“Story of a Bad Boy” is a 1999 American independent coming-of-age coming-out LGBTQ+ romantic dramedy film written and directed by award winning American playwright Tom Donaghy (“The Dad Shuttle”). The film stars Jeremy Hollingworth, Christian Camargo (“Penny Dreadful”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”), Julie Kavner (“The Simpsons”), Stephen Lang (“Last Exit to Brooklyn”, “Tombstone”, “Save Me”), Lauren Ward (“In & Out”, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”, “Torchwood”), Cherelle Cargill (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”, “Sex and the City”, “Jessica Jones”), Bill Velin (“Wonder Boys”), Anthony Gestone (“Just One Time”) & Anil Kumar (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”, “Oz”, “Six Feet Under”, “Nip/Tuck”, “Revenge”, “Shameless”). It premiered at the Frameline Film Festival in 1999 but didn’t receive a commercial release until 2001, when it arrived in Germany.
I’d previously seen Tom Donaghy’s “The Dad Shuttle” several times, but I was unaware of this piece by the same creator. The story follows Pauley (Jeremy Hollingworth), who continuously follows his erotic interests, which change constantly throughout the film, giving the movie an indecisive, random quality that was unusual and charming, if not wholly satisfying. I couldn’t remember purchasing this film, or that it even existed when I stumbled upon it while looking for something in my collection to entertain me for an afternoon, which it did. Some of the performances are quite good, including Hollingworth, which is why I was a bit disappointed to learn that he didn’t appear in much beyond this movie. Pauley has a girlfriend, Lauren Ward’s as Ludmilla, whom he kisses a lot. But he also pursues his student teacher Noel (Christian Camargo) jerks off with another friend and kisses a nun. Pauley is daring, reckless, young and nearly fearless…which may or may not lead to a tragic ending, which is left to the audience’s interpretation, as it should be. One of the plot points concerns a tacky musical version of The Scarlet Letter, titled “A”. This probably amused me more than most, as days after moving to New York in September of 2012, I saw a musical version of The Scarlet Letter titles “A is For Adultery”, where I met several people who I remain friends with to this day.
The final moments of the film, which again, are open to interpretation, haunted me a bit, and left me feeling a lot. But given the open nature of it all, your mileage may vary, and likely will. I liked it. This isn’t a great movie but it’s fun and it feels like an exciting find as again, I’d never heard of it before (that I can remember) and this is just what I was looking for today.