Watch ‘Uncle Frank’ First Trailer, Revisit 1970s Gay Life

Amazon Studios released the trailer for Uncle Frank, the latest film from Alan Ball (creator of Six Feet Under and True Blood). First premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, the film stars Paul Bettany in the title role as a gay New York University literature professor who returns home with his niece and partner for the funeral of his father, but ends up confronting his past in the process.

Set in the 1970s, Ball's semi-autobiographical story follows Beth (played by Sophia Lillis of the It movies) as she moves to New York City to attend college, and decides to track down her Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany of Silas fame in The DaVinci Code) who moved to the city years before. While the rest of the family bullied and picked on Frank, Beth always admired his wit, intelligence, and writing abilities. She took to heart his advice that she should strive to grow into the person she wants to be, rather than the person everyone else thinks she should be. When she and her new boyfriend crash a party at Uncle Frank's, she learns he's gay and in a relationship with Walid "Wally" Nadeem (Peter Macdissi), a Saudi who is also hiding his sexuality from his family.

The road trip film follows the trio as they make their way home to South Carolina where they eventually confront Frank's troubled past with his deeply conservative family. It turns out Frank's father had caught him as a teen in an act of intimacy with his first boyfriend, a discovery which forever affected their relationship.

Bettany is not known to be queer.

The film is scheduled for release on November 25. You can watch the entire trailer below.

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