Henry Gamble (Cole Doman) has just turned 17, and on the day of his birthday party, as guests arrive for a poolside celebration, he will discover more about the world than he expected. In Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, writer/director Stephen Cone chronicles the transition from adolescence to adulthood, as well as the awakening and realization of sexual identity, as seen through the wide-eyed main character. Even though Henry is the son of an evangelical preacher (Pat Healy), the film isn’t specifically about spiritual conflicts, or about Henry leaving religion behind to embrace who he is, instead, it’s a film that touches on as many subjects, as there are guests at Henry’s party.

Cone’s work has been compared to Robert Altman’s, and with reason, he is a master at maneuvering through a richly varied array of characters, and the highest compliment one can give this film in particular, is that every guest at the party seems fully realized, as if they have a life before and beyond the span of the film. His direction of the young Doman in particular, is wonderful because he makes him both a guide for the audience, and a blooming young man whose spirit can’t be contained by the film he’s in.

Quietly touching, sexy beyond words, and smarter than its “teen flick” facade would suggest, Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, should prove to be essential viewing for young people coming to terms with adulthood, and will also remind adults about the sense of possibility that came with young age. I had the opportunity to speak to both Cone and Doman, who eloquently discussed the film’s themes, 80s music and shared their most memorable birthday memories.

Films about spirituality have been unjustly deemed as irrelevant by most media. And some of the best works by Fellini, Bergman, Dreyer and even Woody Allen to some extent have been about struggles with the divine. Do you feel that this is a dilemma that’s lacking in most contemporary cinema?

Stephen: It’s not quite as willfully strategic as that, it really just comes from wanting to tell stories about people that I grew up with and people that I know and love. My dad’s a Baptist minister, I grew up in a similar sort of world, so I wouldn’t know or be able to do it any other way. But I’m not trying anything specific, maybe it’s just a nice byproduct of the stories I’m telling, that maybe they open a little more of a dialogue and a sense of understanding.                                                                                                                                                       
One of the best things that ever happened to me was when my dad showed me the riches of the Foreign section at the video store. I read that your dad showed you all these “forbidden movies” growing up too. Things that maybe you were too young to be watching. Did you find that this maybe separated you earlier from people your age?

Stephen: I guess they weren’t traditionally forbidden, they were in the sense that not many people my age were watching them. I think my dad identified very early on that movies were something that I really loved, so he very slowly allowed me to watch things. There were still some conventional restrictions on my viewing though, I wasn’t allowed to watch R rated films till I was 14 or 15, but yeah if I wanted to watch an Atom Egoyan film he’d sit there and watch it with me.

Duran Duran was one of your favorite bands, Stephen, and Henry gets a Duran Duran record in the movie. Cole, did you ever think of Henry as a version of Stephen?

Cole: I actually had never thought about that. I think Stephen and I connected in how we shared the same background and loved people in these religious communities. We also share a love of music, similar to Stephen and Duran Duran, my mom would hand me albums by Indigo Girls, John Denver, Cat Stevens and Simon & Garfunkel...but no, never did I feel I had some duty to play Stephen or “show” him. I never thought of it as an autobiographical movie.

Stephen: You never thought of it as autobiographical? Cool! We never talked much about my experiences. I’ve made another movie set in this world called Wise Kids and there’s different parts of me in different characters, in that movie I was more like the preacher’s daughter, and then in this one I guess I was a little bit Henry, a little bit Logan. The music definitely was something of myself I put into the film, and also the sort of idea when you’re 16 or 17 of how it’s exciting before you come into any sort of identity that kissing anyone can feel good. That free identifying sexual curiosity was something I explored too. But there are many things that have nothing to do with my life, I didn’t grow up in a megachurch, I grew up in smaller churches, I certainly didn’t know in that house. There are emotional and sensual elements of me though, it’s like a sensual autobiography.

Cole: Those were the things we talked about, where Henry is maturity wise. Those were the things Stephen communicated clearly to me.

I think the music in the movie is so wonderful. One of the first things I did after watching it was buy the album by New Canyons featured in the credits.

Stephen: I love that! There’s a Spotify playlist with about 80% of the songs.

Can you talk about how you added the music?

Stephen: There was a whole temp soundtrack first, with actual Duran Duran, Vampire Weekend, M83,to figure out the vibe we wanted. But obviously we couldn’t afford those songs, so we replaced them with amazing local music, most of the bands are from Chicago and a few from New York. My sister’s band plays in the film. We premiered the film in May of 2015 and I spent the most of February and March figuring out the music, we had a spreadsheet with first choice and second choice songs for each moment. It was an elaborate process.

The whole ensemble is very Chicago, right? I know Pat Healy did theatre with Steppenwolf for instance.

Stephen: He did back in the day. There are only two cast members who aren’t Chicago based, one of them is Pat actually, but he has Chicago roots. But 18 of the 20 actors in the film are working actors in the Chicago area.

I’m in awe of the Woolf-esque quality of the screenplay which takes place during a single day, complete with symmetrical, beautiful bookends. How was the process of writing this and did the actors have a chance to improvise at all?

Cole: There wasn’t a lot of improv at all, we were pretty true to the script. If improv was happening, it would just be trying things in a different way, we had open discussions. You’re grateful about those kinds of conversations as an actor, because they help you give the best performance.

Stephen: I always say my movies are 5% improvised. I did all these interviews without remembering what I’m about to say, but just the other day I remembered that when I was about to begin the process, I made a list of all the kinds of people I wanted to have at the party, they were either specific people from my life or types of people. So I had about 20 types of characters who could be here, and just started writing the script. I did it all at once, I think I cut one character, but it was very much like painting a portrait. Like the “Sunday in the Park” portrait.

Now I’ll fantasize about Sondheim turning Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party into a musical.

(Cole laughs)

Stephen: I think there are a lot of people who think there is too much happening in the film, and my defense - not that I need one - is that they’d say the same thing if they saw a portrait of a bunch of people. It’s packed on purpose, I want it to be crowded rather than have a clear arc.

Cole, many actors are advised against playing gay/queer characters early on because of typecasting, was this something that concerned you at all?

Cole: Not at all, I only thought about it once people started asking me about the repercussions it would have in my career, but I’m an openly gay actor, playing a queer character onscreen, so my response is I wouldn’t be able to be the best actor I can be, if I wasn’t being true to myself. The people you wanna work with are the people who are honest and true, so if someone won’t cast me because of my sexuality or the work I’ve done in the past, that’s not work I wanna be doing, or people I wanna be working with.

I feel that whether you’re growing up straight or gay, grappling with your sexuality is always going to be an awkward phase. While the film is certainly not didactic in any way, it makes a case for parents and children discussing sexuality in the open. Have you had any offers to use your films as educational materials?

Stephen: I love ideas like that, I just don’t have the time or the energy, and no employees (laughs). But yes, in a dreamland I have a team of outreach people to do stuff like that. All I can do is hope people will see it on Netflix and Hulu, and have conversations about it.

The film is neither a queer movie/a Christian movie/a coming of age movie. Are you in any way advocating for cinema to be as fluid and label free as sexuality is becoming? Do you feel that genre equals limitations in any way?

Stephen: One thousand, million, percent! I love the in-between spaces. I have no interest in categorizing these films, which can be interested when you get acquired by someone like Wolfe, which is a LGBT distributor. The Wise Kids world premiered at Outfest and I had no idea what that would mean for the movie, in terms of how we’d be branded. I’ve never set out to make a “gay film”, but gay audiences have embraced them, and I’m grateful for spaces that show my movies to different kinds of audiences.

To end on a Tiger Beat note, what was your most memorable birthday party like?

Stephen: Cole, did you have birthday parties?

Cole: Yeah, what comes to mind is my 13th birthday, me, and like 12 guy friends saw Agent Cody Banks in the movie theater, then we went back to my house, played games and had a big sleepover. I don’t know why that birthday stuck with me, especially cause I can’t even recall other birthday parties. I had more growing up, it’s absurd I think about Cody Banks.

Stephen: That’s a good one! I don’t think this is what you asked for, but I was at a birthday party when I saw the first movie I saw, it was The Care Bears Movie, we were going to a mall movie theater, and walking in the parking lot and approaching the theater is embedded in my memory forever.

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is playing in select theaters.