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Project Outline

Blood Sweat and Tears is a trilogy of short films written and directed by John Lochland for the Big Dipper Film Company. Each of the stories features one of the three characters seen in Sweat which is the middle part of the trilogy and the only one of the three films that has been completed.

Sweat starring David Paisley is the story of an afternoon of debauchery and intrigue as a young man takes leave of his senses and heads for a sauna. Negotiating the humiliating locker room strip Simon forges his first impromptu introduction to a handsome man called Tim in the sauna. Nerves prohibit normal conversation as they share the empty sweat room and the two attractive men shy in each other’s presence. Later, Simon encounters an opportunistic rent boy called Tiger and is amazed that at seventeen, he seems to have learned more about sex than Simon has in all his twenty-five years. Further into his journey, an experiment with poppers and some very public sexual activity leaves him wondering what he came for. He leaves non the wiser, albeit with a phone number and a wry smile.

Blood stars Tom Swash as Patrick (AKA Tiger) a young opportunistic rent boy on the make. His journey begins with a call from his heavily pregnant girlfriend to tell him she has gone into labour two months early, it’s late, he’s North, she’s South. Patrick uses his street philosophy to get from A to B without much money and in the quickest way possible. ‘Tricking’ his way through the night, we learn as he goes, what’s really in the hearts of his punters and how his own values have changed now that he’s going to be a father. Before journey's end he is forced to make a decision when someone makes him an offer difficult to refuse, bareback sex for the total cost of his train fare home. Seventeen year old Patrick completes his emotional and geographic journey before dawn and arrives in time to see his girlfriend holding the new arrival.

Tears starring Tom Frederic as Tim is the story of a successful man in his late twenties looking for love in all the wrong places. When Tim’s lover Sam, is killed in a motorcycle accident on his way home to his wife, he becomes confused by his apparent inability to grieve for a man he thought he loved, even though he knew he was married. Sam owned a houseboat, the location for regular secret rendezvous and violent sex and now Tim struggles to work out whether it was love or just illicit sex. Finding himself alone in the city, his grief edges out, highlighting his inability to connect with people on a level other than physical. Perhaps there is one person who can help. Tim wants to talk to Sam's widow, at Sam's funeral.