I did try, upthread, to point out that it was turning into a Name That Gay Movie contest. I posed questions. I was ignored.
But it seems as if people like the Name That Gay Movie contest, so I won’t stand in the way.
Yes, I’m well aware of that. I named several myself. However, the rate of gay characters stands at about 1.1%, according to Entertainment Weekly, far below even the most conservative estimates of gay demographics — often estimated between 5% and 10% of the population. Yes, Hollywood has, in the past, made a movie with gay characters; the point is, despite the obvious success of Brokeback Mountain, these movies appear to be too few and too far between.
So the question is, and let me state it unequivocably here: what kind of mainstream movie, with a gay main character, would you like to see?
Didn’t the Lord of the Rings have some gay hobbit dude as a its main character and that made a bundle, seems there is an audience of gay movies!
If you’re not already familiar with it, check out “Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss” written and directed by Tommy O’Haver. Not a mainstream movie, more of an Indy/Sundance/Lion’s Gate thing. But if you want to see a way for Mainstream to go, this is a good example. It’s a romantic comedy (Sean P. Hayes in his breakout role) about a guy who wants to fall in love. That he is gay and the man who is the focus of his affections is merely curious isn’t really what the movie is about. It’s about a human being who is trying to find a way of sharing his life with another human being. And everyone can relate to that. And pay to see it dramatized.
And let me add, DrDeth, that I spoke of Hollywood after Brokeback Mountain, and your counterexample was… excuse me, 38 years ago? Please read the whole thread.
The Family Stone had the deaf gay brother with the black boyfriend, didn’t it. It was an ensemble piece, though, so not a main character. I think that was post-Brokeback.
Me, I’d like to see a horror/fantasy movie with a gay protagonist. Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman are both pretty good at writing gay or genderqueer characters, a film version of Imajica for instance would rock.The protagonist isn’t gay, exactly, but the difference is…exotic.
I’ve heard this mentioned a few times recently, but I don’t remember any specifics about that scene. Someone want to elaborate?
What about Little Miss Sunshine, which was a Fox Searchlight film but which also won Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin and Best Original Screenplay, and which was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress. Being nominated for and winning major Oscars makes a film mainstream no matter who released it.
In that film, Steve Carell plays a suicidal gay man. He’s not suicidal because he’s gay, he’s suicidal over the pain of unrequited love.
Robin
Just about any really. Although what I’d really like is a mainstream hollywood film about a gay couple who are just that, a couple. I’m sick to death of gay people being always portrayed as indiscriminate sluts, incapable of having relationships or having tragedy in their life that revolves around them being gay.
What really sucks is that even most films I’ve seen made by gay people for gay audiences use those same things and I’m tired of it.
Brokeback Mountain isn’t about gayness?
This is the crux of it right here. There are films with gay characters. There are films with gay themes, but there are not mainstream films where the incidental love interests of the protaganists are same-sex. Studios always cram in superfluous, unnecessary love stories into everything. The cop chasing the serial killer, the young kid trying to make it as a Major League pitcher, the other young kid training to be a fighter pilot who’s fearless in a plane but is endearingly afraid to talk to girls, the guy fighting the zombies, etc. All these kinds of movies have pointless, story-stalling love stories. Why not shake thet up and give them a same-sex love interest, not as the theme of the movie – don’t make it a movie about a gay cop facing homophobia and discrimination on the job. make it about a terrorist plot to take over Disneyland which gets foiled by a beat cop who happens to be in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride with his husband.
Or how about making Shia Labouf’s character gay in the Transformers movie, or the quarterback on Friday Night Lights. It would be nice if the standard, routine romantic interests were occasionally, incidentally queer without the movie seeing it as important to the plot.
I don’t disagree. However, a lot of the Harry Potter saga is about unfair discrimination, in various forms, including the treatment of “Mud Bloods” by some of the Wizard community, and the treatment of House Elves. It would have been interesting, and consistent with this general theme, if JK Rowling had bitten the bullet and brought the gay theme out into the open in the text, either by making Dumbledore’s past more explicit, or by having a same-sex relationship between two Hogwarts’ students.
:eek: What gay characters were there? All I remember was the creepy guy in the apartment who Ratso sent Jon Voight’s character to, and that scene only vilified homosexuality, at least within the context.
Only in the same way, that, say Gigli is about straightness.
As opposed to, say, suddenly realizing that no one was paying attention to her anymore and deciding to do the children’s-book equivalent of flashing her naughty bits at the paparazzi.
The issue is Brokeback Mountain was a first. It was new so everyone went to see it just because.
Another issue is you need to have gay actors playing gay roles. Gay actors hide in the closet.
I mean you wouldn’t have a white guy playing Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr or even a white actress playing Diana Ross.
Even if the black actor/actress was a worse actor than the white person.
It’s insulting to have a straight person play gay. Of course this only applies if the gayness is esential to the character.
Like on Will and Grace. If Will’s character was not gay then the whole plot falls apart. But if the gayness isn’t central to the character it doesn’t have to be gay.
For example Rhoda was a Jew played by a non-Jew and that’s fine because Rhoda’s Jewishness wasn’t central to the character. Rhoda would’ve been the same character even if she were Christian (well 99% the same character)
So this is the issue. Do non-gay people want to see gay love stories. Studies say about 1-3% of Americans are gay. That is a tiny niche audience in a day where studios only want to produce movies guaranteed to make money. This is why we have sequels no matter how bad because they are assured to make a minimum amount of money
One study said that. Other studies have put it higher, though. Still, the idea is that straight people are capable of appreciating a movie with gay main characters, now. The problem I see with taking say, an action film or a horror film and having a gay protagonist is that the tacked-on love interest usually serves a specific marketing purpose. I could see a less-action oriented police procedural doing it, though.
Basic Instinct. Sharon Stone’s character was bi. I seem to remember there was a conflict in the LBGT community between whether it was good that a main character was bi or was it bad that the bi character was a murder suspect.
Bullshit. Gay actors have played straight characters for centuries. Straight actors can play gay characters just fine.
Again, bullshit.
Is it insulting to heterosexuals to see them portrayed by Rock Hudson, Cary Grant or Jodie Foster? I disagree that it matters. It’s not the same as race because that is a visible, physical trait of an actor that can’t be “acted.” Sexual orientation is all internal and therefore eminently “actable.” And I’m not talking about steretypical mannerisms or speech affects either (there was certainly none of that in the Brokeback performances), it’s all about portraying attraction, love, lust, jealousy and other emotional notes which should be part of any actor’s repertoire as a matter of course. I think the same goes for religious identities too. Denzel Washington is not a Muslim but he had no problem portraying the conversion, the convictions and the changes undergone by Malcolm X.
Internal characteristics can always be evinced by good enough actors. Faking emotions is, after all, what they do for a living. If an actor can fake being attracted to anyone, he/she should be able to fake being gay.
Is it? I don’t find it insulting. Why would I, exactly?
It’s a love story between two people in a society in which they can’t be together who try to cobble together the best relationship they can. A similar, but not identical, story could be told for an interracial couple in, hell, most periods of American history, or an interfaith couple, or a couple involving a person with a physical or mental disability or emotional illness.
Making Love was made 25 years before BBM. It did big business on its opening weekend because it was new and novel, then dropped off tremendously because word of mouth and published reviews held it to be a bad movie (it is fairly bad, but not as bad as all that). Had BBM not been a good film, with good reviews and good word of mouth, it would most likely have followed that same arc.