So happy to see that East Side Story, one of the best gay indie films of recent years and one of my personal favorites, won the GLAAD Media Award on Saturday night in San Francisco. Although the movie is a few years old and already been released theatrically and on DVD, it aired on the LOGO channel which qualified it for the best television award and it won!

GLAAD honors individuals and projects in media for fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives. The awards were split into three ceremonies, held in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco

I’m really excited for writer-director Carlos Portugal and especially one of the leading men, Steve Callahan, who is a terrific actor and a very supportive reader of Greg In Hollywood and before that, of Out In Hollywood.

The film tells the story of Diego (Rene Alvarado), a closeted young gay Latino who works in his grandmother’s restaurant and is having a secret affair with Pablo, a closeted real estate agent. Diego wants to leave it all behind and open his own restaurant somewhere else. Things change when a gay couple moves in next door in a neighborhood that is beginning to undergo gentrification. Diego is instnatly attracted to one of the men, Wesley (Callahan) and the feeling is mutual and electric. But the road to love is not at all smooth, mostly because Welsey feels stuck in his relationship with his bitchy boyfriend with whom he has just bought this house.

Here are some scenes:

Comments

(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)