Local film student Jason Druss, like most college students, is always looking for new ways to pay down his ever-mounting school loans, and recently learned he had successfully fused his filmmaking talents with his support for marriage equality to do just that.
Druss, 20, a motion-picture and television student at the Academy of the Arts University, an online degree program, was selected by gay chatline Interactive Male as the winner of its “Big Gay Kiss” video contest and walked away with a prize of $10,000.
The contest, which ran from April-October, asked artists to submit videos of two gay men kissing that would be judged on creativity, originality, composition, sexiness and fun in an overarching effort to raise awareness of and funds for Marriage Equality USA’s efforts to legalize same-sex marriage.
Interactive Male brought in 414 video entries, as well as 2,528 photos that were judged in a monthly photo contest, donating $5 for each video entry and $1 for each photo to Marriage Equality for a total donation of $4,600.
Shantal Shave, public-relations manager for Interactive Male, said Druss’ “True Love in Love Park” exemplified the message that the competition was trying to communicate.
“Jason’s film is beautifully shot, sweet and affecting,” Shave said. “We had several great entries, but overall, the judges felt Jason’s most embodied the spirit of the contest: overcoming discrimination with a celebration of love.”
Druss, who is heterosexual, said he learned of the video contest while perusing a list of filmmaking competitions online and immediately got in touch with his best friend Derek, who is gay, and who, along with his boyfriend Mike, agreed to be the subjects in the video, which Druss decided to set in Love Park.
“When you think of locations around the city that resemble beauty and love, I think the park is really one of the big ones,” Druss said. “Aside from the iconic LOVE statue, the whole area is just very open and public, and I wanted to make a statement that there is nothing wrong with two men coming together in this public place to share their love.”
Just 12 hours before the shoot was to take place, however, Mike learned that he had mono — known as the “kissing disease” — and the couple had to bail out. Druss quickly made numerous phone calls, sent out e-mails and Facebook messages, and put an advertisement on Craigslist to try to find new subjects and received a response from another young local couple, Jay and Ron.
Druss met the pair at Love Park and shot the video in less than an hour.
The final product runs just over a minute and shows the two smiling at one another from across the park and eventually walking hand in hand toward the LOVE statue, under which they share a more-than 30-second kiss.
Druss, whose girlfriend, Carly Bondra, composed the music that plays in the background of the film, said some passersby watching the filming appeared uncomfortable.
“There were a few people giving us some weird looks, like ‘Why are you filming this?’ and ‘Why do we have to see this when we’re strolling through the park on a Sunday afternoon?’” Druss said, noting the reactions only gave him more purpose to create a final version that demonstrated the beauty of the couple’s love. “I think Philadelphia’s always been an extremely equal-opportunity city.And then in the midst of this mostly open-minded city to have people who gave us these nasty looks — I just thought it was so ignorant and gave me even more motivation to finish it.”
Molly McKay, media director at Marriage Equality USA, said the organization was impressed with Druss’ film and noted that it meshed well with the agency’s mission.
“I thought it was very sweet and it captured an authentic moment where you can see the universal light of love in both of their eyes,” McKay said. “We believe in telling the stories of real-life couples who are impacted by marriage discrimination, and I think this campaign was a beautiful and touching way to show these stories and share our love with our fellow human beings.”
Visit www.biggaykiss.com to see the video.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].