Burkett “Kett” Turton On Revisiting His Gay Goth Role 25 Years Later In ‘Gypsy 83’ The Director’s Cut [VIDEO]

In 2001, Todd Stephens, writer of the hit gay-themed Edge of Seventeen, three years earlier, made his directorial debut with the indie Gypsy 83, about a pair of Goth misfits living in Sandusky, Ohio. Gypsy Vale (Sara Rue) and her queer teen BFF, Clive Webb (then Kett Turton), both worship rock queen Stevie Nicks and decide to take to the road, destination New York City so Gypsy can take part in the Night of 1,000 Stevies event. Along the way, they meet up with Bambi LeBleau (the amazing Karen Black), an ill-fated singer now running Karaoke at a local redneck bar. They also encounter an Amish runaway and sexually confused fraternity brother.

Gypsy is searching for her estranged mother. Clive is needing to figure out whether he is really gay. Both character go on their own respective emotional journeys, together.

The film played a few festivals, opened to mixed reviews and was a financial flop.

Alas, the 94-minute cut was not in keeping with the filmmaker’s original vision. He was pressured into cutting his movie to pieces. Then, major gay festivals and potential distributers weren’t happy that “there were no buff/shirtless boys to put on the movie poster,” according to Stephens. “No one wants to see a fag hag film.” And they weren’t able to get the rights to Nicks’ music, which felt essential.

Now, twenty-five years later, and five years in the making, Stephens tracked down the original cut negative and it has been restored, via a 4K rescan, and is being released at a 138-minute running time.

In this version, the two lead characters have more depth. Turton is especially raw and penetrating as a budding young gay man seeking clarity and validation. And this cut restores some of his most poignant and significant moments, especially in an extended scene that takes place on train tracks.

(A note on Nicks’s music, Stephens did reach out several times to the rock goddess’s team and while the new publisher that bought her catalogue loved the director’s cut and thought it was a great idea as did Nicks’s publisher, her longtime manager who originally said no 25 years ago still refused to allow any of Nicks’s songs to be included in the film. A damn shame.)

Turton made his film debut in Rollercoaster (1999) and went on to appear in Heart of America (2003), Saved! (2004), the remake of Walking Tall (2004), Blade: Trinity (2004), Firewall (2006), Wrath of the Titans (2012), Weiner-Dog (2016) and most recently co-starred in Osgood Perkins’ horror indie, Keeper, opposite Tatiana Maslany.

The thesp has appeared in many TV episodes and was a series regular on Dead Last in 2001. He had a significant role in the American remake of Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom, titled Kingdom Hospital in 2004 as well as recurring parts on Zombie (2017-19), Riverdale (2020-21) and Family Law (2021-25).

He finished filming Osgood Perkin’s most recent horror pic, The Young People, which stars Nicole Kidman, Tatiana Maslany and Johnny Knoxville. He will also be starring in a second upcoming horror movie, Rob Willey’s Silver Creek.

 Gypsy 83 The Director’s Cut is being released in New York (Quad Cinema) on August 14^th and in Los Angeles (Nuart Theatre) on August 28^th via Altered Innocence.

The Contending had a VIDEO chat with Turton about the quarter-century-in-the-making film.