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Filmmakers Ziad Touma and Brian Charbonneau remember Montreal's gay amnesiac
by MATTHEW HAYS
The story was too strange for a filmmaker to pass on. In October '99, a man was found naked in an alleyway--the day after the city's biggest circuit party, the Black & Blue. The man claimed to be suffering from amnesia; he had no memory of his past, and knew very few things about himself, one of them being that he was gay.
Eventually, with everyone from Dateline NBC to the New York Times publicizing the news, some relatives--from Tennessee, as it turns out--soon showed up to remind the man they knew as Matthew Honeycutt who he was. Police arrested Honeycutt, saying he was a fraud. Gregg Blachford, the Gay Line volunteer who had taken Honeycutt in, insists the man was indeed an amnesiac and no faker.
Cut to several months later, and local filmmaker and journalist Ziad Touma was meeting with drag artist Brian Charbonneau (aka Sheena Hershey), to discuss a future film project. Drawn to based-on-a-true-story screenplays--Touma's previous short, Line-up, was also inspired by a real story--he and Charbonneau set about writing a story very loosely based on the strange case of Honeycutt.
In their version, the amnesiac is found by two drag queens (Hershey and Jacklyn Jet), who take him home and give him a new life. All the while, the drag queens try desperately to help the amnesiac to remember his past life. As the three bond, the amnesiac becomes attached to his new life and chosen family in Montreal, uncertain if he wants to return to his past life.
Titled Saved by the Belles, the feature will be shot on digital video in Montreal this April. Touma, a producer at MusiquePlus who contributes regularly to the Mirror's sibling mag Ici, says once the idea had come to them, the script virtually wrote itself. "The ideas just started flowing," he says of his meetings with Charbonneau. "The response from backers surprised us too. Telefilm has been very excited about this project. They've already committed to one-fifth of our $500,000 budget."
As for Honeycutt himself, Blachford says the alleged amnesiac is not granting any interviews about his notoriety of two years ago. "I met with the filmmakers about the project some months ago," Blachford told the Mirror. "It seems like an interesting project. Though I speak with Honeycutt about once a month, I haven't mentioned it to him. He really doesn't want to be reminded of that time. He's getting on with a new life."
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