Chris Knipp
08-22-2015, 09:59 PM
Pat Mills: Guidance (2014)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/pat.jpg
EMILY PIGGFORD AND PAT MILLS IN GUIDANCE
Drunk, closeted gay actor poses as high school guidance counselor
Guidance is a gay Canadian film comedy of a genre I was hardly aware exited, the corruption-of-youth tale. The protagonist, played by the writer-director, Pat Mills, and containing a lot of himself pushed over-the-top, is a failed actor in his late twenties, once star of a kids TV show (as the director was). The show (in the movie) was called "Wacky Street." He is reduced now to voicing an airy-fairy meditation-motivation text, a job from which he is fired for arriving at the recording studio drunk at nine-thirty in the morning -- and for sounding too gay. "I'm not gay; I just have a soft voice," he retorts. He is closeted, but doesn't even know it. As for the drinking, he insists that for him, the hour is not early. He's in alcohol-fueled denial of many things, including his recent diagnosis with stage-three skin cancer and the fact that he's about to be evicted from his apartment. He has cut himself off from his family.
He is also pretty crazy. He watches a video of a nutty new-agey high school guidance counselor, then takes on the counselor's identity like an acting role to apply for such a job. Because the principal is away and the position needs to be filled in a hurry, he gets it. He continues his heavy drinking, filling a drawer in is office with small liquor bottles, and serving vodka to students with problems.
In spite of or because of his outrageous behavior the students, especially some of the misfits, like him. The faculty members merely find him extremely odd.
Recurrent voiceover passages from the meditation-motivation text serve as an ironic counterpart to the story-line's growing disaster and also express the protagonist's alcohol-numbed sense that all is well. In his delusional role-playing, he actually seems to be onto something. He motivates a shy girl to get a boyfriend, bucks a school bully with "Fuck you's," and wards off a gay gym teacher who tries to seduce him. He makes an alienated goth girl feel understood. He recognizes a kid dope dealer as brilliant and gets him into a special school.
But still he is committing fraud and doing various other illegal things, such as buying (or trading) drugs with students and partying with them on school grounds. He will run away for a while with an unmotivated black girl student, Jabrielle (Zahra Bentham), and with her as accomplice rob a series of tanning salons. He sends her off to her aunt in Winnepeg with stolen money and his laptop, to escape her abusive mother. The laptop will save her from her dyslexia, because it has Spellcheck: this exemplifies his simple, upbeat solutions to personal problems.
He has been sexually repressed till now. We see him pose nude before a mirror pressing his penis between his legs to hide it and he denies he's gay by saying he doesn't even like penises. But this is a mild coming out story too, and the coming out comes when our hero goes to jail.
It takes a special cast of mind for Mills' movie to seem funny, but its giddy, madcap mood of upbeat nuttiness never falters. Seen up close this character in "real life" would appear grim and desperate; but Mills finds humor and resolution underneath or beyond the desperation. The filmmaker was not originally going to play the lead role, but it is his, and he owns it. Guidance is curiously native and sincere. It also manages to smoothly fake something bigger than its minuscule budget. It looks and sounds like any half-decent high school comedy. Dennis Harvey's Variety (http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/toronto-film-review-guidance-1201291573/) review from Toronto begins by pointing out that in Guidance "There are trace elements of 'Strangers with Candy,' 'Role Models' and the contrastingly serious 'Half Nelson' in 'Guidance.'" (Elsewhere the Cameron Diaz-Justin Timberlake-Jason Segel movie Bad Teacher has been mentioned.) Harvey also cites a key line in which the protagonist pinpoints himself: “Let’s just say I exist in the space between caring too much and not giving a fuck.” The description my appeal to adolescents whose emotions are erratic and whose sense of motivation comes and goes. Though its success as a movie is intermittent, Guidance has something to say. It isn't just therapy for its creator.
Guidance, 81 mins., debuted at Toronto in its Discovery section and has been in a handful of other notable festivals, including some LGBT-oriented ones. Though it got positive reviews in Hollywood Reporter (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/guidance-toronto-review-729740) as well as Variety, its future is in home viewing. It has been acquired for US distribution by Strand and has a theatrical release scheduled 21 Aug. 2015 at NYC's Village East Cinema.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/pat.jpg
EMILY PIGGFORD AND PAT MILLS IN GUIDANCE
Drunk, closeted gay actor poses as high school guidance counselor
Guidance is a gay Canadian film comedy of a genre I was hardly aware exited, the corruption-of-youth tale. The protagonist, played by the writer-director, Pat Mills, and containing a lot of himself pushed over-the-top, is a failed actor in his late twenties, once star of a kids TV show (as the director was). The show (in the movie) was called "Wacky Street." He is reduced now to voicing an airy-fairy meditation-motivation text, a job from which he is fired for arriving at the recording studio drunk at nine-thirty in the morning -- and for sounding too gay. "I'm not gay; I just have a soft voice," he retorts. He is closeted, but doesn't even know it. As for the drinking, he insists that for him, the hour is not early. He's in alcohol-fueled denial of many things, including his recent diagnosis with stage-three skin cancer and the fact that he's about to be evicted from his apartment. He has cut himself off from his family.
He is also pretty crazy. He watches a video of a nutty new-agey high school guidance counselor, then takes on the counselor's identity like an acting role to apply for such a job. Because the principal is away and the position needs to be filled in a hurry, he gets it. He continues his heavy drinking, filling a drawer in is office with small liquor bottles, and serving vodka to students with problems.
In spite of or because of his outrageous behavior the students, especially some of the misfits, like him. The faculty members merely find him extremely odd.
Recurrent voiceover passages from the meditation-motivation text serve as an ironic counterpart to the story-line's growing disaster and also express the protagonist's alcohol-numbed sense that all is well. In his delusional role-playing, he actually seems to be onto something. He motivates a shy girl to get a boyfriend, bucks a school bully with "Fuck you's," and wards off a gay gym teacher who tries to seduce him. He makes an alienated goth girl feel understood. He recognizes a kid dope dealer as brilliant and gets him into a special school.
But still he is committing fraud and doing various other illegal things, such as buying (or trading) drugs with students and partying with them on school grounds. He will run away for a while with an unmotivated black girl student, Jabrielle (Zahra Bentham), and with her as accomplice rob a series of tanning salons. He sends her off to her aunt in Winnepeg with stolen money and his laptop, to escape her abusive mother. The laptop will save her from her dyslexia, because it has Spellcheck: this exemplifies his simple, upbeat solutions to personal problems.
He has been sexually repressed till now. We see him pose nude before a mirror pressing his penis between his legs to hide it and he denies he's gay by saying he doesn't even like penises. But this is a mild coming out story too, and the coming out comes when our hero goes to jail.
It takes a special cast of mind for Mills' movie to seem funny, but its giddy, madcap mood of upbeat nuttiness never falters. Seen up close this character in "real life" would appear grim and desperate; but Mills finds humor and resolution underneath or beyond the desperation. The filmmaker was not originally going to play the lead role, but it is his, and he owns it. Guidance is curiously native and sincere. It also manages to smoothly fake something bigger than its minuscule budget. It looks and sounds like any half-decent high school comedy. Dennis Harvey's Variety (http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/toronto-film-review-guidance-1201291573/) review from Toronto begins by pointing out that in Guidance "There are trace elements of 'Strangers with Candy,' 'Role Models' and the contrastingly serious 'Half Nelson' in 'Guidance.'" (Elsewhere the Cameron Diaz-Justin Timberlake-Jason Segel movie Bad Teacher has been mentioned.) Harvey also cites a key line in which the protagonist pinpoints himself: “Let’s just say I exist in the space between caring too much and not giving a fuck.” The description my appeal to adolescents whose emotions are erratic and whose sense of motivation comes and goes. Though its success as a movie is intermittent, Guidance has something to say. It isn't just therapy for its creator.
Guidance, 81 mins., debuted at Toronto in its Discovery section and has been in a handful of other notable festivals, including some LGBT-oriented ones. Though it got positive reviews in Hollywood Reporter (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/guidance-toronto-review-729740) as well as Variety, its future is in home viewing. It has been acquired for US distribution by Strand and has a theatrical release scheduled 21 Aug. 2015 at NYC's Village East Cinema.