Gay and Loathing in Bris Vegas

When co-creator, Craig Rossiter, asked me to direct the pilot episode of Gay and Loathing in Bris Vegas, I said yes because I was helping out a friend and someone who was a potential business partner. You never know how these things will go and I definitely wasn't committed to the whole season. I had seen Craig's short film, Silver Stiletto, and I thought the writing and concept was strong and worthy of a feature. When Craig offered me Gay and Loathing in Bris Vegas, the decision was, at least initially, based on a desire to test whether a collaboration would work. I did not know John, the other co-creator, at this stage. Then I read the scripts. The characters were fresh, Brisbane (my home town) was a centre-piece, it was a web series (which I had not done before) with a built-in/mass-niche audience, and most importantly, the writing was hilarious. In addition, the concept was scalable and I needed a creative outlet beyond my day job working in locations at Screen Queensland. There was also the thrill of applying the skills from my years of experience working on the sets of big-budget Hollywood films like Deadpool and Godzilla, and making something on a shoe-string budget.

Gay and Loathing in Bris Vegas is a story worthy of being told, not just because it provides an entertaining look at suburban gay culture in a city that is often over-looked, under-estimated, and most certainly rarely ever considered to be a gay mecca (not in comparison to Sydney or Melbourne). These things make it unique for sure. But there is also the situational and dialogue driven humour that has been so expertly written by John, a former stand-up comedian who spent the first decade of the new millenia trapped in a disco on Oxford Street in Sydney, and Craig, who studied screenwriting at the University of California, Santa Barbara and founded the gay rugby club in Brisbane (The Brisbane Hustlers) before gay rugby was really a thing.

The comedic voice, while hardly derivative, could be best described as the polyamorous love child of Kath & Kim, Little Britain and Modern Family. This web series deserves to be made, most notably because of the strangely authentic foundation, the Ying and Yang, of its basic human relationships. In almost every episode, you see a dynamic between couples (partners, friends, sporting colleagues) where one is hugely selfish and the other almost desperately self-less. A partnership based on a near-functioning codependence. Towards the end of the season, as the couples interact beyond their couple worlds, the codependence begins to collapse. As I came to get to know and love the characters, I realised that everyone else would too. The structure of the series is almost masterful. Set over 2-days, the first day we see the couples operate virtually independently in their own private worlds. By Day 2, they all start to come together, the pressure builds, and the characters start to pop.

There are many cinematic and screen references in this series, but only where they add a subtle nuance or an interesting complement to the scenes. Some references will be obvious like Aeroplane in Episode 12. Others will not be so obvious. The series certainly did not need to be derivative in order to succeed. In the edits, we have also made sure to include establishing shots of Brisbane landmarks as the city is as much as character as the people traversing it. While the road has been long and the budget short, the passion and investment from everyone involved has been rare. What gays in Bris Vegas will not stay in Bris Vegas. This is a project for the world to see.