Curtain Up 2012!

Homeboy

In director Dino Dinco’s rarity of a documentary, gay Latino former gang members (some former convicts as well) talk easily about subjects including cultural machismo, coming out, and their struggle for acceptance (both internal and familial). The personal accounts of several men, most of them heavily tattooed and hyper-masculine, goes into what gang life meant to them, the violence that has shrouded their lives in Los Angeles, ways in which gay and Latino culture intersects for them, and, compellingly, what their first time with another young man was like.
 
“The first time I had sex with another man was on my 21st birthday,” says Marco in the film, talking about his first same-sex encounter. “I was drunk at a little party and this very attractive guy took me into a room and went down on me. The experience was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was the best ever. When I sobered up, I thought, Hell, no, that didn't happen, and blocked the memory of it out for a year and came out a year afterwards.”

The boys are frank and sometimes graphic (don’t take Mom to it if you’ve just come out to her last week), but that makes it feel real, like a conversation at your local hangout (or barrio, as the case may be). As a bonus, the film also weaves in interviews with Chicano gang expert Luis J. Rodriquez, who authored the best-selling memoir Always Running: Mi Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. July 14, 4:30 p.m., REDCAT.