Happy 20th: How Greg Berlantis The Broken Hearts Club changed the course of queer cinema – Queerty

Greg Berlanti (left) on set with the cast

A lot of people ask me when I first knew I was gay. Fact is, I dont know.The character Kevin in The Broken Hearts Club

How did LGBTQ peopleonce erased or denigrated as villainsmake so much progress in Hollywood in just two decades?

Think of the shows and personalities that dominate todays televisionEllen, Queer Eye, RuPauls Drag Race, Pose, CNNs Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, MSNBCs Rachel Maddow, to name just a fewand how stark a contrast that situation is from the 1980s and even well into the 1990s.

Will & Grace would not premiere until 1998, and sitcom star Ellen DeGeneres wouldnt come out (Yep, Im gay, blared Time magazines profile) until 1997, at the cost of her popular series, ABCs Ellen.

That same year, a young college graduate named Greg Berlanti sat down to write a script and get it filmed, somehow. What began as an exercise in self-reflection on his own search for friendship and love in West Hollywood soon took on a life of its own. A low-budget, art-house film with a cast comprised of mostly unknowns would become a showcase of young actors on the rise, and an affirmation for an oppressed community desperate to see itself on-screen. It would change the way audiences understood gay life in America.

It would also announce the arrival of a young writer/director as one of the most influential filmmakers of his era, a producer who would change the way Americans viewed the LGBTQ community.

This is the story of The Broken Hearts Club.

Tall, lean with dark hair and blue eyes, the then 25-year-old Greg Berlanti hailed from an Italian-American family in New Jersey. By 1997, hed come out as gay, graduated from Northwestern University, and transplanted himself to West Hollywood with ambitions to write for the screen. Like many starving screenwriters landing in Los Angeles, Berlanti found few career opportunities in his first couple of years. He spent his time churning out commercial spec scripts in hopes of capturing the attention of producers.

Moving to West Hollywooda growing hotbed for LGBTQ cultureprovided Berlanti with a surrogate family of close gay friends who could offer him support and suggestions in his original scripts.

When I developed the group of gay friends I had out here, Berlanti recalls, that was the moment. It was the first time I felt like I would be alright.

Frustrated with attempts to go mainstream, Berlanti decided to look inward instead.

I had written a lot, Berlanti says. I hadnt written anything this personal. I started writing about myself. Id always loved the movie Diner. I remember thinking theres no movie like that for all of us [queer people]. So rather than sit down to write the script that all my friends told me would finally get me a job, I wrote something personal to me. I forget how long it took to write around then, but I was definitely trying to capture the spirit of what it felt like to be one of my group of friends in Los Angeles in the late 90s.

Berlanti began working on a script about a group of young gay men living in Los Angeles and playing on the same local gay softball team. Together, they would confront existential questions about love, relationships, insecurities and redefining gay identity after the trauma of the AIDS epidemic. In other words: they would become a surrogate family. The young writer poured his heart into the story, taking snapshots from his own dating experiences alongside images of life in Los Angeles.

Gregs own love life would also suggest the scripts title. As he had a penchant for falling for aspiring actors, which his sister nicknamed his 8x10sanother name for an actors headshot.

The process of writing and self-reflection offered catharsis.

I definitely at the time didnt think my dealing with my sexuality would help me be a better writer, he admits. I had segregated those things in my mind. I focused on scriptwriting and, finally, was inspired to write about everything I went through and the friendships I developed. I learned a lot about myself in the process.

The ultimate scriptnow titled 8x10scomprised a collage of Berlantis life, integrating the personalities of his friends as well as much of their verbal shorthand.

We had language, Berlanti notes. Certain dialogue. Some were things we said, some I made up. But [my objective] was to create the spirit of being part of this little club, part of these guys. Diner, in particular, has its own vernacular in the 50s. American Graffiti was another.

That vernacular would become part of the scripts hallmark humor, dividing it into five acts, each introduced by mock definitions from the gay dictionary. Terms like meanwhile (a term used by friends to indicate the presence of someone attractive), newbie (a newly out of the closet person, usually emotionally vulnerable and facing heartbreak) and guy (a method of characterizing a person by their most apparent attribute; i.e. muscle guy) would become the movies lexicon and, eventually, part of its legacy.

With 8x10s taking shape, Berlanti again looked to his friends for inspiration, and a bit of help.

I worked on the script with two of my close friends who were very instrumental in developing the material, and who have gone on to great success themselves: Julie Plec and Ryan Murphy, Berlanti says. Both really helped me develop it.

Plec became a talented writer/producer herself, creating the long-running series The Vampire Diaries for The CW. Ryan Murphy, who needs no introduction, would go on to become one of the most successful writer/producers in television history, creating the shows Popular, American Horror Story, Pose, Feud, Nip/Tuck and Ratched, among many others.

Still, the comedy and warmth of 8x10s masked the ongoing struggle of Berlantis life as a starving writer. When I finished the script, he sighs, I think my car got booted the next day. I had to borrow a bunch of money from a friend to pay to get my car out. I was a script or two away from heading back home. I had a negative bank account.

Desperate, Berlanti handed the script off to Plec, who, at the time, worked as the assistant to horror director Wes Craven. Craven had scored a major hit with Scream in the early 1990s. By the time 1997 rolled around and Craven began work on Scream 2, Plec found herself promoted to an associate producer position on the film. Impressed with the quality of Gregs final draft of 8x10s, Plec passed the script to Scream 2 writer Kevin Williamson.

Williamson loved it and called Berlanti.

[Kevin] said it was really good and asked if I had other movie ideas, Berlanti says. So I started writing another movie for him. In the midst of that, he asked if I wanted to write on this TV show that hadnt premiered yet. So I started to write on that TV show.

The show would at last offer Berlanti an income. When it premiered, it scored the highest ratings in the history of its fledgling network, The WB. Critics praised it for its frank and sexualized depiction of teenagers, and it developed an immediate following.

It was called Dawsons Creek.

The success of Dawsons Creeks first season earned Berlanti an office space on the Sony lot and a steady writing gig in 1998. In the meantime, he circulated 8X10s in hopes of finding a director. According to Berlanti, agents and studio executives loved it, but often advised him that it would never get made into a film.

Other high-profile gay movies of the era focused on coming out (Beautiful Thing), the spectre of AIDS (Love! Valor! Compassion!) or bordered on softcore pornography (Nowhere). 8x10s took the radical step of focusing on LGBTQ people as people who cared about friendship and community rather than sensationalized and scandalous tabloid fodder. Hollywood, at the time, didnt believe there was an audience for such a film despite the success of television adaptations of Armistead Maupins beautiful Tales of the City, which had a similarly heartfelt community vibe.

It was doing its job, Berlanti observes of 8X10s growing notoriety. I kept getting meeting after meeting. I kept talking about the quality of the writing. It announced me as a writer. Anything beyond that was a gift.

Berlanti chose to focus on writing for Dawsons Creek and put 8x10s on the back burner.

As it turned out, it wouldnt stay there for long.

Down the hall from the Dawsons Creek offices, producer Mickey Liddell had set up shop at Sony. The blue-eyed, sandy headed Liddell had earned his own office space after producing a series of commercial and critical hit indie films, including Traveler, which starred a then-untested actor named Mark Whalberg, and Telling Lies in America for writer Joe Eszterhasthe highest paid screenwriter of the 1990s.

I was more of an independent producer, and Id made four or five films at that time, Liddell reminisces. Then I made [the quasi gay-themed] Go, and Sony bought it [midway through production]. So I was in the Sony world at the time. I met Greg, and he was working with Kevin Williamson on Dawsons Creek. I didnt really know TV at the time; so I just knew he was a young writer around the office.

Despite the gulf between the television and film worldsnot to mention the excessive workloads of both menthe pair struck up a friendship. Liddell told Berlanti about Goan ensemble film that featured a number of up-and-coming stars including Sarah Polly, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf and Dawsons Creek star Katie Holmes. Perhaps because of the Holmes connection, or maybe just the shared office space, a copy of 8x10s ended up on Liddells desk. Liddell recognized Berlantis name, and read it.

I had been sent a lot of scriptsthere were so many in the 80s and 90sabout AIDS and dying, Liddell recollects. Those were brilliant movies, classics. But that wasnt my story. We were coming out of that. I remember thinking [8x10s was] so light and romantic and fun. And it fell in my lap at the right time.

For Liddell, a gay, Midwestern transplant himself, the script struck an immediate chord. It was more the world I was living in LA at the time, he says. It was gay guys hanging out and going to parties and having friends and all that. Obviously, this was before apps. You had to make friends and family in a big city. You just tried to find your group. I know Greg and I talked about that a lot. Wed both had that experience. He came from New Jersey. I came from Oklahoma. We came here without knowing anybody. If you had two, three, four really good friends, they became your life.

The morning after Liddell read 8x10s, he ran into Berlanti. I remember being in the elevator and we were talking, Liddell notes. I said I just read your script. I really liked it. And he said Why dont you make it? But I was right in the middle of Go at the time. We were shooting nights. So I said Maybe. Ill talk to you when its done.

Liddell went on to complete Go, which would become a critical and commercial sleeper hit in the summer of 1999. Berlanti continued to enjoy his own success on Dawsons Creek, taking on duties as showrunner for the shows second seasona feat almost unheard of for a writer so early in his career. A year after their chance meeting in the elevator, with the release of Go and the second season of Dawsons Creek impending, Liddell asked Berlanti to dinner. He had one thing on his mind.

Unbeknownst to Berlanti, Liddell had already begun developing a plan to get 8x10s funded. The producer appealed to a young actor from Go that he might want to play a part in the potential film. His name: Timothy Olyphant.

I went to Tim, and asked if he would read the script, Liddell admits. He did and said I love it. Ill play any part. So I said What about the lead? He was like ok.

Over dinner, Liddell informed Berlanti that he believed he could get the movie funded with Olyphants interest. Then the producer dropped a bombshell.

I said Greg, you should direct this, Liddell sighs, his words still echoing the shockwave that every aspiring Hollywood creative wants to hear.

Liddells words stunned Berlanti. I had just gotten my first job as a writer, he remembers. I had directed plays in college, but not a movie, not even a short film. [Mickey] said I believe you are supposed to be the director. He had the utmost faith in me.

Liddell admits to making Berlanti his dream offer, though for less romantic reasons. The truth was I knew I didnt have the budget to hire a real director, Liddell confesses. In the end, however, Berlantis enthusiasm and evident dedication won him the job. I think thats why I asked Greg to direct it, the producer opines. It was personal. It was his story. Greg knew how [the characters] should sound. He knew the humor. He knew how to do it.

With Berlanti agreeing to take on the directorial duties, Timothy Olyphants agreement to play the lead, and the buzz around Go building, Mickey Liddell managed to leverage a deal with Sony to fund and distribute 8x10s on a modest budget, assuming the pair could convince enough name actors to appear in it. Given the attitudes of the late 1990s about LGBTQ people, they had their work cut out for them.

Though Mickey Liddell had total confidence in Greg Berlantis ability to direct 8x10s, the producer had no illusions about the production ahead. Filmmaking poses countless potential hazards, even for experienced directors. With a neophyte at the helmalbeit one of obvious talent and dedicationLiddell knew he needed to prepare as much as possible.

Everything that goes wrong falls on your plate, Liddell says of his role as producer. Youre protecting the director a lot. It was Gregs first time, and these were young actors. He moved up a lot more in the television world. His responsibilities became much bigger.

To help guide Berlanti through the shoot, Liddell hired veteran cinematographer Paul Elliott to film the production. He also called in casting director Joseph Middleton, who had cast Go, to produce as well and help the team over the next enormous obstacle on the path to production.

It may seem absurd now at a time when actors fight over who should have the honor of playing a queer character on the screen and when LGBTQ stories often bait major awards, but in the late 90s, playing a gay character was still seen as dangerous for a performer. Ellen DeGeneres had come out of the closet in 1997 only to see her once-popular sitcom tank in the ratings and meet with cancellation just a year later. When Will & Grace premiered in 1998, ratings were soft, and male stars Eric McCormick and Sean Hayes had to endure extremely personal questions from reporters about their own sexual orientations.

At the time, most guys thought if they played gay in a movie it would ding their career, Berlanti recalls. If they werent thinking it, their agents were thinking it. There were more closeted actors than out actors. I remember dinner parties where the subject would come up. It was a hot-button issue. There were definitely a lot of gay men who felt that other gay men shouldnt come out.

Liddell agrees. It was hard to get actors at the time. It wasnt just like were making a gay movie! We definitely got pushback. We got a lot of passes. The producer decided to leverage his own success as much as he could in hopes of convincing actorsgay, straight or otherwiseto read the script.

In my head, it was like, How do you make people think this is cool? Liddell remembers. Because I had just done Go with Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf [playing gay characters], who are both straight, I think that was half of my pitch. It was time. It was cool to do it. I said Look at Greg, our director. Hes going to be huge. I think it was mostly bullshit, but you fake it to make it. I talked to all these people, as did Joseph [Middleton], along with agents and managers.

Berlanti and Liddell began by casting Timothy Olyphant as Dennis, an aspiring photographer searching for his artistic voice, only to find it in his relationships with his friends. Throughout 8x10s, Dennis wrestles with his feelings of inadequacy, especially when compared to another member of the group: Cole, an aspiring actor and waiter. Cole would spend most of the films runtime enchanting men with his handsome charisma and hiding an affair with a closeted co-star. Therefore, the actor playing him needed to have a certain look.

We had to get someone so good looking that it made Tim Olyphant go I can never look like that, Liddell recalls. Middleton came back with a surprising suggestion: Dean Cain.

Cain had spent most of the 1990s lauded as one of the sexiest men alive, having landed the lead on the popular nighttime romance, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. That show had wrapped in 1997, and apart from a few TV movies, Cain hadnt had luck in landing a feature. Much to the surprise of Berlanti and Liddell, Cain agreed to a chemistry reading with Olyphant. Producer & director offered, and Cain took the part.

From there, the creative team began an aggressive search to find the rest of the cast that would secure the budget from Sony. For the role of Patrick, a sweet, if slightly nerdy member of the group, Middleton reached out to a young actor named Ben Weber. Weber had attracted attention the year before as the curly-haired, lovable schlub Skipper on a fledgling cable comedy called Sex & the City.

I was living in New York at the time, Weber now recalls. I was kind of on my own. I had done the pilot for Sex & the City in 1998. I had worked with Tim Olyphant in episode three or four [of the series], so when I heard he was circling the project, I could see where they were going with casting.

Because of the Olyphant connection, Weber decided to have a look at the script. Much to his surprise, he found it delightful.

I really responded to the material, Weber says. I was such a Patrick. I was such a loser. The thing about Gregs work is that he makes these beautiful losers with these great friends that get them through all these things. That was what I responded to: I was always the butt of the joke, I could respond to that in the character.

Patricks storyline in the film saw him dueling his own cynicism and low self-esteem. He also battled his lesbian sister, Anne, and her longtime girlfriend Leslie. Together, the couple lobby Patrick to act as a sperm donor for their desired children. Besides examining same-sex parentingstill a new, hot button concept in the 90sthe lesbian couple added a feminine balance to the otherwise all-male story. Liddell and Berlanti also saw the roles as an opportunity to cast established actresses, which would help keep Sony from cutting their funding. To cast the couple, Joe Middleton turned to two up-and-coming bombshell starlets, Nia Long and Mary McCormack.

Long, a luminous beauty who rose to fame as Will Smiths on-screen girlfriend in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, began to eye the role of Leslie.

The script came to my agent and I remember thinking, Wow, what a cool project, says Long today. Im always attracted to telling stories about the underdog. I remember really liking Greg. He commands respect. He knows what he wants. Hes a character development genius. But hes also so gentle, which created a super safe space to do the work. I was young. I was open to trying new things. My character, Leslie, was a woman I had met many times in my life, but never had a chance to portray on film. Thats why I chose to take the role.

The part of Anne, Patricks sister, would go to blond-headed, blue-eyed Mary McCormack, a name on the rise thanks to her acclaimed turns in Private Parts opposite Howard Stern, and in the critically lauded ABC drama Murder One. For McCormack, the offer required no hesitation.

I was living in LA, McCormack reminisces. It was one job to the next. I spent the late 90s in West Hollywood dancing with the gay boys. It was my community. She said yes immediately.

With Olyphant, Cain, Weber, Long, and McCormack aboard, Sony moved closer to a final greenlight.

Finding the rest of the cast suddenly had a new urgency about it, as the creative team continued to look for men willing to play incidentally gay characters. They cast a wide net looking for actors to play two key roles: Howie, a neurotic psychology student in a dysfunctional relationship, and Taylor, a middle-aged interior decorator recently dumped by his boyfriend.

The team decided to approach actor Dan Futterman for the role of Howie. Futterman had appeared as the son of Nathan Lane and Robin Williams in The Birdcage just two years earlier. At the time of casting 8x10s, he had landed a role in a production of A Fair Country in Lincoln Center. One of his co-stars in the show was an actor named Matt McGrath, who had begun acting in his teens and already amassed a long resume of stage and film work. One night, Futterman invited McGrath out on the town.

Dan had this friend who was doing a play downtown at Playwrights Horizons, Tim Olyphant, who was also asked to do the film, McGrath remembers. So the two of them were like, Lets go hang between shows. And they said Weve been asked to do this movie, but we think you would be great for this part. Read it. We want to talk to Greg. So they kind of ganged up on Greg to at least see me for the part. We set up a meeting in New York. I auditioned, and it worked out really well.

Handsome, bespectacled and with pale skin to contrast against his dark hair and hazel eyes, McGrath felt an immediate connection with the material. Hed come out as gay himself the year before to friends and family, who accepted him with open arms. His agents at the time, on the other hand, had a very different reaction, especially when he began to show an interest in playing gay roles.

I had left an agency over a number of reasons, McGrath explains. There was a very well-known gay movie that I was offered. I opted to do the movie, but my agents said too gay. I luckily had this choice to make between that movie and [The Impostors] that I ended up doing. So moving on from that agency, I never forgot hearing its too gay. For McGrath, his moment of vindication had finally arrived.

When Berlanti sat down to write 8x10s, hed made a deliberate choice not to specify the race of any given character, save one. The writer had based the interior decorator Taylor directly on a personal friend. As such, the script described him as middle-aged, white and blond. But, as the old saying goes, theres no stopping a force of nature. Back in Los Angeles, Berlanti, Liddell and Middleton were about to confront just that.

I was the least known in that movie at the time, recalls Billy Porter, the towering, statuesque actor whose star turn in Pose made him a household name. I was juicier, before I lost my baby fat. I was like 29. [The film] started it all for me. Because I wasnt a name at the time, people very often dont even remember that its me.

Like McGrath, Porter had come up through the New York theatre scene, landing parts in popular musicals including Grease, Smokey Joes Cafe, and the original cast of Miss Saigon. His powerful vocals earned him a recording contract, and it seemed like stardom lay just ahead. Then Porter hit a snag: he refused to conceal his identity as a gay man.

Ive been out pretty much my entire career, Porter explains. There was a dont ask, dont tell policy. But I wasnt hiding anything. I wasnt acting like I had girlfriends. You didnt talk about it out loud, especially in the music business. I also was not lying about it. The choice was already made by the people in positions of power that I wasnt masculine enough to get straight parts.

Doors in New York slammed on Porter as quickly as theyd opened. By 2000 I had moved to Los Angeles. I had done a couple movies, so I thought Ill move to Los Angeles, maybe try my hand. My agent-now-manager Bill Butler, had read the script. He thought I was right for it.

Porter showed an immediate interest in the role of Taylor, despite the specification that the character would be played by an older, white man. Berlanti invited Porter to audition based on his theatrical resume.

I assumed he was based on a friend because what was there was so specific, Porter says of his character. But when I got there, I just did what I do. I went to meet Greg. He let me imbue the character with heart and something real, which was what was so great about that original script. And he was like Oh youre right. You are Taylor. So they gave me the part.

Casting continued, as Liddell and Berlanti plucked one up-and-coming actor up after another to round out their cast. The role of the party boy Benji went to a spikey-haired, blue-eyed upstart named Zach Braff. The part of the newly-out 20-something Kevin went to teen heartthrob Andrew Keegan, known for the primetime soap Party of Five.

That left one part left to fill, and with Sony still waffling on a final budget and green light, casting it would prove essential. When Berlanti had begun writing 8x10s, hed created an older character not inspired by anyone he knew so much as an imagined friend he wished hed had. In the story, the younger men all turn to the character of Jack, the groups softball coach, and the owner of the restaurant where Cole, Taylor, Patrick, and Dennis all have their day jobs. Jack acts as the moral guide and role model to the other characters throughout the film, not to mention a connection to an earlier generation of LGBTQ people.

It was wish fulfillment for me Berlanti admits of Jacks character. It was the one thing my group of young friends didnt have. Truthfully, the generation Im a part of that was just coming out at that time: AIDS had wiped out most of the generation above us. You really felt the void of not having a lot of role models, or the sense of tradition to be passed.

Sony had initially pushed Berlanti to consider a number of respected, high-profile character actors for the part, including some Oscar-winners. All the studio suggestions either balked at the proposed salary, the subject matter, or both. Fortunately, that left Berlanti in a desirable position. From the outset, he had only one actor on his list.

I very rarely have actors in mind when Im writing stuff, Berlanti confesses. But, John Mahoney I did have in mind. So when I finished the script and Mickey said we would make it, I wrote him a letter. And he said Id love to sit down with you.

John Mahoney had emigrated to the US from Britain as a child and grown up in Illinois. As an adult, he joined Chicagos prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre company before launching a long and successful career as a character actor, picking up a Tony Award in 1986 for the play The House of Blue Leaves. By 1999, however, most of the world had come to know him as Martin Crane, the cantankerous father of Frasier and Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier. Off-screen, Mahoney seldom discussed his personal life in any detail, in part because doing so could have harmed his career. As a gay man himself, Mahoney saw the character of Jack as a way to acknowledge his own sexuality in a subtle way without having to surrender the whole of his privacy.

[John] was the character from the movie, Berlanti affirms. He would hold court off-camera. He wasnt a showy person. He would do it in a quiet way. But he was the sun people would orbit. He was kind and genteel, and he set the tone for everybody. He was like an angel for the movie: everything you wanted to be when you grew up.

Sony loved the casting of Mahoney, a major television star at the time. The studio finally gave the production the go-ahead on a $1 million budgeta modest price tag for an ensemble film at the time, especially one with such high-profile actors. Their cast finally assembled, Berlanti and Liddell could finally move forward with shooting in Los Angeles in October of 1999. Around the same time, Berlanti decided the film should have a less obtuse title, and borrowed the name of the main characters the softball team as the new moniker. Thus did 8x10s become The Broken Hearts Club.

But, for Greg Berlanti, writing and casting The Broken Hearts Club was little more than an overture. The real test lay ahead.

As production on The Broken Hearts Club ramped up in September 1999, Greg Berlanti had his work cut out for him. Hed begun showrunning on Dawsons Creek, which would mean that he had to split his time between both projects, rehearsing his cast and working with Director of Photography Paul Elliott to develop the visual style of the film over a three week period. On breaks, or in the evenings, Berlanti would have to oversee work on Dawsons, often penning new scenes during lulls. The young director also went about building a rapport among his cast, showing them around West Hollywood to get a sense of the lives they would have to embody.

We had a fun rehearsal period, says Ben Weber. We went to gay nightclubs and met all the real people that inspired the movie. Spending time around his friends, seeing how much love there was, how much support they had. These were friendships that had pre-dated Hollywood and gone though different states of coming out. It was interesting to see characters who were making up for lost time, who came out late. That was something I had no ideait makes all the sense in the world.

Says Matt McGrath: Its very much an LA story. Coming from New York, being a New York actor, I had to play catch up. West Hollywood, especially at that time, was its own beast. It was the Mecca of being young and gay at that time. It was becoming a desirable place to live. There was a lot of nightlife. What Greg wanted to do was have me meet his friends. Getting to know these guys and how they moved through the worldthey were very very talented, and like Greg, were striving to take over the town. I see them around still. Theyre writers and producers and executives. It was a special group that this was written about.

Shooting on a modest budget also meant the production would have to consolidate where possible and call in a few favors.

Every one of those apartments: Those were my friends houses, Mickey Liddell admits. We were living that life anyway, and it was easy. We could grab all those places. We knew what a club would look like on a Saturday. It was easy production-wise to do to.

For the cast, that also meant becoming unusually close.

At the time, Matt McGrath was living with me, sleeping on my couch, Mary McCormack reminisces.

I lived with Greg while we were shooting the movie, at his place in West Hollywood, Weber offers. It was the first time Id spent extended time in LA. One of the first nights I was there, there was an earthquake. I was in my room and came running down the hallway and into Gregs arms. He was like, Its OK! Its OK! All these complex emotions of if I could trust my director have answered right away.

The trust came in handy when shooting commenced in early October. To complete the film on time and on budget, Berlanti and Liddell would have to move at a breakneck pace.

It was really helpful that I didnt know much, confesses Berlanti. I got a great DP. And I kept doing things that, after the fact, [the crew] would say I didnt think wed do the whole movie that way, but it worked. We were shooting 8-9 pages a day. For anyone keeping track, most productions shoot 2-3 pages in a standard day.

We were on a moving train, McGrath analogizes.

Continued here:
Happy 20th: How Greg Berlantis The Broken Hearts Club changed the course of queer cinema - Queerty