USA, 2004 Director: Todd Verow
Stars: Todd Verow, Dustin Schell
Cruising around washrooms, parks and the internet for sex is boring enough when you're doing it yourself, so the experience of watching Todd Verow's 84-minute home video of his own seedy, endlessly unsatisfying encounters is enough to drive you to stick hot needles in your eyes. Throw in the dazzling excitement of Todd's stale, long-dead relationship in a paint-flaking Manhattan shoebox, Verow's persistent nude scenes despite his lack of good looks and the grainy, digi-cam look of Anonymous and you have everything you need to for an hour and a half of purgatorial performance-art/gay-movie Hell.
Plot: Todd's (Verow's name for the on-screen cold fish he plays) relationship with John (Daniel Schell) started well, and went downhill rapidly from there. Neither seems to have any form of interest in the other anymore, but both are so inert and meek that they stay together anyway. Todd works a boring job at a movie house, and is addicted to internet, phone and in-the-flesh anonymous sex of any description. Todd indulges his addiction day and night, and when John drops in to visit him at work one day and catches him out in the crapper where Todd has his mouth stuffed with some other bloke's cock, John beats the daylights out of Todd and leaves him bleeding all over, face down on the floor. The movie could easily have ended here, but unfortunately, it doesn't and we're blessed with a full hour more of watching Todd go about his pathetically lonely, aimless existence.
Notes to Todd: a) Don't find your job challenging or interesting? Look for another one, b) Can't stop cheating on your boyfriend 24/7 and are over the relationship anyway? Don't whinge when he gives you the flick and changes the locks, c) If you're going to spend a lot of time in front of a camera naked or semi-naked, it's best not to look like a cross between William Hurt and William H Macy and d) Who gives a fuck?
As per usual, interesting themes around disconnection, the thrill of random sex versus the bitter fatigue of the never-ending chase, the warmth of having a lover versus the stagnancy of familiarity and so on are buried under a sludge pile of poor camera and sound work and a make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach to storyline and character development. We might have cared about Todd, certainly, we might relate to many of his predicaments, but simply pouring them into a poorly-made film and and reeling them off scene by scene isn't really a productive exercise for anybody. Melancholy shots of displaced lead characters walking against the direction of pedestrian traffic arrows are clumsy obvious metaphors that are no substitute for well drafted scripts and less deluded self-indulgence on the part of the writer-director-star. Cameos by Hispanic trannies who resemble Cher don't really cut much ice either.
The one thing that makes Anonymous worth watching is an especially hilarious scene that has Todd performing some sort of ludicrous twirling striptease dance in the privacy of his office. Not since Jeffrey has such a scene made me laugh so loudly and heartily and that's what won the film its one percentage point.
