Product Details

• Actors: Malcolm Stumpf, Patrick White (VII), Max Paradise, Hailey Anne Nelson, Fairuza Balk
• Directors: Cam Archer
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Wellspring Media
• DVD Release Date: July 10, 2007
• Run Time: 81 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000P6R9NU
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #21,258 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #45 in	Movies & TV > Drama > Love & Romance > Unrequited Love
  #92 in	Movies & TV > Drama > Gay & Lesbian

• For more information about "Wild Tigers I Have Known" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Arriving with the Gus Van Sant stamp of approval, Wild Tigers I Have Known blurs the line between indie film and experimental art. With the aid of cinematographer Aaron Platt, Cam Archer fills his debut with dreamy visuals, like Wong Kar-Wai set loose in Santa Cruz. The story concerns 13-year-old Logan (the full-lipped Malcolm Stumpf), who lives with his frazzled single mother (Fairuza Balk) and harbors a crush on 14-year-old Rodeo (Patrick White). Through a chance meeting, Logan gets to know the object of his lust, and abandons nerdy best friend Joey (the bowl cut-sporting Max Paradise). Rodeo prefers women, so Logan invents a female persona named Leah, who exists only on the phone, to initiate a virtual relationship (Ruth Elliot voices his alter ego). Meanwhile, mountain lions roam the woods, encroaching on human habitation. This concerns Logan, who identifies with the confused cats. Plus, the school mascot is the tiger--and that's as far as the filmmaker takes his title metaphor. Archer got his start by making shorts with Platt, and Wild Tigers often feels like a short writ large. Filters, dissolves, and ambient sound design contribute to Logan's sense of disorientation. At its most self-indulgent, the film comes dangerously close to the superficial aesthetics of a music video or fragrance ad (the DVD includes Archer's clip for Emily White's title song). For moviegoers tired of creaky comedies about gay first love, where the hero has a spunky gal pal with a sideline in snappy retorts, however, it represents a distinct alternative. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Product Description

Logan is a soft spoken and lonely 13 year old boy with a crush. Unlike his equally lonely friend Joey, who obsesses over the sexual exploits of the popular boys, Logan is fixated on the boys themselves, particularly Rodeo Walker. Logan's infatuation with Rodeo inspires him to create a new persona named Leah. Leah and Rodeo grow close through whispered late night phone calls, and when Leah agrees to meet Rodeo face to face it is Logan who must finally prove that he can ask for what he so achingly wants.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Coming Out Young, July 8, 2007

By	Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

"Wild Tigers I Have Known"

Coming-Out Youg

"Wild Tigers I Have Known" is one of those movies you are not likely to forget. It has style and is beautiful and sensitive. It is a movie that can be easily related to because we all have had that youthful obsession for someone. As the movies looks at teen sexuality, it is never obscene--it is not "sexy", it is simply beautiful, intimate and somewhat scary. The direction allows each scene to unfold its own pace with precise, poignant camerawork.
Logan is played by the beautiful Malcolm Stumpf. He does not act, he simply is. He is a normal boy who has adolescence thrust upon him. He is an outcast and powerless and searching for an identity that will permit him to act on the feelings that he will not admit to himself that he is having.
We all know that adolescence is not easy but gay adolescence is that much more difficult. There are virtually no role models and no guide to take one through the gay maturation process. Director Cam Archer seems to be telling us that what gay youth needs most are people that they can look up to. The youth of today are exploited by society and must live with a media machine that does not really care about them.
The movie is both unusual and bizarre that is multi-layered. As it shows a gay youth coming of age and dealing with his sexuality, it requires an open mind. When Logan finally comes to realize and accept his homosexuality, he is saved. The film follows his coming-out process and the mood of the film is quiet determination. Logan is alone and has no one to share his feelings. He has a hard time at school as kids can be cruel. The film looks something like a long music video and each song reveals something about the plot. It seems to be a series of vignettes as if they are moments of Logan's life. Without a lot of dialog and plot, the film tells a beautiful story--we are taken on a guided tour of what Logan feels and how he feels and not what he does.
"Tigers' shows the loneliness and isolation we feel when we are surrounded by an environment that is based on heterosexual economics. It shows how we are parallel to the unwanted and feared tigers of society. The movie deals, in reality, with the inner feelings of adolescence. These feelings grow slowly until one realizes that he is different from others, as if he is the only one among an entirely different species.
This is not an easy film to sit through but when you do you will be rewarded by the experience. You will see what we have felt and how we have dealt with those feelings. Anyone who is gay has had these feelings and angst and therefore will be able to easily identify with Logan. There is self indulgence here but that is fine--it does not detract. It is not easy to show the feelings of a 13 year old but Archer has done his film proud. To those who have panned this film. I say, get a life. Here is a beautiful representation f the teen mind as it struggles with one of the hardest decisions ever.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sweet story of a puppy love is overwhelmed by artsy-fartsy gimmicks, special effects, September 8, 2007

By	Hulka (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

With all the good reviews and all, I couldn't believe how this movie alternated between irritating and boring.. If you are a fan of art house movies, or special effects, then you might like this movie. But if you are looking for a sympathetic look at the stirring of same sex intimacy among adolescent boys, this movie was big disappointment.

Too bad, because the basic plot had a lot of potential as a sweet coming of age story about an the confusion a young gay boy experiences with his first infatuation--the kind of puppy love we have all experienced at least once in our lives. 13 year old Logan is a clumsy nerd who has trouble fitting in with his classmates. Logan had sexual fantasies about his classmate, Rodeo, the school's wrestling hero. To Logan's surprise, he finds that he has more in common with Rodeo then he expected. Rodeo likes Logan's iconoclastic attitudes toward their boring junior high school social life, not to mention the fawning hero worship that Logan heaps on him. An unlikely friendship develops, and they begin to hang out together, taking walks in the woods and on the boardwalk.

The budding friendship ends when sexually confused Logan calls Rodeo on the phone claiming to be a girl called Leah. Not surprisingly, when Rodeo discovers that Leah is really Logan, he finds the deception too weird for him to bear. Word gets out about Logan and his world comes crashing down on him.

The movie did receive an award for special effects, but I found the special effects took up entirely too much of the movie. The lack of dialogue led me to wonder whether the filmmaker was making a special effects movie instead of romantic drama. There too many long, lingering shots of Logan's face. Several times I was tempted to fast forward through them until the next scene. What dialogue there was consisted of monosyllables, so there was very little character development, or any insight into why the boys were attracted to each other.

The only good part of the movie were the heartfelt performances of the 2 young actors--Malcolm Stumpf and Patrick White. Unfortunately, as good as they two boys were in their parts, they were not enough to save the movie from it's defects.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, "artsy" film is a bit of a downer for average viewer, July 14, 2007

By	Bob Lind "camelwest" (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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Adolescence is a tough time for any boy, but doubly so for someone who is coping with the realization that he is gay. "Wild Tigers I Have Known" (2006) successfully conveys this via the isolation, loneliness and despair of Logan, a 13 year old middle school student who is infatuated with one of the popular, athletic boys, Rodeo Walker. Logan not only dotes on the limited friendship Rodeo is willing to extend to the shy boy, but constantly daydreams about developing the relationship, making it obvious to his schoolmates who proceeds to taunt him unmercifully. Ultimately, Logan's obsession drives him to attempt a dangerous charade in hopes of conveying his feelings to the other boy.

This is a difficult film to watch, with many "artsy" touches and slow, confusing segues from reality to Logan's dream world, justified in trying to emulate the confused, seemingly pointless state of Logan's emotions. While Logan eventually learns to accept his feelings, the film remains mostly a depressing hodge-podge of conflict and fuzzy images of reality, not really the thing to brighten up the day of someone going through what Logan is experiencing. While it may be highly original, beautifully photographed and outstanding as an "art" film, my rating is based on the likely reaction of a regular viewer of gay-themed theatrical films, who would likely consider this just satisfactory overall. Three stars out of five.