I think Ron Howard said all that needed to be said about it. I honestly think anyone protesting this has made themselves look like an idiot. It would seem like they’re essentially saying, “you can’t have a character in a movie who does x.” Movies obviously need a wide range of characters (from saintly types to pure evil to all the shades of gray in between including Tommy Boy-esque characters that start off really dumb and low brow but grow up in the end and etc.), and protesting a character is stupid.
Censorship has nothing to do with it (Howard himself made an argument about “censorship” and was just as wrong in doing so). Ron Howard has the choice to leave a stupid turn of phrase in his film and be rightly thought a boor, or to take it out. His call, but no one’s censoring him.
Right. Just like those friggin’ Nazis who made Judgement at Nuremburg and those sociopathic thugs who made American History X.
I must be really out of touch, I actually think that people should be able to make movies where the characters say even indisputably offensive things, like people in real life do sometimes.
But as we know, every lead character in a film represents the true beliefs and values of the producers/directors/writers/actors involved.
Hmm, maybe “guyness” is more accurate for what I meant than manliness. It’s not like a test of what you are really made of, and whether you could defeat a shark with your bare hands.
Here are some things that are group A:
Caring about feelings, sensitivity, flowers, color matching, operas.
Some things that are group B:
To drink beer, eat meat, arm wrestle, watch football etc.
With “manly”, I meant things like in group B. So they are not manly in the real sense of toughness, where things actually matter, but in an everyday way.
There’s something about choosing based on power. Like, a huge energy-consuming car is group B, while a small electric car is group A. Cutting your hedge with a huge power tool is group B, while trimming your roses with a small pair of scissors is group A.
Now what words should we choose to make these distinctions? I guess we could call group A things “girly”. But then, wouldn’t that be an insult to girls?
How 'bout “socially/culturally conscious”, “environmentally responsible”, “aesthetically aware” or “personally considerate” based on respective context?
Or are those terms too gay for a straight older macho male like me to be using?
You’re in for a terrible shock if you think you might be able to make any kind of predictions about orientation or gender based on membership in group “B.”
So this bit of dialogue was so integral to this undoubted masterpiece of a film that it couldn’t possibly be as good without it?
(Also, the notion that offensive language somehow made American History X better doesn’t hold water with me - that one was such a disaster, nothing could’ve saved it.)
It seems to be a really tiny number of people complaining and a much larger group arguing against them. Some people will complain about anything - it’s their hobby.
As an amputee, I am REALLY offended by how all you fuckers keep using the word “lame” so casually.
Actually, I’m not. You know why? In the words of a gay friend of mine “I know better than to take offense where none was intended.”
It’s all so retarded 
That response misses my point so badly it hardly seems fair to retort, but here goes-- My point is not that Howard’s film is or isn’t at the same level of quality/artistic merit/charactersic n as the films I referenced. My point was also not about the particular words used in any of the portrayals in those films.
My point is that offensive characters in fiction and the opinions and beliefs expressed by those characters are not indicators of the “boorishness” or any other characteristic of their creators. This should be evident to even the most ardent devotee of recreational outrage. To demand that a writer (or producer) bowdlerize a flawed character’s speech is offensive and obnoxious in its own right and whoever demands this deserves whatever ridicule comes their way.
it doesn’t necessarily reflect on the creator, no, but if he’s so willing to go to the mattresses over what’s apparently a minor bit of dialogue, I just have to question his judgment overall. Obviously some people find it offensive, and at this brief passage of time this piece of dialogue comes off as a bit tone-deaf. I could be wrong, maybe Vince Vaughn making a gay joke is in fact a genuinely incisive piece of repartee that the movie couldn’t do without (and maybe Daryl Hannah calling herself Madison in Splash was secretly intended as a devastating deconstruction of American constitutional history), I don’t know.
The thing is, even if you aren’t personally offended by the usage, what’s still happening is that the association of gayness with crapness is becoming stronger. It’d be pretty much impossible for gay to be used as a synonym for crap/shoddy/useless and there not to be any feedback.
I ask people to at least not use it around me please, so if they continue using if after that, offence is intended. I wouldn’t feel offended, but I would dislike that person more, and most of us (certain trolls excluded) aren’t on an active crusade to be disliked.
Still missing the point. It doesn’t matter if the dialogue is integral to the plot or consistent to the character, or whether it’s “incisive” or witty or inane or relevant or retarded®. It’s words coming from a character in a movie, not a fucking public service announcement. This isn’t Ron Howard’s anti-gay manifesto or corporate mission statement. Objecting to dialogue in terms of whether it might be offensive to someone who hears it is like objecting to The Three Little Pigs because the wolf is a meanie.
You tell 'em, Lizzie McGuire! On a more serious note, I already don’t use “gay” as a pejorative of any kind and I (pretty successfully) discourage my teenaged daughter from doing so, but I am finding the controversy here to be a little overwrought.
Sign in background at Stewart Colbert Rally:
" Homosexuality is so Gay ".
Nolo contendere.
What a ridiculously egotistical statement. It’s also entirely possible that even after you ask, no one gives a shit whether or not you’re offended.
I would question his judgement if he did remove the minor bit if dialogue that isnt really that offensive. Let’s say Ron caves and removes this bit of minor dialogue, then some other group decides some other minor bit is offensive and he should remove it, too, because after all he caved to the other group. Then yet another group finds some other small bit of dialogue offensive and so on and so on. Then Ron doesn’t have a movie left once he caves to everyone. I think the artsy fartsy types call thus artistic integrity. It’s his movie he can put whatever he wants in it, if someone doesn’t like it they don’t have to go see it.
I’m sick and tired of these motherfucking homos and their motherfucking drama over the word ‘gay’.
Won’t someone think of teh parent chaperons?