For years, Neil Drumming was a successful journalist, most notably writing for Entertainment Weekly. Now, he’s jumped to the world of film. Set in Brooklyn on the night of Barack Obama’s first election, Drumming’s directorial debut, Big Words, is about three former friends (they were in a semi-successful hip-hop group in the ’90s but had a falling-out) who are so caught up in the “old days” that they can’t focus on the present and the future. I chatted with Neil during the Frameline Film Festival back in June about the process of making the film, not wanting to cast rappers, not having a political agenda, whether nostalgia is a bad thing or not, and more.

Big Words is on tour now and plays tonight at the Houston Museum of African-American Culture.

For more dates and information, visit affrm.com/big-words

Let’s talk a bit about your background. You worked at Entertainment Weekly…
Yeah, I did that for six years, and it reminded me of why I went to film school. I went to film school at USC, but I never pursued film after I graduated.

Why not?
Intimidation. Fear. I didn’t have any money. I was in California—I’m from New York—and I didn’t have a good support structure there. I had my friends, but they were just potheads who rapped, and I didn’t make friends with film school kids. My personality just didn’t work out that way. When I graduated I had a film school degree in writing, but I had no way of making a movie.  I ended up moving back to the east coast. I lived in D.C., which is where I got my start in writing. I got back to New York and I worked for Blaze, worked for Vibe, worked at CMJ for a while, then I worked at Entertainment Weekly.

I was covering music, and then I went to film. I was covering film and I met a lot of people—Will Smith, a lot of directors—doing interviews, you know, doing the job. It reminded me of why I went to film school. I thought, “I don’t want to talk to other people about their work. I want to do my own work.”

You got the itch.
Yeah. In 2008 I quit the job and started writing screenplays. It’s difficult to get a movie made, to get a screenplay bought or produced—everybody knows that. I’m not going to whine about it. I took the indie route. We got financing—by financing I mean me and my friends, our parents and our wives and shit (laughs).

The impetus to make Big Words independently was…you know, it had been optioned once by another indie producer. What really happened was I worked on a much bigger screenplay with a big producer, and that project was frustrating. I thought what I had in the movie was pretty commercial, but I was pushed to keep making it more commercial. In the end, the reason it just failed is that the producer gave up on the notion of it. “This kind of thing doesn’t work in the market.” That’s not the kind of thing you want to hear as an artist. I don’t think about the market that much. I think about what I think is good, and hopefully the audience will find me.

No disrespect to this producer. I’m still in contact with her. The thing is, when you’re making a movie for 12 million dollars or up, you have to start thinking about the market. I understand where she was coming from. But, for me…I like the notion of spending less and having more freedom.

Big Words was a script I’d had for a long time, and my producer (who was working on the big project with me) said, “I’ve always loved that script.” Finally, we said, “Let’s try to make it.” We had an up-and-coming, hot young video director (who you probably know) attached, but that didn’t work out. Even though we didn’t end too amicably, he was one of the people who said to me, “You want too much control over this movie. You should probably make it yourself.” I didn’t want to hear that.

You didn’t want to direct?
No. I went to film school for writing. The Big Words script is probably my favorite thing I’ve written in my entire life. I love it to death. I wrote it, and it started circulating. The response was amazing. When I got my actors, that was it. I contacted Dorian (Missick) and he was always onboard. He loved the movie. Gbenga (Akinnagbe) is a friend of mine. I asked Jean Grae…

It’s so cool that Jean Grae is in the movie. Perfect.
It’s funny; I never wanted rappers playing rappers [in the movie.] I wanted the best actors I could get to play these guys.

You were afraid they wouldn’t be able to pull it off?
I think Mos (Def) is a great actor. It’s just…maybe they’d take it too personally. The characters in the movie are flawed; they’re not great people. I didn’t want anybody who was taking it so personally that they couldn’t bring it across in their performance. I don’t think most rappers are as good at acting as…actors (laughs). Dorian, Gbenga, Darien (Sills-Evans)—those guys are actors. That’s their job. They’re not dividing their time between that and something else.

A big theme in the movie is nostalgia and how people get caught up in it, like a trap. Do you think nostalgia is a bad thing?
No, I just think that in hip-hop it’s a funny thing. People see the movie, come up to me and say, “Whatever happened to the Golden Age, man? That’s what hip-hop is about!” I love that period, but if you think about it realistically, that’s the minority of the time. When people were talking about that positivity shit, that was like, three years. Hip-hop is, like, 35 years old. The Golden Era isn’t “what hip-hop is about.” It’s just a small part of it. De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest—that was five years, max.

I needed De La as a kid. That’s why there’s such a big thing about De La in the movie, because it’s personal for me. Public Enemy was too angry for me. I had too many white friends to listen to Public Enemy. That shit scared me. LL Cool J was dope, but he was too macho. Kool G Rap was too gangsta. When De La came out, I thought, “These are weird dudes like me.”

I’m really nostalgic, but I don’t want to force that shit on anybody else. The movie’s not about saying, “This shit’s better than this.” All I’m saying is, people had a period in their life that meant something to them, and sometimes it’s really hard to let it go. The Big Chill was a big influence on Big Words. High Fidelity, too. Movies about a time in your life that meant something to you.

Hip-hop is a young man’s game. It’s a straight man’s game. It’s a man’s game. You touch on all this in the movie.
As I got older, I started to think about all this. What if I’m married or I’m gay, and I love this music, but I’m listening to it in a different era now, because I’m older. I’ve realized that a lot of those things that are in the music are in conflict with who I am as a person. I wrestle with this with the character James. How do you rectify something that’s in your bones (hip-hop) with who you are now when they don’t necessarily go together? I didn’t want to tackle it with too heavy a hand, but it was something I was thinking about for years. I say this all the time—out of all the rappers that have grown up, how have none of them come out? There are no gay rappers. It’s just a ridiculous notion. I thought about what it would be like to grow up in this hip-hop thing and come out as an older man.

Big Words originally had four characters in the group. The fourth guy was gay. He was sort of the backdrop for everyone meeting up. When I rewrote the script, I decided I wanted less people because it would cost less money. I still wanted to approach the notion of one of them being gay. There was another character, a straight man named James; he was married and was contemplating leaving his wife. Gay or straight, that feeling of wanting something else could apply to anyone, so I combined those two characters. It scared the shit out of me to do it, but I did it. I handed the script to Matt (Keene Smith, producer), and he was like, “You’re crazy! It’s a gay movie now!” I was like, “Well, no it’s not. It’s about three guys!”

Is the “chinky-eyed” scene taken from real life? [In the scene, Malik says he gets “chinky-eyed” when he smokes weed, and Malik’s friend and his Asian girlfriend get offended.]
Yeah. I wasn’t there, but every single one of my friends was there for it. I was on a business trip, and I got the story from five different people. It had happened years ago, but I wrote it into the script. The guy who actually did say that just saw the movie and said, “I can’t believe you actually put that in…” My producer, Matt’s wife is Filipino. We talked a lot about that scene. He was like, “I don’t know, man…”

I said, “Look—the movie’s called Big Words. Part of the subtext is that there are words that have a serious impact.” The fact that she reacts to that word, but no one reacts to “nigger” the whole movie…It’s just something I wanted to say. It’s just interesting to me that some of us accept certain words that should have the same impact as others.

You touch on a lot of weighty subjects in the movie, but you just touch on them. You’re not heavy-handed.
I don’t like things that are heavy-handed. I set the film in one day because I’m a firm believer that a lot of films have too much change. Like, a person who hates someone will come around by the end of two hours. That’s ridiculous. I don’t think people change much at all. I figured, if I set this movie in one day, the subtle differences in them at the end of the day would be more interesting than if they had some sort of revelation, which none of them do.

I like that they don’t arrive at a big epiphany at the end. I almost saw it coming, but it never happened, which is great.
You know how I knew who I didn’t want working on the movie? Anyone who asked me, “Why don’t they get back together?”

Yeah, like they expect the guys to end up rhyming in the middle of the street in a cipher.
If that’s the ending you want, go see Brown Sugar or some shit! (laughs)

[Neil went on to talk about why the movie makes no big political statements, despite it taking place on the night Barack Obama was elected president.]
I’ll be honest with you, part of it is fear. Sometimes you don’t know exactly how you feel about stuff. I don’t always want to make a statement. I skip the whole agenda thing. I don’t really have an agenda. I’m not even a very political person. A lot of people in Q&A’s will ask me how I feel about Obama, and I’m like, “The movie isn’t about Obama at all!” People ask me specifically, “If you don’t have an agenda, what is the reason you set it against the election?” I don’t think people like the answer, but the answer is this: I wanted to make a movie about self-absorbed black guys. I figured the biggest thing to put them dimensionally opposed to would be the one time when they felt like everybody in the city was on the same team. Everybody was optimistic. These guys are not nihilistic, but they’re in a very negative personal head space. It’s just a contrast.

It’s just a device.
Right. I think people want there to be more to it than that, but I really don’t have an agenda. It’s barely in the movie at all. On that actual night, I didn’t even leave my house.

The film isn’t about the election, it’s not a gay movie, it’s not a hip-hop movie. Like you said, it’s about guys who can’t let go. Is it a difficult sell?
Yeah, it is. We’re not actually selling it—we’re just showing it to people now—but to get people to appreciate it, I describe it in terms of other movies like that. The Big Chill is not a Motown movie, but it’s an homage to that time period. Dazed and Confused is not a rock ‘n roll movie per sé—it’s a coming-of-age movie. Big Chill is about baby boomers, right? I don’t necessarily relate to baby boomers on a superficial level, but when I see that movie, I understand it and relate to it on a personal level. The Big Chill, Dazed and Confused, American Graffiti are all specific about their references. Sometimes, the more specific you are about your reference points, the more universal it’ll be.

Bwakaw

Veteran Filipino actor Eddie Garcia puts on a staggeringly heartfelt performance as Rene, an unimaginably (and hilarious) grumpy old man with a dream-crushing mean streak. Bwakaw is set in an unremarkable (though picturesque) village in the Philippines, Rene spreads his Scrooginess to everyone he meets, even the nice ones. A neighbor delivers a meal to him as a friendly gesture, with a smile. “Perfect timing” he replies, as he as he feeds the offering to his dog, Bwakaw. Why so rotten? Well, he came out of the closet when he was sixty, subsequently realizing he’d been deceiving his sweet girlfriend of 15 years the whole time. What’s worse, he since hasn’t felt the touch of a man, due to coming out at an advanced age. “Do you know how hard that is?” he whimpers in confessional. Constant reminders of death stalk and surround him, exacerbating his bitterness.

“Why do you do nothing but wait for your death?” a friend asks. “At my age, what else can I do?” sighs Rene, hope stripped bare.

Jun Luna should be beaming with pride, as he’s directed a film that swims through you like a chill, striking every nerve along the way. The drama hits hard, charged with elemental power. Despite the emotional heft, it’s also wickedly funny—Garcia’s crotchety snips and insults are certifiably golden. I’ve not seen a better film come out of the Philippines, and I’d urge anyone typically dissuaded by world cinema to give Bwakaw a watch—it’ll stir you to the core.

RATING: 8.1

The Campaign

Documenting the impassioned 2008 campaign to battle Proposition 8—an amendment to California state constitution that states marriage can only be between a man and woman. The Campaign is a surprisingly prosaic documentary about the furious, closely contested and polarizing national debate. Director Christie Herring had her cameras on the front lines in San Francisco during the fight against Prop 8, and was there to capture the heartbreaking defeat as the amendment passed on Election Day. The film simultaneously recaps the history of the struggle for same sex marriage, touching on the trailblazing of the Mattachine, the inspiration of Harvey Milk, and the infuriating antagonism of Anita Bryant.

The subject matter is sure to stir up emotions in just about everybody (though the film ironically explores how voter apathy might have been the campaign’s downfall), but the presentation of the hard-fought battle is so conventional it hurts. We see the heartbreak and tireless work of the campaign volunteers, but the filmmaking doesn’t match their passion. It lacks the sense of urgency to inspire people. Nevertheless, The Campaign is a must watch, for the sake of our country’s future. I just hope it’s effective enough to move the needle.

RATING: 6.5

Big Words

John, James, and Malik, three former members of a ‘90s New York hip-hop crew find themselves stunted by their inability to let go of the past in Neil Drumming’s bittersweet Big Words. The trio had a painful, unexplained falling-out years ago and haven’t kept in touch since—but a party on 2008’s historic Election Night serendipitously brings them together and forces them to confront their old demons while the rest of the country looks ahead, full of hope. If you’re expecting a sentimental reunion flick here, you’re (thankfully) dead wrong.

Director Neil Drummer exhibits a high level of taste in his feature debut. Big Words approaches a slew of interesting ideas—the stunting effects of nostalgia, black alpha-male homophobia, the difficulties of self-reconciliation—and Drumming is tasteful in the way he subtly introduces these ideas, tossing them up gently for us to ponder amongst ourselves. The film doesn’t have an agenda, nor does it feel like it’s trying to be profound. The actors do a good job all around (Darien Sills-Evans is a standout), and where the characters end up at the end is pleasantly unexpected. Big Words is a thoughtful assortment of conversation-starters set to dope ‘90s hip-hop beats.

Stay tuned for our full review and an extended interview with director Neil Drumming.

C.O.G.

At long last, David Sedaris has allowed one of his essays to be adapted to film. With director Kyle Patrick Alvarez (Easier With Practice) at the helm, C.O.G. is a respectably interesting indie soul-seeker drama, but it’s unfortunately far inferior to Sedaris’ original tale. Alvarez manages to dampen Sedaris’ almost mythical characters with writing that’s thin and unworthy of the source material, though he does extract worthy performances out of his fine cast.

Jonathan Groff plays David, a pompous, preppy Yale student (he lets you know with the “Y” on his sweater) who travels West on a Greyhound with the mission of “getting his hands dirty”, battling his long-repressed homosexuality, and finding happiness. He begins his odyssey by picking apples on an apple farm (beautifully shot), run by the hilariously ignorant Dean Stockwell. Groff’s cockiness is believable, though he never crosses into unlikable territory. There’s a boyish innocence to him that he retains throughout the film, no matter how brash he gets. There’s an interesting mix of sexual and religious confusion wrapped up in David, and Groff conveys the inner conflict nicely.

From here, David gets moving. He’s promoted to the apple sorting plant where he meets a friendly, flannel-wearing, blue collar guy named Curly (played with panache by Corey Stoll) who…well…let’s just say he comes on a little strong. Pretty strong. Very strong. “This is my dildo collection!” strong. David also meets a shit-talking apple-sorter, Debbie (Dale Dickey), and a legless Gulf War vet named Jon (the great character actor Denis O’Hare) who introduces him to the titular trio of letters and attempts to convert him to Christianity.

Jon is a tornado of rage, jealousy, small-mindedness, and unwavering faith, though he’s got enough kindness in him to take David under his wing. It’s a complex, ever-evolving role, and watching O’Hare handle it with such conviction is a joy. The scenes between Groff and O’Hare are the film’s best—their companionship is touching, yet it always feels volatile. The rest of the characters aren’t given much to do, though the actors make the best of what they’re given. The episodic format of the story makes every moment feel transient, fleeting, so that nothing ever really sticks. Characters come, they go, we move on.

Alvarez makes Oregon look divine, with its leafy landscapes and tranquil fields highlighted whenever appropriate. There are several electric moments scattered throughout C.O.G. (mostly involving O’Hare), but the tedious pace of David’s journey is unsatisfactory. Each potential friend David meets turns out to be something shockingly different than what he expected, which feeds the film’s main theme: Everyone’s got fatal flaws, but they deserve to be loved nonetheless. We should love these characters, but with how ambivalently Alvarez presents them, they’re hard to even remember.

RATING: 6.7

Breaking the Girls

Director Jamie Babbit offers up what has got to be tackiest, most titillating version of Strangers on a Train ever made. Agnes Bruckner plays Sara, a driven law student who bartends to pay the bills. On the same night Sara gets fired for stealing from the tip jar (her arch-nemesis, Brooke, ratted her out), an enigmatic seductress named Alex (Madeline Zima) treats Sara to a wild night of debauchery, cathartic plate smashing, and steamy swimming pool sex. During pillow talk, Alex half-jokingly suggests the classic “murder trade” scenario, in which she murders Brooke for Sara, and Sara murders Nina, Alex’s stepmom and bane of her existence. Sara laughs off the proposition, but when Brooke is found dead in the school swimming pool, she finds herself unwillingly entangled in Alex’s murderous plot.

Babbit showed real talent in the cutely clever But I’m a Cheerleader, but Breaking the Girls bears a stronger resemblance to her run on the late-night MTV sex-soap, Undressed. There are a lot of girl-on-girl sex scenes here (more like make-out scenes), but they feel empty and uninteresting. Zima and Bruckner are gorgeous, but these scenes lack any kind of sexiness due to the film’s trashy 90’s TV movie presentation. There’s an irksome yellowish hue to the film that makes everything look “blech”. Even in scenes shot in broad daylight, the mustard tinting made me feel queasy.

The second half of the film gets quite plotty, which is good and bad. Bad, because every revelation, every twist (there are a lot of them, thrown at us rapid-fire) is so convoluted it’s damn near laughable. I’m not one to get hung up on plot holes, but there are so many here it’s dizzying. The good news is that these zigs and zags do generate a respectable sense of momentum, and if you numb your mind to the idiocy of it all for a bit, you might find yourself actually getting caught up in the story. The problem is you won’t be rewarded for your efforts, as the ending we arrive at is predictable and not nearly as emotional as it’s supposed to be.

The sad thing about all this is that the cast is very, very good. Bruckner fits the role of ambitious heroine like a glove, and Zima is as deadly and intoxicating as always. There’s a tricky sense of mischief to her eyes that always seems to draw me in. The always solid Shawn Ashmore is wasted here and amounts to nothing more than a walking plot device. This isn’t a terrible movie, but its ambition is sadly unmatched by its execution, damning it to the land of straight-to-video.

RATING: 5.2

I returned to the Castro Theater last night for the fourth time in a week (last weekend was The Hitchcock 9), though theater fatigue wasn’t an issue. The Castro Theatre was absolutely bananas for the opening night of the largest and most established LGBT film festival in existence, the Frameline Film Festival (Frameline37). San Francisco’s Castro district is the country’s epicenter for LGBT culture, and the Castro Theatre was bursting with pride, specifically pride for queer cinema.

After the theater’s resident organ player finished his pre-flick set (old-timey stuff never gets old), the lights dimmed and we were treated to a wonderful presentation of every Frameline promo video since the 15th festival in 1991. I was trippin’ watching the neon colors and slap bass tunes of the early promos evolve into the slicker, more artsy promos of the last decade. The promos were funny, bad-ass, sexy nostalgia nuggets that were a hell of a lot of fun to scarf down. After the marathon, the audience was beaming.

Next, festival Executive Director KC Price and other members of the organization detailed the history of the fest and why it’s been the most respected queer film festival for decades. San Francisco is one of the tightest, most supportive communities in the country, and you could feel it in the air as the listed off the countless festival supporters and donors.

Director Stacie Passon and producer Rose Troche took the stage next to introduce the opening night film, the much buzzed about Concussion. The film has gotten a lot of praise and support since it played at Sundance. It’s since been picked up by the Weinstein Company and will be opening in theaters this fall. Troche, a previous participant in the festival, gushed about the love and all-around good vibes she felt from the San Francisco community. Passon’s speech was more brief, ending her maybe two minutes of thank-you’s by throwing her arms up and yelling out to the packed house, “Let’s watch a movie!”

Concussion

Concussion tells a familiar tale of a sexually frustrated suburban housewife, eyes wandering, who takes on a double life after discovering a lustful outlet in the big city. Stacie Passon’s debut feature, however, doesn’t feel trite in the slightest. The dynamic is shaken up a bit here, as Passon’s heroine is a lesbian—the film deals with various feminist issues and has only one male character (refreshing). The film is, though, much more about universal issues like loneliness, the depression of advanced age, marriage, self-discovery, and honesty.

After Abby—a suburban, lesbian, stay-at-home mom with two kids—sustains a concussion after getting clocked in the head with a baseball thrown by her son, something is shaken loose inside her. She’s suddenly aware of how empty her life feels—she stays home, vacuums, exercises, cooks, picks up the kids. She’s hit a dead end. “I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I don’t want this”, she whimpers. She’s so sexually deprived (her wife’s been neglecting her in bed) that she resorts to phoning a call girl in the city. Then she thinks, “Why pay for sex when I could get paid for sex?”

Visually, Concussion is stunning, with Passon and David Kruta’s (DP) evocative and moody use of color and shadow doing a wonderful job of mirroring Abby’s mood. Robin Weigert gets A LOT to do here as Abby, appearing in nearly every frame. She shows discipline—the tiniest, most subtle twitches and squints on her face speak volumes. Concussion, though perhaps an atypical film in several ways, is a film anybody can relate to. In her debut feature, Passon shows as much promise as I’ve seen in any new director this year.

Look for our full review of the film in a few months when it releases this October.

LGBTQ cinema will get the bright spotlight it very much deserves at Frameline37, the oldest, most respected queer cinema showcase in the world. The festival runs from June 20-30 in San Francisco at the Castro Theatre, Roxie Theater, and Victoria Theater, and in Berkeley at Rialto Cinemas.

Queer cinema is ever-growing, and the issues, questions, and cultures explored in its films are key to promoting acceptance, understanding, and education about the LGBTQ community. There are far too few queer representatives in film, and Frameline helps to change the landscape. It’s also going to be a hell of a lot of fun, with films from across the globe in every genre, from drama to comedy to action to documentary.

Here are a few of the films I’m looking forward to watching at the festival:

Concussion

The festival’s opening night film is the sexy, introspective debut feature of director/writer Stacie Passon, Concussion. Robin Weigert plays a 40-something lesbian stay-at-home mom who finds her cushy suburban life to be unsatisfying, both emotionally and sexually. After getting clocked on the head with a baseball by her son, her motivation to liberate herself from the doldrums of home life is amplified. She starts a project renovating a loft in the city, and an opportunity comes along that allows her to do something she’s never done before—pay for sex. Feeling sexy for the first time in ages, she goes even further by jumping to the other side, becoming a call girl herself. Still, at home her family waits. It’s always great to see a female-dominated cast, and Concussion looks to be a stirring exploration of sexual depravity and suburban melancholy.

GBF

One can get a little emotionally drained at film festivals, shuffling from one life-affirming, gut-wrenching, tear-jerking indie flick to another. I don’t expect this to be the case at Frameline37, mostly due to the number of fun, gaytastic features like Hot Guys With Guns, The Gayanator, and this, director Darren Stein’s GBF, a high school comedy about gay BFF’s Brent and Tanner planning their epically glittery and homo-tacular coming out. Stein’s track record isn’t exactly glowing—his most notable film is 1999’s camp-trash Jawbreaker, which was absolutely destroyed by the critics—but honestly, I don’t care. I’m going into GBF (Gay Best Friend) looking to laugh my ass off so hard I spill my popcorn.

C.O.G.

Jonathan Groff stars as a cocksure city boy who travels from Connecticut to Oregon to get his hands dirty (for the first time) on an apple farm in C.O.G., the very first screen adaptation of a David Sedaris short story. Finally! Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut Easier With Practice, C.O.G. has all the trappings of a typical indie flick—a lonely protagonist with a weird job in a small, church-going town, lots of pretty landscape shots, eccentric white people—but with the promise Alvarez showed in his debut, C.O.G. is likely to be another indie treasure.

The Campaign

Same-sex couples won the right to marry in California in 2008, but had their rights yanked away from them later that year in November when Proposition 8—a state constitutional amendment that states only a man and woman can marry—passed. The Campaign takes a close look at the fervent battle against Prop 8 by gay rights activists and supporters. The film also examines the history of the fight for gay rights from the ‘60s to now. Prop 8 has recently been challenged as unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court is reviewing Prop 8 at the time of this writing. The Supreme Court was expected to make a decision on gay marriage this past Monday. Their decision is now expected to be announced on Thursday, opening night of the festival. It’s hard to think of a time this film would be more relevant.

In the Name Of

In the Name Of is a Polish film about a priest wrestling with his homosexuality. One would think the premise would result in a scandalous, high-drama film, but from what I’ve heard, the film takes a disciplined approach. It won the Teddy award at the Berlin Film Festival for best LGBT feature and has been receiving a lot of praise for its beautiful cinematography. It’ll be interesting to see the controversial issue of church and homosexuality explored by Malgowska Szumowska, an Eastern European director.