made them feel a little bit better about walking their path and not feeling shame.

I do think that both characters are joined in their loneliness, kind of.

A lot of the film is about, I think, how we negotiate our own loneliness, kind of.

And they share a similar journey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I mean, totally.

Why can't we have sex? What's wrong with you? Sorry.

yeah

and it felt the character of hank kind of being a sex offender and a pedophile is yes very lightning rod subject matter but also i think i wrote it from a place of of I was trying to...

The goal wasn't like...

I hate when films talk about the goal of their film being a social message or the goal to destigmatize.

That was never kind of... my intention was neither to stigmatize or de-stigmatize or not humanize, I think, but try in trying to write the characters honestly as possible.

And I mean, like a film, like as long as a film, as long as the character is speaking and, and, breathing and acting like a, like a person.

And you try to just as honestly as you could try to figure out how they would move around a space and speak to another person like that by virtue of that is, is humanizing someone like, and so I think I've gotten this question a lot kind of through the of why make a character that you could empathize with.

Um,

Right

... guides, like, decisions later.

But, um, but yeah, it's, I mean, you're also not the first person to, like, tell me about, like, an experience like that after watching the movie.

It's been really interesting to see, like, how many gay men come up to me and they're like, "I was 17 or 16 or however old, um, and, like, my gym teacher was sleeping with me." And, and the way that they speak about it is, like, again, in no way is this, like, a defense of any of the adults in the room, but the way that these people who were adolescents at the time speak about it is with a m- like, yeah, a much more slippery kind of morality than anyone, anyone-

[laughs]

Straight people can play gay parts.

That's what, that's my hot take, too.

But, um, [laughs] I think that, like, I'm watching that movie, and I'm like, "This is...