Wes Hurley (center) on the set of “Potato Dreams of America”
We have never felt such a kinship with a potato.
We owe this very strange feeling to writer / director Wes Hurley, the filmmaker behind the wonderful queer comedy Potato Dreams of America. The film is playing at Frameline45 starting June 15. The film is also playing at the Provincetown Film Festival starting June 18.
Potato Dreams of America stages Hurley’s own life story as he emigrated from Russia to the United States. Growing up in Vladivostok in the last days of the Soviet regime, young Vasili / Potato (Hersh Powers) grew up addicted to the hope and glamor of American films, begging Jesus (Jonathan Bennett, yes, from Mean Girls) for deliverance. As he grows up, however, Potato and his mother, Lena (Sera Barbieri) both begin to realize that he is gay. This will mean almost certain death in Russia, so Lena becomes a mail order bride and takes Potato to Seattle. There, Lena (now played by Marya Sea Kaminski) struggles in her marriage to the tyrannical John (Dan Lauria), as Potato (Tyler Bocock) struggles to lose the remnants of her Russian identity, much to the chagrin of her liberal professors. He also has to hide his budding queer sexuality from John, who is hiding his own secrets.
We spent time with Hurley to talk about his own history as a gay Russian immigrant, the struggle to tell his story on film, and the plight of his mother and stepfather in real life. Potato Dreams of America is playing Frameline45 starting June 15. The film is also premiering at the Provincetown Film Festival starting June 18 and is currently seeking distribution.
They say the truth is stranger than fiction. Well, it’s a strange, wonderful, true story. It is also your first feature film in six years. Why has it brought you to this point in your life and career to tell your own story?
To be honest, it took that long to raise funds. I wrote the screenplay eight years ago, and that’s very closely – 99% – all that happened to me. But it was such a struggle to get the money collected. Everything I have done before has been guerrilla style. I didn’t want to do this one that way.
It’s one of Russia’s fascinating contradictions that before Putin gay life really flourished, and I know in parts of the Far East it still does. What does this say about the Russian character?
I mean, I think it’s the old story of a government that makes us a scapegoat and rallies people around a common danger. We have always been a popular target. It’s very sad. I never knew the opening there. When I grew up I started to feel like it was going to become more open, but not for gay people, just in general. But it was going to be more western. It stopped pretty quickly. So I don’t know what the future holds for Russia. It never was in the right place, really. It’s hard to hope, but I would like that to change.
Do you think the people there really want a change? Or are they just resigned to it will always be so.
I think a lot of people are resigned. But, you know, I’ve never known a gay life there. I thought I was the only gay in the village, like this character from Little Brittany.
[Laughter]
Now that I know gay immigrants from Russia who to have been there, they say gay culture is in a place where most people are afraid to lobby for rights. The attitude is the more discreet, the better for us. This is the mindset of a lot of people. And there are great people who are fighting for equality. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen. Putin, sooner or later, will die, so the question is, what happens then? One of the great things about the internet age is that it’s hard to shut down or hide how much equality has progressed in other places. So I hope that will also come to Russia. The youngest are very aware of it.
You also have a lot of fun with Vasili who comes to America and wants to lose his culture since he escaped he. But he meets this very liberal professor who pushes him not to lose his culture, nor his language. Were the Americans reluctant to let you assimilate?
Constantly. There are wonderful things to be experienced in a liberal bubble like Seattle, so I am lucky in many ways. But it’s a respect where people would really push you over the edge. And people would drive you crazy about it. It’s funny, the teacher of the film, their conversation is very inspired by my first day at school.
It is terrible.
Now I can laugh about it, but I hated my teacher back then.
You use a lot of long shots, especially in the Russian segments of the film, the tram scene for example. Why?
I mean, I’m definitely influenced by old school cinema, a lot of older Hollywood movies or Japanese movies like Ozu’s, compositions that show a character in a painting for a while. I love this simplicity, but there is incredible detail in every shot. I have a background in painting, so I prefer cinema to be pictorial. You just created a beautiful composition and stick with it. I know it’s the opposite of Hollywood which likes a lot of quick cuts with a shaky camera.
I love long trips like this. I think there is such art in there.
I think it helps the actors in the sense that they can stay in character. It’s more like theater in that regard.
Related: Musicals, Male Burlesque, Jonathan Bennett in Jesus & Drag: The Queerty Frameline45 Preview
It helps that you have a very talented cast here. Tyler Bocock, who plays Potato, is very good here in his first feature film. But there are two cast-inspired songs that I want to talk about. How did you come to Jonathan Bennett as Jesus?
I mean, we’re really lucky we got it from our casting agent in New York. I love using gay actors in non-gay roles. I feel like it’s interesting, especially when you don’t expect it. Jesus, in the film, is the idea of what the Jesus of a little gay boy would be like. So I thought that would be hilarious. And it really paid off. He came to Seattle for a few days and really hit it off with Hersh Powers, who plays young Potato. They really hit it off and had this amazing chemistry.
This is one of his best performances. He’s having a lot of fun.
Therefore a lot of pleasure. He got it. It’s just funny. He is lovely.
The other inspired cast here is Dan Lauria, both because I think he’s a very talented and underrated actor, and because he’s probably best known as the All-American father of The good years. Here he is sort of the antithesis of that. How did you approach him?
I mean, that’s a big part of what you said. He’s a great character actor and doesn’t have enough of a good job in the movie. He is so, therefore good. This emblematic presence that he has because of The good years, that iconic daddy, spilling that, that was fun.
It’s a bold thing to put him in a role like this, but that’s what makes him exciting and fun.
Racial, ethnic and foreign fetishization is a hot topic right now, especially within our community. He’s come back in a lot of my interviews recently. The potato, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to really care. Is it exploitation if he profits from it? I guess it’s autobiographical.
Yes, it’s definitely autobiographical on this point. One of the reasons I wanted to put it in there was to show the passage of time and the evolution of consciousness. As I assimilated, I became less anxious and embarrassed about things. Then once I realized I could get things out of it… why not? I definitely, at first, when I first came to this country, it was really hurtful to feel that gays didn’t like me, and those who liked him, loved me only because I had an accent. So it was very personal, and I try to show it at the start of the edit.
Yes.
But honestly now I barely have an accent, and I’ve lived here for so long that I feel more American than Russian. So that doesn’t bother me. I think it’s something that frustrated me, but I wouldn’t compare it to racism. It worked to my advantage, and I don’t care at this point. Funny: the reactions of some older gay men are really uncomfortable because I fit into the stereotype of being a slutty gay man. But I was a bitch …
[Laughter]
I just wanna be true to this. And I hope he reads that it is over many years. One of the reasons I wrote it this way was to show that his accent was decreasing and his confidence was growing.
It’s a fun sequence. However, it’s a little weird to have someone ask a partner to say “Chernobyl” in bed.
[Laughter]
Well, that’s a lot of fetishists’ problem, they don’t know anything either. It is not a question of substance.
What do you realize about yourself, your family, and your story as you retrace all of this? Do you find catharsis in there?
I don’t really think about it in terms of production. It’s more like a purge. The very first drafts of the script, the end, it was just me saying why I had made the film. And again, I don’t understand as much anymore, but before, everyone asked me where I was from. So I ended up regurgitating the same story over and over again. But it’s really like the character says at the end of the movie: I wanted to make the movie so I didn’t have to say it anymore. Ironically, by the time I made the movie, I didn’t understand the question very much because I had assimilated.
What underlies the character of Potato is that he watches American movies—Ghost, A hard worker– because they always have a feeling of hope, of aspiration. Russian films, right? How does this influence you as a child?
I think what happened with Russian cinema is that at the start of the Soviet era they were only making propaganda films. And it was edifying, but it was propaganda. There was such censorship that when things started to open they started calling her Chernukha—black cinema. The filmmakers started making films that showed how things really are, but I think they’ve gone a little too far. I feel like…
