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DVD Pit Stop
 Run time: 80 min Rating: 6.0 Genres: Drama Director: Yen Tan Writers: David Lowery, Yen Tan Stars: Bailey Bass, Marcus DeAnda, Yesenia Garcia |
| Storyline Recovering from an ill-fated affair with a married man, Gabe finds solace in the relationship he maintains with his ex-wife and daughter. On the other side of town, Ernesto evades life at home with his current live-in ex-boyfriend by spending much of his spare time in the hospital with an ailing past love. Impervious to the monotony of their blue-collar world, they maintain an unwavering yearning for romance. The emotional isolation the two men have grown accustomed to is captured in a subtle, optimistic, poetic fashion while avoiding melodrama. Written by Websurfer |
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| Plot Keywords: ex husband ex wife relationship, working class, small town, texas, gay parent | |
| Details: Country: USA Release Date: 21 January 2013 (USA) |
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DVD Pit Stop
4 comments
Pit Stop is a wonderful new film from director Yen Tan. It is the story of two mid-thirtyish gay men, Gabe and Ernesto, living separate but not totally dissimilar low key working class lives in the same Texan small town. Separately each man is yearning for love and emotional fulfillment while respectively struggling with his daily life and relationships. The focus is on Gabe and Ernesto but everyone in the film is a real person with a story to tell. All are portrayed in a thoughtful and empathetic way with no one casually discarded for the sake of storytelling expediency. This is a true character study of people finding their way in life and love and one cares about what will happen to them.
Gabe is divorced but trying to sustain his family for the sake of his young daughter. He has recently been rejected by a male lover who is married and now moved away. Ernesto is trying to end a two year relationship that has fallen apart and has no future. At the same time he is dutifully visiting a previous lover who lies comatose in a convalescent home following a car accident. Both men want more but their personal situations and the small town environment constrain them from being who they are and achieving the love and intimacy they long for and deserve. Both men still want to be wanted.
The film is beautifully made and the ensemble cast, led by Bill Heck as Gabe and Marcus DeAnda as Ernesto, is top notch. Pit Stop is a moving film that deserves a wide audience. Fans of Tan's earlier film, Ciao, will particularly like Pit Stop.
You follow th life of two broken hearted men, Gabe and Ernesto, who live in the same town, go to the same places and work 100 ft away without even knowing each other.
It may seem a little still at the beginning and by the trailer you might expect it to progress into a much more sexualized interaction between characters, but it turns out to be a nice romantic drama, which was a nice surprise.
It's not one of those "instant love" movies in which two people meet, fall madly in love and ride in a white horse to the horizon, it's a bit deeper than that, showing you about how you can "move on" how and when you least expect it.
I recommend it.
Pit Stop is the story of two working-class gay men in their thirties – Gabe, a building contractor (played by Bill Heck), and Ernie, a lumber-yard worker (played by Marcus DeAnda) – in a small town in Texas.
Gabe is divorced but still close to his ex-wife and daughter; the man he loved and left them for has dumped him and moved far away. Ernie is breaking free of his latest failed relationship with a man. Their paths almost cross a few times, but they don't actually meet until fairly late in the movie. Because of its unconventional structure and slow pace, it has been widely criticized by amateur reviewers of gay movies.
But this is by far the best gay movie I have ever seen, and I've seen hundreds – all the ones that are worth seeing and many more that aren't. Everything about it is perfect.
It doesn't need editing or any of the other fixes even favorable reviews say it needs. They're looking for a different kind of movie – in which the lovers meet early and we see all that happens afterwards – and they won't have any trouble finding it, because it's all we've gotten until now. But I THANK GOD that Yen Tan didn't hear their whining, and that he made this movie EXACTLY as he did. Not in any universe could it be any better than it is.
Every character (including the ex-wife and her new boyfriend) and every scene is essential, exactly as it is. If I listed everything about Pit Stop that's perfect I'd list everything (well, maybe not the title), but I must single out the writing, direction and acting.
The characters have time to develop fully and richly, each within the context of his own life, every tiny detail of which is perfect. Their brief almost-meetings (at least three times) earlier in the movie help tie their stories together even though they're deliciously subtle and easy to miss; and the pacing of the whole movie is as graceful and lovely as a ballet, but more natural. Action lovers will definitely be bored, but who cares? When the two men finally meet, it's the sweetest, hottest stuff ever shown on any kind of screen anywhere on earth.
Gabe and Ernie are the realest couple ever in any gay movie, and Bill Heck and Marcus DeAnda are the best actors who ever played gay characters. Every word, every sound, every movement, every gesture, every glance of an eye or lift of an eyebrow is perfect.
Movies of any kind – gay or straight – just don't get any better than this. It's fantastic.
Recent Spirit Award nominees have cropped up in the past few years including 'Keep the Lights On' and 'In the Family', sensitively-made films on a gay theme. Now in 2014, we have 'Pit Stop', which is also as good as these fine predecessors.
'Pit Stop' focuses on two blue collar workers from Texas, Gabe and Ernesto (played by an excellent Bill Heck and Marcus DeAnda, respectively). We see each of their stories for most of the film separately, and note that both are getting over failed relationships.
In the case of Ernesto, his ex-boyfriend, Luis, is still living with him. He initially tells Luis he can take as much time as he wants to move out but changes his mind when the ex-boyfriend starts dating other men and keeps him up, while watching late night TV. Ernesto also visits another ex-boyfriend, who's in a coma, after being critically hurt in a car accident.
Gabe's situation is different. He's still living with his wife and young daughter but no longer sleeps with her. He recently broke up with a man and now is dating again. In a notable scene, Gabe goes out on a date with a teacher—who falls asleep on their date watching a foreign film in a movie theater. Gabe drives the date home, who apologizes for not wanting to see him again, as he makes it clear that he hasn't gotten over his last relationship.
There's also a sub-plot involving Gabe's wife, Shannon, who goes out with a co-worker, Winston, on a date. Shannon, desperate for physical companionship, gets drunk and puts the moves on Winston, who isn't ready to get physical on a first date. Sure it's possible that Gabe's sexual rejection of his wife would lead her to want to have sexual contact with a man she's probably not that attracted to (Gabe tells Winston at one point that Shannon isn't attracted to heavy set men). But usually, the roles are reversed: women are wary of having sex on a first date, especially when it involves a man they don't find that attractive.
While the pacing of the film is fairly slow, the interactions between the characters ring true. Another excellent scene is when Luis has left and calls Ernesto on the phone, from New Mexico. Luis feels he's lost but Ernesto tries to convince him that he'll eventually get it together, if he just applies himself (like going back to school). At the same time, Ernesto makes it clear that he doesn't want Luis to return.
We see the connection between Gabe and Ernesto at film's end, as they meet through online dating. They're basically instantly attracted to one another as they recognize that they have both been trying to fill a similar void, in their lives. 'Pit Stop' is a low key drama which, as I pointed out above, proceeds rather lugubriously. Nonetheless, for the patient film-goer, you will be rewarded by excellent acting, direction and characters that seem to jump off the page, of real life.