How Kevin Smith got Superman to go gay

How did Brandon Routh (above right) go from wearing tights for Bryan Singer to having a gay pornstar boyfriend in Zack & Miri Make a Porno?

“I felt it should be a salt-of-the-Earth, middle-American kind of guy. Someone like Superman,” said Porno director Kevin Smith to the Los Angeles Times. “And Seth [Rogen]’s like, ‘Brandon Routh. Let’s call him.’ [Elizabeth] Banks was in the room while I was having this conversation with Seth, and she’s like, ‘Superman? His agent is my agent.’”

Smith envisioned the character as a twofold sort of “straight man” — Routh’s character Bobby Long is not only closeted and repressed but he’s also the foil to the hilarious Justin Long (above left), playing Bobby’s boyfriend, porn star Brandon St. Randy.

“On paper, it’s a thankless role,” says Smith. “But Brandon found a way to play him like a hen-pecked husband in a gay marriage who’s still not quite living out loud. He’s so funny. He found a way to make it more comedic than it was on the page without changing a word.”

Part of what makes the casting fun is the general assumption that, as a handsome young thing starring in a movie for gay director Bryan Singer, Routh must be gay himself. For what it's worth, the actor married his longtime girlfriend Courtney Ford last year. (Admittedly, the infamous “How Gay is Superman?” cover of The Advocate — which went with a story by yours truly that made no such speculation about the actor’s sexuality —probably didn’t help.)

According to Smith, “I think he saw this as the chance to make fun of the fact that people assume he must be gay because he worked with Bryan Singer or something like that. He embraced it. He ran with it.”

Gay or straight, Routh’s still a handsome screen presence. And now that we know he has a sense of humor, he may wind up having a career in movies that don’t require him to sport an “S” on his chest.