A new show explores the lives of five very attractive gay guys living in a West Hollywood apartment building. No, sorry – it’s not a gay version of The Real World. The City of West Hollywood and The L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center have teamed up to fund the creation of a steamy online educational soap opera called In the Moment that they hope will get people talking about more than just safe sex.

Co-creators Dave O’Brien and Alton Carswell came up with the idea for the online soap opera in response to an unnerving increase in the rate of H.I.V. infections among young gay males. “Alton and I felt like dialogue and conversation among gay guys in our generation has really fallen off around issues surrounding HIV prevention,” say O’Brien. “We wanted to create something that would start that conversation among younger gay guys in the Los Angeles. A lot of people in our generation use the internet to meet other people. Whether it’s for dating, sex or friendship. [Current] HIV prevention methods tend to focus on making condoms accessible to people in public spaces but more and more a lot of gay guys don’t necessarily go to these places. We’re seeing a lot more guys who spend a lot of their time online and it’s not a place where people traditionally reach out to you to talk about these issues.”

So O’Brien and Carswell were faced with a question. How do you reach these guys on the internet? “We thought about some of the things that [young gay guys] talk about – soap operas, episodic dramas and shows on the internet,” explains O’Brien. “So we started looking for a way to connect an online soap opera with an online conversation around the issue – something more broad than, should I use a condom or should I not use a condom. Most of us are pretty aware that using a condom is a good idea. But often people decide not to do that and we wanted to look at the reasons behind those decisions.”

As a solution, the co-creators came up with a system where users can post answers to discussion questions after watching the five minute episodes which O’Brien promises are both entertaining and educational. “We wanted it to be something that’s sexy, fun and interesting. We can put all the information in the world out there put if people are captured by something they’re not going to stick around.” Their plan seems to be working. It’s already recieved more than 11,000 hits and users have posted drastically different responces. One user thinks it’s ok for a couple to have unprotected sex, “if they are loyal to each other and do not ever have any sex with others, and keep checking themselves every 3 months.” Another comments, “STUPID!!! that’s why all young people are becoming positive….not using condoms is just plain STUPID!”

Carswell who works with the Gay and Lesbian Center as Program Coordinator for Weholife.org (the site, In the Moment can be seen on) is particularly excited the idea of viewers forming their own opinions. “One of the things that I was frustrated with is that HIV prevention is so one sided,” he says. “‘Use a condom’, ‘you should do this, you should do that.’ Part of the things I’ve found in the community is that we need to have a two way dialogue to make it more relevant to our generation.”

The series stars Sammy Sheikh as Edgar who might have a drinking problem, Peter Scherer as the jokester Shawn, Kapule Ravida and Jesse Lewis as love-birds Mike and Stephen, and the Levi Fiehler as Adam, the cornfed new kid in town. But is have the creators forgot some of their audience by making all of the characters male? “It’s focused on gay men specifically because of my contract with the city of West Hollywood,” explains Carswell. “If you look at the statistics, we’ve been seeing a really surprising jump in HIV infection in younger gay men in recent years,” adds O’Brien. “It was on the decline for a while but recently there’s been an increase in that which hasn’t necessarily held true in lesbians.” While there may be no women or transgendered characters, the creators took special care to include characters from several ethnic backgrounds. “We really wanted to make sure we had an accurate portray of the community. [Infection rates] have grown exponentially in the Latino and African American communities. One of the praises we’ve received is that we have different parts of the community represented in this project. Just seeing the face of someone else who looks like you [makes it a stronger message].”

The series creators have high hopes for future episodes. They’ve created twelve in total and are relying on their traffic for the first episode to receive the additional funding they will need to film the remainder of the series. Upcoming topics to be addressed will include a myriad of addictions including crystal meth. “Let’s face it, Los Angeles is a city where gay men are faced with many decisions about our sex life and we tried to look for situations that people where in that weren’t so cut and dry,” says O’Brien. “I think a lot of times HIV prevention makes it seem like your decisions are as simple as using condoms or not using condoms. We wanted to look at things like self-esteem, relationship issues, body image, addiction – whether it’s substances or sex.”

In The Moment can be viewed at http://www.weholife.org.

More Photos

- Kapule Ravida as Mike and Jesse Lewis as Stephen
- Sammy Sheikh as Edgar, and Peter Scherer as Shawn
- Levi Fiehler as Adam

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Tags:Alton Carswell, Dave O'Brien, HIV Prevention, In The Moment, Jesse Lewis, Kapule Ravida, Levi Fiehler, Peter Scherer, Sammy Sheikh, The City of West Hollywood, The Gay and Lesbian Center, WeHo Life

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Matt Falber is the Editor-in-Chief of Real Gay L.A. Matt was formerly an editorial assistant at Frontiers Magazine. He served as a regular contributing writer for Frontiers for two years and also wrote for IN Los Angeles, its sister publication. Matt has a flare for the arts and when we don't have him chained to his desk, he can be seen singing and acting in various L.A. venues.
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