J. LOFARO, FINE LINE FEATURES

August 13, 1999

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Songwriter Gabriel (Christian Campbell, center) and go-go boy Mark (J.P. Pitoc) spend all night looking for a place to be alone after finding Gabriel's place already occupied by his roommate Katherine (Tori Spelling).

A night in the life

by Mark J. Huisman

"I can't play a gay go-go boy! It will ruin my career!"

That's what Jean Paul "J.P." Pitoc thought when he first read the script for trick, the summer's most promising romantic_comedy. Written by Jason Schaefer and directed by Jim Fall, trick is the tale of two young men who meet on a subway and then spend the rest of a very long night looking for someplace to be alone.

Fall, a native of Holidaysburg, Pennsylvania, said he's "been on cloud nine since January." In its opening weekend, trick beat the box office record for gay films, selling out virtually around the clock in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The film opens August 20 at the Cedar-Lee Theatre in Cleveland and the Esquire Theater in Cincinnati. It will open in Columbus on September 10, although the theater has not yet been announced.

Fall said he wanted to make a gay movie for a gay audience, but also for an audience of "smart viewers who know about its gay content and aren't afraid of it."

"I think I will always gravitate toward comedic material and toward gay material, because that's who I am," Fall said. "The movie has been embraced because the film is true to the spirit of the gay community. And because all these terrific people helped me do my job right."

One such terrific person, Pitoc, was nervous because his character, a go-go boy named Mark, had to appear almost hude atop a bar. At that very time, shortly after he had graduated from NYU's theater program, Pitoc was in an off-off-off-Broadway monologue showcase wearing only his briefs. The writer/ director had been a tad shady, firing all the girls in the production without telling the boys.

"I'm playing a construction worker convinced he's Antonio Sabato, Jr. And there was a lifeguard, a model, stripper, a go-go boy," in that show, Pitoc recalls. "And I'm thinking, 'Okay, I know what this is about.' I was wary of repeating that situation."

But Fall, who approached Pitoc on the street after seeing that same show, overcame his objections by telling him that Tori Spelling was involved in the trick project. Pitoc

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realized there were worse offers.

"One, I just wanted a fucking job," he says over the whir of a blender mixing a protein shake. "Two, it's a great script and three, a terrific character. The role uses my body--in part I'm playing to type by showing off my physique but Mark isn't a quarterback or boxer. He's the lead in a love story. And that's awesome."

Clinton Leupp needed no persuasion whatsoever when Fall, who knew the openly gay actor as Miss Coco Peru, offered him a role. Leupp snapped it up, in part because of a pivotal scene where Miss Coco tries to convince Gabriel that Mark is trouble, trouble, trouble.

"Jim knew I could do that monologue," says Leupp. "And it was fun for Miss Coco to be a little creepy, because people can relate to that." Unlike performers whose get left on the cutting room floor, Miss Coco's role was actually sharpened without her consent or Leupp's. "They added the part about how Miss Coco videotaped Mark, which wasn't in the script. They made her even a little more creepy."

A Bronx native, Leupp's little boy dressup shows thrilled family and neighbors, at least until he gold older. "Then they changed their mind this wasn't okay." Even later, in theater department, he says, "They told me to lose my Bronx accent and butch up." The advice never stuck: "Every time I walked on stage, the audience giggled, 'Oh here comes the camp'."

Indeed, the bus stop ad for trick (a common sight in New York's gay ghetto Chelsea) features Miss Coco, arms outstretched and shouting to the world. "It's a drag queen's dream, being on a bus stop poster," says Leupp. He credits Fall with making sure the film's two openly gay actors the other being Steve Hayesreceived the same exposure as the two straight leads.

Although they only briefly share the screen, Pitoc and Leupp express genuine affection for one other. "Nobody gets along better than Clinton and I," says Pitoc. Leupp cher-

ishes the evenings before production when he and Fall entertained Pitoc and Campbell.

"They came to see my show a couple of times. We'd go to dinner and just hang out in the restaurant. The four of us really got comfortable with each other." How comfortable? "All I can say is I just get nuts around Jim Fall. We would tell those boy war stories about our one-night stands."

Leupp, who is taking Miss Coco's show to the Beverly Hills Playhouse for an openended run, hopes trick opens some doors for both of them.

"I know there are gay actors who would never play a gay role, who would never talk about their boyfriend. And that's a choice they have every right to make. But we both have to live with the

conse-

quences of our choices.

"They will probably work more," Leupp continues. "I can live with that. But can they live with

pretending to be someone else? I could never do that. Inside and out, I'm a big queen."

"I think I will always gravitate toward comedic material and toward gay material, because that's who I am.”

– Director Jim Fall

MARCO QUESADA, FINE LINE FEATURES