Genoa-Kingston graduate premieres musical romance inspired by his own partner

GENOA – “Glitter & Doom,” a musical romance directed by a Genoa-Kingston High School graduate, made its silver screen debut over the weekend in New York and Los Angeles. It’s set to debut in Chicago this weekend.

Tom Gustafson, 47, graduated from Genoa-Kingston High School in 1994 and has gone on to direct eight pieces of cinematography after studying film at Northwestern University. His latest, “Glitter & Doom” is a jukebox musical, using all of the hits from folk rock duo Indigo Girls, with real-life inspiration.

“It’s basically a gay romance, fantastical story that’s inspired by my partner and I meeting 20 years ago,” Gustafson said.

Cory Krueckeberg, Gustafson’s partner, wrote the script for “Glitter & Doom” and gave it to Gustafson for their 20th anniversary. The film is loosely inspired by the couple meeting for the first time in Chicago in 1998.

“And at the time, there wasn’t music in it but there were placeholders, kind of where we wanted some of the music storytelling to happen. And then we reached out to two of our heroes, Indigo Girls, who gave us permission to use their entire catalog,” Gustafson said. “And then we started spending months going through all of their songs and kind of creating mash ups and medleys, that worked within the story.”

Krueckeberg and Gustafson, working as SPEAKproductions, have produced eight acclaimed films and won more than 65 awards from films shown in more than 300 film festivals, according a news release.

The 116-minute musical was shot in Mexico City as COVID-19 restrictions began to tapper off, and has taken two years to produce Gustafson said.

“We’re really excited to get it out there. I mean, it’s been two years of 24-hours work on this project,” Gustafson said. “The most ambitious one that we’ve done – this is our fifth kind of musical feature that we’ve done – and this one was pretty challenging for many different reasons. But the fact that it is personal ... we’re very excited to kind of finally launch this into the world.”

“Glitter & Doom” will debut in at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave. in Chicago on Friday.

“It’s a very joyful, kind of surreal romance ,and there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world right now that’s pretty depressing and sad,” Gustafson said. “I like to say that it is a good escape for a couple hours to go and be in the fantastical world of ‘Glitter & Doom’ and enjoy some pretty amazing music from Indigo Girls.”