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The Year in Queer MoviesThe first project to get off the ground, gay auteur Gus Van Sant’s Milk, has cast megawatt star Sean Penn as the gay rights figure. This casting will doubtless draw considerable attention to the project and will hopefully give Milk’s story the exposure that it deserves (likewise Van Sant’s characteristically thoughtful handling of tricky material, which will hopefully be on full display here). Rumors that both Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg are being considered to play assassin Dan White are unsubstantiated.
Currently the project is slated for a 2009 release, but hopes are that it might be fast-tracked to wrap before an anticipated summer actor's strike and squeak in for 2008 Oscar consideration The second Milk pic, The Mayor of Castro Street, is gay director Bryan Singer’s yet-to-be-kickstarted adaptation of the Randy Shilts biography of the same name. There has yet to be any casting announcement, so it’s not likely that we’ll see anything from this project until 2009.
Next year sees the long-awaited return of gay filmmaker Tom Kalin, whose first feature, Swoon (1992), was instrumental in the queer cinema revolution of the early 90’s. His latest film, Savage Grace, explores the real-life murder of socialite Barbara Day Baekeland by her gay son, Anthony. It’s of course much more complicated than just that, and hopefully Kalin’s unconventional narrative style will bring the story to life (the fact that Julianne Moore plays Baekeland certainly won’t hurt). We should also be seeing a U.S. release for Canadian gay dad hockey comedy Breakfast With Scot, which stars Tom Cavanagh as an ex-Maple Leaf whose glass closeted existence is thrown into disarray by the arrival of a flamboyant child. The film received warm reviews in its Canadian release and hopefully will make a splash here as well.
So what’s missing from the landscape? Well, long-gestating gay novel adaptations The Frontrunner and The Dreyfus Affair, to name a couple. And bigger picture, Hollywood movies that present gay people and gay sexuality as being much more than a joke or something to be horrified of or disgusted by. Will the Milk biopics strike enough of a chord with mainstream audiences to make the idea of a heroic gay person more accessible? Maybe. But in the meantime, it looks like what happens on Brokeback Mountain really does stay on Brokeback Mountain. Submitted by on Sun, 2007-12-09 22:19. |
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A nice wrap-up -- and here are a few more items
Augustin Roy's video-shot present-day-set adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Grey made the gay fest circuit rounds to decidedly mixed reacion. I liked it a lot. In this version the "picture" is a video isntallation -- and Dorain dies of AIDS.
Also on the limited-release front Jean-Marc Barr's gay and bisexual teens in toruble drama One to Another was quite good and Tsai Ming-Liang's latest paen to his boyfriend, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone absolutely sensational. Joe's new film Syndromes and a Century, a romance about his parents, isn't gay -- save for a gay monk. But I love Joe!
Brian an excellent and detailed
summary of gay visibility (or lack of same) in movies this year. Frankly 2007 has been one of the most forgettable years in Hollywood movies period. An animation flick "Ratitoiulle" is one of the few I remember. I rented the final Pirates of The Caribbean movie on Saturday, and it was the weakest of the three. Too long, boring and confusing. So if gays were going to take a pass in the movies, 2007 was probably a good year to pick!
Why are gays still portrayed so poorly in Hollywood? We make up 10% of the population if you include bisexuals, and I would hazard a guess that the percentage is higher in the movie industry. One possible theory is that the USA is generally lagging compared to the rest of the West in terms of accepting gays, partially due to conservative Christians who make up a sizable part of the population. I couldn't help but notice that three movies you gave favourable reviews to were either non-USA (the Israeli flick and "Breakfast With Scot") or directed by a "foreigner" (David Cronenberg is Canadian). Most movie producers want to maximize profit and do not want to alienate a sizable chunk of their potential audience.
Another possibility is that heteros have this implicit belief that homos usually do not have as many responsibilities as they do in life, re. child rearing etc.. Therefore, gays are not worthy of being taken seriously. This theory is a bit of a stretch, but when interacting with straights I sometimes get this underlying sense this is what a lot of them believe. The fact that a large number of straights botch up the child-rearing job despite all the implicit advantages they have, seems to escape them!
Anyways I would love to hear other AfterElton reader's theories about why gay visibility in the movies seems to be decreasing not increasing.
Cheers
JBE
Re: GLBT population within the industry & box office results
I've always wonder how many GLBT people actually work within the entertainment industry. Not just the actors but the people behind the scenes and the executives who decide which projects get the green light. I also wonder how many of these employees are gritting their teeth because more films like "Chuck & Larry" and "Wild Hogs" are being produced for the indiscriminate mainstream mall audience.
Money has always been the major reason why some films get made and not others. It should be noted that many of the films mentioned in the article did gross over $100-200 million dollars. For example, "Hairspray" and "Chuck and Larry" were released around the same time and both grossed almost the same amount of money. (C&L $119.7 M; Hairspray $118.8 M [U.S.] Source: Box Office Mojo.com)
When it comes to gay visibility (in addition to many other groups who are also ignored or stereotyped in films and television), the criticism is valid and necessary. As far as hypocrisy is concerned, I do wish that some of the industry insiders would grow some... and not always play it safe. (Approx. $65-85 Million to produce a mainstream movie playing it safe? It does make me wonder where the money is going.)
I never expected "Brokeback Mountain" to be a big hit in mainstream theaters, much less develop icon status. At the same time, should every gay movie, comedy or drama, be just like Brokeback? I really hope not. However, I do believe the template for a well-told story for a wide audience who would like to be challenged should not be ignored.
Brokeback Mountain
was a great movie, because of the acting as well as the story. Hopefully though it will be the last "being gay often leads to tragedy" movie for a while. I would like to think there are some great gay storylines that are not tragic or depressing, that are ready to be told. I have read a large number of gay novels and short stories this year, and quite a few of the them have a happy ending (especially the teen novels by Brent Hartinger, David Levithan and Alex Sanchez).
Cheers
JBE
Maybe It Was "Brokeback"
Overlooking the obvious
I know that, in our community, we tend to think that any positive moments for gays must lead to backlash and we need to blame ourselves. So this article focuses on "Brokeback backlash".
What I would point out is the Judd Apatow films. You praise Knocked Up as "progressive" because the male characters are comfortable with one another. They're straight men. When the film is so anti-gay and sexist, how is that progressive? His other big movie, 40 Year Old Virgin, also had very widely disussed scenes that presented homosexuality as an insult, as sick, as making you less of a man.
Don't you think the success of Wedding Crashers, 40 Year Old Virgin (and now the success of Knocked Up) did more to help Hollywood see homosexuality = sickness as profitable than Brokeback Mountain?
It's just somewhat hard for me to believe that low-rent directors who make trash like Chuck and Larry or Wild Hogs suddenly said, "Hey, thanks to Brokeback we can hate gays."
Good point Jon
some movie directors figure they are likely to make more money appealing to the less attractive qualities of young straight males. What better way to boost an insecure straight 16 year olds sense of self then making fun of "fags"? Unfortunately there are not enough young straight guys with a secure sense of their masculinity out there to say "enough is enough these cheap shots are not funny".
Cheers
JBE
Someday my prints will come
afhickman
"It takes a village (to make Village People)"
Maybe the problem is that Brokeback set the bar too high. Before BBM, it was just assumed that gay-themed movies had to be low-budget, independent films that were often well-meaning but just as often catered to the lowest common denominator. BBM may have changed all that. Maybe, even as I write this, gay writers are polishing off old scripts and shopping them to producers. Nothing happens overnight in Hollywood (except cheap knock-offs and sequels). I'd like to think that producers are hip to the benefits of so-called prestige films such as Brokeback (especially on awards night) and will take a chance on long-shelved projects like The Front Runner. Once the stage is set, the play can begin! Yes, I'll admit; I too am impatient for the success of Brokeback to translate into more high-profile, gay-themed movies, but, if waiting a while means higher quality products, I think the wait will be worth it.