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

60 Movies I Will Never See (Or Saw and Regretted)

There are 6 basic emotions, 1 positive (happiness), 3 negative (sadness, anger, and disgust), and 2 which could be either (surprise, fear)  The function of a movie, book, song, or other work of art is to elicit positive emotions, to make the audience feel better after viewing than they did before.

So I don't understand movies that deliberately elicit sadness, anger, or disgust.  Why would anyone want to watch something that makes you feel bad?  Don't you get enough bad feelings in real life?

Here are 60 movies that I will never see, or that I saw and regretted.

No dying of long, slow, debilitating diseases.  With scenes of yelling at doctors, reconciling with estranged relatives, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, and holding hands on death beds.

1. Terms of Endearment (1983). Shirley Maclain's daugher dies of cancer.

2. Beaches (1988).  No one surfing or swimming, just Bette Midler singing and crying.

3. Steel Magnolias (1989).  Women face tragedy in the South.

4. My Girl (1991).  Boy falls in love with a dying girl.

5. Lorenzo's Oil (1992).  Family tries to cure their dying son.

6. Stepmom (1998). Hugging and dying.

7. Here on Earth (2000).  Boy's girlfriend dies.

8. Bridge to Terabithia (2007). With Josh Hutcherson (top, recent photo). They fool you into thinking it's a fantasy movie, like Harry Potter.  It's actually about a boy befriending a dying girl.

9. Moulin Rouge (2008).  Fortunately, I walked out because it was so awful long before the deathbed scene.

10. The Fault in Our Stars (2014).  A support group for people dying of cancer.

Especially no dying-of-AIDS.  Yelling at doctors, reconciling with estranged relatives, sobbing, sobbing, and so on, but with homophobia.  Lovely way to spend an evening.

11. An Early Frost (1985).  Guy dies of AIDS.

12. Parting Glances (1986).  Guy dies of AIDS.

13. Longtime Companion (1989). Guy dies of AIDS.

14. Philadelphia (1993).  I was forced to watch this, but kept my nose in a book the whole time.  Guy faces discrimination because he's dying of AIDS.

15. And the Band Played On (1993). The government refuses to acknowledge that people are dying of AIDS.

16. The Cure (1995).  Guy dies of AIDS.

17. It's My Party (1996, left).  AIDS and suicide!  Fun!

No Holocaust as entertainment.  Um... 6,000,000 people died. How can that be turned into two hours of fun?

18.  Sophie's Choice (1982).  She has to choose which of her kids to kill, and later gets a couple of boyfriends.

19. Schindler's List (1993). He helps some people escape from the Holocaust.

20. Life is Beautiful (1997).  Set in a concentration camp. Are they kidding?

21. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2009).  More concentration camp hijinks.

No main characters dying, period. Who had th bright idea of killing off the protagonists in car accidents, gunshots to the head, or zombie bites?  Why would I want to get invested in a character, only to have them die?

22. Easy Rider (1969).  I saw this, not realizing that everybody dies, and the movie is ruined.

23. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969),  What's the point of a homoerotic buddy "comedy" if they're just going to die at the end?

24. Thelma and Louis (1991).  I watched this, too.  No one told me that they go over a cliff.

25. Titanic (1997). I was conned into seeing the musical.  Hint: they all drown.

26. The Perfect Storm (2000).  They all drown.

27. Children of Men (2006). Everybody is dying.

28. Pan's Labyrinth (2006).  Girl is dying.

29. Into the Wild (2007).  He starves to death!

30. 28 Weeks Later (2007).  Zombie movies are supposed to have survivors!

31. Burn After Reading This (2008).  I went into this thinking it was a comedy, and walked out when Brad Pitt's comic relief character suddenly was shot to death.

32. Apollo 18 (2011).  Dying astronauts.


No inmates on death row.  You know they're going to die from the beginning.  Why bother to watch?
 33. The Executioner's Song (1982).
34. Dead Man Walking (1995)
35. The Green Mile (1999)

No war.  War is one of the biggest tragedies of life, not a source of entertainment!  If the movie is about humorous hijinks far from the combat zone, ok.  But angst-ridden, somber music, people dying of bullet holes -- no way!  I don't care if the whole platoon struts around naked.
36. Platoon (1986)
37. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
38. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
39. We Were Soldiers (2002)

No ends of the world.  Nuclear holocaust, giant meteor, whatever.  Even worse than the main characters dying, the end of everybody and everything, the most depressing thing imaginable.

40. Dr. Strangelove (1965). Why would you yell "yahoo" while plummeting to your death on the back of a nuclear bomb? I actually saw this, under the impression that it was a "comedy."  It's not.

41. Miracle Mile (1988).  I actually saw this without realizing that the world ends -- until it was too late, and I was trapped there with a date.

42. 2012 (2009).  A flood kills everybody on Earth, except for two hetero couples.

43. Cabin in the Woods (2012). I thought it would be a standard horror movie, with survivors at the end, not "the old gods awaken and start the Apocalypse," and everybody dies.

44. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012).  A "comedy" about a man and a woman (of course) falling in love just before an asteroid kills everybody on Earth.

45. This is the End (2013).  I actually watched this.  Everybody dies,but some of them go to heaven.

No LGBT people dealing with homophobia.  Getting yelled at, rejected, beat up, experiencing angst, and dying.

46. Get Real (1998).  I saw this, thinking it would be ok because no one dies.  Horrible!

47. Boys Don't Cry (1999). Transman is killed.

48. The Laramie Project (2002).  A movie about a real-life horrific hate crime!  Just the thing to brighten your day.

49. Brokeback Mountain (2005). Bisexual cowboys facing homophobia and dying.  No way!

No horrifying handicaps.  I don't care if they overcome adversity and find love, having a handicap is by definition bad, so no movie about it can be good.

50.  The Miracle Worker (1962). I got grossed out by the passage in the book where the child Helen Keller doesn't eat at the table, she just goes from plate to plate and grabs whatever she wants.

51. Johnny Got His Gun (1971).  A blind, deaf, and dumb quadriplegic?

52. Tommy (1975).  A blind, deaf, and dumb boy, plus homophobia.  I turned off the DVD and zapped it back to Netflix.

53. The Elephant Man (1980).

54. Mask (1985).  I don't know what it's about, but it sounds gross.

55. My Left Foot (1989). This one sounded even more gross.

56. The Sessions (2012).  A man living in an iron lung decides to have sex.  Gross.

No movies where the plot summary itself makes me nauseous.

57. Harold and Maude (1971).  I saw this one.  Sickening romance between a teenage boy and an 80-year old lady.  No, I don't think it's at all hypocritical that I'm 60 years old and dating twinks. Plus she commits suicide because she loves life so much.  Huh?

58. Pink Flamingos (1972).  Seen it.  According to John Waters, they offered Divine a substitute, but no, she wanted to really eat the dog poop.

59. Birdy (1984).  A traumatized Vietnam vet thinks he can fly.  My stomach is queasy just thining about it, gay subtext or not.

60. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).  He ages backwards!  Can you think of anything more disgusting?  I couldn't even sit through the trailers.

See also: 10 Gay Movies  I Hated.

The Worst Heterosexist Movie of All Time: "Knowing"

I already have a list of the worst gay movies of all time (the absolute worst is Chuck and Buck), so I'm starting a new list of the worst heterosexist movie of all time.

Heterosexist movies have no gay characters or gay subtexts, plus a hetero romance.  That is, most movies churned out by Hollywood.  It's hard to choose between so many contenders, but I have a suggestion:  Knowing (2009), which is not only aggressively, over-the-top heterosexist, but just plain awful.

In 1959, a classroom of absurdly over-enthusiastic children draw pictures of the future to put in a time capsule (wait -- that's not what time capsules are for).  Except one girl draws long rows of numbers instead.

In 2009, depressed cosmologist John (the hideously ugly Nicolas Cage) asks his advanced astronomy class to write their term papers on whether things happen for a reason, or are just random coincidences.

So basically, evolution or intelligent design?  For astronomy students!  That's absurd. Didn't anyone read this script?

John has an absurd amount of baggage: dead wife, obnoxious son, preacher papa who he hasn't talked to in years, probably due to that evolution/intelligent design thing.

The time capsule opens, and John gets ahold of the rows of numbers.  He deciphers them as the dates, and death tolls, of every major disaster from 1959 to the near future.  The girl was predicting them!

John tries to stop the next disaster by acting like a terrorist, in a scene that had me laughing, although it's not supposed to be funny.

Then he tries to pick up The Girl by acting like a raving lunatic (it works). I haven't picked up a girl since about 1975, but I'm sure I could do a better job than that.  Coincidentally, The Girl has an obnoxious daughter.

All four try to unravel the mystery, especially the last date, a few days from now, with EE instead of a death toll.

Turns out that aliens have been telepathically communicating with kids, giving them long rows of numbers to demonstrate that they know what will happen in the future, and that a global disaster is coming (EE= "Everybody else").

Ok, that's the dumbest warning in history -- long rows of numbers that no one can interpret.  And besides, why warn someone if they can't do anything about it except die?

All of John and The Girl's histrionic machinations come to naught -- the world ends anyway.  So the movie was not only heterosexist, but completely and utterly pointless.

The kicker: the aliens rescue the son and daughter, and maybe some other kids, along with their pet rabbits, drop them off on a world with wheat fields and a tree, and leave.

Wait -- they leave?  Those kids are going to need food and shelter!

I get it.  Boy and Girl and rabbits, ancient fertility symbols.  They're Adam and Eve in a new Eden.

At least the aggressively heterosexist kick in the pants ends the agony of sitting through this mess.

Substantial beefcake can make up for the most inane plotline and the most absurd sacralization of boy-girl romance, but here there isn't any.

There's a collegiate hunk named Sean sitting in the classroom (played by Liam Hemsworth), But, when he's asked to discuss the sun, all he can think of is "It's hot."  An advanced astronomy student?  Too ludicrous to appreciate his hotness!

If you search for "Gareth Yuen" on Google Images, you get someone named Dwayne Cameron instead.

The obnoxious son is played by Chandler Canterbury, now 18 and kind of cute.

But that's not nearly enough to distract you from the agony.

We have a winner: the worst heterosexist movie of all time.

Time Tunnel, 2006: Ruining the Best Gay Couple of My Childhood

I don't remember any tv programs before the 1966-67 tv season, when I was five-six years old, but then the memories come in with amazing clarity, program after program "good beyond hope," opening a whole world of beefcake and buddy bonding: It's About Time, Run Buddy Run, Gilligan's Island, The Monkees, The Invaders, Batman, Lost in Space, That Girl, My Three Sons, Flipper, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible...

And especially Time Tunnel, about two scientists accidentally zapping through history: young, impetuous Tony (James Darren) and older, level-headed Doug (Robert Colbert), protecting each other from danger, rescuing each other over and over, falling into each other's arms at the end of each episode. It would be two years before I got my first boyfriend, and ten years before I learned what "gay" meant, but Doug and Tony remained in my memory forever as what a same-sex romance looked like.

Fast forward 40 years, to the summer of 2006.  I know what gay means.  I have a Ph.D. with a concentration in Gay Studies, I've published books and articles on gay studies, I've seen lots and lots of gay couples and gay-subtext couples in books, movies, and television.

I see a tv movie advertised: The Time Tunnel, a pilot for a potentially updated series (it was actually produced in 2002, and is airing now just to "burn it off.")

Do I really want to see what havoc they wreak on my cherished childhood memory?

But I check it out.

1. New plot: a "hot fusion" experiment goes awry, causing a "time storm" that changes reality, and a team of scientists is sent back to fix it.
2. Tony is now a woman, Toni (Andrea Roth).
3. Doug (David Conrad, left) is morose, but when he discovers that after the time storm, he has a wife and kids, he perks right up.

4. He is recruited for the mission by Flynn (Kavan Smith, top photo), who dies before they can do much buddy bonding.
5. Their team also includes J.D. (Tawny Cypress) and Wix (Bob Koherr).
6. There's hetero-romance everywhere.

If you're curious, it's on youtube.

This happens all the time: gay subtext tv of the past gets a remake, with all of the characters carefully heterosexualized.

Audiences are more aware of gay people now, so it takes more time and energy to reassure them that, in the world of your movie, only heterosexuals exist.