| Dog Tags | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Damion Dietz |
| Written by | Damion Dietz |
| Produced by | Damion Dietz, Stephanie Kirchen |
| Starring | Paul Preiss Bart Fletcher |
| Cinematography | Terence Pratt |
| Edited by | Denise Howard |
| Music by | Jeffery Alan Jones |
Release date |
|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Dog Tags is a 2008 American film written and directed by Damion Dietz and starring Paul Preiss and Bart Fletcher. [1]
The film is the coming of age story of Nate Merritt (played by Paul Preiss), who stuck in bad relationships with his fiancée and mother decides to enlist in the military, although he is not sure. In the midst of all this turmoil in his life, he meets Andy Forte (played by Bart Fletcher), a carefree gay man, and the two immediately strike a chord and become soul mates trying to help each other through their dilemmas and troubled youths.
Both men have domineering mothers and live in broken families. Nate's mother Deb (Candy Clark) is a single mother who hides the real identity of the father Gene (Hoyt Richards) from her son, although the alcoholic Gene still continues to live a destitute life in the vicinity in a one-room shack surviving on permanent disability cheques and doing odd jobs on the side. Andy's divorced mother Louise (Diane Davisson) is a former actress that had to leave everything behind to take care of Andy and Andy's son Travis blaming her son for her own predicament of a stay-home caretaker considering Andy an almost absent irresponsible father.
Nate has to deal with Trish Huddle (Amy Lindsay) a philandering fiancée, who is anxious to conceive a son from any military man, almost guiding Nate step by step in the mechanics of a sexual ritual to achieve this. She has no qualms to have intercourse in Nate's own residence during his absence with other married military men to achieve having the desired boy as Nate discovers when he calls in home unexpectedly. Meanwhile, Nate wants desperately to find his real father, despite grave objections from his mother. He is led to think his father is a married military man called Mark Dessau (Keythe Farley), who had a long-term relationship with Deb, Nate's mother. Meanwhile, Andy is fighting his own demons and is constantly haunted by the memories of his first lover, a Marine (played by Justin Mortelliti). Andy is unable to get over the loss of his first love and fails in all his other intimate relationships, despite the fact his relation with the Marine, though intense, never had any chance of survival with the Marine just abandoning him to his misery. When a new man tries to become intimate with him during a disastrous get-together scene, Andy confesses his incurable love to the Marine and refuses to go further, which prompts the man to tell him frankly: "once a marine, always a marine". Andy is confused by his aspirations to build a future away from home, his sexual orientation and his responsibilities as a father.
After meeting Nate, during a very bizarre circumstance at the residence of an amateur porn director "Uncle Sam" (played by Barry J. Ratcliffe), who invites them to his house to shoot a pornographic scene for money, Nate and Andy leave the house horrified. When Nate offers Andy help with starting his decrepit car, the two strike an immediate friendship with Andy clearly seeing in Nate a reflection of the Marine he once loved. After learning about Nate's obsession to find his true father, the two journey together on a quest to find him. They also find each other and discover how to confront their true "callings." The two engage to explore their own past, present and future amidst brief flashbacks they see throughout the movie.
The bond strengthens between Nate and Andy including sexual affinity between the two, awakening Nate to his own sexuality. Nate decides to confront Mark Dessau (Keythe Farley), his supposed "father", but discovers this was just an illusion. It turns out Mark went out with Nate's mother only after Nate had been conceived. This puts Nate into further despair as he realizes that his mother always deceived him. In his moment of vulnerability, his resistance is down and he easy gives in to having sex with Andy. The scene uses a montage effect where Nate is replaced by Andy's first Marine-love who went away, as Andy responds to both the real man and the man in his memory. The next morning Nate is confused but not weirded out. "There is no should or supposed to", Andy says, "What does Nate want to do?" [2]
Confronted by Nate for a last time and upon an ultimatum to his mother that he will quit his prospective military career, Deb finally reveals that Gene is the real father. In Gene's shack, Nate's search is culminated with he finding a childhood photograph of himself in an album kept by Gene, with Nate being the result of a sexual relation between Gene and Deb at a drive-in movie. The film ends at the drive-in itself with Nate searching his soul with what he has to do with his own life. It is clear he chooses the military path, despite desire and futile efforts of Andy who tries to convince Nate that the two live together as partners and to take care of Andy's kid Travis. The departure shots in which Andy reluctantly leaves Nate alone to decide for his destiny, is a repetition, and a deja-vu of his earlier experience with his first-Marine love, exactly as the party friend had told Andy at the beginning of the film, "once a marine, always a marine."
Asked about how and why he wrote the story, he said in an interview with Time Out Australia: "I was having a conversation with a marine and we were very, very different people and I learnt a little bit about him, his history and background and so this movie was inspired by his story." [3]
The Village Voice noted that "in 'Dog Tags', Dietz gets serious and is all the better for it... he has freed himself as a writer".
Bastard Out of Carolina is a 1996 American drama film made by Showtime Networks, directed by Anjelica Huston. It is based on the 1992 novel by Dorothy Allison and adapted for the screen by Anne Meredith. Jena Malone stars in her debut as a poor, physically abused and sexually molested girl.
Bat Boy: The Musical is an American horror rock musical with a book by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming and music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe, based on a June 23, 1992 Weekly World News story about a half-boy, half-bat, dubbed "Bat Boy", who grew up living in a cave.
On October 6, 2005, an alleged sex party occurred on Lake Minnetonka with seventeen members of the Minnesota Vikings football team; including quarterback Daunte Culpepper, Fred Smoot, Mewelde Moore, Pat Williams, Bryant McKinnie, Nate Burleson, Ralph Brown, Jermaine Wiggins, Troy Williamson, Travis Taylor, Kevin Williams, Lance Johnstone, Moe Williams, and Willie Offord. Two houseboats were rented and some, but not all, of the players performed sexual acts in front of crew members. Prostitutes from Atlanta and Florida were flown in for the party, in order to perform the sex acts. There were at least ninety people on the two boats, and Smoot later estimated that there were 100 women present. An anonymous former player of the Vikings claimed that this is not the first time that such an incident had happened. The scandal has sometimes been referred to as the Love Boat scandal after the television program, or as the Smoot Boat Scandal in the news.
"Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy" is the tenth episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It was first broadcast on Fox in the United States on December 4, 1994. In the episode, Homer and Marge's sex life wanes, so Grampa restores it with a homemade revitalizing tonic. He and Homer travel town-to-town selling the elixir, but they become estranged after Grampa reveals that Homer's conception was unintentional.
Petals on the Wind is a novel written by V. C. Andrews in 1980. It is the second book in the Dollanganger series. The timeline takes place from the siblings' successful escape in November 1960 to the fall of 1975. The book, like the others in the series, was a number one best-seller in North America in the early 1980s. In 2014, it was adapted into a Lifetime original movie.
Nathan Blaine Fletcher is an American politician who most recently served on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors for the 4th District since 2019, serving as chair from 2021 to 2023. On March 26, 2023, he announced he would seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism. On March 29, 2023, news broke of a lawsuit by an employee of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System alleging that Fletcher had sexually assaulted her and that she was then fired after resisting his advances, and that evening, he announced his resignation from the board of supervisors, effective at the end of his medical leave.
Charles Bartholomew Bass is a fictional character in the novel and television series Gossip Girl. In the TV series, he is portrayed by British actor Ed Westwick. Although he is a secondary antagonist in the original book series, the TV series elevates him to an antiheroic main character, and the male lead of the show, where he is noted for his financial ambition, hedonism and personal style.
Whale Music is a novel by Canadian writer Paul Quarrington. It was first published by Doubleday Canada in 1989.
Double Harness (1933) is an American pre-Code film starring Ann Harding and William Powell. It was based on the play of the same name by Edward Poor Montgomery. A young woman maneuvers a lazy playboy into marrying her.
William Frederick, was Count of Nassau-Dietz, Stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe.
In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex refers to a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father, first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. A daughter's attitude of desire for her father and hostility toward her mother is referred to as the feminine Oedipus complex. The general concept was considered by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), although the term itself was introduced in his paper A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men (1910).
Henriette Catherine of Nassau was princess consort of Anhalt-Dessau by marriage to John George II, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, and regent of Anhalt-Dessau from 1693 to 1698 during the minority of her son Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau.
"The Debarted" is the 55th episode of the CW television series, Gossip Girl. It was also the twelfth episode of the show's third season. The episode was written by executive producer and one of the series' creator Stephanie Savage and directed by Jason Ensler. It originally aired on Monday, December 7, 2009 on the CW.
Paul Preiss is an American actor, model, director and producer.
"This Is the Way the World Ends" is the twelfth and final episode of the sixth season of the Showtime television series Dexter. It premiered on Showtime on December 18, 2011. In this episode, Dexter finally confronts the Doomsday Killer, Travis Marshall.
Thomas "Tom" Nash is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Home and Away, played by Graeme Squires. He made his first screen appearance during the episode broadcast on 18 February 1998. Tom was introduced to Home and Away along with his family. Zac Drayson was originally cast in the role, but when the producers thought he would be more suitable for Will Smith, Squires received the part. The actor decided to leave Home and Away in early 2000 after two years and he made his screen exit on 16 May 2000. Squires returned to film the show's 3,000th episode special in 2001.
Travis McGee is a 1983 American TV movie based on the 1978 novel The Empty Copper Sea by John D. MacDonald. It was the second film adaptation of the Travis McGee series. It was made by Warner Bros.
If Loving You Is Wrong is an American prime time television soap opera created, executive produced, written, and directed by Tyler Perry. The series premiered on September 9, 2014 and ended on June 16, 2020. It focuses on the lives and relationships of a group of five husbands and wives who live on the same street in the fictional community of Maxine. The show stars Amanda Clayton, Edwina Findley, Heather Hemmens, Zulay Henao, and April Parker Jones as the five female leads Alex, Kelly, Marcie, Esperanza and Natalie on "their quest to find love in the midst of managing very complex lives."