Dream Boy | |
---|---|
Directed by | James Bolton |
Screenplay by | James Bolton |
Based on | Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley |
Produced by | James Bolton Herb Hamsher |
Starring | Stephan Bender Max Roeg |
Cinematography | Sarah Levy |
Edited by | Annette Davey Chris Houghton |
Music by | Richard Buckner |
Production companies | Mettray Reformatory Pictures Here! Films |
Distributed by | Regent Releasing |
Release date |
|
Running time | 90 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $1.2 million[ citation needed ] |
Box office | $6 million[ citation needed ] |
Dream Boy is a 2008 gay-themed Southern Gothic drama film written and directed by James Bolton, and based on Jim Grimsley's 1995 novel of the same name. It follows two gay teenagers falling in love in the rural South in the late 1970s.
This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.(April 2019) |
Fifteen-year-old Nathan Davies (Stephan Bender) moves to St. Francisville, Louisiana, a small Southern town with his parents (Thomas Jay Ryan and Diana Scarwid) and starts to befriend the older boy next door, Roy (Maximillian Roeg), fellow high school student and bus driver, who is in a relationship with Evelyn (Rooney Mara). Nathan and Roy start to develop their relationship by helping each other with school work at Nathan's house. While Roy is teaching Nathan how to solve an algebra problem, Nathan touches his hand. Roy pulls away at first, but then takes hold of Nathan's hand.
After they finish their work, the boys go for a walk in the woods, finding an old cemetery, where they stop and start kissing. They undress down to everything but socks and underwear, and lie in an embrace together. There is a lot of soft touching and feeling between the two boys. The relationship between Nathan and his father is revealed to be a little strange and full of tension. One morning Roy pulls the bus into a part in the woods and they kiss and Nathan touches Roy. Roy asks if Nathan has ever done this with anyone before, and he promises he never has. Roy takes Nathan swimming with Burke and Randy, but Nathan admits he can't swim. While watching Roy, Burke threatens to throw him in the water, but Roy stops him. While Roy is driving them home, he pulls onto the side of the road and they start kissing. They undress in the truck and Nathan climbs on Roy's lap and they start to kiss. Roy angrily stops him, asking "who taught [him] to screw like that". Nathan swears "no one". Roy pulls out and gets dressed
When Nathan gets home that night, his father wants to know if he had a good time. Nathan is on the brink of tears as he answers his father. He ties a string up to his dresser drawer and bedpost, tucks his pillows under his sheets, and moves to the floor to sleep. In the night he hears a thud and runs from his room, because it's his father sneaking in. It is later revealed that his father had touched him in the past inappropriately. Nathan sleeps outside and comes home only for meals, but returns to his tree outside after eating.
Roy finds him and offers him a place to sleep in his family's barn. The next morning, Nathan goes home for breakfast and his father catches him, yelling at him to not run from him, but Nathan's mother interrupts and he runs to the school bus. Later, Roy tells Nathan they're going camping with Burke and Randy that weekend. That night, Roy tells ghost stories around the campfire, and in their tent, Nathan gives Roy a blowjob, and Roy asks him if he minds when Roy doesn't do those things back to him, and Nathan says he doesn't mind. Hiking through the woods, the boys find an old plantation house. They go inside to investigate, and Nathan hears a voice call his name, resembling his father's. They then find cloth with what looks like to be blood on it, and they smell sulfur (which Nathan says is the smell of the Devil), and the boys see a shadow move up the stairs.
Burke takes the flashlight from Roy and goes to investigate with Randy. Roy and Nathan go into a bedroom and talk, and Nathan says he feels as if he'll never leave that house. He hears the voice again and Roy goes to see if the guys are back. Nathan sees his father and closes his eyes tight, when Roy enters the room again. He tells Nathan not to look at whatever he's seeing anymore and kisses him. Roy gets down on his knees and proceeds to fellate Nathan, when Burke and Randy find them. Roy storms out of the room, and Nathan hears the voice again, and is suddenly knocked unconscious. A shadow of a person carries him up the stairs.
In the attic, Burke rapes Nathan, and realizing what he's done, disgusted with himself, he breaks an arm off a rocking chair and knocks Nathan over the head with it. Blood starts pooling on the floor beneath Nathan's head, and Burke leaves him in the attic. When Roy and Randy find Nathan early the next morning, he appears to be dead. Roy tells Randy to go on and find Burke, whom he says he doesn't believe at this point about what happened. Roy cries once Randy leaves, then Roy leaves too. The police arrive, bringing Nathan's father who tearfully covers Nathan's face with a blanket.
Nathan awakens as if he's resurrected from the dead, gets up and leaves the plantation house. He wanders for a long time still dazed from the blow to his head. Finally he sees Roy coming out of Sunday evening church, but Roy is with his family, so Nathan wanders around some more waiting for Roy to get home. Nathan's mother leaves his father, and Nathan, his head now clear, finds Roy crying in the barn where Nathan slept while hiding from his father. As Roy looks up, he sees Nathan and hugs him.
At the end of the story, Roy is driving the bus and looks in the mirror to an empty seat, but when he looks a second time, Nathan is there smiling at him.
The movie departs from the novel and leaves the impression that Nathan is truly dead, and that the previous scenes were a wishful dream sequence of one of the two boy lovers, presumably Roy. In the book this scene does not take place. The book has the boys meeting in the yard of Roy's church, running together into the woods to talk things over, and deciding to run away together since Roy has been seen kissing Nathan by both Burke and Randy, and both boys will surely be outed to their families and the whole community. The book ends with: "They hear the voices of people searching for them in the woods. They stand and go. They never look back."
Dream Boy first screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany on February 12, 2008. Its first American screening was on October 24, 2008 at the Chicago International Film Festival. The film was released on DVD in North America on August 24, 2010.
Walkabout is a 1971 adventure survival film directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, and David Gulpilil. Edward Bond wrote the screenplay, which is loosely based on the 1959 novel by James Vance Marshall. It centres on two white schoolchildren who are left to fend for themselves in the Australian Outback and who come across a teenage Aboriginal boy who helps them to survive.
Shenandoah is a 1965 American film set during the American Civil War starring James Stewart and featuring Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Patrick Wayne, and, in their film debuts, Katharine Ross and Rosemary Forsyth. The picture was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. The American folk song "Oh Shenandoah" features prominently in the film's soundtrack.
The Secret of the Old Mill is Volume 3 in the original Hardy Boys series of mystery books for children and teens published by Grosset & Dunlap. The book ranks 86th on Publishers Weekly's All-Time Bestselling Children's Book List for the United States, with 1,467,645 copies sold by 2001. This book is one of the "Original 10", some of the best examples of the Hardy Boys, and Stratemeyer Syndicate, writing.
The Maddening is a 1995 psychological thriller film directed by Danny Huston.
Max Branning is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Jake Wood. He made his first appearance on 27 June 2006. Wood took a four-month break from the show in 2011 and the character was absent between August and November 2011. Wood took a year long break from the show in 2015, with Max departing on 1 October. He returned on 24 December 2016. Wood took another short break from the show in 2018; Max departed on 16 February and returned on 23 April. It was announced in 2018 that Max would be taking a break from the soap in early 2019. He left on 14 February 2019 and returned on 7 May 2019. Max served as the show's main antagonist of 2017 following his release from prison and planning revenge on all his family, friends and neighbours. On 16 September 2020, it was announced that Wood would be departing from the role of Max after more than 14 years. Wood's final scenes aired on 19 February 2021.
"Green-Eyed Monster" is the fourth episode of the second season of the American television series Veronica Mars, and the twenty-sixth episode overall. Written by Dayna Lynne North and directed by Jason Bloom, the episode premiered on UPN on October 19, 2005.
Eternity and a Day is a 1998 Greek drama film directed by Theo Angelopoulos, and starring Bruno Ganz, Isabelle Renauld and Fabrizio Bentivoglio.
Boy Eats Girl is a 2005 horror-comedy film directed by Stephen Bradley and starring Samantha Mumba, produced and shot in Ireland. The plot tells of a teenage boy who comes back to life as a zombie, similar to the plot of the American film My Boyfriend's Back.
Dream Boy is a 1995 novel by Jim Grimsley.
Among the Impostors is a 2001 book by Margaret Peterson Haddix, about a time in which drastic measures have been taken to quell overpopulation. It is the second of seven novels in the Shadow Children series.
"The Tape" is the 25th episode of Seinfeld. It is the eighth episode of the show's third season. It first aired on NBC on November 13, 1991.
"Corner Boys" is the eighth episode of the fourth season of the HBO original series The Wire. Written by Richard Price from a story by Ed Burns & Richard Price, and directed by Agnieszka Holland, it originally aired on November 5, 2006.
Class Trip is a 1998 French drama film by Claude Miller, based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Emmanuel Carrère. Its original French title is La Classe de neige, which is the name given to class trips in the snow. It tells the story of a young boy on a school skiing trip who suffers anxiety attacks that bring on disturbing nightmares.
Little Boy Blue is a 1997 independent drama film directed by Antonio Tibaldi about a dysfunctional Texas family. The father, Ray is a Vietnam War veteran who was left impotent from a war injury. His teenage son Jimmy West tries to protect his two younger brothers from their abusive father, but the story ends in violence and the revelation that Jimmy was abducted by Ray as an infant.
The Flight of Pony Baker is a novel for children, one of the many stories written by William Dean Howells. It was published by Harper and Brothers in 1902 in New York, New York. It tells the story of a young boy named Pony Baker who, throughout the book, attempts to run away from his home where he lives with his mother, father, and five sisters. The setting of the story is "fifty years ago" in the Boy's Town of Ohio, the state where Howells was born and raised.
Here I Am a Stranger is a 1939 American drama film directed by Roy Del Ruth and written by Sam Hellman and Milton Sperling. The film stars Richard Greene and Richard Dix as son and father. It was based on the short story of the same name by Gordon Malherbe Hillman. The film was released on September 28, 1939 by 20th Century-Fox.
Hidden Kisses is a 2016 French television film directed by Didier Bivel about the coming out process of two gay teenagers.