Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss

Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss

***

Reviewed by: Angus Wolfe Murray

For straights, Gay World is the forbidden planet. All that seems to happen is guys getting off with guys. Or dreaming about it. Girls are best friends and can be just as catty. They are compatriots. Straight boys, with floppy blond hair and Brad Pitt lips, are the challenge.

Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss takes you into Gay World (Los Angeles, to be precise), where Billy (Sean P Hayes) meets exactly that person, a straight boy with floppy lips and Brad Pitt hair, and falls truly, madly, deeply. He is Gabriel (Brad Rowe) who works as a waiter in a diner (actually, he's a bassist in a Frisco band - or was, before he moved). Billy is a photographer, still waiting to be famous. Still waiting to pay the rent, as well.

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He confides in Perry (Richard Ganoung), an established snapper ("People like us are too talented to be ignored"), who used to have a crush on him, and Georgiana (Meredith Scott Lynn), who has a whiplash tongue and a boring boyfriend. They ridicule his ambition, as tentatively he makes a move towards this coffee shop Adonis, who, if truth be told, is thick as custard.

Writer/director Tommy O'Haver has allowed charm to run riot. He calls his film a trifle, despite being inundated with style. Hayes exemplifies the sensitivity of Gay World ("I'm a romantic," Billy confesses. "A misfit of another kind"), while Scott Lynn provides the pointy patter. The sets are theatrical, the colour is primary and the script sizzles. Your camp, or mine?

Reviewed on: 19 Jan 2001
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A gay photographer falls for a straight waiter.
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Director: Tommy O'Haver

Writer: Tommy O'Haver

Starring: Sean P. Hayes, Brad Rowe, Richard Ganoung, Meredith Scott Lynn, Matthew Ashford, Armando ValdesKennedy

Year: 1999

Runtime: 92 minutes

BBFC: 15 - Age Restricted

Country: US

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