Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (July 18, 2008)

A GAGGLE OF GAY HUSTLER MOVIES
Before I Forget (Avant que j’oublie) opens in limited U.S. release this weekend. The French film is directed by and stars Jacques Nolot, and it's all about an elderly, HIV-positive former male gigolo "contemplating his life and past loves."

"Listen kid, in my day we had to walk five miles in the snow for a trick!"

Okay, not exactly in the running for feel-good movie of the year. I think there's some unwritten rule that all gay hustler films have to be depressing.

The grandaddy of hustler movies, Midnight Cowboy (1970), pretty much set the trend. It won three Oscars (best picture, best director, and best screenplay), but that ending where Dustin Hoffman dies on the bus in Jon Voight's arms is almost unbearably sad. (Okay, so Cowboy doesn't make the gay relationship bewtween Voight's Joe Buck and Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo completely explicit, but it drops a hell of a lot of hints.)

Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy

My Own Private Idaho (1991) offers a gay hustler twofer, with both River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves turning tricks on the streets of Portland.

Lukas Haas & David Arquette worked the streets of L.A. in johns (1996)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt tears it up in the extremely unsettling Mysterious Skin (2004).

Derek Magyar (left) plays a hustler who falls for his roomate in Boy Culture (2006).

I'm sure there are other gay hustler films I'm forgetting. If you can think of any, help me out by sharing in the comments section. (I'm leaving off American Gigolo here because the film went out of its way to assure audiences that Richard Gere's character was straight and "only serviced the ladies.")

Next page! Catching up with The History Boys.