“Deleted Scenes,” unspooling July 15 and 17 at QFest, is the latest compelling and explicit romantic drama from the provocative queer writer/director Todd Verow. The film chronicles the relationship between Wolf (Ivica Kovacevic) and Sean (Michael Vaccaro) through 24 chapters (plus an alternate ending). These are the scenes that were “deleted,” a title card advises, “because of length, denial, melodrama, believability, dubbing and sexual content.”
In a New York City café, the soft-spoken Verow explained why he chose these criteria for his “Deleted Scenes.”
“I was thinking in terms of my own films — reasons why I cut things out. A lot of times, I’ll have really long sex scenes that I’ve cut down. For this, I wanted to just keep them long, so your mind sort of wanders. I’ve always had a lot of technical problems because I’m not anti-technical perfection, so I amped that up even more.”
Verow’s manipulation of time and narrative pulls viewers in, and forces them to think about the characters and their relationship in unexpected ways. By showing the “deleted” moments, audiences are prompted to fill in the blanks and/or consider their own relationships. There are also numerous, deliberate continuity errors that Verow includes to keep the viewer off guard and at attention.
“What frustrates me about movies these days is the obsessions with continuity, and believability and being able to identify with a character, and character arc, and a three-act structure. So these were things I wanted to attack,” he said.
In “Deleted Scenes,” the filmmaker breaks down narrative elements adroitly. He also deconstructs his own personal experiences and demons. Based on one of his past relationships, the film includes a recurring theme in Verow’s work — prostitution. He speaks about this topic from experience, having worked in the trade in the past, “I think in films, traditionally, [prostitution] is treated as punishable. It’s demonized and criminalized and, at the same time, glamorized. The truth is right down the middle. It is just a job. You think it should be more glamorous than it is, and it should be more dangerous than it is, but really it’s not.”
Ironically, where Verow used to play the hustler in his films, he now plays the john. “I’m too old,” he deadpanned when asked about this role reversal. “I am sort of the john — the one that hires these people, and to a certain extent, exploits them by filming them. For this movie, I did have an actor to play [the john], and he did not show up, so I was forced into it, which was a happy accident.”
It’s amusing to think Verow was almost deleted from his own film. But he has plenty of screen time, and much of it involves graphic, energetic sex. “Deleted Scenes” may be the director’s naughtiest, most erotic film since “Anonymous.”
Yet Verow insists he doesn’t have any footage from his film. So there will be no deleted scenes on the DVD.
— Gary Kramer