Alan Boyce Movies

Described by director Gregg Araki as "A Beverly Hills 90210 episode on acid" (with no suggestions of what it might be cut with), Nowhere is a companion piece with Araki's previous meditations on youth gone wild in the 1990s, Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation -- Araki's self-described "teen apocalypse trilogy." Nowhere follows 18-year-old Dark Smith (James Duval) as he goes through a fairly typical day in Los Angeles. Dark needs, but rarely gets, emotional support from his girlfriend Mel (Rachel True). Mel, however, is also involved with a girl named Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson), while Dark moons over hunky Montgomery (Nathan Bexton). Dark's best friend Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz) has troubles of his own, as his boyfriend and bandmate Bart (Jeremy Jordan) is back on drugs and spending most of his time with his dealer. Mel's friends include sugar junkie Dingbat (Christina Applegate), doomsday poetess Alyssa (Jordan Ladd), and Egg (Sarah Lassez), who is being unexpectedly wooed by a Famous Teen Idol (Jason Simmons). Egg's brother Ducky (Scott Caan) has a crush on Alyssa, but she's keeping company with a biker named Elvis (Thyme Lewis). Alyssa's assignation with Elvis gets a psychic boost by her twin brother Shad (Ryan Phillippe) and his tryst with Lilith (Heather Graham). The day continues on a roller coaster of kinky sex, hallucinogenic drugs, random violence, romantic misunderstandings, alien abductions, and (of course) a wild party, this time at the home of noted hipster Jujyfruit (Gibby Haynes). Like The Doom Generation, Nowhere features a wealth of pop culture icons in cameo appearances, including John Ritter, Traci Lords, Charlotte Rae, Eve Plumb, and Shannen Doherty. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When a talented, heterosexual Los Angeles pianist is diagnosed with AIDS, he abruptly spurns family and friends and withdraws into a safe, thick-walled cocoon of embittered loneliness, telling no one that he is going to die. His hopelessness, self-imposed exile and refusal to go the hospital for treatment does nothing to slow the progression of his illness. One day he is brooding in a coffee shop when an impoverished African American woman turns up to hustle him into buying her coffee. He obliges, and as the two outcasts talk, he suddenly loses consciousness. She gets him to the hospital and remains beside him until he awakens. Thus begins a tentative and tender (but not overly sentimental) friendship in which both learn to trust again as they share painful past episodes and their tentative future dreams. Though he never tells her so, the woman realizes that the pianist is dying and so provides him with subtle support. He too helps her deal with her two increasingly unruly teenage boys, one of whom has already become a small-time crook. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A group of gay and lesbian teen characters addresses the camera directly in this pseudo-documentary about the travails of queer adolescence in early-'90s Los Angeles. Andy (James Duval), who hides his sensitive side beneath a nihilistic exterior, really yearns to find a nice boyfriend and settle down the way his pal Steven (Gilbert Luna), an aspiring filmmaker, has with boyfriend Deric (Lance May). Meanwhile, their sex-crazed friend Tommy (Roko Belic) has been kicked out by his parents for being homosexual. The only seemingly carefree members of this adoptive family are Michele (Susan Behshid) and Patricia (Jenee Gill), a lesbian couple whose desire to raise a child together leads the boys to participate in a group sperm donation during one of the film's many scenes of these characters just hanging out and rapping about AIDS, fag-bashing, homophobia, and alienation. In-between polemicizing and posing in front of Steven's camera for interviews, Andy meets college student Ian (Alan Boyce), who seems, at least for a while, to be Mr. Right. Just as Andy and Ian's relationship begins to blossom, Steven and Deric's starts to fall apart, but nothing's for certain in director Gregg Araki's angst-ridden world. Framed as 15 vignettes, each one introduced by an ironic intertitle and many of them interspersed with graphic sexual and commercial images, Totally F***ed Up marked the end of Araki's no-budget phase; the glossy, gaudy Doom Generation would follow two years later. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

This modest teen comedy has the usual themes revolving around sex: how to handle it, how to relate to it, and how to do just about everything except engage in it. The focus is on two teenagers, one is the serious Natalie (Jennifer Connelly). She has her eyes set on becoming President of the U.S. and one day heads off to Washington D.C. on a special visit for "Future Leaders." A certain presidential aide brings a romantic touch to her idealized vision. The other teen is Polly Franklin (Maddie Corman) whose infatuation with a baseball player takes her to New York -- where a photographer steps in as a pinch-hitter. A few other subplots move circumstances around in the two teens' lives, though their romantic exploits take center stage. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide