🎬 Actor – Parting Glances

Fight, fight, fight, fight. A few thoughts on my role in Parting Glances, its actors and filmmakers, the health crisis that spawned it, and the relentlessly uncertain future of gay men and women.

Close up on the original movie poster for Parting Glances as it was released in the United States.

It couldn’t have been a smaller part, a few lines at best.

I was offered the role of one of three townie teenagers harassing Steve Buscemi’s character out on Fire Island. The film was Parting Glances. Steve Buscemi wasn’t even “Steve Buscemi” then — although he would be after the film came out with rave reviews for his performance. If there were parting glances for anyone in this film, they were from Steve looking back at his career as a NYC fireman.

As I had with Amateur Hour, I found the casting notice through Back Stage magazine and submitted a headshot. It was my second audition and again, incredibly, another bite. (I was still in the early days of beginner’s luck. You can’t imagine how easy I thought all this was.)

The filmmakers were ambitious: it would be the first film touching on the AIDS epidemic, a real film I was assured, not some kind of other film I might regret being associa…