Sideline Secrets

Hi, Everyone,

It was worth the wait. The Producer, Director and actors in this gay guy movie had many obstacles to overcome as they brought this project to the DVD market. Many of James Townsend's fans have followed step by step on the internet as this project was cast, filmed, recast and refilmed. When it was finally ready for mass production, a loss of hard drive information took the Editors and Director and Producer back to the raw stock to reassemble the movie.

Even though this movie was filmed on weekends and on oddball schedules to accommodate the actor's free time and the availability of locations, it still looks better than most of Hollywood's DVD offerings. The camera work and story line are excellent throughout.

This is a movie for gay guys more than anyone else. It is adult in nature. There is even frontal nudity. If any of that bothers you, you will not like this. Stay away.

If, like myself, you enjoy a steamy scene with a couple of guys having a rendezvous in bed or in a shower or in a dream, you will not be disappointed. This is not hard core, squirting, sticky type action. This is soft core with visible excitement and simulated activity.

The actors who are supposed to be young and gay, do indeed appear to be young and gay. If not, the acting is great and the scenes work to keep us wondering what will eventually happen.

In a gay or straight person's life, there are gay and straight friends and gay and straight baddies. That is the case with this movie. Not all gays are nice, not all straights are bad. It is just like in the real world possible for a gay guy to find his best friend is a straight woman. The characters were most likely composites of real people somewhere in the writer's life.

This movie is definitely not a high budget threat to King Kong at the box office. It is a nice DVD well worth the price that a dozen or more people put a lot of sweat into. If you enjoy the theme, you will have no difficulty watching it at least once a year.

The mom character is good with a part that builds to a surprise. Dan Swett is a believable bad guy. Brandon Alexander eats up the scenery in his or her role. Ryan Bauer has the face I am going to ask my plastic surgeon to design for me. Jourdain Dion is another good bad guy. He makes a convincing cop we don't want to meet up with. David Wright is much like Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause. He does a lot with a small part. Sarah Kelly should be very proud of her work here. It is difficult to be the other girl between two boys. She makes us fall in love with her. Alex Wilson is on target all the way in his role which requires him to be sexy and vulnerable and secretive.

Then there is James Townsend. He is the lead, the Writer and the Producer. His acting is not over the top and it should not be for this project. He is ready for whatever Hollywood has waiting. I get the hint in several scenes here that James is ready to do a comedy. James Townsend let all his fans watch on his Yahoo Group as he put this movie together. He and everyone who worked on this are to be given an A in not only doing a good movie, but not letting the bumps along the way bring this project to a screeching halt.

I watched a rough cut. When I see the final version I will come back and make any edits needed. The sound and several scenes were not complete on the version I saw. I still liked it a lot.

UPDATE-December 17, 2005...

I was fortunate enough to see the Hollywood premier of Sideline Secrets last night, Dec. 16. It was shown on a big screen in a small Hollywood playhouse that probably has been host to many entertainment career beginnings. Outings in Hollywood might be common and this film was definitely about coming out.

The finished product is superb. There has been added music, mayhem, mirth and mystery that was not in the rough cut. A good laugh for all was provided in a scene that shows a bus passing from right to left with a very appropriate billboard on the side. Watch closely.

Great camera work and editing throughout. Much applause for Steven Vasquez. If he does nothing more, he has proved himself to be a top notch Hollywood cinematographer. The sound is much better than the rough cut. The sound is still less than perfect, but it works better for me than most of Hollywood's newer releases. The music was not annoying to my 67 year old ears.

The acting is not Oscar worthy yet, but no actor here has to worry about his/her future. All performances were well above what the budget might have expected. It was obvious some scenes were rushed and the actors were not allowed 20 takes to get comfortable with a moment.

The sex action was better than any big budget "love" stories and more believable than most male porn.

This is more than a story about a gay guy coming out. That has been done in a usually boring fashion in other movies. This is a story about a reaction to a gay guy coming out and sometimes being forced to come out by authority figures who have their own juices flowing. It is a look at straight people, good and bad as much as a look at the wild side or should I say "sideline" secrets? END OF UPDATE

Tom Willett

If you have ever seen a DeCoteau movie, you will understand my summary of this movie. The difference between DeCoteau and Stephen Vasquez is that DeCoteau has a campy charm about his work. Vasquez is a hack. This film is just plain bad The acting is stilted. The cinematography is amateurish. The dialog is forced. There are far too many gratuitous sex scenes which do nothing to contribute to the plot. And, speaking of the plot, the plot is so messy that one begins to wonder what this movie supposed to be about. Devon Tyler has the perfect life. He has successful parents, a beautiful and loving girlfriend and all the freedom a teenage boy could want. OK, so his life isn't that perfect. His father (or maybe it's his step- father. The relationship seems to go back and forth and you are never sure how this relationship works.) is having an affair with the mother of one of his clients. Devon's mother is an alcoholic and his girlfriend is a nag. In the middle of all of this, while spending time with his girlfriend, Devon is busy checking out other guys. While skipping class, one day, Devon meets a girl who gives him a flyer for a new gay club which is opening. On a lark, Devon decides to go to the grand opening of the club where he meets Clitarissa Pink. Clitarissa is a boy in very bad drag and still becomes the most entertaining character in the film. Devon also meets the new love of his life, Brian. Brian is a hustler who falls for our budding ingenue. The boys have a movie night and Devon stays the night. While having breakfast the next morning, they see Devon's father with another family. At home, Devon's father assumes that Devon is gay because he was having breakfast with another person and he searches Devon's room to find the flyer for the gay bar. The entire series of events is ridiculous and it only gets more ridiculous from here. While we have all of these events happening, there is a string of missing young men in the area and the police are not doing anything to find these people because they are all "hustlers and bums." The police even go so far as to hinder an investigation by the one person looking for the missing youths. In college, I have seen a lot of student films with more professional acting. The actors are apparently trying to act out their parts but I get the feeling that I am watching a scene from another performance with intentionally bad acting. The tragedy is that the actors seem to be taking their acting "skills" seriously. James Townsend (Devon) sets off the gaydar from the moment you see him and it makes me wonder how anyone could think he is straight. Even the fact that he has a navel piercing lends incredibility to his being straight. This is a terrible film and I do not suggest it to anyone. In fact, given a choice between this film and straight porn, I will take the porn.

I'm a film festival junkie. I've seen over 1500 gay films in my life and I keep a bottom 10 list. This film made that list. I've seen worse films so this film doesn't really merit one other reviewers comment... "As bad as a movie can be."

However it IS well and truly bad. The problems starts with a disjointed plot that attempts to be a mystery but ends up being a missed try. Then there's amateurish dialogue, as stilted and heavy handed as any I've heard; and often it's as teeth-jarringly delivered as in the most graphic porn film.

Other reviewers have commented... "This film is just plain bad." and... "THIS FILM IS LAME, LAME, LAME!!!!!" and even ... "Everything about this movie is terrible, the script, the story, the casting, the acting, the direction, the photography, the editing, the music... what else goes into a movie? Whatever it is, here it's as bad as it gets."

That's not entirely fair, but unfortunately it's closer to the truth than the several laudatory reviews that are posted here. You'll notice that there are about 14 people who have ranked many of the reviews of this film. I'm tempted to ask "If a dozen people or so were friends of, or paid by, the film makers how would these reviews be scored?" I'm guessing that something along those lines would explain the wide variation in opinion about this film.

James Townsend who plays the lead also wrote the script. That's generally a bad combo though it stops short of the total lack of perspective one sometimes sees when the writer/star also directs. Talk about your real triple-threat!

I don't enjoy writing negative reviews, but I do think folks should be warned. I've given this film three stars. I have scored other films lower, but only when they were offensive or so disjointed and difficult to sit through that I wanted to punish the folks responsible for the crime. Here it's just a matter of a poorly executed attempt at making a movie.

It's probably unfair to rant about this film in general... Here are just a few specifics. There is an early masturbation scene which includes fantasy shots that stops just short of porno. Shortly thereafter there's a heterosexual kiss in the park that includes another gay fantasy. The boys are hot enough and the scene is pretty tolerable though it is over-thought. The scene is disrupted by cuts from full-color to artistic black & white & back. The acting by the mother was so bad at one time I swore she was cold reading from cards off camera... and that she was a poor reader. The father was even worse.

Generally I'm a pretty easy grader and a sucker for over earnest plots by novice film makers. Often gay-themed indie films have "diamond in the rough" moments that ring so true that they make sitting through the sometimes amateur film making, the frequent insufferable dialogue and the poor plotting worth it. This film may have a few rhinestones in the rough, but they're buried in a whole truckload of dross.

Oftentimes gay indie films have the problem that poor acting and poor dialogue make their characters more caricatures than character. Unfortunately here the characters here would need more detail to become caricatures.

Don't get me wrong. A few of the main characters turn in performances worthy of off off Broadway (maybe on an off night). However the parent roles and the police roles were even below that standard. I'm guessing that those making this film had no friends that fit those particular characters and had to settle for whoever they could con into doing the part. And let's face it the talent pool of those looking to play minor roles in gay themed direct to video indie films is pretty shallow.

Fortunately the boys playing the main roles were pretty. They should just try to exercise better judgment about what they let others put in their mouths, at least dialogue-wise.

Roger Ebert once described "Midnight Cowboy" as a good movie with a masterpiece inside, struggling to break free. Unfortunately this film is hollow inside.

THIS FILM IS LAME, LAME, LAME!!!!! It takes a lot to bring me to over-exaggeration about a movie, but this movie stunk up my house!! I haven't even finished the movie yet and I had to stop to comment on how bad this movie is. I'VE NEVER DONE THAT!! As a consumer, do not spend your money on this film. Wait until it comes out on a cable channel or something. It's barely TV worthy. I REALLY HATE TRASHING A MOVIE, BUT THIS MOVIE IS TRASH! Barely above porn. Should have and X rating! Good plot, some frontal nudity (if that floats your boat), but HORRIBLE high school level acting. Don't know how this movie received distribution. (Must have been a contractual thing.) Really, if you really like watching good movies, don't waste you time with this one. From one movie lover to another. YOU WILL BE MAD AT YOURSELF! Let me say this as well, if you've been through something like this perhaps you can relate and it will have some value for you. In that case I say watch it, you may take something away from it, if not just seeing something that's happened to you being acted out by someone else (has therapeutic value).

Until now, the worst movie I had ever seen was Ben & Arthur. You really should check the reviews for that movie instead of this one. The review statistics for this movie have been skewed positive through a relentless and unscrupulous push by some of the people involved in making it, evidence for which is fairly easy to uncover online. At least the people who made Ben & Arthur were honorable enough to let it stand on its own shaky legs, instead of unscrupulously promoting it so suckers like me would buy it.

Everything about this movie is terrible, the script, the story, the casting, the acting, the direction, the photography, the editing, the music... what else goes into a movie? Whatever it is, here it's as bad as it gets. If it weren't so unpleasant it would be ridiculous. I kept watching it thinking it must get better, because I hadn't yet discovered that none of the positive reviews for it are reliable.

It does not take a lot of money to make a great movie, nor does a low budget mean a movie has to be bad. My favorite example of a shoestring-budget masterpiece is Gus Van Sant's amazing Mala Noche, but there are many others. Sideline Secrets—Director's Cut or original—is bad not because the people who made it had no money, but because they had gigantic egos and no talent for anything at all except self-promotion.