Director Elliot Tuttle and his two stars, Reed Birney and Kieron Moore, discuss the intense reaction to their drama and the fight to get it to the screen.

Blue Film first look: How a radical camboy indie defied the odds, controversy, and rejection (exclusive)

Director Elliot Tuttle and his two stars, Reed Birney and Kieron Moore, discuss the intense reaction to their drama and the fight to get it to the screen.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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March 24, 2026 10:00 a.m. ET

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Kieron Moore as Aaron Eagle in 'Blue Film'. Credit:

Obscured Releasing

- *Blue Film* director Elliot Tuttle and his two stars preview the camboy drama that caused quite the public stir at its world premiere.

- "I don't think I thought that it was gonna be as controversial as it was, which is kind of foolish in retrospect," actor Reed Birney says.

- "*Blue Film*'s not a movie that you stumble upon," costar Kieron Moore says. "I feel like it's something you don't really watch by accident."

There was a time when director Elliot Tuttle genuinely believed his upcoming work, *Blue Film*, would never make it to the screen. Conversations were had with multiple distributors, both domestically and abroad, and the answer across the board seemed the same.

"There has been feedback of, 'We really like the movie, but we can't play it. Our audience won't appreciate this,'" Tuttle tells **. "Or, 'We wouldn't be *allowed* to broadcast this.' Internationally, there are different kinds of regulations everywhere, censors. The content continues to remain an issue in our effort to try to get this film more widely seen or find a bigger audience for it. It becomes very clear it's not about the quality of the film."

On paper, *Blue Film* can be a hard sell. Kieron Moore, who had a recent moment in the spotlight through Netflix series *Boots*, now plays a popular camboy known to his clientele as Aaron Eagle. Aaron is hired to spend a night with an anonymous, much-older man, played by theater veteran and *Mass* star Reed Birney.

The polarizing response comes from what happens next. (**Spoiler warning**.) Rather quickly into the encounter, Aaron realizes the two have a shared history. The man is Hank Grant, his former middle school teacher, who was fired for an attempted sexual assault of another 12-year-old male student at the time. Hank was secretly harboring romantic feelings towards Aaron back then, his real name being Alex, and wants to see through this one night if he's still in love with him now as an adult.

"*Blue Film*'s not a movie that you stumble upon," Moore describes the project. "I feel like it's something you don't really watch by accident."

Birney saw the Hank role as simply a great part, but acknowledges the obvious: "As soon as you say pedophile, everybody has such a strong and undeniable reaction to it." He admits, "I don't think I thought that it was gonna be as controversial as it was, which is kind of foolish in retrospect. Of course, it was gonna be controversial, but I just think I thought it was such a beautiful character study."

The response out of the film festival circuit captures the common trajectory of the response so far, but a question lingers about how a mainstream crowd will take it. *Blue Film* was labeled early on in the press as "controversial" after several major festivals, including heavy-hitters like Sundance and SXSW, rejected the title. When it finally did receive a showcase at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last August, several walkouts occurred.

Tuttle was backstage in a holding room during that world-premiere screening, awaiting the audience Q&A that would follow. "My producer was in the theater watching it, and he was texting our little group chat, 'Someone just walked out during the scene...one other person just walked out. A third person just walked out,'" the filmmaker recalls. "I think I had always anticipated that to some degree."

Kieron Moore and Reed Birney in 'Blue Film'.

Obscured Releasing

"You could hear a pin drop during the whole thing," Birney says of that screening. "Everybody was afraid to move. People have talked about this sense of it feels like a thriller, and I think that was the experience in the room at Edinburgh. People just didn't know what they were watching and what was gonna happen. It felt very dangerous. People said they felt like it was gonna end very badly, like it was gonna be a bloodbath or something. It was that suspenseful."

Then came the Q&A, and not only was the crowd willing to engage with the work, but the specific questions asked also reflected the bigger, poignant conversations *Blue Film* posed. This was followed by a strong critical consensus from reviewers as the work continued to play in many other festivals around the globe.

Obscured Releasing will now distribute *Blue Film* in theaters, beginning with New York City on May 8, followed by Los Angeles on May 15. The director and his two stars hope to incite even more conversations.

"When this film can't screen or when a distributor is not willing to take it, it has always seemed to come from a place of concern for the audience," Tuttle says, "but I don't think our audience is being given enough credit."

The origin of Blue Film

Tuttle began writing what would become *Blue Film* just a few years ago. It was a time of intense retrospection. While watching films by Catherine Breillat, the renowned French director whose work often explores female sexuality, he began journaling about his 12- and 13-year-old self when he was becoming conscious of his sexuality.

"I had been thinking in particular about that time in my life, fantasizing about the male teachers that I had around then and trying to think more honestly about my adolescent sexuality," Tuttle shares. "And in the way my cinematic influences do, what did I really want as an adolescent? What was I really hoping for? And I found the answers to that question to be a little bit more murky or socially unacceptable, maybe, but I found them pretty rife with thematic material or just something compelling. Regardless of the social aspect of saying these things, it still felt truthful."

Tuttle slowly began turning these journal entries into a script. In the beginning, it looked like long musings on adolescent and taboo sexuality, out of which two characters began to emerge. The more autobiographical parts relate to Aaron/Alex and this "quarter life crisis" Tuttle says he was experiencing at the time.

"A lot of the Aaron character is very personal to me in that I was trying to fillet some uglier sides of myself in a truthful way," he explains. "That changed over the course of the writing process, too. The final character, as is, is not completely what I'm discussing right now, but that was how it started."

Reed Birney as Hank Grant in 'Blue Film'.

Obscured Releasing

Through Hank, Tuttle was then able to channel a lot of the questions he asked of himself, notably about the ways in which sex can inform how we live our lives. One film that became a big inspiration was *Pervert Park*, the 2014 documentary (available to stream on Netflix) about the residents of Florida's Palace Mobile Park, which houses more than 100 convicted sex offenders.

"That made a huge difference in how I approached it," Birney says. "They were regular folks with this terrible demon."

The actor, also known for work on films like *The Menu* (2022) and shows like *House of Cards* (2013-17), describes Tuttle as fearless, which, to him, felt both exciting and scary. "I think if it were up to him, he would have had full-on frontal graphic sex. [That] was the impression that I got from the initial letter he wrote me and the conversation we had," he describes. That wasn't something Birney wanted to do, both for his own comfort and to avoid scaring away distributors.

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He also shared one suggestion he thought was crucial for Hank: "I said, 'I think it's very important that Hank isn't a predator and that he doesn't have a computer full of kiddy porn and that he isn't active, that he knows what he is and how dangerous he is. So he is able to abstain, for the most part. I think that made a huge difference in signing on."

Birney, also an executive producer, became an active participant in assembling the movie, which the team shot at a discounted rental home in Hancock Park in L.A. for the mere sum of $50,000, which Tuttle secured through a grant from the Duplass Brothers' foundation. (For years, *Blue Film* consulting producer and filmmaker Mark Duplass mentored Tuttle, who also worked as his intern.)

"You can't make a short film for $50,000," Birney exclaims.

The actor brought in cinematographer Ryan Jackson-Healy after working together on *Mass*. Birney was also the driving force behind the casting of Moore.

Finding Aaron/Alex

Kieron Moore as Aaron Eagle in 'Blue Film'.

Obscured Releasing

Like Tuttle, Moore found himself reflecting on his own life and career when *Blue Film* came his way. He had filmed three episodes of *Boots* with the cast and crew before the Hollywood strikes stalled the production, and by the following January, the producers decided to rewrite the scripts and restart the shoot in May.

His cast mates, who'd become his main friends, had all gone home. His family remained a 10-hour flight away back in Manchester, England. All of a sudden, his New Orleans rental was feeling smaller and smaller, which gave him time to think about the type of actor he was working to become.

"I was ravenous, really," the Manchester native says. "*Saltburn* had come out. I was getting a lot of texts from people being like, 'You would've been great in Barry Keoghan's role.' It was the danger of that role, I guess." Dangerous is how he now describes the actor he envisions for himself. "I texted my team and was like, 'If anything comes up that is kind of shocking that I can prove myself with…' 'Cause I was fulfilled by doing *Boots*, but I knew I could give more."

That same month, in January, Moore auditioned for *Blue Film*, a role he says his team was initially reluctant for him to do. "When I did it, and they saw it, their opinion shift was so motivating," he notes. "They were all so proud of it and proud of me, and I think they were ready to defend my performance."

Moore was not the first choice for Aaron/Alex. He read a few scenes over Zoom with Birney, but Tuttle initially decided on another actor. It was Birney who fought hard behind the scenes to sway the filmmaker, the first and only time he's done that for a prospective actor. He describes what he experienced as "a psychic flash"; Birney could instantly see them telling this intimate story together.

"It felt like I was seeing Brad Pitt in *Thelma & Louise*," he says.

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"I have this really beautiful email from Reed that I've saved. I look at it now and again when I'm feeling down," Moore shares. "It's just this beautiful message, extremely complimentary to me, but also saying he would mourn the movie that he thought that we were gonna make together. I felt like I'd gained a friend in the industry that can be quite competitive and lonely at times."

Both Birney and Moore are now brimming with pride for that movie they made, and in hindsight, *Blue Film* feels like less of a career risk. Birney points to the release of *Pillion*, which depicted far more graphic BDSM scenes between stars Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling, as well as the success of *Heated Rivalry*, also dramatizing intense sex with its breakthrough stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams.

"There's a clearly an openness to these gay stories," Birney says, "but this really goes one step beyond just in terms of what it's asking you to feel for these characters. I didn't feel like in *Pillion* we were being asked to understand or sympathize with the dominator."

Moore is most proud to be a part of something that "gets under people's skin," similar to the work of actors he admires.

"I don't think all art is meant to agree with us," he adds. "I don't think it's meant to dismiss our opinions. I also think it's meant to strengthen them, but I think it can be all of them. I've had a couple of friends that have watched [*Blue Film*] and were like, 'I didn't really feel good that it made me sympathize with [Hank].' I was like, 'The movie doesn't do that.' The movie doesn't make you do anything. The movie gives you an opportunity. And that is where I think the uncomfort lies."

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Source: “EW LGBTQ”