On VOD: MARRIED AND COUNTING

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, June 25: MARRIED AND COUNTING

Allan Piper’s chronicle of the efforts of a gay couple to be married in every state where it’s legal debuted at the FLICKERS: Rhode Island International Film Festival last summer, where it picked up two awards. Other stops on the festival circuit included doc fests like San Francisco and ArcLight, LGBT fests like Seattle, ImageOut, Austin, Out on Film, and Tampa, as well as the upcoming Woods Hole. Just as the nation waits to hear the Supreme Court’s decision on the Prop 8 case, FilmBuff releases the film on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Movies on Demand, PlayStation, Nook, Google Play, VUDU, CinemaNow, and XBOX.

Texans Pat and Stephen met in college in the mid-1980s, immediately fell in love, and have been together ever since. When Piper’s film begins in late 2010, the long time New York City residents are unable to be legally married in New York state – proposed marriage equality legislation failing before – so the couple does the next best thing: they make plans to wed in every state where gay marriage is legal. While they explain more than once that they’re doing this to protect themselves as much as possible under current laws, it’s clearly more of a symbolic gesture of protest and of their love for one another. The former because their various marriage ceremonies don’t confer any federal rights, nor are they recognized internationally or in other states, and they want to remind viewers of this; the latter because they are genuinely a sweet couple who want to share their special day(s) with friends around the country. Along the way, the stresses of planning multiple consecutive weddings wears on them at moments – not only because they seem to be habitually late to appointments, but also, more poignantly, as they both address long-simmering issues around family acceptance. Narrated intermittently by George Takei, Piper’s workmanlike film is as successful as it is because of Stephen and Pat, and would have benefited from less of the fairly repetitive weddings and more of their personalities and daily lives. Late in the film, after they celebrate their “last” ceremony, New York’s passing of marriage equality provides an opportunity for a hometown wedding in Coney Island among friends – but one hopes that they’ll have at least one remaining, definitive, federally-recognized ceremony to plan soon.