there’s also something really fun going on with the way the film character “Bill” that Guy plays is wracked with this guilt and sense of himself as a “lost soul,” whose gambling will destroy everyone around him and himself. He is fragile and frantic and in need of salvation
and Guy Dexter himself has this healthy sense of attachment to risk and to luck, and the relationship he forms with Thomas and the chance he’s willing to take there are portrayed as positive and intentional and joyful for them both.
That sense of panicked urgency, the need to be validated or saved, is not present in the love story forming between Thomas and himself. And I think having a gay couple in particular play against this straight love story about last chances and losing everything—it’s interesting! Because they are free from all of that in their interactions with each other, or even in how they talk about their own desires.
Thomas is not overly devastated or defensive when he tells Mrs. Hughes what he wants—he knows it to be true. Guy does not overstate or apply any pressure when he asks Thomas to come with him to Hancock Park and “see for himself.”
“If I’m right,” Thomas says, and “if my career folds,” Guy admits. And it’s okay! It’s okay with them that “ifs” exist in the equation. Because they trust themselves and they trust what the other person has said to them. There is a security in what they are establishing, and it doesn’t rely on a last minute decision or a savior.
