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...
The two leads here are Donovan and Kaden. Kaden is the openly gay, twink-coded student body president, and Donovan is your textbook straight macho quarterback. Kaden has a thing for Donovan, but Donovan treats him just like most of the school does, which is to say he bullies and mocks him. Things escalate during budget planning when Kaden does not allocate enough funds to the football team, which only makes the bullying worse. When a prank Kaden pulls backfires, he ends up assigned as the football team's water boy as punishment. This is where Donovan starts secretly flirting with him while still acting like he does not exist in public. They eventually kiss and Donovan comes clean that he cannot afford to be seen with another guy because of what it would do to his future, but he does at least start stepping in to stop others from bullying Kaden. Kaden is into the attention but not blind to the fact that Donovan is never going to acknowledge him publicly. After their first night together, one of the girls, the classic evil girlfriend type, catches them and blackmails Donovan into pretending to be her boyfriend so she can win homecoming queen. There is more bullying, more random drama, but when Harvard scouts show up, Donovan finally hits his limit and publicly declares that he is gay and that he loves Kaden. The Harvard scout ends up impressed by both of them and offers them spots at the university.
This one is packed with every cliché you can think of, but what actually worked for me was that Donovan comes to terms with possibly being gay pretty early on, so the show gets to spend more time on how these two actually push each other toward their goals rather than just dragging out the denial. And if you step back and think about it, it makes sense why someone in Donovan's position would be terrified of coming out given everything around him. Kaden gets that and supports him without pushing too hard. The usual ingredients are all here, homophobic teammates, an evil girlfriend, general bullying nonsense, but the two of them work through it and get to their moment. The drama is pretty substantial, as it always is with these. Both guys are very good looking and I have definitely seen them in other things but cannot place where exactly. Decent enough watch overall, nothing more. (5/10)
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