His film takes us back to that era with the story of a two-weeks sober young hustler trying to build a new life for himself after getting sprung from prison and encountering a nonstop barrage of obstacles. These films had dark edges and felt entirely devoid of the fluffy “gays are the world’s party clowns” vibe, and I loved them for that.Ĭhristopher Bradley, making his feature writing/directing debut with The Trigger (love the cool dime store novel poster), knows a thing or two about that era, having starred in the seminal Leather Jacket Love Story back in 1998. Films such as Todd Haynes’ Poison, Gregg Araki’s The Living End, Ana Kokkinos’ Head On, or the late great and dearly missed Richard Glatzer’s debut with Grief, to name a few, had a scrappy, DIY feel yet with a confident point of view. What an exciting time we had in the 90s when it came to the emergence of what was called “The New Queer Cinema”.
