Dennis Quaid: Two gay guys, some cops, a shrunken scientist, a footballer, and is that a dick shot?

  

Link to NSFW version

Nazarenes didn't go to many movies, since it was a major sin, but in the summer of 1979 I managed to see the buddy comedy Breaking Away.  In the university town of Bloomington, Indiana, a group of working-class boys contemplate their future while swimming semi-nude in the limestone quarry where their dads work.  The hunky Mike (Dennis Quaid) wants to "light out to the territory" and become a cowboy. Moocher (Jackie Earl Haley) wants to marry his girlfriend. Dave (Dennis Christopher), wants to become Italian and win The Girl.

But you could easily ignore the heterosexist plot and concentrate on the primal beauty of the four friends sunning on the limestone.  In the end it was about friendship.

There's a more explicit, girl-free gay subtext in Enemy Mine (1985:  a future soldier named David and his enemy, a Drac named "Jerry" (Louis Gossett Jr.), are stranded on an alien planet,  and develop a touching, homoromantic bond.  They end up having a child together (boy Dracs don't need girl Dracs to get pregnant). When Jerry dies, David raises the child alone, and after they are rescued, returns with him to the Drac planet.

Dennis shows his butt for the first time -- but not the last -- in The Big Easy, a 1986 neo-noir about a New Orleans cop who plays by his own rules -- don't they all? -- and falls in love with a girl.

There's also reputedly a dick shot. I put two possible candidates on the RG site, but they are small and blurry.

I'd rather check out the jockstrap bulge of the injured footballer in Everybody's All-American.

More Dennis after the break

There's an iconic rear nudity shot in nnerspace (1987), about a soldier who shrinks down for a special mission, and of course gets a girlfriend: Dennis standing naked on a hill in a gay-free San Francisco.

In Far From Heaven (2002), Dennis goes beyond homoerotic subtexts to play a conventionally married businessman in the 1950s who recognizes and explores his gay identity, while simultaneously his wife establishes a interracial romantic friendship.

Not many bulge or butt shots in the 2000s, but Dennis still shows off his smoking Dad bod from time to time.  In the tv series Fortitude (2015), about murder and mayhem above the Artic Circle, we get a side-butt and maybe some dick as he sits naked on the toilet.

Dennis continues to be a gay ally.  In 2020 he performed at GLAAD's annual "Love and Acceptance" show in Nashville.  

Plus he's still ripped.

Butts, bulges, and potential dicks on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends