"It’s Only Part Of My Life Now:" John Young, Writer/director of "Parallel Sons"

iW: It really was a classic "credit card film." You also shot on 35mm. Can you break down the budget for me?

I shot it for $80,000. $50,000 was credit and the rest of cash. I went on to spend $30,000 more in credit afterwards. We shot on 35, because we priced it out and it was a $10,000 more to shoot on 35mm. By the time we figured out all of our deals, the equipment was the same price. We shot on a fine camera. The stock was more and so was the processing but that was figured into the $10,000. It's a good looking film considering what we had to work with. We were out in the middle of nowhere with a small generator and a couple of lights, just doing set up after set up. Everyone including the crew worked for free. There weren't even stipends. We went up to the Adirondacks and shot for 18 days. We paid for food and lodging. The actors got a small amount of money per SAG contract but at the same time they helped us. They really did whatever they could.

iW: How did you get all those credit cards?

Young: You start applying for them and then for a period of 6 weeks they would just come. "You have already earned $50,000 in credit," they would say. They would just come and come and come. It was $80,000 by the time I was done.

iW: Conceptually, it is a very risky film.. I have a hard time saying I "liked" the film, although I enjoyed it very much. Throughout the movie I kept expecting it to become something else, but you kept diverting my expectations.

Young: I think the experience of tragedy can be entertaining. I think we have a hard time saying we like something that makes us feel sad, or is unfinished or make us feel ...ugh. I've heard about my film that if we ended the film differently, people would of said, "oh what a nice movie." Even thought that would have betrayed where the movie was going to. People are trained to expect a happy ending. I actually think that my film wraps thing up neatly just not in the way that you would like them to. It's a little out of control.

iW: One of the most interesting things about "Parallel Sons" is the lack of OEmothers.' Either they are passed away or they are just not involved in the story.

Young: One of the things I was very moved with happened at the very first screening at Sundance. A woman stood up and said, "you know this is about OEfathers' not being able to reconcile their relationships with their children." I was glad she pulled that out, it made her experience richer. For me a lot of the film is actually about the role of fatherhood and where the parallels exist. They are not just the obvious ones between Knowledge and Seth, but also between OEknowledge' and Seth's OEfather.' In a way they become the final parallel because of the death of their sons.

iW: Were you surprised that you won two Audience Awards; at the Florida Film Festival and the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival?

Young: On one level the film is not what you would think of as an audience award winning film. Because it's not the feel good movie of the year. What happened was I knew how to get the film made. We got through it, no matter how hellish. We cut the film. We didn't have a print, but the first festival we submitted it to was Sundance. We got into Sundance, in the dramatic competition. We sent it away and I thought, "this is easy." But it was 1995 and nothing happened out of that. Florida was nice because it was in Orlando. It probably represents more of a middle-American audience. I was really surprised, shocked actually that it won there. We played a ton of festivals and just kept going. What helped was winning the audience award at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian film Festival. That gave it a real second push. It guaranteed that every gay and lesbian festival would play it and many of them would feature it.

iW: So you hadn't really thought about the gay and lesbian festival or market, before the award?

Young: To tell you the truth, I never thought of the movie as a gay film. I don't think in that way. I suspect in every film I make there will be something queer in it, some sensibility, character or idea. I don't think about making gay films. I think about making interesting films. This was one of the problems with getting a distributor. It was perceived as a gay audience film, but they didn't think they could market it to a gay audience. There was no big sex scene and it's also not a "light" film. People in the marketing departments were saying, "What do we do with this?"

iW: How do you feel now, four year after "Parallel Sons" adventure began?

Young: I am in a much better place now. I had really given up on the film. I had to declare bankruptcy because of the credit card debt. I went through huge depression, which was one reason that destroyed a relationship. At this time last year I was in a real fit. I kind of put it away until last fall I got it back out and decided to look at it in a different way. Like I said before, I knew how to get the film made. The roller coaster really started afterwards. I'm really happy now, cause the film will have a chance to be seen. It's only a part of my life now. It's not the live or die situation it was ten years ago.