Tru Loved (2008)

Director: Stewart Wade
Writer: Stewart Wade
Stars: Najarra Townsend, Matthew Thompson, Jake Abel and Tye Olson

I find it fascinating that Vernon Wells chose Tru Loved for his double and it speaks volumes about how he must feel about its message.

For one thing, his part is pretty flimsy and ruthlessly one note. Coach Wesley has a brand of bigotry and, when it manifests, it manifests just how we expect. There’s little opportunity for any actor to get his teeth into the role.

To be fair, the Coach may be just as bigoted about other things that simply don’t arise in this film. Tru Loved is an indie LGBTQ+ drama, so it’s his homophobia that comes out to rage and it does so without subtlety. Maybe that’s why he played up his Australian accent.

I should add that it isn’t just the Coach who feels one note. The best thing about the script is that there are a heck of a lot of notes in play, so that we see this issue from a wide variety of angles, solidly interpreted by a deep ensemble cast. The worst thing about the script is that none of them really change. Well, except for a trio of supporting characters at the very end and we don’t buy into that in the slightest.

If there’s a hint at depth, it’s in dialogue he’s not part of, Tru pointing out that it’s the most anti-gay people who are deepest in the closet. It’s easy to see that the Coach is the most anti-gay character, even in a reputed conservative town. Of course, Tru grew up in San Francisco so anywhere is conservative in comparison.

If Wells saw the Coach as a gay man so deep in the closet that he lashes out instinctively as a defence mechanism, then the script doesn’t allow him any room to explore that. He’s here to be loud, blatant and inappropriate and to be a representative of that for the entire town, as none of the other authority figures we meet seem to be remotely conservative.

The Tru of the title isn’t the protagonist of the story but she guides us through it, as she’s straight. When the film starts on her first day at Walt Whitman High, it seems like any high school flick. The popular clique ignores her or makes fun of her, even if she’s too mainstream for us to buy into a “freak” narrative. She feels isolated, a crucial theme for an LGBTQ+ movie.

When a boy does come to say hi, it turns out to be the quarterback, Lo for Lodell, but this is not the Hallmark movie you’re imagining for a whole slew of reasons.

The most obvious to us is Lo is black, though nobody in the story seems to even notice that this relationship is interracial. Well, except for the two black women: Lo’s delightfully ornery grandma, Nichelle Nichols, who wonders in an impeccably ironic way why he can’t find a nice black girl, and Lisa, Tru’s black second mum. This is a wildly multiracial conservative town.

Another is that there’s already a strong gay undercurrent through Tru having two sets of parents but in an atypical way. It could well be that she started with the traditional two, who then split up and found new partners, but we don’t get the background. Bottom line, she has two lesbian mums and two gay dads. They’re here because of second mum’s promotion but the dads stayed in San Francisco. Crucially, all of them get on like a house on fire.

If you haven’t seen the third reason already, merely by reading between the lines, then yes, Lo is gay, even if Tru’s gaydar completely fails her. First mum realises it even before he takes her to a musical. Her dads don’t even need to meet him; they figure it out immediately when she phones them to ask for advice.

However, Lo is firmly in the closet. He has absolutely no intention of coming out because he’s a quarterback and that comes with a slew of expectations. “I know you’re not supposed to love football and musical theatre,” he says.

And so we fall into a weird norm where Tru and Lo date publicly but are really just putting on appearances so that Lo can pass. Given that the term historically speaks to people who are legally black passing for white because of their fair skins, it’s odd to see it apply here to a very black man who’s gay passing for straight.

So far so good. They’re good friends. It does the trick. However, if that’s it, this wouldn’t be much of a movie. It escalates, as it was always going to do, and the first crack in the façade arrives when Tru defends Walter, a clearly gay kid, and they start up a Gay-Straight Alliance.

It’s there that Tru finds a real boyfriend and now she’s Trevor’s girlfriend passing as Lo’s and that’s far too awkward to ever last. Things progress, as they will, and we end up precisely where we likely expected all along.

Roger Ebert famously hated this movie and reviewed it after only watching eight minutes. However, even when he went back to see the whole thing, he still slated it. I can kind of see his point, because there are obvious flaws, but there’s still a value to Tru Loved that’s rooted not in how deep it is but how wide.

It isn’t deep. It’s OK to be gay. We get that. In particular, it’s OK to be a gay football player and David Kopay shows up as himself to make that extra-clear. He was a running back for the San Francisco 49ers from 1964 to 1972 and he came out as gay in 1975, the first NFL player to do so. Only six have followed suit, the first of them no fewer than seventeen years later. It’s an important message but it’s not a deep one. I’m an old straight white guy and I know this.

However, it is impressively wide in its scope because there’s an ensemble cast to flesh that point out so we can see it from a whole slew of different angles. And while this presents itself as a teen drama, there aren’t that many teens in it. Certainly the faces we recognise are adult faces and plenty of them.

Wells and Nicholls are the biggest names of the bunch, but many will recognise Alexandra Paul, Bruce Vilanch, Cynda Williams, Jasmine Guy, Elaine Hendrix, even Jane Lynch who I’ve been enjoying in Only Murders in the Building.

They each have different takes on the issue at hand, whether they’re straight (LGBTQ+ ally or opponent—nobody in the film is neutral) or gay (out and married, out in a nation that has not yet legalised gay marriage federally—that was 2015—, still in the closet without fooling anyone or maybe just protesting too much).

Of course, Lo is the ultimate focus and Tru is the link, so it relies on Najarra Townsend and especially Matthew Thompson, who do decent work. They were young actors and that shows but they’re also good ones gaining experience. I could especially see the former as a TV lead, her dream sequences reminding of Wonderfalls. There should have been more of them.

As a flawed but well meaning indie film with a good message, I’m happy Wells chose it for his Double.