On the website Towelroad, Baran is quoted as saying, “I loved teen movies and never really saw one for gay kids that both addressed their sexuality in the way that straight movies like Weird Science or American Pie or Superbad did, and let them get what they want.” To the Huffington Post, Baran added, “It’s also about how our erotic materials help gay men understand who they are… even if sometimes it leads them to form the wrong impressions about what sex is actually going to be like.” Baran’s homage has clearly resonated with a lot of people, since “Jackpot” has screened at a string of film festivals since its completion in 2012. Then the spirit of one of the cover-models (played by Adam Fleming) urges Jack to fight back, saying that now that Jack’s been found out, he has nothing to lose. Only after he finds the stash, Jack has to deal with a trio of bullies who already call him “fag” every day, and who now have more ammunition for their insults, since they’ve just found him kneeling next to a stack of beefcake mags.
It’s wonderful how all our gay activists over the years have fought the good fight and won so much for all of us and future generations of gays.Anyone-gay or straight-who ever found an unclaimed pornographic magazine laying around should feel a pang of recognition at Adam Baran’s short “Jackpot,” which is about a gay teenager named Jack Hoffman (played by Ethan Navarro) who bicycles across his suburban neighborhood when he hears about a dumpster full of gay porn. I knew a guy who once told me that he only could feel alive in summer on fire Islan, the rest of the year in upstate New York where he was a teacher, he had no social life, no outwardly gay experiences or appearances. So as you smugly criticize these guys in the film, I urge other viewers to try to place yourselves in their shoes, and imagine what gay life was in 1976. mere suspicion of being gay, or even unmarried beyond a certain undefined age, could be grounds for loosing government jobs, and of course, no security clearances for gays. These Fire Island frolicers were all born during the gay bashing and gay witch hunts of the lavender scare, under Sen Joe McCarthy and NY asshole closet case lawyer Roy Cohen. The military was weeding out gays left and right. Gay marriage was not even on the radar screen yet. If a pair did become known in the non-gay world, your partner was known as your “friend” or your “roommate”.
It was the era of “couples” always having separate apartments, not talking about the other at work or school, or among straight friends. Society didn’t like it, families raised eyebrows. In those days, many guys wee gay on weekends, straight acting Monday through Friday.
Society was very anti-gay, the gay community had lots of internalized homophobia, and whenever and wherever pockets of freedom existed, of course there were excesses that cover compensated for what most of their lives were previously, and for the majority, off of Fire Island. They did not get to have boy friends in junior high (now called middle school), high school, any many even in college. Aren’t you prissy and sanctimonious? In 1976, most visitors to Fire Island had never known the freedom and self-acceptance of living “openly gay”, “Out”, in their daily lives wherever they originally came from.