Hello, Goodbye

The accent might
betray his Swedish origins, but queer filmmaker Casper
Andreas is New York City through and through: With a body a
Chelsea boy would envy, a do-it-yourself work ethic
right out of Brooklyn, and a teensy-but-adorable
railroad apartment you could only find in the East
Village, the 36-year-old director has spent more than a
decade in the city, making movies that explore what
it’s like to fall in (and out of) love in the
Big Apple. His first releases, 2004’s Slutty
Summer and 2007’s A Four Letter Word,
found ample humor in the kind of romantic
misadventures gay Manhattanites often fall prey to --
though admittedly, most of us don’t end up dating
pathological liars who hustle on the down low, as
Jesse Archer’s Luke did in AFour Letter Word.

Andreas’s
latest cinematic effort, Between Love and
Goodbye, strikes a darker chord: After falling hard for
each other, young lovers Marcel and Kyle move in
together -- and that’s when the problems start.
First Marcel, who is French, must marry their lesbian
neighbor Sarah to stay in the country. Then Kyle’s
troubled transsexual sister April moves in, demanding
constant attention and poisoning him against Marcel.
As jealousy and anger threaten their bond, it’s hard
to tell if the couple will pull back from the brink or
if it’s time to say goodbye.

Even though the
film deals with heartbreak, making Between Love and
Goodbye was a labor of love for Andreas: He not
only wrote, directed, and produced the film, he is
distributing it himself through his company, Embrem
Entertainment. Shortly before the movie’s
January 30 premiere in New York (a Los
Angeles release is set for March 6), Andreas spoke with
Advocate.com about the film’s evolution,
whether he’s a believer in true love, and how
far some New Yorkers will go to keep a decent apartment.

Advocate.com:Between Love and Goodbyeis much more serious than your previous work. Is
this an attempt to branch out into new territory?Casper Andreas: It’s actually the first
script I worked on -- I wrote it almost 10 years ago. It was
inspired by my first big love affair, which ended with
a bad breakup. A lot of the story is made up
obviously, but all my films are inspired by my life
being a gay man living in New York, especially this one.
When I wrote it I thought I would play the Marcel
character. I sent it out to a few places but
didn’t get much response, so I put it aside and ended
up doing Slutty Summer first.

Is that because gay comedies are more marketable? That was certainly part of it. I thought, How
can I make an inexpensive film that will be
successful and lead to other projects?
Certainly being funny and having young hot boys made it
accessible. I wanted to make [Goodbye] my
second film, actually, but having done one romantic
sex comedy, it was so much easier to go ahead and make
another. And Jesse Archer, who costarred in Slutty
Summer, cowrote A Four Letter Word with me.
A lot of it was Jesse pushing me [laughs] -- he
really wanted to get that film made. This one is my
“European” movie -- my art film. It’s
more like the kinds of movies I watch myself.