Love, or Whatever

Frameline premiere of Love, or Whatever: Gio Messale (producer), Rosser Goodman, Tyler Poelle

Joel Rush as Pete and Tyler Poelle as Corey in "Love, or Whatever"

There were over 200 films at the Frameline36 Film festival in San Francisco that ran June 16-24, the largest LGBT film festival in the world. It has been called the Cannes Film Festival by veteran German filmmaker Monika Treut, and as LA director Rosser Goodman puts it "the grandmother of LGBT film festivals". Rosser loves Frameline and says that all of her films have been launched at the festival such as Holding Trevor, which had its premiere in 2007. 

Rosser's new feature premiered at Frameline on June 20,  Love, or Whatever (USA 2012), a comedy about Corey, a therapist whose lover decides he is bisexual and falls in love with a woman (Jenica Bergere). Corey's lesbian sister Kelsey (Jennifer Elise Cox) moves in when his lover Jon (David Wilson Page) moves out, and he falls in love with Pete, the pizza man. Pete happens to be the handsome Joel Rush, whose character provokes Corey to see beyond the physical into the real person.  

Goodman and leading actor Tyler Poelle who plays Corey sat down at Frameline to talk about their film minutes before they went out on stage to greet 700 spectators who had bought tickets to the sold out screening at the Castro Theater. Poelle comes from the Bay Area and revealed it was “a thrill to be at the festival and with the community he grew up in”.   

Of the film, Poelle says that ”love is complicated and is a universal theme”.  His character is pivotal in showing  interconnections with other players in the story line. As a therapist who tries to see into his clients and support them in their quest for love, the world stands upside down for a moment when his ex boyfriend falls in love with one of his clients, unbeknownst to him, or her. 

“Anyone who watches (Love, or Whatever) will be able to relate to it", says Poelle, “because of the feelings, and what Rosser captures so well is what it feels like to be hurt, what it feels like to fall in love again, what it’s like to start dating again when you think you kind of have your life on lock down”.

Love, or Whatever has something for nearly everyone in the LGBT spectrum.  As Goodman explains , “in developing the script, we wanted to be as inclusive as possible, so we have a bisexual story line, a gay male story line, and there is a lesbian sister. The only thing we don’t have this time is a story representing the trans culture. And, we’ll definitively do that in the next one.”  “The film has a good crossover appeal”, she adds.

Working with Goodman are co-writers Cait Brennan, actress in films such as Itty Bitty Titty Committee, and Dennis Bush, whose plays have received numerous awards at theatre festivals.

Stay tuned for an interview with Rosser Goodman and Tyler Poelle 10pm on the July 18^th show of Movie Magazine International. 

 

(Review published in San Francisco - Examiner.com, July 10, 2012.)