I don’t usually come out to the person I’m interviewing. Let alone twice.
But this time, for this film and this person, I felt compelled: “I am an identical twin, and I’m gay.”
“Wow, that’s a double disclaimer,” James Sweeney responds. “That’s amazing. Let’s go.”
Sweeney is the writer, director, and star of the new movie Twinless. He plays Dennis in the film, a gay man who meets a twin in a support group for people who have lost a sibling. Dylan O’Brien plays Roman, whose twin Rocky recently died, and he and Dennis become fast friends, bonding after one of the meetings. Rocky was gay, which becomes a connecting point for the new BFFs, as Dennis helps Roman heal from his loss.
There’s a twist though. And warning, it’s a huge spoiler, though it happens early in the film—but is necessary to discuss the film. So, again, warning!
The reason Dennis is at the support group isn’t because his sibling died. It is because he once hooked up with Rocky, became obsessed with him, felt jilted when he didn’t want to date him, and then basically became a stalker. He was there when Rocky died—he was hit by a bus. And he was only at the support group because he followed Roman there, which, of course, he doesn’t reveal to Roman as their friendship grows. A beautiful, meaningful friendship. But one built on lies…and just general weirdness.
It’s a wild, surprising, often hilarious, and often devastating film, which is why it became the buzziest movie in Park City when it premiered at January’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and O’Brien received a Special Jury Award for acting.
So how does Sweeney feel about twins seeing this movie—specifically, as earlier established, a gay identical twin?
“There have been twins involved throughout this process,” he says, laughing. “I don’t expect everyone to love it, because I don’t expect everyone to have the same reaction, generally. But hopefully people feel it’s, um, a respectful rendition of a twin?”
We both start laughing.
Twinless, as you can tell by my attempt at a plot description above, is a hard movie to describe. It’s hilarious, sexy, and fun—as much as it is sad and disturbing.
Sweeney’s elevator pitch: “I just say it’s about two men who meet in a twin bereavement support group for twins who lost a twin…but it’s a dark comedy! To clarify that it’s going to be enjoyable.”
Sweeney grew up, as I’ve found throughout my life, the way so many people grew up: fascinated by twins. We are a novelty. People want to know if we ever switch lives as a prank. A teacher in my high school once asked if he could study my brother and I. Mostly, I’m annoyed that my parents never submitted us to star in a Doublemint gum commercial.
For his part, the Olson twins were a touchstone. And not just because of Full House. He had their detective books. He went to see New York Minute in theaters.
“I definitely had that fantasy that I think a lot of people in my generation did, of having a long lost twin that you bump into in a forest,” he says, giggling. “So that’s always been an interest of mine. I’ve also been very interested in human psychology, and I was a research psych minor in university and there are a lot of studies done on twins. So I think it interests me, in terms of identity and psychological development. And then I also dated an identical twin.”
Record scratch.
He dated an identical twin?
That has always been a fascination for me, an absolute and unapologetic narcissist. What would it be like to date me?
This leads to a part of our conversation that, for reasons that will make both me and Sweeney blush, is unequivocally off the record. But, suffice it to say, I now trust him as an expert on twins, and therefore endorse Twinless even more than I did before.
“It’s funny because it’s not like I go around thinking about twins every day,” Sweeney says. “But I have for the past couple of years making this movie.”
Twinless is the second movie that Sweeney has worn the three hats for. He also wrote, directed, and starred in the 2019 indie film Straight Up.
This movie is a level up in terms of production budget and cast. O’Brien is one of the, excuse the cheesy phrase, It Actors of the moment, having graduated from franchises like Teen Wolf and The Maze Runner to really interesting work in projects like Ponyboi, Saturday Night (as Dan Akroyd), and Fantasmas.
Sweeney wasn’t necessarily intent on being the co-lead of Twinless, being fully aware of the realities of film financing and needing a “name” to sell. But when O’Brien signed on, it gave him permission to indulge in what he loves: playing a character he created.
“Dylan that gave me the confidence to do it,” he says. “I knew this was a bigger scale than my first movie, and we were chasing, not to be crass about it, but quote-unquote ‘name actors.’ At the time, I was like, who the f—’s gonna wanna star opposite me? Especially someone who’s been in a franchise. That felt so unrealistic. But Dylan’s so grounded and just such a great partner. Once I felt like I found that, it gave me the gall to go forward with this.”
There were actors who passed on the project. It’s a testament, Sweeney says, to O’Brien’s taste and willingness to stray from the typical Hollywood path that he wanted to star in a film that, before it premiered to standing ovations at Sundance, was considered a tough sell.
In Twinless, O’Brien doesn’t just give one incredible performance as Roman. He pulls double duty bringing Rocky to life in flashbacks, so that every conversation about the twin vibrates with a, well, vibrant life that’s being referenced.
“I used to work in casting as my day job, so I think just ethos wise, I see actors from a different lens of not like, oh, they’ve done this before so they can do it again, but, what haven’t I seen from them?” Sweeney says. “Or what have I seen colors from them, but maybe they haven’t been able to bloom fully. So to me it’s really exciting to cast talent and show different sides to them.”
One of those sides, it turns out, is bonafide, unbelievably sexy, drool over, hunk who is very good at mimicking the hottest version of gay sex.
A pivotal moment in the Twinless lore is a flashback to when Dennis and Rocky met, which instigated Dennis’ ultimately fatal obsession. We see them meet, see sparks fly, and then see them go back to Rocky’s apartment, where a sex montage unfolds that is remarkable for how hilarious it is but also how straightforward it is in depicting what it looks like when two gay men get it on.
Twinless was part of Sundance’s pioneering “watch from home” program, but also a victim of it: The sex scene was recorded and put on the internet, where it spread like wildfire. The mass sharing of it ultimately led to Twinless being removed from that virtual platform.
It’s a strange thing, then, for Sweeney: celebrating that the sex scene was so successful in its normalization that it was championed, but also so disappointed that it was pirated and became a talking point for people who hadn’t yet seen it in the context of his film .
“It’s hard, because you are trying to balance the commercial prospects, and we’d gotten notes in test screenings that the same-sex sex scene ‘ruined the movie for me’ from a particular 35+ hetero demographic,” he says.
“But I’d say that’s a minority,” he adds. He had final cut privilege on the film, and obviously kept the sex scene in. “I was surrounded by people who championed me to make the exact version of the movie that I wanted to make.”
That the scene leaked is “a huge spoiler,” he says, and very frustrating. The invasiveness and the huge bummer of piracy aside, “that’s not how I want to be introduced to the internet. Because most people won’t be familiar with me. Waking up to reading, ‘Oh, that bottom twink director…’ is not necessarily the identity I’m trying to claim.”
Still, he repeats to himself that old adage—all press is good press—like a mantra, especially if it gets people into theaters to see the film. And he’s eager for people to discuss it, from all angles. It’s not a straightforward film, and his character is not one who is easy to empathize with.
He remembers going to over a hundred financiers when trying to produce Twinless, all of whom passed with notes about his character and his likability. You know, the potential stalker lying to a grieving twin of it all. But he’s been heartened by how many people who have seen the movie have come to understand Dennis—and, with that, the film.
At the very least, this identical gay twin does.
The post Identical Twins, Lies, Gay Sex: ‘Twinless’ Is the Buzziest Movie of the Year appeared first on The Daily Beast.
