In the darkest of dark comedies, it can be hard to tell the heroes from villains.
That might go double for the audacious Down Low, starring Zachary Quinto and Lukas Gage as an epically repressed, recently out gay man and the masseur he’s hired for his first homo happy ending who team up to hide the accidentally dead body of an internet hookup.
Gage — perhaps best known as the White Lotus bellhop who had his salad tossed by Murray Bartlett — co-wrote the script with writing partner Phoebe Fisher, and then encouraged producer FilmNation to pass it along to Rightor Doyle to direct.
“We had known each other for years,” says Doyle, also the creator, writer, and director of Netflix’s provocative comedy series Bonding, loosely based on Doyle’s experiences as a fresh-faced gay New Yorker working for his dominatrix best friend as her bodyguard. One can safely assume the actor-turned-director has seen his share of crazy worker-client situations, and even he was shocked reading the script for Down Low.
“I read the first ten pages and said, ‘I can’t believe someone is going to make this,'” Doyle recalls. “And then I thought, ‘Wait, maybe I should be the one to make it.’ And I think it’s something that, particularly with queer cinema, gay cinema — I love a good, uplifting story, I love a good coming out story — but my sense of humor and the things that I like to watch felt very aligned with this darker, sort of button-pushing version of what it is to be queer or what it is to explore queer identity. And I just jumped at it. I begged to do it.”
For his persistence, Doyle not only got the gig, but then assembled an enviable cast that also includes Simon Rex in a role not to be spoiled, and powerhouses Judith Light, in a drop-dead hilarious turn as a nosy neighbor, and Tony Awards queen Audra McDonald, in a brief but searing appearance as the ex-wife of Quinto’s former closet case.
“She’s incredible,” Doyle raves of McDonald, who shot her part in a day, much to Doyle’s eternal gratitude. “She has been my hero for my entire life. [As a kid,] I saved up all of my money and walked to the nearest CD store and bought Way Back to Paradise, you know? And I told her this, literally, as she’s getting her hair and makeup done.”
While Quinto’s and Gage’s characters try to get away with almost-murder, McDonald’s ex-wife shows up to ensure her former husband doesn’t get off scot-free for upending their marriage, or for living a lie for decades. On the other hand, his sexuality apparently was a revelation to him, too.
As Doyle notes, part of “the beautiful complexity around the movie, but also just around being a human” is that “you can be right and wrong all at the same time.” But these guys are still totally wrong for trying to hide a dead body, right? Even if they do have their reasons? “I’m not here to answer any of those questions,” Doyle offers slyly.
“Good storytelling for me, asks more questions than it answers,” he says. “I would like to leave more curious than when I came. And I hope that this movie does that, whether you love it or hate it. I think the movie wants you to love it or hate it. I think it’s asking you to have a big opinion about it. And I don’t think it’s afraid of you having an opinion. So you can have an opinion, either way. And I think the movie allows for that.”
Brenda Biya, the daughter of Cameroon President Paul Biya, came out in an Instagram post on June 30. In it, she posted a photo of her kissing Brazilian model Layyons Valença, her girlfriend.
"I'm crazy about you & I want the world to know," she wrote.
Biya, 27, a musician who splits her time between the United States and Switzerland, told the French newspaper Le Parisien she has been in a relationship with Valença for eight months and has taken her to Cameroon three times without telling her family they were in a relationship.
She said she had not informed anyone in her family before publishing the post.
God is a vengeful mother in Aleshea Harris' Obie-winning odyssey Is God Is. Staged in boldly stylized fashion by KenYatta Rogers, Constellation's alternately funny and tense new production matches the play's freak with engagingly eccentric characterizations, grotesque imagery, and blood-soaked violence.
Much of the bloodletting comes at the behest of Mother, or She, portrayed by Jasmine Joy with hellfire intensity. She summons twin daughters Racine (Devin Nikki Thomas) and Anaia (Morgan Danielle Day) to her hospital deathbed, where she lies bandaged, horribly burned and maimed.
The queens are fighting, fucking, partying, and serving fierce performances at the spirited Montréal drag bar centered in Sophie Dupuis' award-winning drama Solo.
At the bar is where Simon (Théodore Pellerin) meets Olivier (Félix Maritaud), and love takes over. Newly arrived from Paris, Olivier performs as La Dragona, a punk-styled genderfuck queen, who makes her debut at the club with an alluringly cocky lip-sync to an ice-cold electro track. Welcomed by his fellow performers with champagne and a night out after the show, Olivier immediately catches Simon's eye.
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