I can't believe it's been almost 20 years since I saw this film (from a Super 16 print) in a dingy little San Francisco theater. It only played for a week and I went to see it again almost every night. No, it's not "Star Wars" but at that time gay cinema was dominated by depressing AIDS-related tragedies and horrible stereotypical gay caricatures. "Defying Gravity" was one of the first full length films to show us a fairly ordinary guy who just happens to like other guys. Candidly, I was always put off by the gay bashing plot point, but I'll cut the writer some slack for needing an strong dramatic element to move the characters from point A to B. Sadly, only a short time after this film was released the real life Matthew Shepard murder occurred. I know it's easy to find fault with these low budget affairs that have to be shot in two weeks with no rehearsal and no more than two takes. But if you know anything about film making, you really have to respect the entire cast and crew for pulling off anything remotely entertaining under these conditions. It's a shame Daniel Chilson didn't make any more films after this. He created a character that was immediately likable. I just saw a big budget gay film this weekend where I didn't care about any of the main characters, even after 90 minutes.

A pity I discovered this movie so late. There seems very little information about this movie available and I'm even more surprised that there is even less information about the actors on the web, especially Daniel Chilson is a very promising actor and I don't understand why he (apparently) played in only one movie. As someone else also mentioned: the scene in the mountains is simply superb and I've seen many well known movies with "big" actors who didn't reached at all this "niveau" (as they put in french). I'm far from being a movie-specialist but one thing is for sure: I enjoyed this movie immensely and I think this is one of the main aims for a movie. Go on guys.

I don't know whether anyone has raved about how beautiful Daniel Chilson is. I have tried to search the net for some more information on him. On the contrary, the only one who was not attractive was his lover, Pete. It is hard to me to believe that any one so gorgeous as "Griff" would fall in love with anyone so homely as "Pete". That, of course, is a subjective opinion. I would recommend this picture to all gays where the themes are still quite valid and the good old boy atmosphere of frats still remains supreme. Even today, after so much "Gay Liberation" talk, reality is such that our society is still mainly homophobic. Straights even avoid seeing programs in which gay characters are featured. Effeminacy still makes them wince. Even gays wince when they see someone who is flaming. This, of course, continues to be unfair. I am not sure how to change all that. It certainly is not through film if straights won't see them. I know that a great amount of effort is expended trying to have us accepted just as another human being with the same needs as straights but when we see the governor of the only State where gay-marriage is legal, running for President and completely in favor of amending the constitution so as to eliminate the gay-marriage in Massachussets, and our own President in favor of the same, in spite of how the straights have turned marriage into a farce by divorcing over and over again, we then see what we are up against. We are still low man on the totem pole and it is because of the rotten hypocrisy of the fundamentalists of organized religion. I still think Daniel Chilson is gorgeous.

There's a gem of a script here. Clearly the filmmaker is working on a ultra low budget. Many of the supporting cast deliver their lines as if they are in a high school play -- they are painfully wooden. However the idea behind the film is an important one and the film will touch you on multiple levels. I somehow wish this script could get fine tuned and remade as a major production. I feel the film as a lot to say about the pressures of college life -- especially that of living in a frat house on a big ten campus and having to lead a double life.Some of the material for the story appears to have been inspired by the Matthew Shepard story and the film feels extremely relevant.In spite of the low budget nature of the film, see this picture!