by tom andrew –
Get ready for the premiere of Mark Blane’s Cubby! The film has been receiving raves reviews across the globe for Blane’s brilliant portrayal as the lead character in a film that he also wrote and directed. The film is a fish-out-of-water story about Mark (Blane), a 20-something, social-anxiety-ridden guy who moves to New York to pursue his dream of sketching male erotica. He tells his mom (wonderfully played by Patricia Richardson of Home Improvement fame) and everyone back home in Indiana that he has taken a job in an art gallery, but he doesn’t.
So begins his journey to make it in New York City with nowhere to live and no job. Mark does find work as the babysitter of a precocious 6-year-old boy named Milo (Joseph Seuffert) and oddly enough with all of his quirks he holds down the job and creates a strong bond with the child.
The story takes us through Mark’s struggles to make ends meet and how he hilariously copes with roommates, Milo’s parents and even a potential boyfriend. Blane admits that a lot of the story comes from his own life, which is how he came up with the idea. The social-anxiety part is not something the writer consciously thought about when creating him.
“Yeah, I would say that he’s struggling with depression and anxiety,” Blane said. “Other than that, I don’t know. I mean, there are some people who have tried to diagnose the character. That wasn’t my intention. But I think that that’s actually kind of interesting because there are a lot of people out there who haven’t been diagnosed yet with something. But I was definitely writing the character as someone who was depressed and anxious and a little bit off because he’s not regulating his medicine when he moved.”
The results are at times touching, frustrating and hilarious, but Blane is careful to not treat this character as a joke, he’s real. Blane has created a character that was comfortable in his home surroundings but when he moves to a big city the feeling of being comfortable just isn’t there.
“I mean, I would imagine he’s probably a little bit calmer [at home],” Blane said. “He lives in his own garage and he knows the surroundings and everything. There’s kind of like a pattern to every day. Mom is there. Everything’s working out fine. But that’s why the whole fish-out-of-water story or what I thought would be entertaining is to see this guy just plopped and jobless and he’s almost an alien from another planet. Yeah. He really doesn’t know how to function. And I wanted to up the ante of that experience. I like my character because he’s sort of unpredictable and zany.”
“I loved creating my own work. I also created a lot of work in college against my professors’ directions. They were like, ‘You need to do A Streetcar Named Desire in class.’ And I was writing my own plays and putting them up on campus like in site-specific places and just like doing crazy performance shit.”
mark blane
Blane spent his childhood writing his own plays because he was annoyed by the shows that his school was staging. He would occasionally go to Chicago to audition for television and film projects. His experience in college wasn’t much different. It was there that he realized that he wasn’t being cast in things he knew he could do.
“I went to acting school and I loved it and I hated it,” Blane said. “I loved creating my own work. I also created a lot of work in college against my professors’ directions. They were like, ‘You need to do A Streetcar Named Desire in class.’ And I was writing my own plays and putting them up on campus like in site-specific places and just like doing crazy performance shit. I wasn’t getting cast as any part. I was a gay guy as an acting major. All the gay guys were in musical theatre. I was like this anomaly. I couldn’t get a leading role and I couldn’t get a sidekick role. I just couldn’t land anything.”
It wasn’t until he got a job in Chicago where he felt he was finally getting the chance to play a role that would end up putting his name on the map as an actor, among other things.
“When I was in Chicago, I was babysitting. I was like, OK, this is the best role ever because I was a queer man and a babysitter; I was tricking people all the time. I don’t know if I upped my masculinity when I was out with my kids, but moms love having a man at the playground.”
Getting that shot of confidence was something Blane wasn’t used to. He spent many years being the outsider in school.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I felt like my most empowering moment, after growing up in Indiana as a gay kid and coming out when I was 14, which was really awful. I mean, I was being tortured at school, was as a babysitter. I felt so confident and alive. There was some hope and energy that I felt. Kids don’t see sexuality or know gender norms. So, they just were like, oh, Mark … Mark’s smart and I like him because he is who he is.”
Aside from acting, writing and directing the film, Blane also had to finance the project and find people to help finance it, which is not an easy task. He had a Kickstarter campaign that helped, but even with a tight filming schedule more funding was needed.
“I think one of the things that I’ve been so frustrated with,” Blane explained, “is that people don’t want to fund my film because not only was I unknown, but they would say, ‘It’s a gay movie. So, we need to put someone big in it.’
“Our system is still … there are a lot of gay men in power. They are still obsessively casting straight actors to play these [gay] roles. There are so many actors out there who might be gay, but they’re not being cast, even in these gay roles and big movies. And that’s frustrating.”
mark blane
Originally, he was told that it was a plus that he was doing an LGBTQ film and that he’d be championed for doing the movie. That making the money would be easier, but he found out the hard way that after many dinners with sketchy potential backers he was getting nowhere. Oddly enough, even the gay men who are in powerful positions weren’t helpful.
“Our system is still … there are a lot of gay men in power,” Blane said. “They are still obsessively casting straight actors to play these [gay] roles. There are so many actors out there who might be gay, but they’re not being cast, even in these gay roles and big movies. And that’s frustrating.”
Eventually the movie was completed but getting into film festivals was another hurdle. It wasn’t until the film was accepted in Italy that things started to change.
“This past year we finished the movie,” Blane said. “We started submitting to film festivals, but we had a tough time. The reason we got into Outfest [in LA] and Frameline [in San Francisco] and Toronto Inside Out Festival was because we were accepted into a prestigious festival in Torino, Italy. As soon as we got that acceptance, everyone started saying yes to us!”
There’s a good reason for that. Blane has created not only a quirky lovable character, but also an incredibly original script with visuals that enhance the film. See it starting Tuesday, November 12 on a variety of streaming services.
For more information about Mark Blane and Cubby, go to cubbyfilm.com