Director:
Bryan Poyser
Studio/Production Company:
Heretic Films
Genre:
Drama
Length:
Feature
Awards Won:
Atlanta Film Festival -- Grand Jury Award 2004
Boston Underground Film Festival -- Bunny Award 2004
Independent Spirit Awards -- Bryan Poyser Nominated -- Someone to Watch Award 2005
Website:
http://www.switchfilm.com
Score:
4.5/5
Sexual awakening has been covered often in cinema, but you will not find a film that deals with the subject more frankly than Dear Pillow.
Wes (Rusty Kelley) is becoming a man and with that transformation desires are awakening inside of him – desires he can not fully understand or contain. During summer vacation spent at his father’s (Cory Criswell) apartment complex, Wes meets Dusty (Gary Chason) -- an openly gay writer for a porn magazine called Dear Pillow. Wes is in need of some guidance and Dusty is all too willing to take the young man under his wing. He begins teaching Wes about the physical act of sex, and when he discovers that Wes has been spying on Lorna (Viviane Vives) – the complex’s manager who has phone sex with random people -- he enlists her to be Wes’s “first”. The catch…Dusty wants to tape the encounter as a personal gift to his ex-partner in pornography and ex-lover Nick.
The scenes between Dusty and Wes are uncomfortable to watch, but there is honesty in them that you won’t find in most films about teenage sex.
Wes is so confused by his sexuality that he will try anything just to feel accepted. Dusty is looking to recapture his youth…a youth spent having a lot of sex with a man whom he loved and who eventually left him for the normalcy of married life with a woman. They are at the same time good and bad for each other because their relationship could lead to understanding or down a dangerous road neither really wants to take.
Filmmaker Bryan Poyser deftly walks the tight rope throughout the film. He’s made a film I will never be able to forget.
The DVD has some good extras for a low budget film -- two commentaries, deleted scenes, and audition footage. But the best part of the Special Features is Poyser’s student
film “Pleasureland” about a man whose porn tapes come to life. Watching it you can see that the idea of sexual confusion is something that he has been trying to understand for a while.
Bryan Poyser
Studio/Production Company:
Heretic Films
Genre:
Drama
Length:
Feature
Awards Won:
Atlanta Film Festival -- Grand Jury Award 2004
Boston Underground Film Festival -- Bunny Award 2004
Independent Spirit Awards -- Bryan Poyser Nominated -- Someone to Watch Award 2005
Website:
http://www.switchfilm.com
Score:
4.5/5
Sexual awakening has been covered often in cinema, but you will not find a film that deals with the subject more frankly than Dear Pillow.
Wes (Rusty Kelley) is becoming a man and with that transformation desires are awakening inside of him – desires he can not fully understand or contain. During summer vacation spent at his father’s (Cory Criswell) apartment complex, Wes meets Dusty (Gary Chason) -- an openly gay writer for a porn magazine called Dear Pillow. Wes is in need of some guidance and Dusty is all too willing to take the young man under his wing. He begins teaching Wes about the physical act of sex, and when he discovers that Wes has been spying on Lorna (Viviane Vives) – the complex’s manager who has phone sex with random people -- he enlists her to be Wes’s “first”. The catch…Dusty wants to tape the encounter as a personal gift to his ex-partner in pornography and ex-lover Nick.
The scenes between Dusty and Wes are uncomfortable to watch, but there is honesty in them that you won’t find in most films about teenage sex.
Wes is so confused by his sexuality that he will try anything just to feel accepted. Dusty is looking to recapture his youth…a youth spent having a lot of sex with a man whom he loved and who eventually left him for the normalcy of married life with a woman. They are at the same time good and bad for each other because their relationship could lead to understanding or down a dangerous road neither really wants to take.
Filmmaker Bryan Poyser deftly walks the tight rope throughout the film. He’s made a film I will never be able to forget.
The DVD has some good extras for a low budget film -- two commentaries, deleted scenes, and audition footage. But the best part of the Special Features is Poyser’s student
film “Pleasureland” about a man whose porn tapes come to life. Watching it you can see that the idea of sexual confusion is something that he has been trying to understand for a while.
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