When Ryan and Shawn Sullivan’s socially ambitious father enrolls them in the prestigious Novato Towne School for Boys, the brothers unwittingly uncover the strange legacy of Charles Steven Kaye, a student who, expelled two decades prior for “lewd and disgusting acts,” became the notorious and universally reviled queer pornographer John Dark. Obsessed with the enigmatic figure of Dark, Shawn rejects the stifling expectations of his upper-class upbringing, leaving his affluent family home and disappearing into the underground queer scene in California. Ryan follows his older brother into this hidden world, seeking to capture Shawn’s life on film and make sense of his unravelling.
Set against the backdrop of a parole house, to which Ryan was released after three years in jail, The Range Rules is a daring, defiant, and darkly wondrous exploration of transgressive queer pornography, prison culture, twelve-step recovery, and a search for redemption, connection, and compassion in spite of the invisible laws that govern our lives.