FAQs, directed by Everett Lewis, is a low-budget effort to deal with homophobia. At the beginning, while the title FAQs morphs into FAGs and back again, there is an extended quote from the homophobic 2004 Texas Republican Party platform. Next, India (played by Joe Lia) is lying on bed awaiting someone to join him in a porn film. Homophobe #1 is at the camera. Homophobe #2 enters, pretends to be straight, unhappy with his porn assignment, and eager to engage in rough stuff. India refuses to make a violent film, so the homophobes calm done. After the film is made, India receives an envelope to pay him, but at a diner he discovers that the envelope contains only a dollar or two with shredded newspaper. India returns to the street to hustle, talks to a competitor, but along come homophobes #3 and #4. India and his hustler acquaintance run off, but India luckily runs into Destiny (played by Allen Louis), a drag queen who has a gun that he is prepared to use; after demanding that #3 must give his jacket to India, the homophobes depart, though India suspects that #3 is actually gay. Destiny then invites India to live in his one-bedroom apartment, subject to certain house rules, rather than continue to sleep underneath the Cahuenga overpass in Hollywood. India tells Destiny that he left his homophobic parents (homophobes #5 and #6) in Colorado for hustling in Hollywood. Destiny has also taken in another stray, Lester (played by Minerva Vier), who later admits that she was kicked out of home at the age of thirteen by her parents (homophobes #7 and #8) for being a lesbian, though she was a tomboy and did not know what a lesbian is. Next, India uses the gun to track down and threaten homophobe #1 and on the street discovers Spence (played by Lance Lee Davis), whose parents have brought him to Hollywood; when a john asks for the privilege of photographing the two boys, Spence talks about bruises that he received on his body from homophobes, including his parents (homophobes #9 and #10). In a scene that should have been cut from the film, Destiny pulls a gun on homophobe #11. Meanwhile, Vic Damone (played by Vince Parenti), a member of the West Hollywood police force is falling in love with Destiny, so his body gets some attention on the screen. One day, India decides to return the jacket to homophobe #3, as he has decided to "save" him. The address is in the jacket, so off he goes to the rescue with Spence. Sure enough, homophobe #3 is gay after all; his name is Guy (played by Adam Larson), and he lives with homophobe #4, Quentin (played by Joshua Paul), but toward the end of the film Guy latter admits his love for Quentin after the latter threatens to kill himself and then declares his love for Guy, thus making the point that homophobic straights are really suppressing their gay tendencies. At a crisis point, when Spence contemplates killing his parents, India articulates the moral of the story, that gays should not mimic straights by using violence to settle scores; instead, gays should openly show their love and let straights deal with that. (However, India obviously has contradicted Destiny's modus operandi.) The film ends with yet another hustler picked up by homophobe #1, with homophobe #2 en route. FAQs is a most didactic film indeed that might improve with better writing and a laughtrack on the GAY-TV channel. MH
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