Blue Film star Reed Birney says he was ‘foolish’ not to expect controversy of age-gap movie

Actor Reed Birney has said it was “kind of foolish” not to expect Blue Film to garner so much controversy, given the difficult, taboo themes it explores.

The film, which also features Boots actor Kieron Moore, struggled to find a distributor and was blacklisted from major film festivals around the world. It’s easy to see why, given what the film is about.

It follows Moore’s character, a well-known camboy known as Aaron Eagle, as he’s hired to spend a night with a much older man, played by Birney.

However Aaron, real name Alex, soon realises that this man, Hank Grant, is his past middle school teacher who had been fired for an attempted sexual assault of a 12-year-old student. It becomes clear that Hank had been hiding romantic feelings for Alex when he’d been a student, and he wants to see if those feelings are still there now they’re adults.

Birney told Entertainment Weekly: “As soon as you say paedophile, everybody has such a strong and undeniable reaction to it.”

He went on: “I don’t think I thought that it was gonna be as controversial as it was, which is kind of foolish in retrospect. Of course, it was gonna be controversial, but I just think I thought it was such a beautiful character study.”

When the movie eventually found a place at Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 2025, a number of people walked out of the screening.

The film came from director Elliot Tuttle journaling about his younger self “fantasising about the male teachers that [he] had around then and trying to think more honestly about [his] adolescent sexuality”. He saw himself in the character of Alex, while Hank allowed him to channel other questions.

Birney revealed that he was able to approach the taboo aspects after watching 2014 documentary Pervert Park. The doc is about Florida’s Palace Mobile Park, which is home to more than 100 convicted sex offenders.

He said: “That made a huge difference in how I approached it. They were regular folks with this terrible demon.”

Birney, who is also an executive producer, suggested that Hank shouldn’t be a “predator” or “active”, and that he should know “how dangerous he is”.

“So he is able to abstain,” he said, “for the most part. I think that made a huge difference in signing on.”

Blue Film is set for release in New York City on May 8, then Los Angeles on May 15.

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