Fund This: Sal Bardo's Pink Moon

In his three previous short films--"Requited" (2010), "Sam" (2011), and "Chaser" (2012)--the filmmaker, writer, and actor Sal Bardo explored gay subcultures, like bug chasers, and the consequences of bullying, such as suicide. For his latest film, "Pink Moon," the world is flipped on its head and a straight teen couple are forced to hide an unintended pregnancy in a homonormative society in which heterosexuals are persecuted and abortion is forbidden.

Bardo, who is also working on a full-length feature based on the same material, launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance the film on Feb. 15, and he's nearing the goal of $10,000. But the production still needs to raise a few thousand dollars by the March 15 deadline.

As he explained in a recent essay he wrote:

"It was immediately after I'd completed the first draft of the script that I realized just how fundamentally tied a woman's right to choose is to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LBGT) rights, from personal freedom, what society dictates we can and cannot do with our bodies, to the oppression and violence that has resulted in the fight to both obtain and protect those rights."

After Bardo saw actor Brandon Tyler Harris in another gay-themed film, titled Stay, he was interested in working with him and cast him in "Pink Moon." The young actor (who's appeared on The Big C, Smash, and Law & Order: SVU) may be straight--and in "Pink Moon" he plays a closeted heterosexual--but he says he understands what it feels like to be persecuted. In this short clip, Tyler Harris explains that in eighth grade he was called "faggot" and "queer" for being a theater kid. "And I still remember that feeling of being bullied and that sense of shame and fear of my fellow classmates," he says.
Watch Brandon Tyler Harris below and support "Pink Moon" here: