John Cardoza in Johns

 

Be forewarned: It's impossible to write about the stuttering character in Johns without giving away the ending. That's a shame, because otherwise Johns is well worth seeing. The movie chronicles 24 hours in the lives of two winsome street hustlers on Hollywood's Santa Monica Boulevard. David Arquette plays John, a straight and streetworn prostitute who's trying to raise enough cash to celebrate his 21st birthday in grand style. Lukas Haas plays Donner, the softer, more innocent gay runaway, who tries to convince his buddy to escape the streets with him and become a lifeguard at a Missouri theme park. Donner, we quickly learn, has a hopeless crush on John.

 

Over the course of the movie, both young men face violence from customers and street denizens alike. They escape each time--until the end, when the Arquette character turns a final trick with a handsome, soft-spoken man named John Cardoza (Arliss Howard). Cardoza has a stutter--not a strong one but certainly a noticeable one--and there are hints from the beginning of the final scene that he hates himself. "Dance," he commands the young hustler. When the boy protests that he can't dance, Cardoza says that of course he can: "You're a fag." Dancing leads to sex, and eventually the hustler brings his client to a pained-looking orgasm. Bad move.

As soon as Cardoza has climaxed, his self-hatred bubbles to the surface. "I am not a fag!" he shouts, over and over, behind a closed door. We don't see what's happening, but ultimately we come to understand that the stuttering john has murdered the prostitute in a fit of homosexual panic.

 

In the long run, Cardoza is such a minor character that the unfortunate use of his stutter as a "character flaw" doesn't spoil an otherwise powerful (albeit heartbreaking) film. Still, Arliss Howard's character still raises troubling issues. Movies, now that they can't use gays or African Americans as the mad killer anymore, have latched on stutterers to fill the role: Look at Primal Fear, for example. The directors seem to be saying, "They [meaning us] are social recluses because they can't talk; it's caused by psychological blocks; and they must not have any sex lives so they're really repressed and walking our streets."

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Passing Twice Index