As the film’s main protagonist shows: to be a good father, you do not need to have a perfectly ordered life nor do you need to fit within the confines of generally accepted heterosexual norms. While Sidney dreams of having a career, he mainly spends his time wandering around Los Angeles trying to make ends meet. He spends his evenings performing as a drag queen, and, on top of that, he suddenly has to start taking care of his son, whose mother leaves him for unexplained reasons. This uplifting story is told at an unhurried pace in which Sidney talks with his friends and tries to make contact with his son, while his on-stage performances add a little color. And although it has all the makings of being unbearably sentimental, it is not like that even for a moment. Much of the credit for this goes to Tomas Pais in the role of Sidney: rather than playing a stereotypical drag queen, he creates a character filled with contradictions, an ambiguous figure who is not defined by his sexuality alone. At the heart of Hunky Dory… there’s a certifiably oddball but legitimate take on the modern dysfunctional family, writes „The Hollywood Reporter.”
Born in Chicago, Michael Curtis Johnson is a screenwriter and director. He graduated from the American Film Institute Conservatory, where he received an award for his short graduation film Flotsam. Hunky Dory is his feature debut.
2008 Flotsam (short)
2008 Diary of a Teenage Vampire (short)
2009 The Guitar (short)
2010 Izzat (short)
2012 As Seen on TV (short)
2016 Hunky Dory
2018 Savage Youth