Writer-director Mark Christopher who would go on to make the feature film 54, won praise Christopher won praise for Dead Boys Club, a short film about a young gay man living in New York, haunted by visions of the gay scene in the 70’s, and a generation lost to AIDS.

It’s the early 1990s. Toby, just out of college in Wisconsin, comes to Manhattan to spend the summer with his older cousin, Packard, a gay man whose lover John R. has just died of AIDS. Toby is shy, the openly-gay society around him makes him nervous. Packard gives Toby a pair of John R.’s shoes; when Toby puts them on, he has powerful visions of the pre-AIDS scene in the 1970s, as if he’s there. He also takes on a different personality when he wears the shoes, more sure of himself, able to express his interest in men.