With LGBTQ Issues at Stake, Clocked at Outshine Is Lesson in Empathy

Miami filmmaker Noah Salzman started writing his movie Clocked in 2019. Two years later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, now notoriously known as the "Don't Say Gay Law," banning the subject of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools for children in kindergarten through third grade. Only days before Salzman's film about an 18-year-old struggling with his gender identity makes its Florida premiere at the Outshine Film Festival, the governor expanded the law to include all public school classrooms through senior year.

Another bill, while not explicitly mentioning drag shows, is aimed at blocking venues from admitting children to "adult live performances." This after the DeSantis administration moved to revoke the liquor license from the Hyatt Regency Miami for hosting "A Drag Queen Christmas."

Salzman's film is about 18-year-old Adolfo Rivera (played by Germain Arroyo), a talented lightweight boxer living in Miami with his tight-knit Hispanic — and very Catholic family — including his older brother, Ramon. They support his boxing ambitions, and while he contributes his financial winnings to help the household, he's secretly saving up for his dream — he wants to be a woman.

Adolfo finally confides in one person.

"I wasn't expecting to tell someone," he says.

"Hey, it's OK. I always wanted a gay friend," says Camilla, a girl he has been paired with on a date by his mother.

"I'm not gay," responds Adolfo, "I want to be a woman. I want to be a woman. I'm a woman. I just don't like me. I don't like my body," he cries.

The movie follows the teen's quest to be comfortable enough to appear in a local drag show.

"I wanted to write a film that was for that lost teenager who was in between the family they are born into and the other family who they find and who will accept them," says Salzman.

While Salzman, who identifies as straight, started with the intention of his film depicting the difficulty of people struggling with gender identity, Clocked is timelier than ever, he admits, during what's become a political war by conservatives over LGBTQ rights, especially issues concerning the transgender community.

"I think this is the best time for a film like this to be shown, and honestly, I have submitted the film to festivals in states where I knew drag and trans issues were being chastised. I think the fact that there is this villainizing is a tragedy," says Salzman. A subplot in his film is about a transgender woman who is shot and killed in a hate crime.
The 28-year-old says he got the idea for his script as a member of the theater community, where he would perform improv comedy at Little Haiti's Villain Theater — the venue makes plenty of appearances in Clocked standing in as a nightclub where drag shows are performed.

"In theater spaces, wherever you are, you will end up interacting with talented, exuberant queer individuals, but when you get to know them on a deeper level, you discover their stories... that many of them were not able to come out on their own terms and that the reason they sought out other communities was that they weren't accepted by their families or people they were close with," he says.

"I want this film to provoke an open and honest dialogue about why empathy and why supporting the people in your community who are queer is so important. I thought at least our film showed why it is so important to empathize. The fact that festivals like Outshine are alive and thriving and helping put a spotlight on films of this nature is so crucial, especially at times like this," says Salzman.

Support for the writer-director's script and many other aspects of the film came from Salzman's family, including his father, Bernard Salzman, a cinematographer for 45 years, who was the director of photography for Clocked and is also one of two executive producers.

There was a level that the film needed to achieve, which was cinematic quality and, above all, genuineness.

"I am straight, but I am an ally for the LGBTQ community, and what was most important to me was authenticity. LGBTQ actors play all of the LGBTQ characters. The drag queens in the film are professional drag artists who have performed off-Broadway, on television."

Armand Fields, who plays one of the main characters, Cleo, has worked on multiple Showtime series, including Work in Progress and The Chi; the television movie The Thing About Harry; and NBC's Chicago Fire.
While the film was 100 percent shot in Miami, the casting was done nationally with actors from Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and Miami. Miami stage and screen actress Elena Maria Garcia plays Alma, the mother of Adolfo. Danell Leyva plays Ramon.

Leyva, a Cuban-born Miami native, is the first Cuban-American on the United States Olympic men's gymnastics team. He says his entire life was spent training for gymnastics and competitions. When he retired at 24 in 2016, he moved from Miami to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, something he had always wanted to do.

However, the 31-year-old remembers vividly when he decided to be an Olympic gymnast. "My mother [who was a member of Cuba's national gymnastics team] met up with someone who used to do gymnastics with her in Cuba. He came over and brought an old tape, and I was mesmerized. I thought it was people flying, and I was like, 'I want to do that.'"

Competing in the London Games in 2012, he won a bronze medal in the individual all-around competition. In Rio, he was awarded two silver medals, one for parallel bars and one for horizontal bars.

Now, he jokes that he's run away to join the circus. Leyva lives in Las Vegas, where he performs in Cirque du Soleil's show KÀ at the MGM Grand.

Leyva says that early in the casting of Clocked, his manager, Maritza Cabrera, who is also one of the producers of the film, was approached about him playing the role of Adolfo. "They reached out to her to say, 'Hey, we have this great script. We think Danell would be great as the lead.'" And while Leyva came out as bisexual in 2021, he and his manager believed that Adolfo should be played by someone "at least nonbinary."
After reading through the script, the part of Ramon, the older brother, felt more suited for Leyva. On one of the first days on set, Leyva met with Arroyo, who had already been taking boxing lessons. (There are no stunt doubles in the film, and Arroyo did his own boxing.) "I wanted us to go to this gym because I felt like it would build the chemistry between us onscreen as brothers."

The Olympian will be honored with Outshine Film Festival's Vanguard Award before the screening of Clocked on Wednesday, April 26. The prize recognizes notable individuals in entertainment for their contributions in helping to tell LGBTQ stories, as well as exemplifying outstanding leadership and support of community equality, representation, and education.

Salzman says Leyva auditioned against 50 to 100 people, and "he truly won out, and his athleticism was nothing more than a benefit to add to the authenticity of the film."

Regarding the movie's title, the writer-director explains that it has several meanings — double entendres, if you will. "In boxing, clocked means to be punched in the face, while in the drag community, to be 'clocked' is when someone calls you by your 'dead' name, i.e., your real name, while you are in your drag attire."

Whatever the meaning, with the current state of affairs in Florida, Clocked couldn't be timelier.

– Michelle F. Solomon, ArtburstMiami.com

East Coast Premiere of Clocked at Outshine Film Festival. 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, April 26, Silverspot Cinemas, 300 SE Third St., Miami; 305-751-6305; outshinefilm.com. Tickets cost $15. Also available to stream online May 1-5.