‘Gay = Sin’ by Matt Brown

When Matt Brown sent us his recent video project, his title got our attention; and that’s exactly how he intended it. “I called the video GAY=SIN in order to attract anti-gay people,” says Brown. “I thought they’d be turned off by seeing some gay-friendly title, so I let it sound a little like it was their view in order for them to want to watch it.”

Brown’s short video (short film maybe?) takes us on a camping trip to central Washington “where it’s predominantly conservative, naive people,” explains the director. “So I showcased a lot of the houses and landscapes in the beginning to show the masked face of society.”

Some of the guys on the camping trip were naturalists/hikers/campers from scenicboys.com, but he didn’t think he’d do much with the footage–until he got home.

“As I was editing, I heard multiple anti-gay marriage commercials on the TV behind me saying that gays will ruin other people’s lives if they get married and that it’s a negative thing. So, as I saw the contrast of all the smiling faces in my footage and hateful, lying words on the screen and I had the idea of blending the two together to show the truth beyond their words. I combed the internet to record the sound of the preachers, protesters, politicians, etc., spewing the flame of hatred out of their mouths.”

The soundtrack Brown uses is truly remarkable, in that he paints both a visual and aural contrast. The soothing music bed is ‘Untitled #3′ by Sigur Ros (you’ll remember that Ryan McGinley did their music video). In contrast, the jarring voices come from various preachers, TV personalities, protesters, politicians, news anchors, like Shirley Phelps-Roper (daughter of godhatesfags.com preacher Fred Phelps, whom you hear screaming and yelling for the last half of the video) and Pat Robertson (the spearhead of “The 700 Club,” i.e., axis of evil, who talks for the first quarter of the video).

Brown tells HN that he’s working on “making an actual planned, scripted gay rights video” soon. “Next time without all the butts and randomness.” But if we have any advice for Brown, we’d say, keep the butts, we never tire of beautiful, naked men.

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