We generally avoid promoting KickStarter drives—there are just too many good projects out there to give them all fair due—but a new campaign from I Think I Do director Brian Sloan caught our eye. His new film, Best Summer Ever, is an adaptation of Sloan’s own teen-lit novel Tale of Two Summers, which explores the unique friendship between two high-school friends, one gay and one straight.
“I was inspired to write this story by my continued friendship with my best friend from high school who’s straight,” Sloan tells Queerty. “We’ve stayed close friends for more than 20 years. He was very accepting and supportive when I came out and we’ve always been able to talk very frankly about our relationships with other people too. I think these sorts of friendships are crucial for teens today, especially when so many LGBT youth are isolated. When you’re in high school, there are probably not going to be a lot of other gay people around, so young people need to realize that ‘the straights’ can be can be incredibly supportive, even more so now than when I was growing up.”
Alex
Whaaaat? A movie where the gay guy is a main character in a serious role and is not just the gay friend and comedic relief?! Must be indie.
Triple S
Yeah, but other kids my age in high school are most often immature, petty, shallow fuckwits who don’t know the true meaning of friendship. Any meaningful friendship almost always develops outside school.
This is just my experience with school aged people. There is always an exception to the rule. If it doesn’t seem to arrogant, I would say that I am an exception. I don’t just dump those who are no longer useless to me, and I actually try to do things with these people, not just say hello and talk meaningless words.
Sorry, I get frustrated when things like this get published when I know for a fact and through experience, that 99% of the time, it just does not happen.
Makes for a good movie though.
Bryan Irrera
it’s not “I Think I Love You”, but “I Think I Do” (though with all the Partridge Family references in the movie, I could see how you’d make that mistake…).
G
This seems like an interesting story. It’s definitely reminiscent of my high school experience where I was the token gay kid and I had my straight best guy friend. Though I think sharing their experiences through videos they make seems kinda hoakey.
Hephaestion
God bless Brian Sloan for working on this project! “I Think I Do” is one of my all-time favorite films and I’m sure this film will have the same sort of humor & intelligence.
John
I guess I would challenge the title of your article. Not to put this worthy project down, but anyone who’s ever been to a gay film festival over the last 25 years will have seen numerous feature and short films about the friendship between a gay teen and a straight teen (and not always with the gay kid lusting after the straight kid.)
Jay
My best friend in the world is a straight guy, 25 years now, since we were kids. I’ve been able to talk to him about everything and have seen him through a divorce, remarriage and two kids. We email constantly and get together whenever we can, especially to take long mulit-day hikes. He’s in England, I’m in the US so those in-person visits are rare but always special. And no, we’ve never had sex, it’s not on the radar. Gay-straight friendships are rare, as rare as close friendships between men, and I’m so, so lucky to have this one. Nice to see a movie that reflects this reality.
DJ
Jay-Gay-straight relationships are NOT rare. Most of my best friends are hetero men and I’ve known them for decades. Plus if a guy is actually hetero he’s not going to have or want to have sex with a man even his bisexual or gay male best friend.
tookietookie
My best friend in high school was a girl who ended up working an assembly line job and having a major inferiority complex. Can I haf film plz?
runescapegogo
runescape are grateful for its fans runescapegogo-com and supporters so runescape could achieve such a big success guildwarsize-com. This success is also owe to the wonderful aion items-innicc-com
SebastianWilMa
Um, a) it’s about time; b) my best-friend is straight & was encouraging me to “be gay” from the time we were 14. I refused until 17, hahaha! I was best-man at his wedding a few years ago.