DVD Review: Dear Pillow

It's heartening to see a good indie film find distribution after you'd almost lost hope of seeing it again, or being able to urge your friends to watch it. I caught Dear Pillow during a limited run at Alamo Drafthouse in 2004, as part of a series showcasing SXSW films that hadn't yet found theatrical distribution. I was pleasantly surprised by the Austin-shot film and although I thought its sexual content might make it a tough sell, wished it would eventually find a wider audience. Three years later, Dear Pillow has finally appeared on DVD, and I am able to recommend it to anyone who doesn't object to watching a frank film about sex.

Dear Pillow isn't a porno, and in fact we witness very little sex or nudity in the film. Characters talk about sex, read and write and watch porn, and obviously are desirous of having sex with the people around them. (They masturbate, but we don't see this directly.) This isn't a dry, talky movie, however -- it can get downright disturbing at times.

Wes (Rusty Kelley) is a sullen teen spending the summer with his dad (Cory Criswell). When he's not working as a grocery bagboy, he eavesdrops on his landlady's prank phone-sex calls, digs through his dad's very specialized porn collection, and slowly builds an almost grudging friendship with Dusty (Gary Chason), the friendly older guy in a nearby apartment who writes porn for a magazine called Dear Pillow. Wes becomes interested in writing about sex himself; he also becomes much more interested in sexy landlady Lorna (Viviane Vives). Dusty offers to mentor Wes not only in writing but in finding an opportunity to get to know Lorna better.

Dear Pillow isn't just low-budget, it's micro-budget -- you get the feeling that Wes's dad's apartment probably belonged to a friend of the filmmakers, and that everything was furnished from Goodwill. But this only adds to a strong sense of the characters being real people on whom we ourselves are spying; this could be the apartment down the block, lacking anything glossy or pretty or unrealistically cinematic. No outright good guys or bad guys are in the film, either. Wes's dad may not understand his son, and he may have unusual taste in his leisure reading material, but it's not difficult to sympathize with him. Wes himself can be downright unlikeable at times, but underneath it he's lost and confused and extremely young.

The DVD quality is very good, and in fact the movie looked and sounded better than it did when I first saw it at Alamo a few years ago. The extras are more interesting than what I usually find on DVDs: two commentary tracks, one from writer/director Bryan Poyser and producer Jacob Vaughan, and one from the three lead actors; deleted scenes and audition tapes; and two short films. Pleasureland, which Poyser and Vaughan made in 2001, is also about sexual matters, and in fact was one of the "objectionable" films cited when the Michigan state legislature threatened to cut funding for the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Grammy's, Poyser's 2007 short that stars Kelley and filmmaker Joe Swanberg, is also included in case you missed it on the film-fest circuit this year.

Dear Pillow was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2005 in the "Someone to Watch" category, and although it didn't win, the filmmakers and cast are likely to be worth following in upcoming years. The filmmakers have been working hard since Dear Pillow's Slamdance premiere in 2004 -- their follow-up film, The Cassidy Kids, premiered at SXSW in 2006. Vaughan recently edited In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Alex Holdridge's latest film, which IFC will show/distribute next year.. Poyser received the "Up and Comer Award" at the Lone Star International Film Festival in November. And Kelley, whose performance is note-perfect as awkward teen Wes, has a role in Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever.

A year or so ago, Poyser and Swanberg held a fundraiser for Grammy's by screening a double feature of Dear Pillow and Swanberg's first feature, Kissing on the Mouth. Both are now on DVD and are worth seeing for their different explorations of human, flawed, non-Hollywood sexuality. I like Dear Pillow better (sorry, Joe) because I was able to connect and empathize more with the characters; unlike other indie films of the past few years, the characters are a variety of ages, and not only twentysomethings. Dear Pillow may have been overlooked for distribution for a few years, but don't overlook it when you are searching for an interesting and unusual drama.