QUEER CINEMA CLUB presents CHUCK & BUCK

Every month at the Paradise Theatre, curator and host Peter Knegt is offering queers (and anyone who loves them) a classic queer film, special guests and performers, and then — after the show — some good old fashioned drinks and conversation in the Paradise’s stunning lobby bar. Each film will be paired with a different local queer artist, who will design an original poster for the screening.

Before there was Ned Schneedbly or Amy Jellicoe or those gays who really were trying to murder Tanya, there was Chuck… and Buck. In 2000, Mike White — the genius queer mind behind The White Lotus, Enlightened and The School of Rock — wrote and starred in the darkly comedic psychological thriller Chuck & Buck. It wasn’t the first thing he ever did (he wrote 9 episodes of Dawson’s Creek in 1998 and 1999), but it was the first truly brilliant thing he did (no disrespect to Dawson’s Creek!). And it was our first real sign that the then 30-year-old White was a creative force to be reckoned with.

Directed by Miguel Arteta (who White would collaborate with again on The Good Girl, Beatriz at Dinner and several episodes of Enlightened), Chuck & Buck stars White as Buck O’Brien, a twentysomething amateur playwright with the maturity level of an adolescent. After his mother dies, Buck invites his childhood best friend Chuck (Chris Weitz, who co-directed American Pie the year before this) to her funeral, reigniting an obsession Buck has had since the two sexually experimented. What unravels from there is something we have come to know from the worlds White creates: a complex, hilarious and daring exploration of sexuality and human nature.

In addition to his screenplay, White also offers a truly unhinged performance as Buck, one that none other than Jeff Bridges called “the best performance of the decade” in a 2010 interview with The New York Times. So come witness the origins of the man who has given us so much in the 23 years since (not to mention a young Maya Rudolph in one of her first film roles, shot just before she began Saturday Night Live).

Our amazing Chuck & Buck poster was designed by Paterson Hodgson, and will be available for sale at the film’s screening.

(Courtesy of Audio Ciné Films)

Wednesday March 22nd, 8 PM/7 PM Doors