“Sunset”, directed by Kate Ennis and Gary Jaffee, written by
Gary, is a 15-minute short film (from Band of Others) that presents us with two
young gay men in a hotel room in NYC around 1942 both facing the draft, shortly after Pearl Harbor. The first shot in the film is of a wooden radio with FDR's comforting voice.
After making out, Arnie (if I have my characters right),
played by Brian Trout, announces he has gotten out of being drafted by a “Jewish”
psychiatrist with a metaphor about popsicles. This is the hairy chested one.
Peter (Niccolo Walsh), who (ironically) is the smooth one, is
going to go and fight. Maybe he’ll get a
clerk-typist MOS.
The encounter has some dialogue about male fungibility and
expandability, in wartime. The women can
always bear the children and raise them.
It also talks about who is a parasite.
This is pretty heavy stuff, but it needs to be heard.
The Army, of course, did its best to pretend it did not
draft gay men when it knew it needed everyone and took them. Welcome to the
world long before “don’t ask don’t tell”.
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