Broadway Damage (1996)

Marc (Michael Shawn Lucas) is an aspiring actor in Greenwich Village who works a day job taking phone orders for tickets to the shows he wishes he was in. He searches the obituaries in order to find an apartment, but currently shares an apartment with eccentric, unemployed Cynthia (Mara Hobel), who wants to work for "Vanity Fair" and keeps leaving phone messages for Tina Brown that are never returned. Cynthia supports herself with the help of her father's charge card, but eventually is financially cut off. Robert (Aaron Williams) is another struggling actor who also dreams of getting a break as a writer and composer of Broadway musicals. Marc explains to his best friend Robert the concept of the "grand gesture". Its when you swallow your pride, buy flowers or something, and let that special person know you're in love with them. Robert is in love with Marc, but rather ordinary-looking, so he doesn't meet the standards of hunky Marc, who is looking for a perfect 10. Marc thinks he might have found his dream man in David (Hugh Panaro), a studio musician, until he discovers that David is not all he seems to be. When Robert finally makes his "grand gesture" to Marc, he does it with a sweet song. The film has a happy and warm-hearted ending.

This quirky romantic comedy about three recent college graduates is fun, improbable, and amusing. The complexity and frustration of finding true love in the gay community is explored nicely by the talented cast with a clever story and memorable music. Mara Hobel's more notable previous role was playing Christina Crawford in the film version of "Mommie Dearest", one of the great camp classics of all time. Cindy Soltoff and Elliot Sokolov composed the music score. Written and directed by Victor Mignatti.

おこげ (1992)

Sayoko Morohashi (Misa Shimizu) is a beautiful young woman who works as a voice-over artist for TV cartoons. She lives alone in a small flat in either Osaka or Tokyo, without a boyfriend or commitments. One day she notices young Goh Yoshino (Takehiro Murata) and his older gay lover Tochihiko "Tochi" Terazaki (Takeo Nakahara) kissing at the beach. Fascinated, she soon frequents gay bars until she finds the couple once again. The young man is a designer and the older man is married. Goh admits his homosexuality to his hysterical mother, his brother Toichi (Kyozo Nagatsuka), and sister-in-law after a meeting with a young woman they want him to marry. Their immediate response is to talk about something else. When Sayoko learns that Goh's mother Kinoe (Noriko Sengoku) has moved in with him, disrupting the couple's sex life, she offers them the use of her place. For a while things go well. As the two guys go at it upstairs, Sayoko merrily thumbs through art books of paintings by Frida Kahlo. Then Terasaki's wife Yayoi (Toshie Negishi) discovers her husband's gay activities and storms into Sayoko's home. Terasaki is forced to dump Goh, who becomes depressed. In an attempt to cheer him up, she tries to set him up with a hunky former sailor. Instead, the sailor rapes and impregnates Sayoko.

"Okama" is Japanese for a rice pot and a slang insult against gays. "Okoge" is the Japanese word for the discarded crust left at the bottom of a rice pot after cooking. It is used as slang for Japanese girls who like gay men--what gays in the West call a "fag hag" or "fruit fly". The last 30 minutes of the film has many soap opera elements, and one very unbelievable scene of violence which diminish this otherwise excellent movie. Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times, "Very fine...As melancholy as it is wise and funny." Incidental music was composed by Hiroshi Ariyoshi. Written and directed by Takehiro Nakajima. In Japanese with English subtitles, the English title is "Okoge".