'X' Marks the Spot, Again :: Q. Allan Brocka Talks the Return of 'Boy Culture'

In terms of both longevity and the fondness with which it is recalled, "Boy Culture" has earned its place as a gay classic – both the 1995 novel, by Matthew Rettenmund, and the 2006 film adaptation, by Q. Allan Brocka.

In terms of the film, it was Brocka's screenplay and direction, as well as the performances of its leads, that made the story of a make escort in Seattle and his quest for love into an instant favorite with LGBTQ+ audiences, not to mention crossover appeal at the box office. Soulful – yet cynical – X (Derek Magyar) reflects on his life and livelihood, balancing his professional life (and his clientele, which consists of a dozen regulars he refers to as "disciples") with his private life... and his hopes for domesticity. But X's home life is as complicated as his workdays (and nights), because he's involved in a romantic triangle with both of his roommates.

There's no avoiding the spoiler that X ends up with Andrew (Darryl Stephens, "Noah's Arc"). But was their happily ever after all that happy, and did it last forever?

Fifteen years later, Rettenmund and Brocka have teamed up to check back on X and Andrew. (Thankfully, both Magyar and Stephens have returned to the roles.) They've spent a decade together and are now living in Los Angeles, where housing is so pricy that the pair are still living together, even though they've recently broken up. As if their romantic troubles weren't bad enough, Andrew is bored with his corporate job and fretful that he will never figure out what he really wants to do with his life; as for X, having no other employment opportunities, he wades back into sex work. Only this time, X finds himself working with, and for, a much younger (and frighteningly adept) escort named Chayse (Jason Caceres), who essentially becomes X's pimp.

Brocka and Rettenmund have fun with the idea of updating the characters, showing how they have grown and matured and yet still struggle to make sense of their world, themselves, and each other. The update extends beyond investigating older versions of familiar characters; the nature of sex work has changed somewhat, as has the culture at large, and the clientele in Los Angeles are nothing if not diverse and demanding, cutting across a range of fetishes and sexualities. The format reflects contemporary times, as well, with the new "Boy Culture" being a series of six short-form episodes; each tells a self-contained story while advancing a larger narrative, and many of the episodes blend humor and sex with serious social topics.

In addition to co-writing, Brocka directs the season. In a chat with EDGE, he revealed the daunting process of bringing X and Andrew back to audiences, reflected on the advantages of the series format, and filled in some of the gap in the characters' lives between the original film and the new series.

EDGE: When it was first announced that "Boy Culture" was coming back as a series, it was also announced that X would be recast, and that was such a disappointment. But then Derek Magyar was confirmed to be reprising the role of X, along with Darryl Stephens coming back to play Andrew, so however that all worked out – thank you for getting them both back!

Q. Allan Brocka: Thank you. I think he's really great too, and I'm so glad that we were able to get him back for the series. When we did the Kickstarter, we thought we were gonna shoot right afterwards, and Derek wasn't available, so we had to [scramble to] cast someone else. But then, we didn't shoot right afterwards, and the person that we ended up with when we recast became unavailable, but Derek was available, so it ended up working out well.

I was very excited that Darryl came back, as well.

EDGE: The film came out in 2006. What makes this the moment to revisit X and Andrew and see where they are now?

Q. Allan Brocka: It's been a really long process getting this series made. We started pitching it in 2007, the year after the movie came out. It was just far too sexual and far too queer, at the time; the places that want to gay content, wanted no sex, and the places that wanted sexual content did not want gay people in it. In 2013 we said, "Okay, we'll just start writing some scripts." I think we did the Kickstarter in 2016 or 17. And then we shot it in 2018, and then it took a long time to get finishing funds and go through post-production.

EDGE: Did you always have the idea that these would be 12- to 17-minute-long episodes?

Q. Allan Brocka: At the beginning we did, and the idea was to create a streaming series for the web, and to make enough content that it could be a 90-minute program that could be programmed as a feature if the festival wanted to show it as a feature, and then hopefully that would help us to get funding, or, or interest in making further, longer episodes, or even just more 15 minute episodes. It was designed to be seen, initially, on the internet, but streaming services have grown so much since then that that's pretty much the way everything is watched now,

EDGE: Let me jump way back to the early 2000s and ask what it was that initially drew you to Matthew Rettenmund's novel when you were making the movie.

Q. Allan Brocka: I actually didn't know of the novel until I met the [movie] producers. Victor Simpkins and Philip Pierce had optioned the novel, and I had met Victor through a short film that I made. They were looking for a writer to adapt the novel, so we had a few meetings and they hired me. There was another director attached [at the time.]

I fell in love with the novel when I read it. It was a challenging adaptation, because the novel is a series of confessions. The structure of the novel is so much more like the series than the film, because every chapter is a different confession and a different adventure that X has. But I had a great time adapting it, and the director that was initially attached ended up dropping out, and they hired me to direct as well. I really just lucked into it.

EDGE: You and Matthew Rettenmund have written the series together. Who took the lead when it came to how X and Andrew would have changed and grown in the years since the film? Or were you both kind of pushing and pulling until you ended up heading in a common direction?

Q. Allan Brocka: Writing with Matthew was really, really easy. I don't remember a lot of arguing or pushing and pulling of each other. If we didn't like ideas, we would just say, "Uhh, I didn't like that one so much." And he's just so funny and smart. I think we were just great at looking at each other's stories with fresh eyes, but still having a kind of the same overall vision and bringing up each other's work. It was a wonderful partnership.

EDGE: What's interesting is that even with the episodes being 12 or 15 minutes long you've got character interactions, you tell a story, you have A stories and B stories that you follow...and yet, it doesn't feel rushed. How did you get all of that in there?

Q. Allan Brocka: Thank you. I really appreciate that. Our goal is to make it feel like this could be a half hour show, and that it's deeper than just having a sex encounter. We wanted to intercut [X's adventures on the job] with his home life and tell stories that kind of parallel and play off each other – how his home life is being affected by a visit [to a client], or how a visit is being affected by his home life, and we wanted to track both stories. As the series progresses, you'll see that [the story] kind of jumps around in time, so sometimes the encounter is happening before the other story, sometimes it's after, and sometimes it's simultaneous.

EDGE: That was another thing I thought it was interesting; the episode doesn't just go from point A to B and then from C to D, but mixes it up so that points can be raised, issues can be addressed, and you can fold surprises in there that come falling out toward the end of the episode, even if those moments happened earlier.

Q. Allan Brocka: It also gave us a good reason, just in the storytelling, to leave scenes; it gave us somewhere to go. "Okay, let's cut away from this now, we made a point; let's go to the other story." That really does help with writing, and that may be partly why it does feel like a real half hour show, because they often will follow multiple storylines, [whereas] a lot of short form [series] will tend to focus on just an A storyline.

EDGE: Society has changed a lot in a short time, and the TV landscape has changed with it, especially on streaming services. Do you think it might be easier now to sell a show like this than it used to be?

Q. Allan Brocka: Maybe. The explosion of LGBTQ storylines with explicit scenes on television has grown. There's shows like "Euphoria," "Genera+ion," "Elite," and "Sex Education," where they are really exploring sex and the sexuality of LGBTQ characters, and that was not there, even like six or seven years ago, so it might be easier now. But it wasn't as of 2018, when we were trying to raise some money.

EDGE: It's been a trope for a long time that when you have a gay male character, he's a sex worker. But here, as in the movie, you're writing past those tropes. Do you see it as a challenge, or as a formal stricture, to be creative in ways that allow you to write to the genre without falling into cliché?

Q. Allan Brocka: Maybe a little bit. I remember when I was writing the feature, it bothered me a little. Back when I was writing it, there weren't as many LGBTQ films and stories, and at that point a big percentage of [what stories there were], were about sex workers. I was like, "Well, I'm just going to embrace it and acknowledge that, hey, this is just another stereotypical thing." And that's also what X would think: "Great; we're making a movie about me, a sex worker." So, I just kind of leaned into it and owned it right in the first minute of the film.

And that kind of helps me in this series. I feel like it's a different take in that it's really about re-entering this industry that he's been away from. That felt like something I had not seen before – and not just for a gay character, but for anyone. What's it like to go back into the industry after you've left it for a while?

EDGE: What felt right-to-the-minute contemporary was the episode where X gets hired by a lesbian couple. Sexuality is much less partitioned and definite than it used to be, at least among younger people. It feels like this episode has hit just at the right moment.

Q. Allan Brocka: Thank you, I'm so happy to hear that! When we wrote back in 2013, I was hoping that it would feel a little bit ahead of the curve!

[Laughter}

The flexibility of sexuality is something that has always been interesting to me: How you can be completely a Kinsey six, and still have sex with a woman if you're gay, and what that experience is, and would be like. I was inspired by lesbians who enjoy gay porn – there's a large lesbian audience for gay porn, and that just fascinated me and inspired this storyline as, "Well, what if we took it to the next level?"

EDGE: It seems like X, who was down on himself a lot in the movie for being a sex worker, has now embraced his vocation and is enjoying it in a way he didn't before. Did that feel like an evolution of the character, or more a reflection of how social attitudes are evolving?

Q. Alan Brocka: I think it's a combination of the two. Certainly, society has evolved and grown. I think X's hang-ups... [in the film] he was very judgmental and very sex-negative. I think he has a little bit of that still, but what, for me, happened with him in the intervening time is really Andrew. In the in the film, Andrew has a really different perception of sex. Andrew is willing to go into his relationship with X, and wants to start out with it being open because he doesn't know where he's at. And, he realizes he's going to be dating a sex worker, so X is obviously going to be having sex [with other people].

In the years in between [the film and the series] – which I think would be an interesting story, but we just don't explore it much – X eventually stops having clients and drops out of sex work, and Andrew stops seeing other people; they become monogamous, not out of any agreement to strengthen their relationship, but more out of losing interest in being outside of the relationship. So, I think the big change in X's view of sex has come from Andrew, and he now has a much more open idea of, and is less judgmental of, sex.

EDGE: The series' third main character, Chayse, is new. He's fascinating, because he's very much a 21st Century twenty-something. In a way, he's a reflection of X – who X might be if he were as young today as Chayse is.

Q. Allan Brocka: Yeah, I think that what I kind of wanted in Chayse was for X to see himself, but a version of what life would be like if he had come up now. X came up in the '90s, and he pretty much figured out who he was then. The world he came out in as a gay teen was so much more closeted, and so much more closed, and he put up so many walls against the homophobia that was prevalent then. I think what he sees in Chayse is what he could have been, had none of that been standing in his way. I just love that dynamic between them, this kind of love/hate. X goes into this relationship thinking he's going to teach Chayse a few things – but then he realizes he has nothing to teach him. Chayse is doing all the teaching in this relationship.

EDGE: He's kind of like a life coach for X.

Q. Allan Brocka: Right – a life coach/pimp.

[Laughter]

EDGE: But there's also a generational difference between them, especially when it comes to Chayse not knowing what it was like in the '90s. There's a great scene where Chayse goes out of the room and X and a client have a minute to talk about the bad old days at the peak of the AIDS crisis.

Q. Allan Brocka: That was something that I really wanted to have a conversation about – bare backing, being on PrEP, and the choice not to use a condom, and how there seems to be a generational divide around condom use. I wanted to explore that a little bit with that encounter.

EDGE: It would be fascinating to see more of that generational divide between Chayse and X if there's a Season Two.

Q. Allan Brocka: We talked about it at length as we were developing this. We probably had 15 or 20 episode ideas. Then we narrowed it down to these six, and developed them fully, but, I mean, there are so many stories surrounding sex. Even though we're exploring it more, I feel like we as a society have just started the conversation.

Still, I mean, we wrote this eight years ago, and some of it is still feeling timely because this conversation is not moving too quickly. Every single person has something to say about sex and has some kind of experience with sex. Even if you're asexual, there's some kind of experience and relationship with sex that I would love to explore and see on screen. I feel like we could go on for many, many seasons, because there's so much for X, and for us, to learn about sex and sexual encounters, and the way different people explore and enjoy, and/or run and hide from their sexuality.

"Boy Culture" – The Series is part the Outfest film festival.