Stay on Fountain: A Look at the Great Gay Tipping Point

Gays are transitioning into a majority acceptance. What got us here? Where will we go now? Adam Sass shows you the events, large and small, positive and negative, that indicate that we now live in the Great Gay Tipping Point.

True to his name, Sass is funny–yet particularly poignant in it relevance.  Beyond an intital few clever, irreverent jabs at Mom Blogs, there’s a point about our Internet age and the breeding ground for opinions, founded or not, it affords us.  That’s why such well-researched and positive contributions to the web, like StayOnFountain.com and this book are increasingly important in combatting widespread ignorance and fear.

With Sass sharing some of his own personal experiences alongside historical insights and cultural commentary, the book makes social and political struggles human–and that’s exactly the point.  The book isn’t just for gays, it’s for humans.

At a cost of under $3 and under 3 clicks to purchase, it’s definitely an effort worth supporting.

Oh yeah, this.

I need your help.  As some of you know, I’ve been recently campaigning to raise money for a short film I’m producing this winter, called “Snow Jacket.”  How hard it has been was not something I think I was fully prepared for, as I never had the experience of making a thesis film in college.  Turns out there aren’t friend’s friend’s rich uncles always waiting to invest in something cool.  Now, there are only 3 days left for fundraising.  (If we do not meet our goal, then current pledges are lost).  Our $10,870 goal is ambitious, but so is the vision of the film.

Last fall, I wrote and produced my first film (called “Test”) with the same team assembled for this project.  Please watch the new teaser trailer for it here:

We made it on a shoestring budget, and are so pleased and proud of the collaboration, especially considering what we had to work with.  Still, with the next project, we want to push ourselves.  We want to challenge ourselves as filmmakers, as well as challenge the audience, by playing with tone, genre, medium, and style.  We feel strongly that this project wants to be made in film. And we’re confident we have the chops to pull off something great, the ultimate destination for it being top-tier festivals.

I’ve been hesitant to outright ask for dollars, because I know how tight things are for many of us, especially during time when politicians and holidays and other worthy causes compete for your wallet.  Still, I sincerely, humbly ask you now.  If there’s anything you can contribute, it would mean the chance to be a part of a very special project.

..as well as a little reward for your generosity, each created with love:

• $5+                          = a HUGE THANK YOU! Every dollar counts.

• $10+                        = a handmade snow jacket ornament

• $25+                        = a DVD copy of our last short film and an exclusive recipe from “Snow Jacket”

• $40+                        =a gorgeous original snow jacket art print by Manabu Takahashi (limited)

• $50+                        =A PDF copy of the “Snow Jacket” screenplay with the director’s handwritten notes and edits, “Snow Jacket” holiday ornament, DVD copy of “Test”, and recipe

• $100+                        =Code for advance screening of “Snow Jacket” online, DVD, ornament, and recipe

• $500+                        =Invitation to an advance screening party for “Snow Jacket” and Associate Producer credit on the film

• $1000+            =Brunch with the creative team at an LA eatery (featuring a life-coaching session from this guy), and Executive Producer credit

So please consider if you’re are at all able to financially support this film.  Go to our Kickstarter page and click the green “back this project” button.  The time is now!

Thank you so, so, so, so much to all who have already donated, pitched in with rewards, watched our videos, reposted links, and otherwise spread the word.  Please help us to continue it all in the final days.

<3,

Lo

P.S. If you could share this with a friend, that would be wonderful!

I wrote and produced this short film last fall, with no money and a lot of help.

If you enjoy it, or it makes you curious, or you want to meet that one girl in it, join us for a little screening Saturday. And if this lends any cred that we know how to tell stories/make movies/express vision, then please help us out on the next project. We’ve got an ambitious goal because our vision for the film is much bigger in many ways.  We want to progress and challenge ourselves as filmmakers.  It sounds route, but every dollar really does count.  If you can pledge anything, and share the project with friends, we are so grateful.

“Test” Credits

Starring: Alyson Gary, Candace Jade Lewis, and Hiroko Imai

Director: Derek Wibben

Cinematographer: Alex Dobbs

Editor: Mike Cox

Producers: Tracy Larsen Clark, Mike Cox, and Yours Truly

It turned out well.  Well enough that we’re doing it again.

My newest project is “Snow Jacket,” a labor of love that is part of a larger feature project in the works.  It’s challenging, unique, and has a pitch video with charming silliness (see below).  Please watch it, spread the word, and check out the project’s support needs HERE.

You can check out details of our vision for the film here.

We’ll be tweeting @SnowJacketFilm.

And updating with new videos, goodies, and rally cries at Facebook.com/SnowJacket.

Any shared links, retweets, and contributions are so appreciated!

The fun for me is in the scavenger hunt for bits of narrative storyline, as with any Ryan Murphy shenanigans.  Here there’s a raging mishmash of classic horror references, homage, and blatant rip-off, cool tricks to amp up a moment.  And a whole lot of story content that we can only hope will build over the season come together in a satisfying arc, as with Glee or Nip/Tuck.  Oh wait.

But oh, the camp of it all.  Melodrama, man butt, a ridiculous Southern accent, it’s all in excess.  It’s a lovely guilty pleasure for anyone weary of True Blood’s fairy/witchcraft/panther crap, with enough what’s-going-on nonsense to satisfy anyone who drank the Lost Kool-aide.  It’s just silly enough to regularly snark at characters acting nonsensically, which really makes this analysis all worth it for me.

SEASON ONE – EPISODE ONE

We meet the central character first: the House.  If the little girl with Down Syndrome in the front yard repeating “You’re gonna die in there” doesn’t clue you in to the fact it’s haunted, its design has all the subtlety of the art on a Halloween greeting card.  It’s 1978, and there are twin twerps in bellbottoms trashing the abandoned place.  One of them yells “I hate trees!” and hits a branch outside with a bat—so boy, are we in for some sophisticated wordplay!  They find a half-dead rodent in the basement—“Awesome!”—and then jars of fetus baby parts in some kind of old lab—BOOORRRING.  Something scary down there kills them.

Then we’re in snowy somewhere, USA, present day, where Vivian Harmon has just returned home from the fertility doctor post-miscarriage to find intruders in her house.  Turns out it’s just her husband Ben intruding on one of his psychology students.  She knifes him, just a little.  This is the first glimpse of Dylan McDermott nudity, and the only one that seems fairly benign to the story.  But silly me, acting likes there’s a real story again…

If there is, then this is sort of the catalyst moment, I guess, and to deal with the lost baby and adultery double-whammy, the Harmon family packs up their broody teenage daughter Violet and moves into the haunted house in Los Angeles.  As people do.  They bring with them a tiny yappy dog and a fedora, so everyone’s clear they’re just as annoying as the locals.  The house is still a creepy gothic nightmare, but everything’s immaculately restored, because, obviously, the previous owners were gay.  And that’s not me making a bad joke, that’s the show.

The creepiness starts.  Vivian starts to redecorates, and Ben tries to have sex with her.  Spooky.  Violet goes to school where psychotic death threats are standard greetings from mean girls.  The neighbor wanders in unexpectedly, a lot.  Constance, a good Virginian Christian who refers to her daughter Adelaide as a “mongoloid,” comes bearing gifts and warnings and unsolicited advice about the house.  Adelaide could be the little girl from the beginning, but mathematically, she seems too young now to have been alive then.  But whatever, logic doesn’t seem to matter much here.   If it did, Violet probably never would have been all “We’ll take it about the house” when the rest of the time she’s all “It’s creepy” and “Why do we have to move?” and “WHAAA I want seasons!”

Ben sees a young patient Tate in his office in the house, who fantasizes about mowing down his fellow high school students and later catches Violet cutting herself.  Obviously, he’s going to be her love interest because he gets her darkness.

Ben builds fires in his sleep and Moira, the house’s old dead-eyed housekeeper forces her employment on the Harmons.  To Ben, she appears as a hot young flirtatious thing who masturbates freely in the house so sexily that he has to go and do the same.  Then he cries.  I don’t know.

It makes more sense when Ben and Vivian have a big soap opera-style fight where they yell a lot about not having had sex for a year and Tami Taylor uses the term “pile driving.”  Also, Ben’s jealous of the stupid little dog, because he has feelings and needs, too.  Then they bone.  Afterward, Ben goes off sleepwalking and Vivian gets raped by a ghost(?) in a shiny rubber fetish suit whom she thinks is Ben.  “Oh hey, baby, that’s weird, but sure, I’ve now been sexually awakened by your insecurities over the dog.  Even though you’re not saying anything.  And we found that suit in the attic and can only assume it’s been used by those gays who used to live here.”  But maybe this is just a dream?  Fantasy?  Tate?  Ugh.  I miss Friday Night Lights.

With Tate’s help, Violet resolves to get back at the Head Mean Girl with terrorism.  They lure her into the basement and Tate manages to bring forth the monster thing that killed the twins.  Mean Girl is sufficiently freaked, but so it Violet.

While Ben’s out running, he notices that Larry, a stalker with half his face burned off, is following him.  Larry also has a terrible limp, but still manages to catch up to Ben, whose muscles have no purpose other than to be seen, remember?  Larry does this “You have to leave the house, your family’s in danger!” spiel, telling him how the house possessed him to burn his wife and children to death years earlier.  He’s terminally ill, now recently released from prison.  Ben’s like yeah, yeah, you’re crazo, and Larry smiles to confirm.

We learn Vivian is PREGNANT again.  Which, to me, is the scariest aspect of all of this.

J (father, CHP officer, motorcycle rider): So, you’d keep an eye on your drink, right?  Like if you had a soda?

M (age 15): I don’t even drink at things.  At school dances, when they have water bottles, I never even take one.

J: Why not?

M: Because I watch “Degrassi.”  I know what happens.