DrDeth, you appear to be gleefully pointing out every mainstream movie with a gay character in it, as if I had said, “There have never been any mainstream movie with gays.”
I have never said anything like that.
Can we get on with the thread?
Some gay action, but no gay main characters.
Eh? What is that percentage, exactly? (Please provide utterly respectable and noncontroversial cite. 
)
I believe the Entertainment Weekly article, which is summed up in the OP and throughout the thread, suggested that current estimates were between 3-5%. It is their assertion which is summed up in the OP, that although movies are made with gays, there are not enough, and not enough of significance.
Note for DrDeth and BrainGlutton and others attempting to create a debate: I am not interested in arguing whether or not any movies have been made with gay characters, with gay main characters, that were by any definition “successful” or “mainstream.” That would be a topic for Great Debates, which this is not. The assertion that there are not enough gay characters in media is Entertainment Weekly’s assertion. Go read the EW article and write a letter to the editor if you think they’re full of shit. My question is very simple: what kind of movie would you like to see? If you can’t answer that question and wish to start a debate, then Great Debates is -----> that way.
It’s an alliance, not an identification. By making T an explicit member of the alliance, it helps to reinforce T as an identity of its own, I think.
In The Mexican, a supporting character played by James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) was gay.
I think you would be hard pressed to find a movie where one of the main characters is gay and their gayness is not the focus of the story. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the only one I can think of where the main characters gayness had nothing to do with the plot (Gay Perry was being sarcastic when he said he’s "knee deep in pussy and just kept the “Gay” nickname because he liked the sound of it.).
**Brokeback Mountain ** was about their gay relationship.
The Birdcage focused on their gayness.
**Philadelphia ** was about AIDS infected gayness
Three to Tango, Oliver Platt was the gay friend of a mistakenly gay Mathew Perry.
The reason for that is, in order to attract the most viewers, a huge percentage of movies have a hetero romantic element to them, regardless if they are comedy, action or drama. That means if you want to have a gay character, the movie needs to either be about gayness or the character has to be a supporting role.
Until a gay Tyler Perry starts cranking out movies about gayness, I don’t think you’ll see too many of them.
I was just thinking about it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in Alien and Aliens, did Ripley ever hook up with anyone? I don’t think so. Neither did she do that annoying thing they almost always do: have her casually mention an ex boyfriend or husband.
Sigurney Weaver did a great job of action hero-ing without taking any time out to tell the audience who she sleeps with. They were great, entertaining, money making movies and gosh, we didn’t need to know who the action hero sleeps with.
So, if we can’t have some good action movies with a gay action hero, then maybe once in awhile the hero could just get on with hero-ing and not at some point, bed someone so the audience can breath a sigh of relief, “whoo, he’s straight. Thank goodness!”
I’m not saying we should de-sex all our action movies though, but once in awhile can’t the hero just be a hero?
It’s been two years since Brokeback Mountain. Surely that would skew the results a bit?
How about Hellbent, the first gay slasher film?
IIRC there’s a deleted scene in which her daughter, now older than Ripley because of the suspended animation, watches Ripley or visits. Which doesn’t prove that she was married or that she even had sex with a man, of course.
It seemed pretty obvious that she, Newt and Kyle Reece (actor’s name escapes me) were being set up as a happy little nuclear family, though.
Yes, but then I was hearing rumors about BBM before it even went into production. Seems to me if Hollywood thought gay main characters in big budget productions could make money, we’d be hearing about all the movies currently in production.
Are there any?
When big-screen comic book adaptations proved they could make money, we started hearing about all kinds of comic book movies we could look forward to (or dread).
I haven’t heard much about a coming deluge of big budget gay protagonists.
And how could this thread reach its third page with nobody touching that straight line?
You’re slipping, Dopers!
I for one have no desire to touch that straight line.
What if it weren’t quite so straight? 
That’s a tough call. On the DVD commentary for the first film, Sigourney Weaver mentions that early drafts of the screenplay suggested some sexual tension between Ripley & Lambert, and that it would have been implied that bisexuality was the norm in the future.
Yet by the time of the second film, Ripley seems to be predominantly hetero. There were filmed scenes - removed from the theatrical run, but you can see them as DVD extras - revealing that Ripley had a daughter whom she had left on Earth, which suggests at least one hetero relationship (although I guess she could have had been artificially inseminated). She also flirts a lot with Hicks.
No, the deleted scene is of Ripley finding out that her daughter had died in middle age while Ripley was floating through space.
Flirts a lot? I’m not sure about that. They were friends, and seemed the only two with any brains and common sense. I agree with Otto they seemed destined for a cute little nuclear family relationship, but then again, it was still left open. A young lesbian watching could interpret Ripley another way. The audience was free to interpret them however they want. Heck, in my mind it could be Hicks is gay, Ripley’s gay, they “read” each other and became fast friends through adversity. Well, I could interpret it that way if I wanted to. The movie didn’t seem to suffer we never saw them naked together.
Yes! Yes, it suffers!
Here’s the problem Fish- your OP, where you said “So the trick is to come up with a mainstream movie that also has a gay main character or two — preferably as something more substantial than the comedy-relief hairdresser! — which straight audiences will shell out money for.”
Thus, even though that is only part of your OP, we are responding to that part.
And, since our comments are on target with your OP, the “debate” and/or lists of movies which “come up with a mainstream movie that also has a gay main character or two — preferably as something more substantial than the comedy-relief hairdresser! — which straight audiences will shell out money for” is not a hijack.
Many threads go off on tangents from where the Op wants them to go, but IMHO as long as they stay at least somewhat in line with the OP (and we have done so) it is not a hijack, and the fact your thread is careening to places where you didn’t want it to go is one of the things you gotta get used to. Sorry.
At least your thread hasn’t turned into a 100% “stupid one-liner and whoosh” thread like so many have. :rolleyes:
The crux of the problem is that major film studios are run by chickenshits who are afraid to produce films they consider to be a “niche market”. It is a miracle that Brokeback ever got produced, and most likely because Ang Lee had the power to insist the characters didn’t suddenly turn into a heterosexual couple in re-write 14.
When I worked for the studio, I was pretty friendly with the head of the department in charge of reading all the scripts submitted to the studio. He was Gay, as was most of his staff. They would read really great scripts, with main characters that were Gay or Lesbian, and rarely bothered to send them up to the powers that be for consideration. They had been told that scripts with predominantly homosexual characters would not be seriously considered, UNLESS one or more characters could be changed to become heterosexual.
The marketing departments look at the bottom line - and that usually means opening box office and the all-mighty youth market (not exactly known for being Gay friendly). Even the classier films that are released near Oscar season are geared for the heterosexual adult market. The few films with major Gay characters usually are initially produced by smaller, independent studios and only picked up after the fact - with plans for limited release in major (re: Gay Urban) markets. (In case you are not aware of the fact, it is very difficult to get movies into theaters unless you have a major studio distributing them - which is why film festivals are so vitally important to small studios desperate to get a distribution deal for their film.)
I think Brokeback did open a few doors, but it will take one hell of a script, and a name director or actor attached, before another mainstream film studio would produce it. Most likely the next big Gay film will be produced by some small, independent studio with perhaps a few big name actors and, only then, be picket up and distributed by a major film studio - and only if it gets rave reviews at some film festivals and a buzz going.