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Documentaries

A number of documentaries focusing on gay subjects also premiered in 2006. Saint of 9/11 told the story of Father Mychal Judge, an openly gay Catholic priest and chaplain to the New York Fire Department, who was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. (The image of Judge's body being carried from the ruins has been burned into the minds of many.)

Kirby Dick's attack on the MPAA, This Film Is Not Yet Rated (which featured a quirky, lesbian private eye), addressed the double standard that grants straight films R ratings but relegates gay content to adults only. For the Love of Dolly and George Michael: A Different Story explored two iconic musicians beloved by gay audiences.

Films Made for a Gay Audience

Then, of course, there were the “gay movies” of 2006 — generally lower-budget indie flicks made explicitly about and for gay people, which of course usually means limited release and box office poison. Adam & Steve was probably the most evenly received of the bunch, and even sported some minor celebrity appearances by Parker Posey, Chris Kattan, Julie Hagerty and Sally Kirkland. Adam & Steve is frothy, wacky, New York City romantic comedy stuff — and considering how many failed movies like this we've seen in the past, writer-director-actor Craig Chester's endearing film was refreshingly solid.

Perhaps more of a success in terms of making a scene, Todd Stephens' Another Gay Movie served up all of the things that we hate about gay films — within the context of a teen sex comedy. Name a stereotype, and it's there. Name a bodily fluid or function, and it's probably there, too. Crass? Yes. Boundary pushing? Certainly. But actually funny? Audiences were divided, but even those who found the film in bad taste or even downright offensive couldn't keep their eyes off the screen for long, seeing as how it featured one of the most frequently disrobed male casts since Caligula (although these guys were much cuter, thank heaven).

Defiantly antiestablishment and unexpectedly moving, Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron Mitchell's hard-core romantic comedy Shortbus was a sprawling (no pun intended), thoughtful meditation on human connection that somehow managed to be funny, raucous, sweet, ridiculous, sexy, touching and wise — and loaded with explicit sex, gay and straight alike. Mitchell's tale of a bunch of post-9/11 New Yorkers who convene at the titular (slight pun intended) salon to overcome their intimacy issues may have been uneven and at times amateurish — but then again, so is sex, right? Regardless, Shortbus was one of the first American films to truly demystify sex and to present it, in all its foibles, as something beautiful and healthy — something that is long overdue.

Few other gay films were widely released in 2006, and few of them fared well. Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds, a much-anticipated sequel, didn't quite satisfy the appetites of the first film's fans. Likewise, the film adaptation of the comic strip The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green was only tepidly received.

A few foreign films, notably the Spanish comedy Queens, the British comedy Kinky Boots and the Bosnian drama Go West, were well-received, but overall the market for gay films wasn't any different than in the pre- Brokeback landscape.

So where does that leave us? Overall, 2006 brought us a group of fairly fresh gay characters in an incredibly diverse sampling of films — and there's nothing wrong with that. Perhaps Brokeback sent the message that American audiences are ready to see their gay characters as something other than a hairdresser or florist or the catty bitch next door — that if a cowboy can be gay, so can just about everyone else.

While it may be years before we see another film come along that so effectively and beautifully challenges the stereotypes that pervade American films, at least in the meantime it looks like the gay supporting characters in our popular entertainment are both more numerous and more representative of our communities. But be on the lookout for surprises. Honestly, when the gayest movie of the year was the naked frat boy puke-fest Jackass Number Two, you know we're not in Kansas anymore.

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