`Trick' Talk -- Straight Actors Played Gay Roles In Director's Prize-Winning Film

Entertainment Weekly's critic, Owen Gleiberman, claims that "Trick" ends with "the single most romantic moment in any movie this year." The New York Times' Janet Maslin called it "a tender-hearted boy-meets-boy story," and it's been picking up prizes at gay festivals from Berlin to Los Angeles to Miami.

At San Francisco's Castro Theater last month, a standing-room-only festival audience gave it a standing ovation (it opens here next Friday). Few seemed to mind that both boys are played by heterosexuals.

Christian Campbell (Neve's older brother) is Gabriel, a shy New York composer who picks up a go-go boy, Mark, played by John Paul Pitoc (a stage actor making his film debut). They spend a seemingly futile night trying to find somewhere to be alone together, and in the process discover they have more in common than sexual attraction.

"A lot has been made of the fact that they're straight," said the movie's 36-year-old gay director, Jim Fall, by phone from Miami. "I love that people don't believe it. It means that they and I did a good job."

Persuading straight actors to play physically intimate gay characters hasn't always been so easy. Nearly three decades ago, when Peter Finch kissed Murray Head in "Sunday Bloody Sunday," Finch told reporters that he just closed his eyes and thought of England. In 1993, Will Smith refused to kiss his on-screen boyfriend in "Six Degrees of Separation," and the filmmakers had to fudge the scene.

"It's always awkward with the whole crew staring at you, whether it's boy-girl, boy-boy or girl-girl," said Fall. "Literally every time Christian and J.P. are touching, it's choreographed. What's kind of cool is the kiss, their first kiss in front of the camera, which is the one we used. They were nervous, and that nervousness worked for the moment."

Positive word-of-mouth on "Trick" began to circulate in January, when the movie made its debut in competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

"It didn't win anything there, but I was surprised it even got accepted for the competition," said Fall. "I was worried that it would be too sweet, and not edgy enough for Sundance."

Fall, who has made several widely seen short films ("He Touched Me," "Love Is Deaf, Dumb and Blind") but mostly works in New York theater, doesn't think of himself as the kind of director whose work necessarily earns praise at festivals.

"I don't fancy myself an art filmmaker; I love good Hollywood films," he said. "I made a gay short, `Shanghai,' while I was at New York University, and it was sort of my angry gay film, about two guys cheating on each other - you know, all men were pigs. But as I grew up, I mellowed out, and I found that what moves me is romantic comedy."

In the mid-1990s, Fall wrote a script that takes place in some of the same locations as "Trick." Nathan Lane and Cyndi Lauper agreed to star in it. It would have been Fall's feature-film debut, but the money never came through, partly because the script dealt with AIDS, partly because Lane had not yet proven his box-office power in "The Birdcage."

"It was dated by the time we wanted to make it," said Fall, who feels that "Philadelphia" and "Jeffrey" got there first. "I think I might go back to it. It could be a period piece in a couple of years.

"Now the whole AIDS climate has changed. The protease inhibitors have created both a deserved and a false sense of security about the disease."

At about the time Fall gave up on that project, he read a short script by Jason Schafer, originally called "Gay Boy," that became the basis of "Trick." They worked together for more than three years, expanding it and changing the characters while trying to raise the $450,000 budget.

"It was a much randier story at first," said Fall. "Mark was not a go-go boy but a hunk Gabriel met on the subway. They ended up having sex at the end, in a bathroom at a diner.

"But I found myself asking, `Is this whole movie just about that, or would it be more interesting to turn it into a romantic comedy?' The sex has got to become secondary to what they're feeling for each other. That's the story I found in Jason's script."

At the beginning of the film, Gabriel seems like a stereotypical show-tune queen, a passive kid who gives in too easily when his obnoxious straight roommate wants their apartment to himself for the night.

Mark is introduced as a tough, flirty hunk performing in a thong. Gradually they reveal other sides: Gabriel starts to stand up for himself, and Mark reveals both a surprisingly gentle nature and a gift for clever social improvisation.

"We worked very hard to develop more aspects to them," said Fall. "I started meeting go-go boys. Many of them turned out to be either hustlers or guys getting their college degrees, who happened to be drop-dead gorgeous. But I still wanted there to be a little question about Mark's motive, so his character is revealed in little bits."

At the same time, Fall felt that Gabriel needed to become more confident. He encouraged Schafer to add touches that would demonstrate that this tentative new relationship made him feel more assertive.

The most controversial character has turned out to be Gabriel's grating, jealous best friend, Katharine, who twice prevents the boys from getting together. Fall had admired Tori Spelling in "The House of Yes," and immediately thought of her for the part.

"It's not actor-proof," he said. "The character walks a fine line. She's very self-involved but you have to love her in spite of that. Granted it's a bonus that Tori's known from `Beverly Hills 90210,' but a lot of people don't like her, and that's been reflected in some of the reviews."

He doesn't care: "She makes me laugh."

Some critics have wondered why Gabriel puts up with so much abuse from his roommate. Fall points out that the character is very young.

"When you're that young and just out of college, it's tough finding an apartment in New York," he said. "I've had my share of roommates who have not been conducive to normal living. And I wanted to show Gabriel's character development, how he fights back and says, `I pay rent here too, you know.' "

Fall claims it was easy to cast Campbell, who breezed through his audition, but he had to go outside normal casting channels to find Pitoc, "who has the most interesting character arc. That made it very hard to audition for the part."

Campbell is a television veteran ("Tek War") who will soon be seen in a couple of independent movies, "Next Time" and "Hairshirt," which he produced. Fall doesn't know what roles Pitoc will be doing next, but "Calvin Klein is sniffing around him as a possible underwear guy."

As for Fall, he has several projects in mind, including a musical about flight attendants, a memoir written by a gay man who was drafted and went to Vietnam, and a story about a man and woman who discover each other just as they're dying in a tuberculosis ward. If he's going to spend more than a year on a project, he wants it to be something he loves.

"Hollywood has come a knockin' on my door a bit, with insipid teen comedy offers," he said. "The offers are not insipid. The scripts are."