Blackmail Boys

Blackmail Boys is an American gay-related movie released in 2010. It is basically about a young gay couple and their ill-fated attempt to coerce a famous figure into paying them to keep his gay identity from view. Sam (Nathan Adloff), a part-time student in Chicago, has been turning tricks to make ends meet, but what he really wants is enough money to marry and go on a honeymoon with his live-in boyfriend, Aaron.

They take aim at Andrew (the prolific mumblecore actor and director Joe Swanberg), one of Sam’s rougher and more mean-spirited clients, a married Christian celebrity author publicly hell-bent on preventing gay teenagers from embracing their sexual orientation.

“Essentially he’s against everything that we are,” Aaron says, “except not really, which makes him a hypocrite.” Their awkwardly executed plan goes brutally awry.

But “Blackmail Boys” is about more than extortion. Distributed by TLA Releasing — the outfit behind a passel of recent gay-theme movies (“Fruit Fly,” “BearCity”) — it’s also about double lives, the violence that can lurk inside those who cannot face themselves and the laudable quest for gay marriage in the United States.