Clifton Collins Jr (left) as Perry Smith and Philip Seymour Hoffman (right) as Truman Capote
‘Without homosexuals there would be no Hollywood, no theatre, no Arts.’
– Elizabeth Taylor
Gay cinema is still attracting a huge amount of attention, following the relatively recent hits such as Capote and Brokeback Mountain. In fact, further to the amazing success of Ang Lee’s ‘gay cowboy movie’, as it was dubbed by many critics, most major studios have been clamouring to get behind new, gay-themed projects.
This acceptance and willingness by studios to back pictures focusing on gays is, of course, wonderful. But it’s been a long time coming.
Hollywood has featured homosexuality since the movies were born but it was always as something to laugh at, or pity, or even fear. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, gay characters were usually cast as the leading man’s effeminate buddy or as the sissy, with their orientation understood, but never discussed. Later, especially from the late 1950s through to the 1970s, gay characters always seemed to be portrayed as emotional wrecks, many of them suicidal. These images of tormented individuals left a lasting legacy, as they not only told straight people what to think about gay people but also gay people what to think about themselves.
Throughout the decades, however, there were always a handful of films that broke new ground – Victim (1961), Making Love (1982) and And the Band Played On (1993) to name just a few. On the whole, films with a homosexual theme were full of anguish. From psycho-thrillers like the Al Pacino movie Cruising (1980), to bitchy melodramas such as The Killing of Sister George (1968) and films full of self-pity like The Boys in the Band (1970), the industry was notorious for churning out limited, stereotypical images of gays and lesbians.
Nevertheless, faced with negative images, many gay men still managed to glean something positive from the silver screen. In the 50s, James Dean played it straight but most knew the score and before Ellen DeGeneres and Will and Grace made coming out acceptable, many gay men lived vicariously through Hollywood’s women. Strong women like Joan Crawford embodied the in-your-face assertiveness that gay men longed to express, while in Judy Garland’s drugs and multiple comebacks, they saw their own closeted battle between loneliness and survival. Revealing a love for these women was often a code for expressing a love for men.
Gay singles scenes grew up around film revivals, and phrases like ‘friend of Dorothy’ were code, a way to come out, but only to someone who was also in the know. Later, Cher, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand and then Madonna also offered gay men real-life versions of Davis’s and Crawford’s wonderfully bitchy characters.
Today, diva worship isn’t as focused as it was in the 50s and 60s. In this millennium, the gay population don’t need to remain closeted, although some still do, and no longer need to set up a diva as some kind of unifying force against oppression and discrimination. Yes, gay men still respect people like Madonna and Cher but the real need for a connection is no longer there. Today it’s more likely to be the diva’s hunky male co-stars who draw the stares.
Gay and lesbian characters are now out and proud. Real progress was made with the rise of independent cinema in the 1980s – films such as Parting Glances (1986) and Poison (1991). Then, soon after these indie achievements, big Hollywood studios began embracing gay-themed movies with films such as Philadelphia (1993), which had Tom Hanks dying of AIDS; Too Wong Foo (1995), which had Wesley Snipes in tights; and The Birdcage (1996), United Artists’ remake of the 1978 French comedy, La Cage aux Folles.
More recently, with the explosion of gay images on mainstream TV – Queer as Folk, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Will & Grace etc – filmmakers suddenly found it easier to break out from the gay, indie-film subculture and get their films high-profile releases and better distribution deals. A whole host of gay and lesbian film festivals began to crop up all around the world and, by the late 1990s, more gay movies were being made than ever before. Some great, some good, some really not so good. As the gay underground quickly became obscured by the gay mainstream, plenty of film companies rushed to produce as many cheesy gay dramas and camp comedies as they possibly could.
In a world where gay identity is being scrubbed clean so that it can be marketed as ‘acceptable’ to the masses who watch Will & Grace, much of the cinematic dross that wouldn’t have made it past financiers eyes were the stories based around straight characters. Nevertheless, as documented in the final chapter, despite the rubbish, gay cinema continues to move forward with movies like L.I.E. (2001), Capote (2005) and, of course, Brokeback Mountain (2005), a total triumph and monumental moment in gay film history.
After Brokeback, more high-quality, thought-provoking, gay-interest films followed – Breakfast on Pluto (2005), Transamerica (2005) and Shortbus (2006). Then, in 2008, Gus Van Sant made the high-profile Milk starring Sean Penn, while Glen Ficarra teamed up with John Requa to direct I Love You Phillip Morris, starring Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey. Both of these high-profile pictures are discussed later in this book. As are the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra (2013). So perhaps, thanks to Brokeback, film financiers will continue to back scripts that don’t simply rely on gay stereotypes to entertain and pull in a crowd – and that will certainly be progress.
So times have changed and this book tells the story of how we got here. From the early fleeting images of screen sissies to mainstream gay movies and beyond, the aim of Out at the Movies is to fascinate, even educate. Each chapter has an overview of the decade, reviews of all the main films, memorable dialogue and profiles of key players in the industry – all adding up to what is, hopefully, the complete guide to both mainstream and independent gay and lesbian movies.
Of course, not every gay reference in the movies is covered. After all, if I’d decided to include the homoerotic subtext of almost every American buddy movie, war movie, cop movie and western, this History of Gay Cinema would have been a huge tome. Instead, the book delves deepest into gay films that have really pushed the boundaries – those which have politically or emotionally reached out to gay people from London to LA and from Kettering to Kansas.
So, enjoy reading and happy viewing!