Summer Movie Doldrums: Where Have All the Gay Cowboys Gone?

Here at AfterElton.com we've been quietly (or at least intermittently) mourning the dearth of gay movies gracing our great nation's silver screens for a while now. In our 2006 "Year in Queer" review, we noted that while it might have seemed that the critical and popular success of Brokeback Mountain would open the floodgates for gay-themed films or mainstream films featuring gay leads, that hadn't yet been the case.

At the time we acknowledged that the production time required for a major film would delay any such wave of gay movies, but now, nearly six months later (and 18 months post- Brokeback), we're still not seeing any uptick in gay films — now or in the production pipeline. If anything, we're seeing fewer.

Yes, fewer. In last year's summer movie preview, we listed 17 gay-interest films slated for release between June and August. This year, by the same criteria and in the same window, there are 13. And in a quarter-by-quarter comparison, the number fell from 14 in the spring to 13 this summer.

Furthermore, of these 13 films, only seven feature actual gay characters and only four have gay lead characters. Of those four, all are limited-release "gay" films that will likely open on no more than half a dozen screens.

The news is doubly frustrating because last summer was especially notable for two summer blockbusters that included significant gay roles. Remember Sacha Baron Cohen's performance as a gay foil in Talladega Nights, or Richard Dreyfuss' gay supporting hero in Poseidon?

Even the gay receptionist in The Break-Up and the Ian McKellen one-two punch of X-Men: The Last Stand and The Da Vinci Code were considerably more significant than anything we've got this summer, which offers little more than third-generation camp (Hairspray) and tightrope-walking straight-guy gay jokes (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Knocked Up) to keep us entertained. (At least nothing coming up in the next few months promises to insult us with the gay panic of Wild Hogs or by using homophobia to scare straight boys as with 300.)

It's not just the multiplexes that are in a drought — even film festivals such as Tribeca and Sundance have offered pretty slim pickings this year when it comes to gay films. (Tribeca had six gay-themed features — out of 157 — and three of those were documentaries. Sundance was scarcely better.)

How could the much-touted "gay cowboy movie," which nabbed handfuls of awards and raked in almost $100 million (not bad for a $14 million movie) not have spawned more imitators, even at the smaller studios?

If there's one thing Hollywood can be counted on to do, it's to cannibalize itself for a buck. If one superhero movie is a hit, you can bet your behind the cineplexes will be stuffed with men in tights within a year's time. Sometimes the studios even have concurrent, identical projects aimed at simultaneously creating and cashing in on a self-contained trend (meteor movies, haunted house movies, animated ant movies, etc.).

So why didn't the success of Brokeback kick off a host of imitator movies about, say, gay firemen in love? Or gay Olympians? Or even gay hairdressers or sales clerks or accountants, for that matter. Had Brokeback really told the only gay love story out there?

Well, Brokeback obviously wasn't a popcorn movie with a massive, built-in fan base à la Spider-Man. So, much in the way that we didn't see a score of English Patient imitators after that movie's breakout success, it's optimistic at best to think that the studios were going to knock each other out of the way to get to the next gay romance script.

The sad truth is that Hollywood depends on "sure things" to stay alive: tried-and-true formulas that consistently score with the major demographic, not novelty films or breakout hits that are able to gain an audience almost in spite of their subject matter or the controversy surrounding them. While Brokeback may have been a hit, it clearly did not send a signal that gay was salable in the suburbs.