, making out, laying on top of each other, etc. Even with some minor side trips and subplots, the whole thing is little more than a big gay tease.

The film's minimal amount of dialogue is often no more substantial in content than what one typically hears in gay adult films. It's like the small talk in between graphic sex scenes. In fact, if all of the many “love” scenes in Boy Culture were instead explicit and graphic, the film would still seem entirely at home with itself.

Potentially interesting dramatic situations do continually present themselves, but no sooner do they appear than they quickly evaporate into nothingness.

Young club-boy Joey OD's on drugs but simply falls asleep. X is the only white guest at a black wedding, but it's never mentioned. Andrew comes out to both his entire family and all his old acquaintances at his ex-fiancés' wedding with absolutely no consequence except on-the-spot approval from all.

Every money issue that could possibly arise (all of the film's characters have fabulously easy lifestyles) is immediately taken care of with injected plot devices such as X's magical stock portfolio that pays for everything.

If this film were true to its basic “boy-meets-boy”, “boy-loses-boy”, “boy-wins-boy” Hollywood roots, there would at least be some drama, some tension, some conflict, some arguing, some something between X and Andrew. Were this any other romance, someone would at least get slapped, run away, cheat, anything. In this film, no one so much as slams a door.

Boy Culture does a number of things well. It is well directed visually with fresh camera angles and clever edits throughout. It has a playful comic sense of itself and quite a few genuinely funny moments. It is a credit to all involved that Boy Culture came together looking so good in just 18 days of shooting.

All the actors in the film do a top-notch job with the material they've been given. From leads to extras, there's not a weak-link in the chain of acting talent. One could say the performances (along with a certain erotic appeal) carry this film.

Boy Culture's three, young, buff and gorgeous lead characters are played by actors with mainly television experience.

“X”, played by Derek Magyar (Commander Kelby from Star Trek's Enterprise and with appearances on Charmed, Boston Legal and JAG) is superb. Simmering, understated and with just the right touch of mystery, his character successfully conveys that inscrutable “straight-acting” quality typical of so many gay hustlers.

“Joey” is played by relative newcomer Jonathan Trent (The Dawn Patrol, The Secrets and Lies). Trent's creative and uninhibited approach to the token “femme” and ditzy, hot-to-trot boy-toy role of Joey results in a successful characterization that is both believable and eminently watchable.

Darryl Stephens plays “Andrew”, and might be familiar to viewers from his lead role on Noah's Arc. Freed from the overly posed and self-conscious acting style of TV, Stephens gets to chill-out and display more of his natural appeal in the laid back character of Andrew.

The character of hustler X's 80-year old, wealthy client “Gregory” is played by veteran television actor Patrick Bauchau. Bauchau's film credits include roles in El Amor y La Ciudad, Vampires: The Turning, and Panic Room. Through his intriguing screen presence and exceptionally mellifluous speaking voice, Bauchau manages to make Gregory into a most charming yet cryptic character.

Much of Boy Culture is backed by innocuous, techno/disco/trance music of the kind found playing at 4 am in stereotypical gay dance clubs. It seems the appropriate kind of unfelt, pumping background that would appeal to the film's one-dimensional, one-track-mind characters and the audience demographic that will identify most with its style.

Yet on the way out of the theater, this viewer couldn't help humming a different tune, Peggy Lee's “Is That All There Is?”

Boy Culture had its US premiere this month at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.