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The
children’s hour
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L.I.E. is screenwriter Stephen Ryder’s shocking tale of one boy’s
despair
by MATTHEW HAYS
 Just
when you thought you were over Larry Clark’s Bully, another American
independent film is pouring over rep and arthouse cinemas across the
continent. L.I.E. (the title stands for Long Island Expressway), the
brainchild of screenwriter Stephen Ryder, tells the harrowing story
of one barely-pubescent lad who runs a mighty bad-luck streak.
Paul Franklin Dano plays the confused young man whose closest friend
(Billy Kay) seems more than a bit friendly. The film plays up the intimacy
of their friendship, and we learn later on that Kay is virtually a pro
at selling his intimacy to Big John (Brian Cox), a local elder who preys
on teen boys. With its intense homoeroticism, L.I.E. has earned raves
on the gay film fest circuit (despite the fact that neither the director
nor screenwriter are gay) while also raising the hackles of (surprise!)
religious-right types.
“As a screenwriter, I like to stick my finger into the eye of the
audience,” says Ryder, from his New York home. “You should
always be talking about picking your nose or masturbation or something,
or else you’re not talking about anything.” Sounds like odd
advice, the kind they might not give in film school, but actually, Ryder
gives just such advice to his students at NYU, where he teaches a class
in screenwriting.
Ryder says he has not been surprised by the controversy surrounding
the film, seeing as there’s utterly no shortage of hypocrisy to
go around. First, he says it’s odd that so many have discussed
the alleged pedophilia in the film. “There is none,” he points
out, correctly. “Pedophilia is when an adult goes after pre-pubescent
children. Big John [the character in the film] is a gay man who goes
after pubescent boys. Elvis Presley’s wife was 14, but no one called
him a pedophile or a child molester.”
What is most intriguing in the film is the way in which Big John, in
large part because of the astonishing performance by Cox, goes from
being a manipulative sleaze bag to a far more complex character by film’s
end. It means L.I.E. has a moral ambiguity, a complexity, rarely seen
on the big screen today.
“That was definitely something I was trying to get at,” says
Ryder, who worked for years as both an undercover cop and a reporter
for the New York Daily News. “Bad people sometimes do good things.
I have a lot of faith, though I don’t belong to any organized religions
because they’re all evil.”
The film doesn’t stop at intergenerational same-sex relations or
drug trips. One young male character talks incessantly about “fucking”
his sister, while Dano’s father is involved with shady criminal
dealings, something which leads to his arrest. It’s a bitter and
unhappy vision of adolescence, without a doubt.
“You’ve got to look hard at the dark things,” says Ryder.
“Life’s too short to talk about the weather.” :
L.I.E. opens
Friday, May 10
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