crispy arcade enemy

Doesn't sound like it was something he and Keifer Sutherland (David) talked about explicitly, but he does hammer home that none of the adults on set were unaware of what a very homoerotic film they were making. I'd already seen some interviews where Alex Winters talks about how those aspects of the film resonated with him, coming from a family of dancers and a background in theatre, and how he'd based Marko on all the queer folks he'd met doing Broadway since his childhood, but this sure is a whole level more information beyond!

But I never can resist the urge to overanalyse my favourite canons, so yet more thoughts below.

Whatever David and Marko might have going, it doesn't seem to pose any obstacle to (eg) whatever David's up to with Star, or might have in mind for Michael. And Marko sure does not seem to mind being David's butt boy (in any sense of the word) ‒ like, he does not come across as obsequious or spineless, he's not hanging on David's every word, but he seems to be 100% into whatever's going on there. It's hard to read him as bothered by the idea he might be about to lose his position to Michael either: anyone David wants is in.

But even more interesting to me is framing David as a pimp, mostly for what that implies the way he treats Star. Because sure, she doesn't get to go run off with Michael on his bike without David rolling up to remind her of her place, but (with apologies to any David/Star shippers) I can't read him as genuinely attracted to or invested in her, or not beyond how useful she is as bait. Her job is to bring home wide-eyed young men, but if she gets any funny ideas about getting attached (maybe convincing one of them to "take her away from all this"?) ‒ well, David's here to remind her who she belongs to.

Tl;dr: where Star's concerned, David reads way more 'pimp' than 'boyfriend' to me. Maybe there was potential for something else, back before it became apparent she wasn't going to make her first kill without a fight ‒ but then, Marko's not in a wildly different place himself. In fact, the biggest difference between Star and Marko might be that he likes his place in the pecking order, and is never happier than when he's covered in blood.

For context, this all comes out of the interviewer asking outright if there was something going on between Marko and David (Is there this strange, almost homosexual relationship between your character and Kiefer Sutherland’s character? […] He always asks your character to do things for him.) The tear that runs down David's face when he's chasing Sam and the Frogs after Marco's death is brought up too, though I'm pretty sure I've read elsewhere that was a lucky accident with more to do with those vampire contact lenses being horrifically uncomfortable (leaving it in the finished film was no accident though). Either way, any reaction David might have had to Marko's death ends at the cave: during the big finale, it's Paul, not David, who goes after the Frog brothers, hollering "You killed Marko!" (David's only got eyes for Michael at that point.)

To what degree David's ever been a pimp/fuckbuddy/master to Paul and/or Dwayne may be up to your own imagination, since there's just not much to go on there. But the more I think about what we see of David and Marko, the more I'm struggling to think of any time David even directly addresses either of the other two. Even in the 'Michael wants to know what's going on' exchange, it's "what's going on, Marko?" that he starts with. Heck, he even seems to be holding up Marko as a major fringe-benefit of joining them ("That's what I love about this place, you ask, you get. You'll like it here, Michael.") Which is probably not worth reading too much into (the gist and the vibes are so much more important than anything specific David's actually saying), but still, jeez, what is the message there? Join the Lost Boys, plenty of Marko to go around? Or, just letting you know how I like it?

In the same article, Winters also talks about his ideas about Marko's background:

As an actor and a director, I subscribe to the theory that you create as much backstory as the character needs in terms of what is going to be on-screen. Otherwise, you’re playing details and subtleties that make no sense to the audience and that just becomes navel gazing. With a character like Marko, who only says a couple of lines in the entire movie and doesn’t really have much need for context, it wasn’t something I was going to spend an enormous amount of time on. He was just a homeless kid who had run away. Typical sort of ‘80s story, right? Someone from a crazy, conservative part of the country who ends up running away to a warmer climate where you can survive on the street. Very similar to how kids get picked up out at the bus station in Times Square.

And yeah, Marko as a young, queer runnaway who hitch-hiked across the country, maybe discovered a real thing for being ordered around while making some cash as a rent boy ‒ that definitely works. You can so easily picture him meeting the Lost Boys, realising they were everything his conservative folks would have hated, and jumping at the chance to join them. It's almost too obvious.

All this over a character who gets like two lines in the whole film, who will be remembered by most simply as 'the cute one' (as distinguished from The Loud One (Paul) and The Quiet One (Dwayne)) and whose biggest scene is arguably the one where he gets staked while unconscious. I do like the point Winters makes that there's no point in creating more backstory for a character than you'll ever get the chance to reflect in what makes it to screen. But this is a film where even 'the cute one' gets to throw himself gleefully into the massacre scene and come out basically glowing, and the amount of subtext they managed to pack into this guy is something wonderful.