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I first met young actor Ben Silverstone of The Browning Version on a transatlantic flight to New York in 1994… No wait, let me rephrase that. I was on a flight to New York in 1994 when, after lunch, they showed us The Browning Version starring Ben Silverstone. Yeah, I guess that’s how it was. Anyway, I really liked the movie (and Ben), and thrilled though I was that four years later he starred in the gay-teen-coming-out drama Get Real I never could bring myself to watch it because I simply couldn’t stand the face of his supposed lover on the movie poster / DVD cover. It took me friggin’ 10 years to finally get over my aversion to sports jocks and watch the movie the other day. And I loved it.

In Get Real Ben Silverstone plays 16-year-old schoolboy Steven Carter who has known that he’s gay since age 11. The only other person who knows is his next door neighbour and best friend Linda. No, actually that’s not true. There are other people who know, namely the men Steven meets while cruising public toilets. One of them is a young writer named Glen with whom he occasionally has sex in the woods. One day Steven takes Linda to the toilet in the park because he wants her to meet him, and that’s where the following clip sets in:

And so the drama begins. They kiss, they have sex, and they both seem to enjoy it. John, however, being one of the sports jocks, can’t even be bothered to speak with the far less popular Steven at school, let alone admit to his homosexuality in public which in turn makes Steven rather unhappy. Frustrated by that and other experiences Steven writes an essay titled “Get Real” about being 16 and gay and having to live a life in obscurity, and he anonymously submits it to the school newspaper. The school head, however, refuses to allow the article being printed. When the editors decide to publish a blank page with the word “CENSORED” across it the “gay article” quickly becomes the No.1 talking point across the school, and thus the drama continues…

Get Real is quite a decent film about coming out as a gay teenager, and it’s a shame really that it didn’t do all that well at the box office and that the DVD has long been discontinued by the manufacturer. However, it’s still available from various marketplace sellers at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, so try to catch it if you can.