Never or Now

Alan Driscol has lived an accomplished life by every outward measure, and now, in a hospital bed near the end of it, he takes stock of the one thing he never allowed himself. With his wife away, he arranges a meeting with a young man, reaching at last for the experience he spent a lifetime denying. Branden Blinn's short drama, starring Smith Crowe, Allen Weiss and Marsha Musial, is a chamber piece about regret, courage and the strange freedom of having nothing left to lose. Later gathered into Blinn's feature-length anthology Remarkable Shades of Gay, it is one of the filmmaker's most affecting works, treating a taboo encounter with dignity and quiet emotional weight.