Latter

So over the weekend I was sitting with my one friend who had never watched Latter Days. I was in shock! I was about to ask for his gay card. How can someone go through the Aughts and NOT have had Latter Days as one of THE movies to watch? It came out in 2004 (ancient, I know) and it was the talk of the town for months on end. It was that time when all those little indie movies with LGBTQ themes were popping up all over. We watched it as part of an outing with the GSA I belonged to at that time. It was awesome.

So Latter Days is one of those early 2000's gay movies that did not shy away from depicting full-on gay male romance and quite a bit of skin and for a change, it did not end up with the gay men in it with AIDS or beaten up. Also, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt played one of the Elders. Always a plus. And it's funny I was talking about the Mormons over the weekend and watching this movie and today we all just learned that they put $100 cool BILLIONS apart for a rainy day. Tax exemption. Such a joy. And to think that the Mormons had just included Gay people in their family searches. Natch.

Back to Latter Days, then. It's a super cute love story and for once, the casting is quite accurate. It was one of those indie movies that popped up every so often and the main actor was Wes Ramsey, who's gone on to be on TV and the such. But our eyes were all on Steve Sandvoss. And who's to blame?  Because I have a weakness for buff blondes (well, and buff brunettes, and buff bald men and buff silver foxes, but who's paying attention?) my absolute guilty pleasure was watching Steve Sandvoss play the corn-bred, wide-eyed ingenue in the movie. He is delicious. Don't believe me? Here:

And why guilty pleasure? Because I think Stevie is straight and sadly, he's done very few movies or tv after Latter Days. Such a waste, because I was a fan and I'm sure there's many more fans around. So the movie follows the fish-out-of-water narrative, it adds some reparative therapy for good measure and a dose of religion (duh, he plays a Mormon). Also, Jacqueline Bisset is the owner of the restaurant where a lot of the action takes place. Can you imagine?

So I hope I made you curious. Go ahead, rent the movie, watch it on a streaming service or if it's not deleted, you can watch it on youtube. And if you have seen it, it's always good to brush up on your Book of Mormon, no?

XOXO