The Greatest Gay Love Stories Never Told

The Mummy and His Daddy
The Love Story: Royal servants Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum were found buried together embracing and holding hands in a tomb of the pyramid of King Unas, making them what is possibly the first recorded same-sex couple in history.

Very little is known about Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum other than that they were close to the king, shared the title of Overseer of the Manicurists (not even kidding) and were apparently held in high enough royal esteem to be buried with such care and respect. These male “royal confidants” were depicted in artwork embracing and touching noses, the most intimate pose allowable in Egyptian funeral art.

In the tradition of The English Patient, why not parallel the story of these two lovers with the archaeologists who discovered them in 1964? Telling a modern-day romance between two scientists who perhaps have their feelings awakened by the stark evidence of ancient homosexuality before their eyes as the original story plays out in flashback could be a slam-dunk.

The Pitch: The English Patient meets The Birdcage
The Cast: Rami Malek (from The War at Home) and Omid Abtahi (Sleeper Cell)

Sigh No More
The Love Story: Noel Coward, the toast of the English stage, and his lover Graham Payn have their relationship tested when Coward writes Payn a leading role in his new play, Sigh No More.

In 1994 Graham Payn, Noel Coward’s friend and lover of over 30 years, wrote a memoir about his life with the colorful celebrated playwright. Payn, himself an accomplished actor, met Coward when auditioning for a revue, and the two were an open couple for decades as Coward wrote such classic comedies as Blithe Spirit, Present Laughter and Born Yesterday. (I am not finding Born Yesterday credited to him – can you pick another instead?)

But it was Coward’s writing a lead role for Payn in Sigh No More that might be the best entry point into the world of these sparkling creatives; after all, nothing tests a couple more than working with one another. In that light, might Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka make good leading men?

The Pitch: Bullets Over Broadway meets Bright Young Things
The Cast: Rupert Everett as Coward … and Michael Urie as Graham Payn

Hadrian and Antinous
The Love Story: A Roman emperor falls in love with a male subject, whose death affects him deeply.

The lives of Roman Emperor Hadrian and his young lover Antinous are ripe for the telling, as they feature all the hallmarks of great epic filmmaking: power, romance, glory, beauty, tragedy, and love. A born-and-bred military man, Hadrian unofficially took the throne in 117 AD, having been unceremoniously married to a 13-year-old girl decades earlier for political purposes. The much younger Antinous (likely born around 110) entered the emperor’s circle around 123 and by 128 was accompanying Hadrian as his closest confidant.