Can The Gay Age Gap Be Bridged? Up-Coming Film ‘After Louie’ With Alan Cumming Says Yes.
Artist and AIDS activist Vincent Gagliostro is hoping to bridge the gay generation gap with his first narrative film, After Louie. Co-written by writer and actor, Anthony Johnston, the film “explores the contradictions of modern gay life and history through Sam (Alan Cumming), a man desperate to understand how he and his community got to where they are today.”
“As an AIDS activist and member of ACT UP in the 1980s and 90s, Sam witnessed the deaths of too many friends and lovers. Battle-wounded and struggling with survivor’s guilt, Sam now resents the complacency of his former comrades and derides what he sees as the younger generation’s indifference to the politics of sex, and of death.
An unexpected intimacy with a much younger man, Braeden (Zachary Booth), challenges Sam’s understanding of contemporary gay life. Through this unconventional romance, he is forced to deal with the trauma that so informs his past, their present, and an unknown future.”
The film “is a portrait of what happened to us — the generation who endured the AIDS epidemic, a generation whose shared history continues to haunt us,” Gagliostro says. “In confronting the end of a traumatic era and provoking a conversation between generations, I dare us to dream of a new and vibrant future, again.”
Gagliostro and Johnston have assembled an impressive cast. Wilson Cruz and New York cabaret legends Justin Vivian Bond and Joey Arias will appear alongside Cumming and Booth. And the film has been endorsed by no less an authority than Gay Men’s Health Crisis founder, activist and playwright Larry Kramer.
After Louie, which aims to go into production this summer, comes at time when the disconnect between gay men of different generations has been particularly contentious. The introduction of PrEP has lead some who fought and survived the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s to criticize the younger generation’s embrace of the HIV prevention med.
As Kramer says, “This movie needs to be made.” You can help make that happen by visiting the film’s Kickstarter page and donating before the June 2 deadline.
