Lukas Gage and Zachary Quinto On 'Down Low' — Their Outrageous New Comedy
" 'Down Low' premieres at South by Southwest this weekend and seems poised to be one of 2023's breakout indie gems," reports Vulture.
The film is directed by Rightor Doyle, from a screenplay by Lukas Gage and Phoebe Fisher. It stars Gage, Zachary Quinto, Simon Rex, Sebastian Arroyo, Christopher Reed Brown, Audra McDonald, and Judith Light.
Gage's career has been on the rise this past year since his iconic "salad-tossing" scene from the first season of "The White Lotus." In it, he was caught being rimmed by his boss, played by Murray Bartlett, after the pair indulged in some serious after-hours drug taking. Since then, he made headlines for being a spokesperson for rimming to Andy Cohen and embracing another fetish on Netflix's "You," where he is a regular this season. More recently, there has been speculation about his sexuality after he was seen vacationing in Mexico with Hollywood hairstylist Chris Appleton.
Vulture writes that in the film "Gage plays Cameron, the chatty, gum-smacking chaos agent who unleashes pandemonium on the otherwise staid life of Zachary Quinto's Gary. Their elaborate attempt to dispose of the corpse involves an Ambien-addled neighbor (Judith Light), a crack vial they simply must smoke, a stolen Fabergé heirloom, and an ode to Nicole Kidman drowning herself at the end of 'The Hours'."
What inspired Gage and Fisher to write the script was "Pretty Woman" — not the glossy film, but its origin script, called "3,000" that told a far darker tale about sex workers.
"We had an idea — what if we made it queer?" Gage tells Variety in an interview along with co-star Quinto. "What if we made it a little bit more insane?"
"The go-for-broke plot (and to say much more would be to spoil some truly WTF moments and ruin a cornucopia of twists and turns) was what appealed to Quinto, the openly gay 'Star Trek' star," Variety continued.
"I like the unabashed gayness of it," Quinto said. "It didn't apologize for itself. It was the first thing I've done since the pandemic, and it was exciting to come do something unique and singular."
Rightor Doyle, an actor and director whose credits include "Barry" and "Bonding," was hired to helm, with some advice to the screenwriting duo. "Doyle urged Gage and Fisher to tone down some [of] Gary and Cameron's more despicable actions and to emphasize the emotional bond they form while juggling various felonies and misdemeanors.
"The question of the movie is if you do bad things, can you still be a good person?" says Doyle. "There's a larger issue surrounding queer identity where many people in our society feel like at a base level you can't be good. We wanted to fly in the face of that."
Nor does Gage want to present some PG-version of queer life.
"This is not to bash 'Love Simon' or any of those coming-of-age gay movies, but I want to see queer people and characters and situations where it's not just about how being gay is okay," says Gage. "I wanted to situate LGBTQ people in a different genre. I wanted to have queer characters and not just have it be a queer story of 'it's okay to be gay and love ourselves.' "
Check out pics from both actors' Instagrams: