Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing
In 2021, Todd Stephens flew under the radar with his quietly amazing Swan Song, a film about an aging, queen-y hairdresser well-known amongst Sandusky, OH’s rich and famous. The film was based on the actual life of the hairdresser while also treating that small, lakeside town as a changing and adapting character, too.
Twenty-two years earlier, Stephens penned a film focusing on another queer person from Sandusky: himself. Edge of Seventeen (1998) follows 17-year-old Eric during his senior year of high school and his tumultuous road to coming out. Eric is a stand-in for Stephens in an indie film that has become a cult favorite for its honest and accurate depiction of the coming out process.
The summer before his senior year, Eric works at a restaurant in an amusement park sitting next to Lake Erie. He works there with his girlfriend Maggie (the quietly amazing Tina Holmes). Also working there is hunky college student Rod, who catches Eric’s attention with flirting and standard, orientation-gaging questions. Their supervisor is lesbian Angie, who makes the service industry suffering of working at an amusement park bearable with her vulgar sense of humor.
These characters all weave in and out of Eric’s life during that summer of 1984, and each play a role in Eric’s coming to terms with his sexuality during his senior year. Maggie becomes the longsuffering girlfriend and beard (straight friend used to make the gay character appear straight), and Angie becomes the wiser, older queer person to help Eric in his coming out process. Rod becomes the sex object and representation of the good and bad of gay culture.
Though Eric’s coming out process might not be revolutionary, the honesty and accuracy with which it’s portrayed was. It’s not overdramatized or played for laughs; it’s often just presented as is. There’s almost a documentary feel to Eric being able to let loose at Sandusky’s gay bar, The Universal Fruit and Nut Company, and his eventual coming out to his mother. The sex scenes, frank and sometimes graphic in what they depict, aren’t Hollywood-ized; they’re just what they are.
Still, the art direction, clothes, and soundtrack make this a convincing 80s movie (despite being filmed a decade later). The more Eric starts to express himself through synth music and dressing like Boy George, the more he experiences ridicule and judgment from typical, small Midwestern town people.
As the movie continues, Eric’s accepting his orientation leaves behind some wreckage, which often happens in a queer person’s pursuit of their genuine orientation. The movie doesn’t tie up loose ends and fix all the problems by the end. The consequences of Eric’s mistakes remain, and strained familial relationships don’t get fixed. But this kind of ending is what adds to the film’s authenticity and what makes it stand out from other gay films of that time.
Edge of Seventeen is currently streaming on Netflix.
—EB