For audiences who first discovered Chris Salvatore nearly two decades ago through the Eating Out films, his latest role may come as something of a shock.
Gone is the charming, handsome romantic lead audiences came to know as Zack. In the apocalyptic queer horror film Scorch Marks, Salvatore steps into considerably darker territory as Joel, the abusive ex-husband of a man struggling to survive not only the apparent end of the world, but the ghosts of a destructive relationship.
And Salvatore couldn’t have been happier to turn expectations upside down.
“I’ve never played a character like that,” Salvatore says. When writer-director Brendan Haley first approached him about playing Joel, Haley didn’t exactly sugarcoat what he had in mind.
“He was basically like, ‘Okay, so I really am interested in you playing Joel, but he is evil — kind of evil,'” Salvatore recalls with a laugh. “Then I read the script and I was clutching my pearls. I was like, ‘Wow, he is a bastard.'”
Instead of frightening him away, it made Salvatore want the role even more.
“I was so psyched because I’ve never played a character like that,” he says. “I didn’t even think that I could, honestly.”
Haley thought otherwise.
“He was such a champion,” Salvatore recalls. “He was like, ‘You can do it. I believe in you. I’ll be there every step of the way.'”
The result is a performance almost designed to shatter Salvatore’s familiar screen persona.
Scorch Marks, premiering October 1 exclusively on LGBTQ+ streaming platform Dekkoo, follows Beckett, played by Brandon Shypkowski, who awakens to what appears to be a devastated world. As an ominous storm closes in, Beckett finds himself confronted by Joel and the psychological wreckage of their marriage, while something even more terrifying waits beyond the horizon.
Haley’s feature directorial debut mixes psychological drama, supernatural horror and queer storytelling, with influences ranging from Clive Barker to Samuel Beckett and ancient Mesopotamian mythology. But underneath the cosmic monsters and end-of-the-world imagery is something considerably more intimate: an examination of toxic relationships and the ways destructive ideas about masculinity can infiltrate queer lives.
That gave Salvatore considerably more to work with than simply playing “the bad guy.”
“I feel like it’s really important as actors that we don’t judge our character too harshly, because we have to kind of embody them,” he explains. “I don’t think Joel has a lot of self-awareness. I tried to understand where his pain was coming from.”
Salvatore saw Joel’s cruelty as rooted partly in insecurity — a man desperately attempting to conform to an idea of power and masculinity that was never really designed for him.
“There’s a deep insecurity in Joel, but he masks it as being harsh and what he thinks maybe is masculine,” Salvatore says. “I feel like there’s also a part of him that is ashamed of being gay.”
Joel, he says, is trying to succeed in a world dominated by “elite older straight men,” leaving him constantly attempting to embody the kind of man he believes that world will respect.
Salvatore drew on his own experiences with insecurity and pain while building the character, without allowing himself to excuse Joel’s actions.
“I never tried to judge him,” he says. Then, with filming safely behind him, he laughs: “Even though I can say now, after it’s done, wow, he’s a real asshole.”
Becoming Joel
The transformation wasn’t merely emotional.
Salvatore also underwent an elaborate prosthetic makeup process that dramatically alters his appearance in the film. It was another first.
“I’ve never worn anything like any prosthetics like that before,” he says. “I don’t even think for Halloween.”
The first time the effects artist told him she was going to glue the appliance directly onto his face, Salvatore remembers thinking, “Glue it?”
Removing it wasn’t exactly like peeling off a Halloween mask either. Adhesive had to be carefully loosened to avoid damaging his skin.
Yet the lengthy process — roughly two hours in the makeup chair each morning — became unexpectedly important to his performance.
“When I put this on, I really feel like Joel,” Salvatore remembers. “It’s like a transformation.”
Then came the contact lenses.
“The eyes were the hardest part because I could not see,” he says. “When they put those white eyes in, I could not see.”
Suddenly Salvatore wasn’t simply learning how Joel moved and spoke. He was learning how to act while barely being able to see Shypkowski standing in front of him.
“I was like, ‘How am I going to act? I can’t see anybody. I can’t see my co-star Brandon,'” he recalls.
Even navigating the set became a challenge.
“Is someone going to usher me to a chair or something? Am I going to be tripping all over the place?”
The anxiety disappeared when Salvatore finally saw the finished effect.
At a recent festival screening in San Diego, he found himself studying Joel on the big screen and wondering whether the filmmakers had somehow digitally altered his performance.
“Did they make it look spookier or scarier? Did they change my voice?” he remembers asking.
They hadn’t.
“That was you,” he was told.
For Salvatore, it was proof that the months of work had paid off. He had deliberately changed his voice and physicality, imagining what Joel would sound like based on the character’s personality and behavior.
“I was surprised seeing it all put together,” he says. “When you’re filming it, it’s out of order. It’s bits and pieces at a time.”
Only after seeing those pieces assembled could he fully appreciate how far he’d traveled from the Chris Salvatore audiences thought they knew.
Finding Trust in a Toxic Relationship
That performance also depended heavily on Salvatore’s relationship with Shypkowski.
The actors met at their first table read in November and spent approximately two months rehearsing before filming began just after New Year’s. They sometimes rehearsed several times a week.
Or at least they intended to rehearse.
Sometimes Salvatore would arrive at Shypkowski’s house — or vice versa — and what was supposed to be a rehearsal turned into an hour-and-a-half conversation about life before either remembered there was a script waiting.
“He’s just really easy to get to know and so down to earth,” Salvatore says. “He’s kind of goofy and silly like me.”
The friendship created trust that became essential once the cameras started rolling.
“It was just a real match made in heaven where, in our real lives, we have a lot in common,” he says. “So it made it easy to have chemistry on screen.”
Then Salvatore adds another qualification.
“Obviously, he’s a super handsome guy, so he’s easy on the eyes.”
Playing an abusive relationship for weeks, however, wasn’t always easy to leave behind when filming ended.
Salvatore says he sometimes went home after spending an entire day being menacing and found the emotional residue of Joel following him.
“It’s hard to shake those characters,” he says. “Usually I play characters close to myself.”
That made Scorch Marks a radically different acting experience.
“It was a weird, wild experience,” he says, “but it was so much fun.”
From Eating Out to the Messiness of Queer Life
Salvatore’s history makes the role particularly interesting.
The Eating Out franchise arrived during an era when simply putting openly LGBTQ+ actors at the center of queer films could feel revolutionary.
Salvatore remembers producer Michael Shoel emphasizing the importance of hiring openly gay talent so the actors could discuss that representation publicly.
A lot has changed since then.
What excites Salvatore about Scorch Marks is that its queerness isn’t confined to coming out or finding romance.
“I feel the story is much more than just a coming-out story or a romantic story about two gay guys falling in love,” he says.
Instead, the film examines uncomfortable territory within the community itself.
“It really highlights some of our toxic traits as a community, and especially in relationships, and how those behaviors can affect mental health,” he explains.
For Salvatore, that’s where queer cinema now has an opportunity to go.
“We’ve kind of done the whole nice gay love story thing,” he says. “Now I feel like it’s really important to show the mess — not be afraid to go further and deeper and show the messiness of it all.”
Showing that messiness, he argues, can ultimately become an act of healing.
“Without showing it, you never really can uncover what’s under the stone and shine sunlight on it and kind of grow from it and learn from it and heal from it.”
There may even be room for Salvatore to revisit the considerably lighter side of his queer-film past. He revealed that conversations about a possible Eating Out 6 continue among members of the franchise’s creative family, including Daniel Skelton and writer-director Q. Allan Brocka, although financing and timing remain uncertain.
“We’ve been throwing around different ideas,” Salvatore says. “We’re just waiting for some funding to come in, so we’ll see. Fingers crossed.”
The Reality Show That Wasn’t
Salvatore’s journey between Eating Out and Scorch Marks hasn’t always been easy.
During the pandemic era, while performing in Naked Boys Singing! in Las Vegas, Salvatore was approached about joining MTV’s The Real Friends of WeHo.
The timing seemed perfect.
He was considering moving back to Los Angeles and returning his focus to film acting. A reality show could document that transition.
“I was so excited,” he remembers.
He went through multiple interviews, negotiated what he describes as an intense reality television contract with the help of an entertainment attorney, relocated and began filming.
Then, after roughly a week and a half, he received a call from his lawyer.
“They’re not moving forward with you. You’ve been dropped from the show.”
Salvatore says he was initially told producers simply wanted to reduce the size of the cast. He later heard through friends that two cast members allegedly did not want to film with him because he had an OnlyFans account.
The rejection hit him hard.
“I felt like an outcast,” he says. “I felt othered — really, really other.”
It also confirmed fears he’d already wrestled with when starting an OnlyFans account: Would people think less of him? Would it destroy opportunities in mainstream entertainment?
For Salvatore, there was also an obvious contradiction. He’d already appeared nude in movies. Why should independently controlling and monetizing his own image suddenly make him unacceptable?
“I was so broke. I needed the money,” he recalls of his decision to start the account. “I already showed my junk in the Eating Out movies. What’s the difference?”
OnlyFans, he says, offered a way to regain control over his image and income.
Being rejected from a queer reality series because of it, he says, was deeply demoralizing and contributed to one of the lowest periods of his life.
Years later, Salvatore sees attitudes toward adult content creators changing. But his own experience has also left him with a more complicated perspective on the business.
Creating adult content can be profitable and empowering, he says, but it can also carry emotional costs rarely discussed publicly.
“It’s a lot of work,” Salvatore says. “And it’s not for the faint of heart.”
He says there were times when he found himself using alcohol before collaborations to numb anxiety. Eventually, that became a signal that he needed to reevaluate his relationship with the work.
“I was like, maybe I need to take a step back and just reevaluate and do a little bit more healing around that.”
He emphasizes that he isn’t condemning sex work. Quite the opposite. He believes the stigma surrounding it has diminished considerably and hopes it continues to disappear. What he wants is a more complete conversation — one that includes mental health, substance use and emotional well-being alongside money and sexual freedom.
“That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to do,” he says. “But I don’t think that is talked about enough.”
There was also one unexpected source of support after his reality-show dismissal: Todrick Hall.
Salvatore says Hall reached out personally after he was dropped.
“He was so sweet after I was let go from that show,” Salvatore remembers. “He was the only one that reached out and was like, ‘I’m so sorry. I tried to tell them not to do this.'”
Whatever controversies have surrounded Hall, Salvatore hasn’t forgotten that gesture.
“He was one of the only ones that really reached out and apologized on others’ behalf.”
The Woman Who Changed Everything
Ask Salvatore where he’s going next, however, and the conversation becomes much more personal.
He is writing a book about Norma Cook, the elderly neighbor whose friendship with Salvatore captured worldwide attention after he became her caregiver during the final years of her life.
The story has been approached several times as a potential movie, Salvatore says, but before surrendering it to someone else’s screenplay, he wants to tell it himself.
“It was important for me to get the story down in my own voice first before there’s any sort of life rights being sold and then changed in a way that I wouldn’t — or she wouldn’t — like.”
Nearly a decade after Norma’s death, he finally feels capable of doing that.
“I’ve tried several times before, but I felt like I was, in a way, still grieving,” he says. “Honestly, it took almost 10 years.”
He says the book is about halfway completed.
Norma’s influence, meanwhile, remains very much alive.
“I think about her every day,” Salvatore says.
One of the greatest lessons she taught him was remarkably simple: be present.
“When I was with her, I would never look at my phone,” he remembers. “I wouldn’t even think about scrolling or tweeting or anything like that.”
Those years with Norma became a refuge from the digital world and its constant demand for attention.
“I really feel like everyone needs a Norma in their life,” he says.
Norma also spoke openly about mortality, frequently telling Salvatore she was ready to die. Rather than making life seem darker, those conversations made its value clearer.
“She really made the gift of life very at the forefront of my mind,” he says. “That just makes living in today’s world way easier — not to worry so much about tomorrow.”
Her biggest lesson?
“Being present.”
Being Queer, Being a Disruptor
That sense of perspective also shapes the way Salvatore views his identity.
Asked what the word “queer” means to him today, he considers how dramatically the word itself has transformed during his lifetime — from something often weaponized against LGBTQ+ people into an identity many now claim with pride.
“Being queer is like being othered in the most beautiful, magical way imaginable,” he says.
For Salvatore, queerness also carries a responsibility to challenge convention.
“We are so lucky to be queer and to be the trailblazers in society, to show people a different way, a different point of view.”
Queer people, he says, disrupt assumptions about what society considers “normal.”
“I think the world is a better place with queer people in it,” Salvatore says. “Being queer is to be a disruptor in a really powerful way.”
It is a fitting philosophy for an actor now deliberately disrupting his own image.
Salvatore isn’t abandoning the romantic comedies, music or provocative choices that made him recognizable. Music, in fact, remains one of his first loves. He says he continues writing, singing and playing piano and expects to return to releasing music eventually.
“There is more music coming,” he promises. “The acting kind of has taken the front seat.”
For now, that means Joel.
And Scorch Marks.
Salvatore says he’s increasingly interested in projects that leave audiences with something more than entertainment.
“I really right now am just wanting to do stuff that I feel passionate about,” he says. “Scorch Marks is a story that I think is worth telling. It makes the audience leave thinking about life and thinking about the story.”
He laughs when comparing that ambition to his earlier work.
“It’s quite different from Eating Out. You don’t really leave Eating Out with questions.”
Nearly two decades after becoming one of queer cinema’s familiar romantic faces, Chris Salvatore isn’t interested in simply repeating himself.
He wants the uncomfortable characters. The complicated conversations. The stories that expose something messy enough that audiences might still be thinking about them after the credits roll.
“I feel like I’m really into making content and making art that is thought-provoking and healing in any sort of way,” he says. “I think that’s what makes it so beautiful.”
And perhaps that’s what makes Scorch Marks such an appropriate next chapter.
The movie may be about an apocalyptic storm, a toxic relationship and something terrifying approaching from beyond the horizon, but beneath all that darkness is a story about surviving long enough to choose something better.
For Chris Salvatore, it also represents something simpler: the chance to show audiences a side of him they’ve never seen before.
Scorch Marks premieres October 1 exclusively on Dekkoo.
