coverEastSiders
I have always loved the tradition of the ‘Great
American Road Trip’ and I really wanted to stick a rainbow flag in it and claim it for LGBT
people! We have every right to this country, its beautiful national parks and monu-
ments, and we have every right to explore them in the same way that straight people do.”
impressed by everything that we did with it.” Williamson agreed, explaining the motivation
for his decision further, “Van is right, I have always loved the tradition of the ‘Great American Road Trip’ and I really wanted to stick a rainbow flag in it and claim it for LGBT people! (Laughs) We have every right to this country, its beautiful national parks and monuments, and we have every right to explore them in the same way that straight people do.” He expounded further why it was so personal, “My husband and I have done two cross country road trips, back when we were first moving to Los Angeles some eight years ago. We drove my car across the country from Mississippi and then we drove his car cross country from Minnesota to get to Los Angeles to start our new life. So, it’s subject matter that is loosely inspired by that—obvi- ously we didn’t get robbed by a handsome drifter [Colby Keller]—though we certainly did have the opportunity to grow closer to one another by being in the car for six days straight.” (Laughs) The road trip wasn’t without its challenges, “We actually lost one of the campgrounds in Idaho. They were super gung-ho for us to shoot there and when we gave them the name of the project, they dropped off the face of the earth. It was a little surprising to me that we are still having issues like that in the run up to the election. We even dealt with one of the crew members who point blank asked if he was in danger of contracting AIDS because they shared toothpaste!” Williamson outlined another
of their challenges, this time with a cast and LGBT community member, “All the stuff that happened with Colby Keller was wild too. (His 2017 Advocate article supporting Donald Trump caused quite a stir.) When his initial statements came out, we already had a plane ticket booked for him and were in a car careening across the country pulling a vintage camper trailer to go meet him.” Van Hansis summed the experience up this way,
“It was so much work, but it was really a labor of love and was such an incredible experience. We shot across the country and then we had a sit down in Boise for about a week and a half to two weeks, because that’s where we got the interior stuff in the trailer. Then we drove from Boise to L.A. and did about a week there. Then Kit and John and the rest of the gang did all the stuff for the two stand-alone episodes after that. It was insane, I’d never done the cross-country road trip thing, but I’m glad we had the chance to do it.” Williamson humorously added a couple anecdotes from the trip, “We got snowed out of Yellowstone, so I didn’t get to shoot the blowjob scene that I had scripted at Old Faithful. (Laughs) We also stayed at an AirBNB outside of Boise that I didn’t realize was basically on top of a mountain. The only pathway up was a dirt road with no railing, so of course I had to drive this 2000-pound camper up and back down and some motherfucker laid out food for the elk herds and we were constantly having to swerve to miss them…and in turn, avoid hurtling down the mountain.” (Laughs)
Their relationship to the world was altered a
great deal once Netflix picked upEastSiders, Kit Williamson talked about how it changed the game. “We’ve never seen the kind of response that we got to the show premiering worldwide on Netflix with season two, until we premiered season three on Netflix. They doubled the number of languages that are available with subtitling. Season two was in about a dozen languages, season three we’re avail- able in two dozen,” he said. “I know from Twitter and people reaching out to me that the third season is available in Brazil because it’s in Portuguese, it’s in Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey and the Middle East and even Nigeria. It’s been really cool because it’s available in many countries who might have a mixed record with LGBT rights. Netflix opened that up and made it possible to bring a gay, queer story to network users all over the world. I can’t state how important that media representation is to me, as a guy who grew up in Mississippi. Williamson summed the conversation up with
a bit of wisdom that spoke to this writer’s heart, “I believe it’s one of the reasons why it’s so important as queer people and artists to tell these stories and to tell our own stories and keep a record. To document our stories and learn from the past and to take those lessons into the future.”
Amen to that.
EastSidersSeason One, Two and Three are all available for streaming on Netflix. For more information about the series and how to connect, go
toeastsiderstheseries.com.
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