"Valentine's Day" Launches Two TV Spots and a Featurette, Still No Homo

Look! They appear onscreen together.

At this point, I'm starting to feel a little bit like the crazy old man ranting in the town square and wondering why no one believes what I'm saying. But what am I ranting about? Movie marketing. In particular, the marketing of Valentine's Day, the new romantic comedy starring Jennifer Garner, Jessica Biel and half of Hollywood that comes out February 12.

If this topic sounds familiar, it's because it's become my own personal windmill at which I must tilt. It all started last May when we found out Bradley Cooper was playing gay in the flick and we ran through the fantasy casting for his closeted football boyfriend. The studio didn't take our suggestions instead casting Grey's Anatomy hunk Eric Dane in the football player role, which seemed nice enough. After all, it was pretty easy to see them as a couple.

Since then we've seen two trailers for Valentine's Day - the first being a teaser where we wondered aloud why Julia Roberts was kissing Bradley Cooper instead of, say, Cooper kissing Dane.

When the second trailer came out , it seemed pretty obvious that the gay relationship was being downplayed. This happened at the same time the marketing for A Single Man went straight, and the American marketing for I Love You Philip Morris became mostly about Jim Carrey and his wife. At the time I wondered:

Is it really impossible to market an ensemble romantic comedy to the masses with a gay couple in it? Could that really be considered a bad marketing move in Hollywood now? First, a gay director (Tom Ford) takes a movie about a gay man based on a book by a gay man and degays the marketing for that movie, and now this?  

I'm quoting myself because everyone else did. The story got picked up over the holidays by a dozen major sites and in several languages. The problem with the statement I made isn't that it's ludicrous on the face of it - it's that I didn't go far enough. Last week, our own Brent Hartinger interviewed Tom Ford about A Single Man, and asked him about the marketing controversy:

I have a very definite take. First of all, America is a very strange place. In order to cut a trailer that we could run in theaters, we had to remove the men kissing because they consider that “adult sexual content.” In order to make the trailer acceptable, that was a cut that had to be made. Did I do the actual cut? No. Was I happy about it? No. But did we have to do it to market the film and get the word out? Yes.

So it's actually not that the studios don't think they can't market a film with romantic gay content, it's apparently that they are actually not allowed to do so.That's right in some, modern day version of the Hayes Code, filmmakers apparently can't show gay men kissing in a movie trailer, otherwise it becomes "Red Band" meaning it can't be played in front of other movies in the theaters.

Never mind that television can show two men in bed together making out during daytime programming. According to Ford, when it comes to running trailers in movie theater, to earn a "Green Band" trailer, dudes must not kiss. (Green Band doesn't mean a trailer is appropriate for all ages, but rather is appropriate for the audience attending the movie currently being shown in that particular theater.)

So am I still angry at the filmmakers? Not really. But I am furious at the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) for having such ridiculous rules. The organization is famously not at all transparent in how they rate films and trailers, but this is a rare peek into their insanity, and frankly, I hope their children and their grandchildren are ashamed of them.

So what can be shown in a trailer, or a television spot, and still rate a "Green Band" trailer?

A man kissing a woman is fine.

An underage male being grabbed and kissed by an of-age female.

A man proposing to a naked woman.

Naked man being straddled by woman in man's shirt.

Senior citizens discussing their sex lives.

 Straight people on each other's laps kissing.

But one of this.

But you can't show two men kissing in any way. Because that's "Adult Sexual Content" and we can't have that in theaters.

So, presuming Valentine's Day features Cooper and Dane locking lips (and if it doesn't, that's an entirely different kettle of double standard fish), I completely understand why these next two television spots are gay free. First we have "Falling".

And then we have "Funny Thing"

As for the 2:32 featurette, that was cut for the UK, well, the cast spends more time talking about Valentine's Day than they do showing clips from the movie. Or maybe the UK is just as screwed up as we are.

Valentine's Day opens February 12.

Of course, has anyone familiar with Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated already knows that the MPAA treats gay material very differently than it does straight content. It's just appalling to be reminded yet again how obscene their double standard truly is.