Head On (1998) by Ana Kokkinos

I'm gonna live my life, I'm not gonna make a difference, I'm not gonna change a thing. No one's gonna remember me when I'm dead. I'm a sailor, and a whore, and I will be until the end of the world.

I'm halfway through "Head On" (1998), an indie Australian film about a gay Greek 19 year old, who is searching for meaning in a racist, homophobic society that rejects his culture and his lifestyle.  He seeks escape from this harsh reality by indulging in a seedy underworld of sex, drugs, gambling, and other ephemeral means to chase a high.

It's also the first film, I've seen that's delved into Greek culture so unabashedly and uncensored.  I loved the scene where the father tenderly dances with his son to a traditional Greek song and presses his forehead on his son's.  This tender moment is rare amidst all the yelling and fighting between father and son.  Ana Kokkinos did a great job in blending the cultural as well as sexual struggle that Ari deals with growing up in an unwelcoming Australia.

After Ari tries to but finds sex with a female unappealing.  The girl calls him a "poufter" at first but then settles down and says, "I'm glad you don't act like a faggot, Ari" to which he replies:  "I'm a man...I don't take it up the ass."  She snorts, "Of course you do, you're Greek.  They all take it up the ass. [...] Fucking life!  I hate this fucking life!  I fucking hate it..."

At a bar, an intellectual girl states,  "That's what wrong about this country.  Everyone hates everyone.  The skips hate the wogs.  The wogs hate the Asians.  And everyone hates the blacks."

(If you're from the states and aren't familiar with Aussie slang, like me.  Check out this site.  The racial slurs used in the quote above:  skip = white Australian, wog = Mediterranean person.)

This certainly ain't "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

The best bildungsroman movie I've seen in awhile.

Trailer:



I liked this review on IMDB by mattydee74 (Sydney):

Head On is an amazing film. Its beauty and treasures lie in not judging the journey taken in the film but opening up to the experiences of a young man lost and hidden. Its not a bright, gay film but rather a fiery drama which doesn't offer answers but depicts a painful truth which many would prefer to disregard. This is a film about the loss of hope in the jaded nineties. It is very much a local film (shot in Melbourne) and an Australian film, but I think it offers up wider and more general issues. 


Few films capture the mood of the 1990s quite like Head On. It is a film embedded with characterisitics which intuitively identify the strangely blank decade that edged up to the 21st century. If the eighties was - though simplistically - regarded as the decade of high paced materialism. The 90s can be seen as a time of conservatism and cautiousness - again too simplistically - which could be regarded as the tired decade. A time imbued with a feeling that everything had already been done. Grunge embodied this, as did the increasing popularity of pastiche and remakes such as the way television shows were more and more the source for films. It was a time where even moreso than in previous decades - the answers and ideas were sort in ready-made forms. Reused, resurrected and exploited. Sarcasm and cynicism became law. Pettiness became more and more common. Many of us were just tired out. 

Trippy Music Video & "Weekend"

This song was played at the end of "Weekend," an indie UK film, which was pretty subdued but the script was beautifully and intelligently written. It was a very thought provoking film.

The director and writer, Andrew Haigh, wrote this for the synopsis:

"On a Friday night after a drunken house party with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club, alone and on the pull. Just before closing time he picks up Glen but what's expected to be just a one-night stand becomes something else, something special. That weekend, in bars and in bedrooms, getting drunk and taking drugs, telling stories and having sex, the two men get to know each other. It is a brief encounter that will resonate throughout their lives. Weekend is both an honest and unapologetic love story between two guys and a film about the universal struggle for an authentic life in all its forms. It is about the search for identity and the importance of making a passionate commitment to your life."

I liked this review posted about it on IMDB by brocksilvey:

"In "Weekend," a beautifully acted and written indie drama from writer/director, Andrew Haigh, two gay men fall heavily for each other over the course of a 2 or 3 day period, each getting at something in the other that no one before had managed to do. But this is not a "gay" movie, and people who stay away from it because they think it has a gay agenda, or that it has nothing to say to them, or who are simply uncomfortable with the sight of two men having sex, will deny themselves the pleasure of seeing a film with a universal message about what it's like to be lonely and the search for meaningful human connections that kind of loneliness motivates.

It's not that Haigh avoids addressing the complications of being gay in the present day. Part of what I admired about the film was that it put being gay, and the constant energy it takes on the part of gay men to either fight or ignore the ignorance and hostility they must constantly endure, in a context that anybody can understand. The film's central character, Russell (Tom Cullen), has been raised as a foster child in a "straight" environment. His foster brother knows he's gay and is accepting of it, but even at that, Russell's time with his brother and his brother's family only accentuates the desolate fact that the kind of "normal" happiness his brother enjoys (the solidarity of a strong marriage, children) is something that at best he will have to fight for or at worst will be denied altogether. The bitterness this harsh reality can create in gay men is illustrated in the character of Glen (Chris New), a crusader who believes happiness in marriage is a sham perpetrated by the straight community and that attempts at finding contentment and satisfaction in a life partner are akin to tilting at windmills.

Cullen and New deliver award-worthy performances, so it's a shame that this film's size and subject matter will deny it any kind of major awards attention. The film is actually breathtaking at moments, albeit in an unassuming way, in its frankness and its ability to capture perfectly in words ideas about the way our societies treat relationships, commitments and love that I had only half articulated to myself. It would be easy to believe that Haigh found two non-actors roaming the streets, asked them to star in a movie, gave them situations to play out without a script, and filmed the results. It's that authentic."

Glee Tackles Controversial Teen Suicide Issue

Funny Performance: "According to My Korean Mother"

Joel Burns' Moving Confession and Uplifting Message

A string of teen suicides — including one fourth grader — due to bullying of boys accused of being gay, has spurred openly gay Texan city council member, Joel Burns, to speak out against the psychological torment of America's children. He told teens struggling with their sexuality or with bullying or both that "it gets better."

This intolerance and hatred born out of fear, I believe, is due to the collective shame and rejection of the natural sexual orientation that occurs frequently in nature amongst dolphins, monkeys, birds, and other animal species but is categorically labelled as degenerate and reprobate by an ignorant and judgmental human race. (Read more about homosexual activity in nature here and here.)

Often times, bullies are merely repressed, closeted cowards, who lash out at those courageous enough to come out in the open, at a relatively young age during the turbulent high school years, for it brings to light what they wish to keep in the dark.

Joel Burns urges in this viral video not to end one's life over disapproval, taunting, ostracization, bullying, etc. because it is only temporary.

Joel Burns: "Yes, high school was difficult. Coming out was painful, but life got so much better for me. And I want to tell any teen who might see this, give yourself a chance to see just how much better life will get — and it will get better. You will get out of the household that doesn’t accept you. You will get out of that high school and you never have to deal with those jerks again if you don’t want to. You will find and you will make new friends who will understand you, and life will get so, so, so, much better.

I look back at my life as full of so many happy memories that I wish I could share with those whose photos were shown up above earlier and those who have taken their lives. Memories that I wish I could share with the 13-year-old version of me on that very unfortunate day..."

Full transcript can be read here (lots of typos and mistakes in that transcript but you get the idea).



It would be wise to view this trying time as the universe's way of tempering and fortifying the steel of your fortitude and integrity.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
-Winston Churchill

P.S.: Thank you, Conor S., for sending this video to me.