If you’ve ever reached into the drawer beside the bed – and you know the one I’m talking about – only to discover condoms already covered in lube, then the David sponsored Out on Film Friday night feature, The 10 Year Plan, is for you.
Or if you use a fake name on Grindr.
Or if you like flirting with go-go boys.
Or, yes, even if you’re an all-in, first date, U-Haul on speed dial, die-hard romantic, and in that case, you should already have committed to buying tickets to the Friday night feature, where you’ll not only have the chance to screen writer-director J.C. Calciano’s third romantic comedy The 10 Year Plan, but engage Calciano and straight, but sexy, lead Jack Turner in a post-film Q&A.
The Ten Year Plan synopsis: Think My Best Friend’s Wedding sans the Dionne Warwick sing-along, based slightly on a true story, but with gay(er) twists.
“The story is based on me and my two best friends,” Calciano shares. “Fifteen years ago, they made a deal. We were all sitting in a bar and they made this pact to be together, if they were single. Ten years later, each of them came to me individually and said, ‘I really care about him but I don’t want to hurt his feelings’ and ‘I don’t know if I want to be in a relationship with him, how do I get out of this?’ I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for a romantic comedy. They’re both such characters in themselves not dissimilar from the two characters in the movie. So there’s a lot in the movie that’s very true.”
Myles (Turner) is an overeager, social media stalking, serial dater, searching for his Mr. Right, while breezy cop Brody (Michael Adam Hamilton) has a rotating roster of Mr. Right Now’s on Grindr.
At the film’s beginning, best friends Myles and Brody barter away their bachelorhood on a bar napkin after Myles scares away another suitor, promising to become a monogamous couple in ten years – by the age of 35 – if still single.
Fast-forward the formulaic 9 years, 10 months, and 29 days, and the film’s will-they-or-won’t-they story is buttressed with both subtle and defined layers in Calciano’s filmmaking.
Calciano’s fascination with technology and its effect on our contemporary dating lives, while more of a sub-story in The 10 Year Plan, has stood clearly defined at the forefront of each of his previous films, Is It Just Me? and eCupid. Calciano recognizes the liberties that technology has afforded his storytelling but also recognizes its limitations.
“I think [technology] is indelibly part of the culture . . . it’s part of how we meet, how we date and how we communicate,” Calciano says. “It can be the most beautiful tool to help tell a story, but it can also be your worst enemy in ruining a climatic moment.”
It’s a conundrum that Calciano embraces during his version of the big grand gesture in the final moments of The 10 Year Plan.
“Years ago you have the movies where you have to go get the girl or the guy back at the end and it was the race to the airport, it was always the get to the train station, let me catch them before they do this. But now it’s why the hell don’t you call them on the cell-phone and say I’m sorry … you don’t have to chase anyone down to make that big romantic gesture, you could just text them a smiley face and a wink and then it’s like, okay, the movie is over.”
It’s a rom-com, so think happy ending but while cookie-cutter on the outset, it’s the conscious subtleties in The 10 Year Plan that make it an enjoyable piece of LGBT cinema. That includes a scene where Myles is forced – after going sex toy shopping with Brody – to clean a spilled bottle of lube from his bedside drawer.
“Everybody thinks that things happen to them that happen to no one else and I come from this: well if it happened to me, then it happened to everybody else,” Calciano laughs. “So I try to notice all the things in my day and make note of the silly things that happen that I’m sure happens to everyone but they don’t give it a second thought. Those are the things that really bring a film into your heart. It’s the things you’re like ‘no one knows that about me’ or ‘I thought that was only me.’ Those little things are really important elements in making a story very personal.”
And Calciano’s filmmaking comes from a very personal point of view.
In The 10 Year Plan, main character Brody plays a cop, out at work with an open, affirming, and insightful, straight partner, played expertly by Moronai Kanekoa. Neither Brody nor his partner portray character types that are often seen on the silver screen – in gay or straight cinema. But that doesn’t matter to Calciano.
“Being gay is secondary to the friendships, the storyline and the relationships,” Calciano admits. “I am very blessed in the fact that I have this kind of life where me and my partner – I’ve been with my partner fifteen years now – we exist in a world, maybe because we live in West Hollywood, that none of it’s even a thought. It is my hope for the rest of the world to enjoy that one day soon and I think that’s kind of where my movies go, is that the gay thing is not a thought, it is a seamless part where nobody cares or brings attention to it. There’s no coming out, anything like that. That’s where I set my movies in the world of where either I currently live or where I want society to be in the future.”
While the October 3 screening and post-film discussion is most immediate in Calciano’s future, he’s currently working on bringing together several ideas that may hopefully have him collaborating with other writers, including another rom-com, an erotic thriller and a family feature film.