John, a gay Illinois small town cop moves to Los Angeles, hoping to fit into a place more welcoming of his sexuality. He soon discovers the "circuit," where he meets an insecure hustler, who draws John into drug abuse and illicit sex.
John (Jonathan Wade-Drahos) finds himself regaining consciousness in a public bathroom at The Red Party. As he contemplates his image in the mirror, he flashes back to when he was a small-town Illinois cop, whose captain suggests a move to Los Angeles, in order for John to discover a more sympathetic environment. John packs up his truck, drives cross country, and moves in with his cousin Tad (Daniel Kucan), who's now living with his ex, Gill (Brian Lane Green) and Tad's new boy toy, DJ Julian (Darryl Stephens). Tad is making a documentary about the gay circuit and the party culture, while Julian is a circuit party DJ. Gill invites John to a Hollywood Hills party, where John meets Hector (Andre Khabbazi), a male prostitute, who's battling his personal demons of looks and age. John and Hector form a budding friendship as John experiences a downward spiral into the sex and drug-fueled world of the gay circuit party scene. Will John survive?—trivwhiz
Dirk Shafer's "Circuit" is an extremely disturbing and powerful film. Everything that one could hate about gay life in America stars in this movie. Jonathan Webster, a college-educated gay man living & working as a police officer in a small Illinois town, realizes that he has no future there, and so moves to Los Angeles. John is muscular, athletic, and stunningly attractive, and soon becomes socially popular in the West Hollywood world where youth & beauty mean everything. He is slowly seduced by the colored lights and glitter into the vacuous world of the circuit party, where young, beautiful gay men waste their lives flailing in a stupor of drugs, alcohol, promiscuous & unsafe sex, and sleazy electronic techno-pop disco music. John's increasing substance abuse eventually erodes his judgment and strains his friendships. This movie frankly confronts many issues that gay men won't or can't address: the gay cult of youth worship, body fascism and negative body image, rampant drug & alcohol abuse, the internalized anti-gay bigotry and the concomittant corrosion of self-esteem that fuels the whole ugly mess, and the business people who have a vested interest in making sure that none of it changes.
