Writer, producer and star Noam Ash brings his award-winning debut feature to FilmOut San Diego as the festival’s Closing Night film
by chris carptenter
Of the many great films that will be screened during the 26th annual FilmOut San Diego LGBTQ Film Festival, running August 20–23, one stands out as a true crowd-pleaser with virtually universal appeal. It is Bookends, which will make its San Diego premiere as the fest’s Closing Night film at the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) in Balboa Park. Lead cast member Noam Ash and Director Mike Doyle will attend.
Opening Night at the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park will feature Test, an intense drama about a competitive bodybuilder’s gay awakening. Its cast includes Brock Yurich (who also wrote the screenplay), Tony Award nominee Tammy Blanchard, and actor-singer — and Glee alum — Matthew Morrison.
The ever-timely subject of family figures into quite a few of the acclaimed movies to be shown. These also include the Welsh gay romance On the Sea; entertaining documentary Hunky Jesus, about the annual Easter pageant in San Francisco presented by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Out of the Woods, a relationship drama that boasts such big-name cast members as Frances Fisher, Bruce Davison and Mimi Kennedy; Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders, Jeffrey Schwartz’s fascinating documentary that revisits the controversy surrounding William Friedkin’s 1980 thriller Cruising; and the sexy Israeli tale A Man Walks Down the Street.
Complete film information and fest passes, or individual tickets, can be found at filmoutsandiego.com.
This writer’s absolute favorite festival entry that I was able to screen in advance is Bookends. It follows Nate (played by Noam Ash, who also wrote and produced the movie), who, after a bad breakup, is forced to leave his fabulous New York City life behind and move in with his grandparents. He quickly becomes determined to escape the confines of retirement community life and his grandparents’ relentless attempts to “improve” him.
But when his Holocaust survivor grandfather Saul (award-winning veteran actor F. Murray Abraham) shows signs of cognitive decline and his grandmother refuses to acknowledge her husband’s early dementia, Nate finds himself torn between his desire to flee, family responsibilities, and an unexpected romance with his grandparents’ handsome doctor (Charlie Barnett, who recently appeared in the San Diego stage production of Hedda Gabler).
Ash first gained recognition as creator of the hit web series My Gay Roommate and subsequent TV pilot Boy•Friends, which garnered over 11 million views and received critical acclaim from Vanity Fair and The New York Times. He guest-starred in HBO Max’s The Other Two, as well as starred in and executive produced The Influencers on Amazon Prime.
Bookends, which was directed by Mike Doyle, serves as Ash’s debut feature film. Of note, it won the Anti-Defamation League’s Stand Up Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this year.
Ash spoke with The RAGE Monthly recently via Zoom to discuss his latest, undeniably significant achievement … which might also give viewers a renewed appreciation for Nutter Butters.
Hi Noam, and thanks for your time. I just loved the movie. It kind of starts out like a typical gay rom-com, but then as it goes on it becomes more and more poignant, and insightful, and touching, and moving. There are so many layers to it and I loved that.
Thank you so much for saying that. We worked hard on that. Not a lot of people notice this but there is a bit of a visual aid that also happens at the beginning of the movie, that’s setting you up to think you’re going to see something you might have seen before. It’s in 16:9, which is the aspect ratio of a TV show. Then as soon as Nate gets to his grandparents, we shift into cinematic, so there’s a whole visual thing that happens.
Wow, that’s interesting. I don’t think I noticed that.
It’s very subtle but if you go back and look, you’ll see that, when it starts out, it fills your entire screen like a TV show would. And then, right after the title sequence, it expands into a cinematic (widescreen) aspect ratio.
OK, I might have to watch it again. That’s very cool. It really struck me that Bookends was like a labor of love between you writing it and starring in it, and then the whole cast seems so involved. Talk a bit about what inspired you. I understand there are some kind of autobiographical elements to it.
You know, my relationship with my grandparents was and is one of the greatest blessings of my life. It’s inspired by a lot of the lessons and wisdom that I learned from them, so it’s autobiographical in that sense. The whole structure of the movie is complete fiction, but I did live with my grandparents for a year after a breakup, and it was wonderful.
It was honestly one of the best years of my life so far. So I took those conversations and lessons, and some of the more poignant experiences, and then wrapped them in this fictional world that we created, this retirement community and all of that.
When you say it’s a labor of love, it really is. The film was born out of the love for my grandparents, and I think that is a big part of how we were able to, frankly, punch far above our weight. We are a small indie movie, but we have F. Murray Abraham and Caroline Aaron (who plays Nate’s grandmother, Miriam) and Charlie Barnett, all of whom are absolutely brilliant.
We didn’t know when we set out that we’d be able to do that. We were fortunate that one of our producers, who is also our casting director, Henry Russell Bergstein, sent the script to Murray and his agents. He did a lot of work to prepare me ahead of time.
He was like, “Listen, you’re going for the best of the best; sometimes it can take months for them to read and, if they say no, don’t be disappointed because there are plenty of other options.”
No, it was like a week later that Murray called and he loved the script and wanted to do it. I think that love is the thing that brought everyone to the table.
The cast is great and I wanted to ask in particular about working with Murray. How was that?
Murray is a master of his craft, and also the nicest, most generous human being. I’ll never forget the first day on the set; there are flutters and nerves from everyone. Everyone from the director to the crew to myself.
You’re starting on a new journey that you really have no idea how it’s gonna go. (laughs) And of course, the first scene that I shoot is the very poignant scene with Murray where he has his moment of dementia and he forgets an important detail about my character’s life.
It was quite the scene to start with. (laughs) Murray shows up, doughnuts in hand for everyone. He introduces himself by first name to every single crew member. Before we start shooting for the day, he starts with a joke. He just puts everyone at ease, and he really made us all feel like family.
And so that first day there were definitely those jitters — I mean I was like, “Oh my God, we have a legend in our midst” — and that admiration and respect never went away. It only increased, but then it also became sort of like this person that I now know and love and feels like family.
That reminds me of one of the lines from the movie that I wrote down: “We’re family; we take care of each other.” Which is so simple and obvious on one hand but so profound on the other. When you were writing this or developing it, did you see yourself as the leading man or central character? Were you part of the package deal, so to speak?
(Laughs) I am a writer-actor-producer-creator, depending on the project. I started in YouTube and had a web series called My Gay Roommate that I wrote and starred in. It was back when no one was doing web series (beginning in 2012); it was a very novel thing to do. It started as short, 3-5-minute episodes, expanded to 10-minute episodes, and then we sold it and made it into a pilot.
But then I’ve also sold other shows that were not vehicles for me, and so for me it really just depends on the story and what serves the story best. (Bookends) was a story that was so personal to me that I knew on a cellular level what I wanted it to feel like and look like and so, yes, I always envisioned myself in this role.
Nice. Your film has been playing various film festivals thus far. What have been some of the responses or reactions you’ve gotten?
It’s been really incredible. The festivals we’ve played have really spanned the gamut. We premiered at Santa Barbara, which is a phenomenal, general audience festival. We then played a whole bunch of LGBT festivals, a lot of Jewish film festivals, and then a lot of international festivals. We played in Amsterdam and Torino; we’ll be playing in Spain later in the season.
What’s been really cool for me to see is how every audience sees it differently. A lot of the LGBT film festivals really see it as a rom com and as a romance between Nate and Dr. Green, and everything that happens around them. A lot of the more general film festivals really see it as an intergenerational story, with the main drive being Nate’s relationship with his grandparents.
For me as a writer, that’s really cool because when we set out, I wanted to make sure that we don’t water the story down; I wanted it to simultaneously be a story of romance, AND an intergenerational story, AND touch on issues of end of life, AND also be really funny and not compromise on any one of those elements.
So the response has really been phenomenal and so gratifying to see how widely it’s resonating, and how different people find their own entry points. The older crowds that have watched it very much identify with Miriam, some with Saul.
A lot of the younger audiences are like “Oh, my parents are going through this; I am a caretaker” or “I just got out of a relationship that may not have been right for me.” So that’s been really heartening, to just see how differently it’s received from all these different angles.
Charlie Barnett (Dr. Green) is so adorable, and you guys are hot together! How was he to work with?
Incredible. You know, we really lucked out on this production. Every single person was just lovely and really showed up wanting to do this story justice. That goes for everyone from the director, Mike Doyle — who turned the movie into something far beyond what I could have imagined — to our cinematographer, Tari Segal, who was just nominated for an Emmy for Margo’s Got Money Troubles. Charlie was wonderful, and we all just clicked.
One of the other technical elements I really appreciated in the film is the music score. I loved the score and the songs.
Yes! Dabney Morris, the composer, is absolutely extraordinary. The way he works is also very interesting. He composed live to the edit, so as Mike was editing the film with our editor, Dabney would sit in and play live to how they were putting the movie together. The score is all live performance that was captured. He is sensational.
Wow! What are your long-term plans for the film?
We’re about midway through our festival run. We have a whole slew of them coming up, including San Diego. If you would be so kind to include bookendsmovie.com? That gives people a list of all of our upcoming festivals and tickets to them, and also an opportunity to sign up for our mailing list.
We are looking tentatively at a February 2027 theatrical release, so our plan is to be in theaters and then it will make its way to the streaming services and VOD and all that good stuff. We’re really, really excited! @bookendsmovie