Relighting Candles – The Tim Sullivan Story Premiers at OUTFEST LA

Short Film Documentary, Relighting Candles – The Story of Tim Sullivan, premiered at the Outfest LA Film Festival on Sunday, July 16, 2023, at the Directors Guild of America, located at 7920 W Sunset Blvd. A lot of members of the West Hollywood community and sober community showed up to support the project produced by Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone, and co-directed by Zeberiah Newman (“Unexpected”) and Michiel Thomas (“Game Face”).

The weho-based documentary chronicles Tim Sullivan, the 82-year-old Bronx native’s journey from coming out as a gay man, to how he got sober more than 40 years ago and his tradition of hiring homeless and newly sober people at his company, Timothy Jay Candles. The documentary also highlights homelessness and the fentanyl crisis in Los Angeles County.

“I’m just happy that basically, this could be a vehicle for other people to help a lot of our people who are in terrible trouble right now,” said Sullivan during a Q&A portion after the screening. “It doesn’t take a lot. You just find something for them to do and all of sudden they’re doing it. And they come back the next day and do more and we’ve had really over 200 to 250 guys and past 25 years and most of them I must say are quite successful and this makes me happy more than anything. My three brothers have children and I always thought, shit I can’t have kids, yack, yack yack and blah, blah, blah. And now I have this family that’s amazing and it’s been wonderful.”

Timothy Jay Candles in West Hollywood is known for creating handmade fragrance candles for private label and international clients. “An intricate process, but everything is done by hand,” reads a post on the business website. “We work in stages melting and pouring the wax hand-placing the wicks and letting them dry properly for 24 hours”