Bruce La Bruce Raising Money For Gerontophilia, A Queer ‘Harold & Maude’

To call Bruce La Bruce an ‘in your face’ filmmaker is a bit of an understatement. Films like The Raspberry Reich, L.A. Zombie and Skin Flick have pushed the boundaries between cinema and porn, often deliberately challenging the audience’s perception of what they’re watching, looking into everything from Neo Nazis to the undead, all with a homoerotic bent.

Now he’s hoping to return with Gerontophilia, which he’s described as ‘Harold and Maude meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. The film has already started shooting in Montreal, but now La Bruce has launched an IndieGoGo campaign to raise $30,000 to get the movie finished. While this one doesn’t sound as explicit as many of La Bruce’s earlier movies (although who knows?), it takes on a subject that will be challenging to many, this time a relationship between an 18-year-old and an octogenarian.

The director says, “While it might not in any conventional sense be considered science fiction, Gerontophilia is at its heart a time travel movie. It takes as its subject a love affair of sorts between an eighty year old man and an eighteen year old boy: two old souls who, had they met each other somewhere else along the space/time continuum, might have become the perfect couple.”

Here’s the synopsis: ‘Lake is an unusual boy: he is a young man with an old soul who discovers he has an odd fixation on the elderly. Realizing that some day, if fate allows, he will be one himself, he is particularly fascinated by old men. He imagines their age to be a beautiful thing and recognizes how these men where once young and vibrant and attractive, as he is now. Although Lake has a girlfriend his own age, named Desiree, he wonders sometimes if his fixation on old men is unnatural and unhealthy – perhaps even sexual.

‘When his mother, who is a nurse, takes on a management job at an old folks home, Lake jumps at her offer of a summer job as an orderly there. Gradually, Lake comes to discover that the old people in the institution are being given psychotropic drugs to keep them in a catatonic state. Lake befriends one old man in particular, Mr. Peabody, who still seems to have some fight left in him. They begin to form a strong bond. Mr. Peabody charms Lake with romantic stories of his youth and confesses his dreams of seeing the ocean one last time. Avoiding the vigilant eye of Nurse Stonehenge, who administers shots and pills to the old folks, Lake starts to wean Mr. Peabody off his medication.

‘Eventually, Lake springs Mr. Peabody from the institution. Together they embark on a road trip telling everyone they meet that the old man is his grandfather and that they’re driving to the ocean. After numerous life- changing escapades, Lake is finally ready to accept his true feelings for Mr. Peabody, but everything changes when the trip takes an unexpected turn.’

If you want to know more or fancy offering some cash to the movie – as always with crowdfunding there are perks available depending on how much money you give – head over to IndieGoGo.