Life in the big city

>> Jon Shear rolls out the myths in Urbania

by MATTHEW HAYS

It's close to impossible to peg a movie like Urbania. Part psychological drama, part romance, part mystery, its director, Jon Shear, maps out a relationship fraught with problems over a series of very familiar urban myths.

But "unpeggable" is precisely what the 36-year-old actor-cum-director was aiming for with his first feature. "I love things that take me places I've never been, either seeing them or actually making them. By the same token, I like seeing things that I've experienced before but haven't experienced in the film medium before."

Shear's narrative, penned by Shear and Daniel Reitz (and based on Reitz's short stories), is expertly brought to life by the cast, led by Dan Futterman. Futterman travels through the plot's complex hills and valleys, venting rage about his romantic loss while bumping into various civic legends. At one point, he's being told about the man who wakes up after a one-night stand to find his kidney removed; at another, he's gazing into a neighbour's window, witnessing an old woman putting her damp dog into the microwave to dry it out.

"I've always been fascinated by myths," says Shear. "People try to convince you that they're true, even ones that couldn't possibly be true. There can't have been 90,000 people in that emergency ward when Richard Gere showed up. But everyone claims to have a friend who swears they were a nurse in that ward when Gere showed up [with the gerbil lodged in him]. That sense of trying to convince you that something's real, even when it couldn't be, the trauma leads the central character into that world."

Gay characters do emerge in the film and Shear does worry that the gay label may restrict Urbania's chances with broader audiences. "The gay label creates myths and expectations in itself. Worry is too strong a word, because it bespeaks a certain kind of shame, which I don't have. I've been to every gay festival that would have me. But this movie is made for so many different audiences."

Even as Shear and his film sweep numerous gay and lesbian film fests--it opened Montreal's Image&Nation last week, and won the $10,000 jury prize at the San Francisco gay film fest earlier this year--the director turns out to be as hard to pin down as his film. Shear claims he has been fired from acting jobs for being gay and being straight. (At 19, he was fired from a production of Huck Finn after being spotted in a gay pride parade; at 26 he claims Tony Kushner let him go from a production of Angels in America after learning Shear was in a relationship with a woman.) And though he connects with the gay experience, Shear says he's been in a live-in relationship with a woman for some 10 years.

"My personal life is very fluid, like my work. I'm very happy that my body responds to lots of different stimuli." :

Urbania opens Friday, Sept. 29