It seems strange that there are only a half-dozen people about as I arrive at the Titan Media studio for the filming of a key scene of Brian Mills', The Chest. Besides me, there are two cameramen, a stills photographer, performers Simon Angel and Cole Ryan, and director Mills. So things are pretty quiet.
Only slowly does the work for the day coalesce as the guys make hushed and casual small talk. The photographer checks his equipment. The cameramen spool cable and connect monitors. Mills preps the set himself. An assistant arrives with a key piece of set dressing: a period poster. It looks too new, and Mills asks for it to be distressed.
First on the agenda are stills. Of course, they’re necessary, but Mills uses them to help the performers get in the mood. Part of that necessitates fluffing, and a low-keyed and intimately personal sexuality begins to present itself. Angel and Ryan huddle together, whispering and making out. They’re in their own world, oblivious to the rest of us who feel like we’re observing a private event. Mills likes it that way — it’ll suit the nature of the scene.
In The Chest, a young man discovers his father’s decades-old stash of sexual memorabilia. Letters about sex between Army buddies and old physique magazines reveal the father’s hitherto unsuspected homo-adventuring. In the scenes that will make up the movie, the son imagines his father’s experiences. The one I’ll see filmed depicts one of the father’s first sexual experiences, when a house guest presents the young college boy with a sexuality, and a cock, that aren’t to be overlooked.
The Chest is a pet project for Mills, with some autobiographical touches. For this scene, he wants a mood that mixes boyish eagerness with hesitation, innocence mingled with instinctual sexuality. He laughingly reminds us what Joe Gage tells actors so their dialogue will come out sounding natural: “Say it like you’re falling asleep.”
Mills is quiet and studious in his approach — smiles all around, and a calm confidence, but no fabricated excitement, no cheerleader directions. He could be a one man show. He adjusts lights (especially the moonlight flooding in through a window), respectfully suggests better viewing angles for the videographers, and, with gentle finesse, stages the actors.
He tells Ryan the situation, but won’t feed him any lines. He wants Ryan to make the scene his own. Despite slight language problems for French-speaking Angel, he really picks up on Mills' intent for the scene. Ryan, though, is not too forthcoming. He’d like — needs — explicit direction. After Mills suggests some sample dialogue, Ryan uses it verbatim.
Ryan’s the guy who honest-to-god gave up his virginity in his first film (Closed Set: Titan Stage One). A basically shy lad, Ryan tells me he likes making movies because people — his sex partners and the filmmakers — tell him what to do, whereas in real life, he’d be a little shy to ask. So film work is impelling him into greater sexuality. The purity of response that marks his performances comes from the simple fact that he’s doing this stuff for the first time. His reactions are real, and he’s fascinating to watch — his heated rush forward, his shy blushes afterward.
Cole topped his partner in his first film. He'll do the same today, but he’s going to bottom as well — for the first time in his life. How’s that for greater sexuality? It’s beyond me how he knows he’s going to like it, or be sure that he can accomplish it at all. But when the moment comes, Cole slides right down onto Angel’s not insubstantial pole. The proverbial duck to water, it seems, although afterwards he quips to me, “Those weren’t screams of pleasure!”
The fucking goes so fabulously that a climax is obviously arriving. Mills tells the boys to hold off while the cameras are repositioned to provide light fill for the cum-shot. As the boys attempt to sustain their momentum with some delicate fondling, techies scurry all around and above, until, voila! There is light! Now Mills calls out instructions in a traditionally directorial manner making sure that the various possibilities of cum-shots will be covered. Then Mills gives the go-ahead, and they do. Mills is pleased and, as there’s nothing else but a little cuddling the lads can do after coming, the day’s shoot is over.
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