MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Fun Down There’: Portrait of Gay Youth

The endearing and amusing “Fun Down There” (at the Nuart through Tuesday) suggests that the naive might just inherit the Earth after all. Buddy Fields (Michael Waite) is a gangling farm youth in Upstate New York who takes off for Manhattan in search of some clinic he heard about on TV where they can change you from gay to straight. However, not only does he lose the phone number but almost immediately meets a kindly young gay photographer (Nickolas Nagurney), who, without planning to, steers Buddy toward the path of self-acceptance.

Written by Waite and producer-director Roger Stigliano, “Fun Down There” looks to have been made on a budget of about 10 bucks, and a couple of scenes look like they were lit by a flashlight. But no matter: The film glows with a sweetly radiant sensibility. Buddy may be an innocent, but he’s no fool, realizing full well that he has to come to terms with his homosexuality. He’s a sunny young man, not self-conscious, self-reliant and requiring little more than a roof over his head. He’s thrilled to get a job washing dishes at a St. Mark’s Square restaurant--it’s lots easier than working on a dairy farm--and his freshness and openness amuses but also seems to charm everyone he meets.

“Fun Down There,” which chronicles what surely will be the most decisive week in Buddy’s life, is not a film filled with peril and conflict. There’s a temptation to regard Buddy’s experiences, virtually all of them positive, as too good to be true. But wait a sec: Buddy asks so little and is so naturally pleasant and likable why wouldn’t he bring out the best in people?

Actually, Stigliano and Waite are revealing a big truth: For all the bad publicity New York gets about being a place of danger and indifference, you’re more likely to be met with friendliness and simple courtesy there than you are in self-absorbed, laid-back Los Angeles. Like Spike Lee, Stigliano and Waite are attempting to suggest that a sense of community can actually exist in New York--one that is accepting, supportive and not ridden by despair and drugs.

There definitely are awkwardnesses in “Fun Down There,” but Stigliano is a filmmaker with a vision, a man who is as observant of New York’ off-the-beaten-path charms as he is of its people, whom he tends to view from a discreet, compassionate middle distance. There’s real subtlety in Waite’s understated portrayal of the reflective Buddy, and depth in the two young men he attracts, Nagurney’s photographer and Martin Goldin’s waiter, who is also a college student. There are some brief glimpses of explicit sex but they are natural in effect rather than exploitative; you do, however, regret the filmmakers’ choice of title, which lends itself to crude double entendre completely at odds with the film’s tender tone. P.S.: Sit out the credits and you’ll be rewarded with a hilarious parting shot.