After Louie

2012

"The problem is not to make political films, but to make films politically."  Jean-Luc Godard

After Louie (10 Excerpts) was shown in 2008 at the Pulse Art Fair in New York. Since that time I have completed the screenplay and am currently in development with After Louie, a deeply personal, loosely-fictional, feature film about a generation of gay men who have survived their own generation.

It is inspired by my friend William Wilson and his short story, After Louie.

The film opens in 1969 when William meets Louie for the first time at the Bernini Fountain in Rome, coincidentally on the day Judy Garland is found dead in London, the event which sparked the Stonewall riots and the beginning of the gay liberation movement.  The narrative moves between eras in New York City  — from the gay sexual liberation of the 70’s through the shuttering of hard-fought and won rights in the 80’s to the Will and Grace 90’s to today.
 
It is the present and Sam, a defiantly queer artist, on the verge of 55, an age he sees as limbo, "the middle of things" has found his life and work in flux. His only significant relationship is a boy he hires for sex as a means of self-preservation. Like many his age Sam lives in a pastiche of time, memory and history.
 
He is a gay man living in a romantic and sexual climate where one is old at 17. 
 
Notebooks:  While writing the script for After Louie I suspected that the story I wanted to tell would be found in the process of looking for that story. Keeping notebooks helped me find a way into that story and kept things visual.  The notebooks also kept me honest. I had to tell the truth. 
 
 
Selected pages from Notebook 1

© Copyright 2012 Vincent Willliam Gagliostro. All rights reserved.