10 Gay Movies I Hated

I haven't seen a lot of gay-themed movies since 2005, when I moved to small-town America, but before that, living in West Hollywood, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, I saw practically everything.  Some were good, but a lot were awful: angst-loaded melodramas set in worlds where there is no gay community, every heterosexual is homophobic, lesbians turn straight, and gay men keep falling in love with women.

Here is the list of the biggest offenders, excluding historical artifacts like Cruising and The Boys in the Band, and movies where the gay guy dies (which I never see in the first place).

It's Still the 1950s

1. Get Real (1998). The only gay guy in the world (Ben Silverstone), who plasters his room with pictures of hunky footballers but still worries that his parents will "find out.  He falls for a local jock, who won't acknowledge his presence in public, continues to date girls, and beats him up to prove he is heterosexual.  But there are no other options.

2. Sordid Lives (1999).  In "modern" Texas, a drag queen named Brother Boy (Leslie Jordan) is in a mental hospital, undergoing de-homosexual therapy.  Meanwhile, a gay man (Kirk Geiger) moves from Texas to Los Angeles, where he undergoes 300 years of therapy to accept "who he is," but is still terrified that his theater-crowd friends will "find out."  Are you kidding me?  (Southern Baptist Sissies is in the same vein).

3. Cruel Intentions (1999).  Teenage brother and sister have fun destroying people's lives.  Fruity queen (Joshua Jackson, not even the most homophobic of the Jacksons) helps them blackmail his sex partner, a closeted footballer, who tries to turn hetero by throwing out his Judy Garland cds.  Excuse me?  Who researched this movie?

Gay Men Really Want Women

4. The Object of My Affection (1998).  Straight woman (Jennifer Anniston) and gay man (Paul Rudd) fall in love and begin a relationship.  Um. . .what exactly did they think the word "gay" meant?


5. The Opposite of Sex (1998). Teenage girl (Christina Ricci) shows up at her gay brother's house and seduces his lover (Ivan Sergei), who never once states that he's bisexual.  Apparently all gay men are into women, they just like men better -- until they find The Girl of Their Dreams.

6. Party Monster (2003).  Party boy (Macaulay Culkin) says he's gay, but he falls in love with a girl, who almost convinces him to abandon his "destructive lifestyle."  But it doesn't work, and he becomes a murderer.  Those are your choices: turn straight, or kill people

Gay Men are Really Women

7. The Birdcage (1996).  It may have been ok with La Cage aux Folles in 1978, but in 1996, the sight of one effeminate stereotype (Robin Williams) teaching another effeminate stereotype (Nathan Lane) how to butter his toast "like  a man" was infuriating.

8. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). East German boy (John Cameron Mitchell) falls in love with an American GI, and decides to become a woman for him.  Operation is botched, creating a transwoman with an "angry inch," who becomes a punk rocker and falls in love with a homophobic Bible-belt boy.  Same-sex desire doesn't exist; it's all male-female, regardless of the body you inhabit.

Lesbians Switch Teams a Lot

9. Chasing Amy (1997). Hetero man (Ben Affleck) falls in love with a lesbian and begins the task of converting her to heterosexuality.   Isn't that a debunked myth -- lesbians will "turn back" if they meet the right man?  It works, albeit temporarily.

10. Kissing Jessica Stein (2001).  Jessica meets a lesbian. She's astounded, utterly unaware that such things exist.  In Manhattan.  In 2001.  To be fair, she lives in a gay-free Manhattan, where people constantly make heterosexist statements ("Oh, you got flowers!  Who's the guy?").  They begin a relationship, but then Jessica switches back to heterosexual again.

Gay as Arrested Development

11. Chuck and Buck (2000).  The worst gay-themed movie since Cruising.  I'll save it for another post.

See also: 10 Gay Movies I Loved

"Cruising": Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and dicks in a doomed gay world. With a nude Mr. Big.

The 39 Dumbest Things on TV

Why I Walked Out on Spiderman

I finished my Ph.D. in 2001, and, unable to find an academic job in a university near a gay neighborhood, ended up moving to Wilton Manors, Florida, to share a house with my friend Yuri.  I lived on writing and two part-time jobs, fitness trainer and English/composition instructor at the police academy.  

Wilton Manors was like West Hollywood: as you traveled from the gym to the restaurant to the bookstore to the gay clubs, you rarely if ever saw a straight person.  After four years as a stranger in New York, it felt like home. 

But you still had to choose your movies and tv programs carefully.  Homophobic slurs weren't as common as in the 1980s, but offensive stereotypes still appeared, and the heterosexism was rampant: LGBT people did not exist.

Most of the movies I saw in 2002 had strong gay subtexts.

1. Orange County   Arlo and Chad.

2. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Sam and Frodo subtext.

3. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry and Ron subtext.

3. Chicago. Strong lesbian subtext.

4. Spy Kids 2.  Children's movie starring Daryl Sabara (left, later photo), who doesn't express any hetero-horniness.

5. Big Fat Liar. Children's movie starring Frankie Muniz of Malcolm in the Middle, who befriends a girl but doesn't fall in love with her.

6. Clockstoppers.  A boy (Jesse Bradford) and a girl stop time, but don't fall in love.

Even though I was very careful, three intensely heteronormative movies still made it through my defenses:

1. 28 Days Later.  Cilian Murphy wakes up in the zombie apocalypse, and hooks up with two survivors, a man and a woman. I'm all set for a nice triangulation, when all of a sudden the man dies.

Why does the man always die?  Why do the last two people left always, always, always have to be a man and a woman? I felt sick.

2. Igby Goes Down.  The title made it seem obviously gay-themed, and I heard the star, Kieran Culkin (left), was gay.

It wasn't gay-themed.  There were no gay characters.  Instead, there was an amazingly homophobic portrayal of a bi drug dealer.  

More after the break

Elijah Wood: Fear of the Buddy-Bond

Unlike his Lord of the Rings costar Sean Astin, Elijah Wood never got much play as a teen hunk, and he didn't do a lot of buddy-bonding roles; the only one that springs to mind is Radio Flier (1992) with Joseph Mazzello, and Oliver Twist (1997).

In fact, a lot of his roles drew on 1990s anxiety concerning same-sex bonds; masculine smiles hide danger, destruction, and malice:

The Good Son (1993): Mark (Elijah) discovers that his irrepressible cousin (Macaulay Culkin) is a psychotic murderer.

The War (1994): Stu (Elijah) and his friends are at war.  Oh, and he gets a girlfriend.

The Ice Storm (1997): Mikey (Elijah) has a violent brother, has sex with a girl, wanders out into an ice storm, and dies.

Or sometimes irrelevant:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1993), a version that ignores the Huck-Jim subtext.

Flipper (1994): a remake of the classic tv series with Elijah playing Luke Halpin's character. He kisses a girl.

The Faculty (1998): Casey (Elijah) discovers that the faculty are aliens, with the help of a girl who has a boorish boyfriend.

The lack of heterosexual interest and homoromantic subtext of The Lord of the Rings might exonerate him, except that during the last ten years, he hasn't done much of gay interest: a gay-vague psychopath with supernatural powers who eats women in Sin City (2005), and a gay "best friend" in Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012).

There's an Elijah Wood dating story on Tales of West Hollywood.

The Culkin Brothers: Always Mistaken for Gay

Quick -- which of the Culkin brothers is this?

Hard to tell, isn't it?

The Culkin Dynasty began with Home Alone (1990), a Christmas movie about a young boy (10-year old Macaulay Culkin) accidentally left at home when his family goes away for the holidays.  The top film of the year, and the top-grossing live comedy of all time, it propelled Macaulay into child superstardom.

He grew up thin, pretty, and androgynous -- everyone assumed that he was gay -- with a heavy-lidded, world-weary, knowing expression that actors often use to denote depravity.

Who knew that there was a whole family of Culkins back home, including four boys who would all grow up thin, pretty, and androgynous, with the trademark world-weary, knowing expression.  I keep assuming that they're gay, and going to their movies, expecting them to play gay characters.  But they almost never do.

 1. Macaulay (born 1980).  No gay characters, but his Michael Alig identifies as gay in Party Monster (#6 on my list of the 10 Gay Movies I Hated).  He's more of an anything-for-a-thrill decadent who almost Finds True Love with a girl.  Macaulay also played a handicapped decadent youth in Saved (2004), which has a gay character.

There's a sausage sighting story about Mac on Tales of West Hollywood.

2. Kieran (born 1982).   After a small part in Home Alone, he established himself as a talented actor, specializing in quirky indie movies like The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (which sounds like it is gay-themed, but isn't) and Igby Goes Down (which sounds gay themed, but isn't; I walked out after seeing the homophobic portrayal of a bi drug dealer).  Kieran also played the world-weary, knowing gay roommate in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010).

3. Shane, born 1986.  Not into acting.

4. Christian, born 1987.  Not into acting, though he played Kieran's brother in It Runs in the Family (1994).

5. Rory, born 1989. He's grabbing up all of the quirky indie movies that Kieran turns down, such as Mean Creek (which is about bullying but has no gay characters) and Chumscrubber (which I keep getting mixed up with the gay-themed Borstal Boy).  In The Night Listener (2006), his character, who bonds with gay radio host Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams), should be gay but isn't.

Answer: Rory.