The friend who was with me at the Abbey the night we found ourselves at the bar next to "Vacationland" star Gregory J. Lucas last month sent me an email a few days ago to tell me that the actor's picture was on the front of the NY Times features section! I thought, cool! This little movie is getting some well-deserved attention!

The WRONG kind of attention as far as I'm concerned! The reviewer, Nathan Lee, was NOT impressed. His review starts like this: Too bad the title "Another Gay Movie" is already in use; it would have worked nicely for "Vacationland," a generic coming of age movie whose arrival on the scene suggests that the audience for gay indie clunkers is inexhaustible.

Ouch! I disagree. I've seen more than my share of those "gay indie clunkers" Lee writes of and "Vacationland" isn't one of them.

So, I'm standing by this movie that so wonderfully captures the blossoming love between two high school best friends (Lucas and Brad Hallowell) who give up any pretense of being straight at some point and just go with their feelings. There's no agonizing about it, they just become romantically involved, the way every gay high school kid wishes it could be. I loved the film for that. Sure, I didn't love the creepy subplot involving a child molester who resurfaces in the life of Hallowell's character but, for me, there was enough in this movie to make it very worthwhile.

So far, "Vacationland" has played at various festivals including the Berlin Internaitonal Film Festival and at Outfest in Los Angeles. It opened in New York City last week but no Los Angeles release date yet.