‘High Tide’ Director and Star Fell in Love While Developing the Queer Romance: ‘There’s a Love Story Behind the Love Story’
Marc Malkin Senior Editor, Culture and Events In director and writer Marco Calvani’s “High Tide,” well-known Brazilian actor Marco Pigossi stars as Lourenco, an immigrant living in Provincetown, the iconic gay getaway in Massachusetts.
Suddenly single with his visa about to expire, he meets and falls for Maurice (James Bland), a Black doctor from New York City who is on vacation before heading to Angola for a residency.
Turns out there was as much romance going on off-screen as there was on. Calvani and Pigossi fell in love after initially meeting to talk about possibly working together one day. “I tell everyone there’s a love story behind the love story.” Pigossi tells me. “We were falling in love as he was finishing the script.
He was always asking me things like, ‘What’s your favorite poem in Brazil? What would be like a very conservative city in the countryside?’ I didn’t know what he was writing.
