This documentary pulls together oral history to trace a very specific New York chapter of gay life in America. Back in 2014, someone found a box stuffed with hundreds of letters sitting in a storage unit in LA. These letters went all the way back to the 1950s and were written to a young guy named Reno Martin, who'd later become known in Hollywood as agent Ed Limato. When Martin left home to chase a radio career, his closest gay and queer friends kept writing to him just to stay in touch. Every letter's signed with a fake name and ends with a warning to burn it after reading, which tells you everything about an era when just being gay, or dressing in drag, could get you thrown in jail. The filmmakers actually tracked down the surviving writers, now in their eighties and nineties, and turned what could've been dry historical digging into something genuinely personal and intimate. The people behind this doc found the original letter writers themselves, several of whom are stil...
Tum becomes the leader of the Nuea-in gang after making a superstitious vow that if he got the position, he would visit nine temples. He never follows through on that, and his luck takes a nosedive because of it. He keeps getting beaten by the rival gang, led by Oh, who has made a name for himself by snatching the badge off every gang leader he defeats and stitching all the insignias onto his pants. When Tum's friend points out that the broken vow is probably behind all the bad luck, Tum decides to finally go on that nine-temple merit-making trip. The twist is that Oh is out there doing the exact same thing, and the two of them end up stuck traveling together whether they like it or not. Spending that much time in each other's company across multiple temple visits and a couple of nights together means they start actually getting to know each other, the fears they carry, the family stuff, the insecurities, what they actually want from life. Feelings start creeping in, they hook up, but Tum cannot bring himself to say out loud in front of his friends that what he feels for Oh is real. He eventually gets past that wall and love does its thing.
A big chunk of the show lives in the back and forth between these two, constantly needling each other and hunting for ways to get under each other's skin, and it is entertaining to watch. What the story does well is that all those nine temple stops and shared nights become the actual vehicle for their emotional growth, and nothing about it feels manufactured. The conflicts come from real places rather than drama dropped in just to create tension, and every moment they move closer to each other feels like it was actually earned. The tone stays in romantic comedy territory but never goes fully silly, there is a certain maturity underneath it all. The humor lands more often than not, though it might not work for everybody. Some of the more exaggerated physical bits feel a little odd, but they are clearly not meant to be taken seriously and are just there for a laugh. The chemistry between the two leads is genuinely good and both of them do a solid job. What I appreciated most is that the show never goes for big dramatic declarations or unnecessary meltdowns, it is really just two guys slowly getting honest about what they want and what they are afraid of, and that makes their whole relationship feel real. The downside is that episodes three and four start to drag in places, and I found myself just wanting it to wrap up. A bit of melodrama crept in during those stretches and it did not really fit the tone the show had built up to that point. Still, minor complaints aside, this was a solid watch overall. (7/10)
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