My interview with Jesse Rosen, director-writer-star of new indie flick “The Art of Being Straight”

Jesse Rosen describes himself as “the accidental star” of The Art of Being Straight, the film that he wrote and directed and which opens in LA today at the Laemmle Music Hall 3. It opened last week in New York and a review in The NY Times called the film “an unpretentious dramedy of post=college confusion.”

So how did Rosen end up as the accidental lead and the hot guy on all the posters?

“Our lead dropped out three days before we started shooting,” he explained. “We had cast him and basically he wanted to be paid a significant amount of money and I said, ‘Look, we can definitely pay you but we won’t have a camera.'”

So Jesse took on the part of Jon who has just moved to Los Angeles from New York, ostensibly “taking a break” from his longtime girlfriend. He moves in with college bro Andy (Jared Grey), whose pals incessantly do that kind of “That is so gay” banter that’s essentially harmless — unless you’re the only gay guy in the room.

Jon is hardly comfortable discussing his shifting Kinsien scale placement with them, and his new job as bottom-rung gofer at a major ad agency is fraught with sexual tension as a studly boss (Johnny Ray Rodriguez) barrages him with thinly veiled come-ons. Infamous among his buddies as a womanizer, Jon is more surprised than anyone when he ultimately falls for his boss’ seductive charms, which sends him spiraling into a world of sexual confusion.

“It’s certainly based on some personal experience,” Jesse said. “At the same time, it’s absolutely based on conversations I’ve had with numerous friends throughout the years. One of my straightest friends, we were up late one night, and I had told him I had had my own same-sex experience and it’s two o’clock in the morning and he says, ‘You know, I slept with a guy once.’ I was floored. It was so many of these stories of our generation. Not that it’s the biggest deal, it’s just that no one was really talking about it.”

He doesn’t like the word experimenting though.

“I guess it’s just sort of learning about ourselves and coming into our own,” he said. “Someone who saw the film recently and told me it’s not a coming out film, it’s a coming in film. That really struck me. That’s what this movie is about: self discovery and finding your identity and nothing more. And the sexual aspect is merely a metaphor I think for coming into your own and trying to be confident in who you are as a person.”

I’ve watched the film twice and Jesse does not hit a single false note which I find amazing since he had such little acting experience,

“I had done a play in high school,” he said of his previous acting experience. “I had an amazing, really passionate crew of people who believed in the movie. Everyone was a part of the process. I remember during a gay sex scene, we had done a first take and the gaffer was at the monitor. I called ‘cut’ and I asked him, ‘How was that?’ The gaffer, who is gay, yelled back: “It didn’t look real enough!’ So it was pretty much like that on set.”

I wondered if it helped Jesse’s performance that he didn’t have a whole lot of tine to prepare and to essentially just be himself as he worked from a script that he already knew every word of.

“We had so little time to make the film, we shot it in about two weeks so knowing the lines helped it move faster in terms of advantage.”

So why not reschedule the shoot?

“We had no time and no money,” he said. “It was an extraordinarily small budget, it was privately financed. I knocked on a lot of doors. The first money that we got was from an old producer friend of mine gave us $500 and we were so excited. He left the check on his doorstep, inside a microwave. There was a microwave on his doorstep. I opened the microwave and there was this glowing $500 check. That was the beginning.”

If the movie does not offer any clear-cut answers regarding sexuality, it’s by design.

“People who have seen the film say, ‘This is a wonderful coming out story, we’re so glad that John realizes that he was gay in the end. And other people have said the complete opposite. Others have said he’s bisexual. It’s really your own interpretation. I think that’s the point of the film, that there is no grand conclusion.”

Rachel Castillo who plays Maddie actually lived two doors down from him during their sophomore year at Emerson College.

He studied writing at Emerson, mostly poetry, then moved to LA after graduation and landed a job as personal assistant to John Stamos. He then worked at a TV movie company for awhile before landing a job a job in Beverly Hills as the assistant to the president of film company before leaving to make his movie.

The principal photography was shot two years ago and the film premiered at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco. That resulted in some distribution offers including one from Regent Releasing: “They were the company to go to in terms of getting the film out there, not just to a specific audience. My dream was for everyone to see the film – not just the gay audience and not just the straight audience.”

So, you know you are dying to know whether Jesse is gay or not.

“I’m somewhere in the middle,” he said. “I tend to be with girls more and date women and I don’t often go the other way but it’s day to day, man. Labels are really boring to me.”

Jesse adds:”Within the circle that I roam, being gay is really well accepted. You don’t get made fun of or anything like that but anything in the middle isn’t really accepted yet. When someone says, ‘Is he gay?’ That is a perfect example of how our society looks at bisexuality. Maybe someone has had same-sex experiences but does that make them gay?”

“Your mind wants you to choose too. You’re having these thoughts and these fantasies and you’re thinking, ‘I must be gay.’ But then the next day, you’re not or you’re somewhere in the middle.”

Jesse will be having a Q&A after the 7:20 p.m. showing of the film Friday night. Here is the trailer: