Adults Only

By: Robert O'Neill
In-House Review - Nov 19 2013

Writer/director/producer/actor Heath Daniels and prolific short filmmaker Michael J. Saul scored waves of laughter with their 2010 short comedy Go Go Reject. They returned to the festival circuit in 2013 with an equally accomplished short that is wildly different in tone, but still pulls at the heartstrings.

Adults Only follows a sullen photographer named Matthew (played by Heath Daniels, who also wrote and produced). Haunted by memories of a lost love, Matthew is in desperate need of a distraction. One night, on his way home from a gig, something grabs his attention: two men leaving a porn arcade.

Matthew follows the men to a secluded alley and photographs their passionate tryst from the shadows, unable to take his eyes off their primal connection. The following night, he returns and enters the arcade. Pushing through the curtain, he is ushered into a fluorescent maze of hallways leading to private booths. Cracked doors and skillfully placed peepholes offer a voyeuristic view of intense and private exchanges.

Matthew thinks he is only there to watch. But his view of reality is shaken when he meets an intense and handsome stranger and finds himself in an intimate exchange of his own.

With little-to-no dialog and a voyeuristic camera that perfectly compliments the subject matter, Adults Only is an engaging experimental short. It's also impressively uplifting. For a film that revolves around anonymous sex in a seedy club, the film has a lot of heart. We're thrilled to offer this exceptional short. The movie itself is 26 minutes, but the DVD is packed with fun bonus features. We can't wait to see what Daniels and Saul bring us next!

By: Amos Lassen

Here is something I found about a short film that is making its way on the festival circuit. Matthew (Heath Daniels) found himself despondent after the break-up with his boyfriend and he felt alone and depressed. Then because of an intimate encounter at a porn theater, things begin to change. What happens to Matthew is a result of a chance encounter when he sees two men having sex and takes a few pictures. He is a photographer returning from an assignment. As he watched the two men, he realizes that he is something of a voyeur. He decides that he wants to take some pictures of "sex on the seamy side" and he enters a porn arcade where he watches others doing what they do. He finds this to be exciting and he also enjoys watching various kinds of rejection. As he becomes more interested he enters the world of anonymous sex, he considers all the possibilities that it hold. As he watches, he has flashbacks to his own relationship that ended and we see why he finds his activity so much fun.