Accurately portraying the small details of life as a gay 14-year-old was one of my biggest priorities when producing my new feature film. Big boys. My collaborators and I wanted to cram the film with details to better evoke the audience’s memories of their own youth, especially if it was ever hidden. There were certainly details that I took from my own life, but I found that when I let the cast and crew’s ideas run wild, the film Really began to feel inhabited. However, nailing down these details wasn’t always easy. It involved a lot of back and forth as we weighed different options. Often we had to take time away from a problem before we could find a solution we were happy with. Sometimes we had to sacrifice details because they detracted from the story. I found the whole process to be one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of making this film.
Below are some examples of the collaborative process that resulted in these details being implemented just right…
Size awareness
The film is called Big boys for a reason. I was a big boy growing up (and still am to this day!) and was sick of seeing chubby characters demeaned or marginalized on screen. I wanted to focus on an overweight protagonist who was funny, interesting and complex for reasons that had nothing to do with his weight. However, his weight is constantly on his mind. How could it not be? Years of being judged by your peers and seeing “the fat kid” mocked in the media takes its toll. There are little things you learn to avoid drawing attention to your body. We wanted to use these little behavioral details to show what it’s like to feel insecure with a heavier body.
While I was writing the film, I remember going to the beach and seeing a chubby kid wearing his shirt in the sea. It reminded me of all the times I was afraid to take my shirt off at a pool party for fear someone would make a nasty comment. Jamie, the protagonist in Big boysis the type of guy who expects to be attacked like that. In rehearsal, Isaac Krasner, the actor who plays Jamie, and I talked about his habit of pulling his shirt down to cover his stomach. If you look closely, he does this throughout the film. It blows me away how brave and honest he is in presenting Jamie’s body confidence. He never hides behind “cuteness,” but always tries to be as realistic as possible. It’s one of the many ways he brings compassion and nuance to this character.
The cool older guy
We wanted Dan, the cool older guy in Big boysto embody the kind of casual masculinity and confidence that would make him irresistible to someone like Jamie. He is both what Jamie wants Be and his with. There have been many guys like that in my life. Camp counselors, coaches, cousins’ friends. I remember noticing all the little things they did and said that made them seem so effortlessly cool. I wanted Jamie to have a keen eye for things like that, too. I thought it would better capture the intensity of his crush if I saw the details that really attracted him.
The backwards baseball cap was a must. Maybe it’s because I was a kid in the late 90s/early 2000s, but this will always be a very cool guy looks to me. Our cinematographer Gus Bendinelli suggested that Jamie notice Dan putting his arm around the headrest of the passenger seat while backing up. I was so excited when he said that; it’s exactly the kind of casual, subtly masculine gesture that Jamie would drool over. David Johnson III, who plays Dan, made a great choice when he casually leaned against a tree while advising Jamie on building a tent. Isaac understood the impression small gestures like that would make on Jamie. Later that same day, he suggested that Jamie lean against a tree as well while giving Dan his own advice.
Internalized homophobia
After Jamie first has gay thoughts, he panics and tries to reason his way out of it. I originally thought he was trying to Google “how to be straight again,” but that felt too obvious. When we shot the scene, we had him list “beautiful women” in his notebook. That felt a little too much like a derogatory joke to me. I wanted that detail to feel a little more specific and serious, to bring that panic alive. Our producer Allison Tate and I thought about it for a long time. Then it came to us pretty much at the same moment: It should be an untitled list of reasons why he might still be straight. We took a snapshot of it (with our editor Erik Vogt-Nilsen’s handwriting replacing Jamie’s) and it’s one of the moments in the film that I’m most proud of.
The vicious gay stereotypes that were taught in school and in the media were part of what made it so hard to come out of the closet. Being gay meant “acting gay,” and “acting gay” was an undesirable two-dimensional image of a man who was inherently less worthy because he was not male. A guy who couldn’t keep up with the boys because his homosexuality naturally not one of them. I did NOT want to embody that image! I was determined to be straight, and if I couldn’t be straight, then at least I could “act straight.” I thought, “At least I have a deep voice. At least I like movies, not Musical theatre.” It was a very “not like the other girls” mentality and it was not good for me. I wanted Jamie to struggle with the same problem, to show how internalized misogyny and homophobia make it difficult to imagine his future as a three-dimensional, happy queer person. It took me a while to understand that it is so much more interesting, complex and Fun than I had been led to believe. It took me a while to realise that it was something to be proud of, rather than an image I had to distance myself from in order to be taken seriously. I think Jamie will eventually get there too.
I understand that presenting such details can be embarrassing and in some cases painful, especially if you share Jamie’s insecurities. But I really didn’t want to shy away from it because I believe it helps people see them as the normal human experiences that they are and frees them from the shame they feel about them. I think Mr. Rogers said it perfectly when he said, “Everything human is worth mentioning, and everything worth mentioning can be better managed.”
