"Doing Time on Maple Drive" (1992)

Wow…I remember this as a young adult…and for the first time, I saw a movie that was sensitive, validating (mostly…no romantic reconnecting scene) and AIDS wasn’t the focus.

I also agree with OP, Jim’s performance was exceptional. He almost stole the main plot line.

Like this movie, and the happy ending.

You can't go wrong with Bibi Besch...

OP- How good could it have been?

It was a Lifetime movie.

I saw it many years after the fact and loved it. Really well done domestic drama. The homo was hot.

Lori Loughlin omg

R4, have you actually seen it, or just trolling?

Jim Carrey is an underrated dramatic actor.

I smell cookies.

This movie was groundbreaking at the time. Jim Carrey did an excellent job, and William McNamara was hotness personified.

Has Carrey ever shown peen?

William McNamara was a preppy dream in this. His character comes out near the end of the piece to his best friend Andy, played by Philip Linton. Tragically, Linton died of AIDS while Maple Drive was still in post-production.

I think in one of the Ace Ventura movies you can see a glimpse of it from behind dangling thru the legs. Vaguley remember that from my teen days scanning HBO for any nudity.

This is the first gay character I remember on TV

It was directed by Ken Olin, who also used to be sizzling hot.

McNamara was great. Carey I remember being sort of overwrought and trying to hard to be serious.

It was an important movie since it wasn't about AIDS or gays suffering. James B. Sikking as the tough father (he's also in Ordinary People as the father's business partner) is great as the stern father who accepts the gay son.

An old thread for those interested

R11 Very briefly in "All In Good Taste" (1983).

R4 It wasn't a Lifetime movie. It was made by 20th Century and shown first on the Fox Network (not the cable news one, though, obviously).

This movie was wonderful. I've watched occasional bits and pieces when it's re-run and think it still holds up. But - growing up gay in the 90s probably plays a big role in my affection for the movie. First of all, William McNamara was gorgeous back then and I was totally in love with him, even before seeing this. But everyone in the cast was great, including Lori Laughlin and Doogie Howser's dad. Also a wonderful aspect - that the mom remained a unforgiving bitch and didn't have a character redemption or "resolution". It was much more honest than what you'd expect from tv movies of the time. It was released on DVD and seems to retain a cult following.

Loves this movie back in the day. In retrospect it had kind of an Updike/Cheever vibe which is turf Olin also explored as an actor on “thirtysomething.”

Didn’t William McNamara go on to have major substance abuse problems? I remember he was also good/creepy as a serial killer in that old Sigourney Weaver/Holly Hunter thriller “Copycat.”

r18 Great find! Thank you.

Bibi Besch got an Emmy nomination for her performance.

This was the very first gay movie I ever saw.

I remember thinking Jim Carey was a solid dramatic actor.

I had a crush on William McNamara as a kid.

It really did help me in some weird way, especially since every movie I'd encounter after it was depressing as fuck for about a decade.

[quote]It was a Lifetime movie.

It aired on Fox which is why I could watch it and no one would think it was weird.

It's actually on YouTube. I'm into it about 15 minutes and not liking it as much as I remembered. But William McNamara sure is hot!

Of course Jim Carrey was great in this film. He was playing against type.

Billy McNamara was hot as fuckin shit in his day. I remember his perfect ass in Chasers. One of the reasons I moved to LA was I hoped to meet him.

Bibi Besch was terrific in everything, even her throwaway scene in the chronic fatigue syndrome episode of Golden Girls.

Jim Carrey showed his dick in a movie all the way back in 1983?!

R29 Yes, and it was only his second role. He was only 21 when he did that movie.

Wow, William McNamara has never been married? Just a fiancee, according to IMDB. What do we know? What's the story?

McNamara is straight, and he usually plays aggressively straight/alpha male roles. Nothing to see here. He simply played against type in Doing Time on Maple Drive.

I just rewatched the entire movie again at R25’s link. It’s still such great television. I like how all of the characters have a “moment” in the film. Everyone of them shines in their part.

I can remember when this came out. I’m William McNamara’s age so I could really relate to everything at the time. Celebrities were dropping like flies in 1992 from AIDS. I remember opening up the newspaper and reading about Robert Reed and David Oliver (A Year in the Life) dying. Neither was openly gay. People were more ignorant then and anti-gay attitudes were largely associated to the development of AIDS.

McNamara is still working regularly, but isn’t getting quality scripts anymore which is too bad.

[quote]You can't go wrong with Bibi Besch...

Bibi Besch playing the Mother we all prayed we didn't have.

[quote]Bibi Besch playing the Mother we all prayed we didn't have.

But was she good because she was playing against type?

Bibi Besch almost always played cold, icy, WASPy bitches, all the way to her time on THE Secret Storm. Playing a warm, fuzzy character would've been against type.

Besch had a much more sympathetic role two years earlier in TREMORS. Her scene starts at 2:00.

William McNamara told a story in an interview I can't find now where he tried Viagra and it wouldn't go down and he had to go to the ER and they gave him a shot in his dick to relieve it.

I read "Dong Time on Maple Drive."

Not only did William McNamara show his nice ass in Chasers, but he also showed a little bit of peen.

Are you saying his peen is small, or we only got a short glimpse R40?

[quote] William McNamara was gorgeous back then and I was totally in love with him,

Me too! He was beyond beautiful.

Is he a hot zaddy today or did he not hold up?

He's unrecognizable to me now. I saw him in a Lifetime movie a few years ago in which he played a creepy stepfather and I had no idea I was watching the closeted son from Maple Drive. It's not just that he's older because people can age and still look like themselves. McNamara looks like a totally different person now.

I found him a bit colorless. He was fine in the role but he didn’t do enough with the role to make him stand out.

What do you all think happened to the characters after? I’m thinking Matt started living his best life and got a steady partner. The father and the mother… I’m thinking they maybe divorced. I almost got the impression the father was a little envious of the freedom his son now had not being tied down in a marriage. It couldn’t have been any fun after finding out that your wife is a cold hard bitch who only cares about image than people. In that way I wonder if they had an American Beauty style scene where he yells at her for caring more about material things and what other people think than the family.

[quote]What do you all think happened to the characters after?

Matt moved to San Francisco, where Conrad Jarrett had been living since the mid-'80s. They met at a 12-step meeting for Adult Children of Mothers Who Were Cunts on Steroids. Conrad sponsored Matt until they realized they were madly in love and moved in together. Conrad died in the mid-'90s, and Matt is a stalwart of that program.

Matt sold their house in the Avenues, and took the money and ran. We've heard he lives somewhere near the nursing home in which he and Conrad installed their mothers, somewhere on the south side of Chicago.

Conrad was gay? Budd would never have been gay.

Buck*

They should have used Elm or Chestnut as the name of the street as an allusion to the impending plague.

Why is this thread grayed out? I truly don’t understand.

There were a lot of threads in this movie that were left hanging at the end. Jim Carrey's character had no resolution, the sister's baby, whether the parents stayed together and the mother came to grips with the gay son. It could do with a sequel.

I wonder if they were potentially setting it up to be a series. Could easily have worked as one although the gay son would have been neutered à la Matt Fielding.