Getting Go: The Go Doc Project - a film review

LGBT movies are feast or famine in terms of quality. There are really good gay-themed films out there. Brokeback Mountain remains my all-time favorite, but check out the British Film Institute’s suggestions for a list of twenty-nine others. I’ve complained loudly, though, of what I think is a boomerang effect. Because we have lived so long in the closet, LGBT people still provide a ready-made audience for practically anything an LGBT Tom, Dick or Mary Jane with a camera might come up with, so great is our hunger to see ourselves represented on the screen.

At least that’s how I see it. I approach every new gay film with a “show me” attitude. I’m still a sucker for young love stories, and for the usual themes of overcoming religious bigotry and self-loathing, although coming out stories done poorly (and, I repeat, most are) still get under my skin.

A 2014 film showed up on Amazon Prime recently that I had not heard of before: Getting Go: The Go Doc Project, starring Tanner Cohen and Matthew Camp, written by Cory Krueckeberg and directed by Tom Gustafson.  Cohen, Krueckeberg and Gustafson came up with the fanciful Were the World Mine in 2008 about a magic flower that turns everybody gay, so this was clearly a second team effort for them. Not one that spelled “must-see,” but one that at least suggested there might be some creativity there. Worth a look-see.

I was quite taken with it. It turned out to have more than a little creativity, a great touch of sympathy and some good acting. And a more frank and direct approach to issues most films about romance dance around far less intelligently:  where are the lines between lust and love, between infatuation and caring, between give and take in any human relationship?

The film opens with “Doc,” a Columbia undergraduate student, masturbating to an image of “Go” doing his thing as a gogo dancer.  Doc is, like many socially inept young people, a child of the social media age, the kind of person who counts “likes” from the isolation of his room rather than hanging out with actual friends, the image of a “loser.” “Go,” on the other hand, is an exhibitionist who typifies the kind of gay who considers the sex act a way of celebrating his civil rights and knows how to monetize his handsome face and chiseled body. 

The stage is set for victims at two extremes of America’s sexual hangups to meet when Doc reaches out to Go, telling him he’d like to make a film about his life, and Go, to Doc’s surprise, accepts his offer.

What follows is a gay love story for the modern day. Doc, more head than body, at least at first, thinks he has died and gone to heaven. Go, more body than head, turns out to be surprised by his own vulnerability, and we watch as the story unfolds that this head vs. body thing isn’t as simple as we might have thought.

What makes me want to classify this film as one of the more underrated gay-themed films I’ve seen in a while is the effect it has on you as you watch the relationship grow.  You don’t quite know whether you’re rooting for them to succeed as a couple, or even whether that was ever in the cards. Whether you're watching fluff and faux-philosophy or serious commentary.

I’m of the school of thought that we should all have “practice husbands,” people to teach us about sex and love and relationship we then burn out on when we are too young to pull off monogamy and selflessness successfully. People to remember fondly, if possible, in our later years when companionship and affection take their natural place in partnering with another, whether or not sexual intimacy continues.  So I was not inclined to want these kids to avoid falling in love and I felt no need to judge their behavior. They were free as fictional characters to behave anyway it suited them. I was watching this film as an old man, not a romantic young one. And far more interested in what the writer and director were up to than the actors.

What appealed to me was the fact that you could never be sure whether this was supposed to be a fictional narrative or a documentary. Go (Matthew Camp) was played by a gogo dancer in real life, and that added substance to the question. I was not even impatient with the many drawn-out kissing scenes, as critics who wished for closer editing did, but happy to just allow them to play out. I’m happy the film avoided becoming porn, which it might well have, given Camp’s political views, and considering the opening scene, but focused instead on affection. The best scene for me was of the two of them lying in bed, playing with each other’s hands.

In the end, the film demonstrates that it is indeed possible to write, direct, and act in a story about sex and love by just laying it out there and not being overly concerned with the moral of the story or other consequences. Sexuality can be beautiful, it seems to say. Don’t fuss with it. Just let it be.

available on Amazon Prime