Fifteen years ago, a little movie wowed audiences at Indie Memphis. Blue Citrus Hearts was Morgan Jon Fox's coming out party — both as a person and a filmmaker.

When Fox saw André Téchiné's 1994 film Wild Reeds, it struck a deep chord. "It was the first movie I had ever seen about people my age coming out on screen," he recalls. "There were no out kids at my school, that I knew of. There were no role models, like there are now, to look up to. There was no reflection of myself in TV or media. So when I finally saw Wild Reeds, it was the first time I saw somebody who reflected myself onscreen, or anywhere around me. It spoke so much truth to me in a private moment, that I felt like this was the most powerful thing, that I could sit down and watch this movie by myself and it would give me so much peace. It was like a huge sigh of relief."

He wrote Blue Citrus Hearts during his freshman year at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "Then I dropped out, because I wanted to go to film school. This film was all that mattered to me. I was 19 at the time."

Read the full story at The Memphis Flyer