A-List: Top Five LGBT Films
By J. Don Birnam
June 29, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It is no exaggeration, in my view, to say that TV shows like Will & Grace and movies like Brokeback Mountain helped to move the needle in this area. Like with other civil rights fights in our history, seeing the faces and lives of the men and women affected by certain discriminatory practices tends to change people’s views. Americans are, undoubtedly in my view, an inherently tolerant people. We believe strongly in concepts of liberty and equality - they are, after all, in our cornerstone documents. Sometimes times can blind. But the opening of people’s eyes occurs and it comes from all over - from the ballot box, to the town square, to the movie hall.
I have always enjoyed movies because of that prescient role at the center of the American cultural ethos - one we export to other nations and which we use to understand ourselves better. What can be more American, for example, and for better or for worse, than Gone With the Wind? Or The Godfather? That is us. That is our culture in artistic form.
So, today, I look back on some of the films that have touched on topics relevant to LGBT individuals.
The criteria for this one was challenging as it is not always clear what is necessarily an LGBT-themed movie. Is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof a gay-themed movie? It seems clear to me that the Paul Newman character had a romantic infatuation with his dead male friend and had no sexual interest in the stunning Elizabeth Taylor. But the heinous Production Code in the 1950s impeded the filmmakers from making explicit what is implicit in the Tennessee Williams play, and in the end the characters are implied to have (straight) sex.
And another challenge: are movies that are favorites of the LGBT community in the mix? Steel Magnolias, Chicago and Mean Girls come to mind, but they don’t really touch on any explicit gay theme, unless you consider sass and strong female emotions to count. So, reluctantly, I will keep those out for now.
I’m also going to keep out some of my favorite LGBT movies of all time that I have listed in other columns, if only to make my life easier - so Weekend, Brokeback, and Philadelphia are out. Still, I am left to list a lot of honorable mentions, because there are many great movies that also helped move the needle in the right direction. For example, the movie Transamerica, with a stunning performance by Felicity Huffman and a moving song by gay-icon Dolly Parton, brought awareness to the lesser known letter of the LGBT acronym - transgendered men and women. Indeed, as the next frontier in the civil rights battle develops, I expect this movie to gain growing significance.
I also am partial to Far From Heaven, The Hours and A Single Man. Both demonstrate the difficult emotions that tore apart the lives of many men and women in the closet, and weave in interesting stories about artistic sensibilities. The movies are subject to a fair criticism - that they feature tragic, death-destined gay characters - but that is true, unfortunately, of many gay-themed movies, as you will see from the main list. It is no stretch to say that these films are a cathartic experience about the closeted pains experienced by the filmmakers, and others in the community. Perhaps Todd Haynes, the director of Far From Heaven, will have another movie for this list with his highly anticipated Carol being released later this year. For now, however, it is another five that occupy the list.
A shout-out is also in order to movies that explore another important topic for the gay community - the HIV/AIDS crisis. I mentioned Philadelphia, but the important documentary How to Survive A Plague and even the touching Philomena are worthy of honorable mentions here.
Oh, and one final shout-out to our straight allies goes here: The lesbian psycho sexual thriller Bound is sure to excite many members of both genders. I’ll just leave it that, if you haven’t seen it, Corky.
Here we go.
5. Trick (1999)
I’ll start with the only uplifting entry in the bunch, the now-iconic gay romantic comedy Trick. Starring a young Christian Campbell (Neve’s brother), it tells the story of a young, semi-closeted kid who meets a hot young man at a bar in New York and wants to have a one-night stand with him. But Campbell’s character has an annoying roommate, the other guy is not out, and they have nowhere to go. Campbell’s token hag (Dictionary: woman who loves the company of gay men), played by a ditzy Tori Spelling, is of no help.
The film follows the two as they spend the entire night looking for a place to hook-up in in New York City. A whirlwind romance a la the one explored ten years later in Weekend then (somewhat predictably) develops, but the film’s even corny denouement is still touching. The movie may not be a trailblazer in the LGBT rights movement nor have that much to say about the struggles of the individuals involved, but it does honestly explore a quintessential element of gay culture: the gay bar hookup.
This is truly a heartfelt and funny film that is in ways anachronistic today (fewer men are afraid to bring love interests home to straight roommates). But don’t get your spirits up too high, because the rest of the list is vein-cutting galore…
4. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
I still remember the chills down my spine when as a newly-out gay man (literally, out by maybe a week) I discovered that the lead character of The Talented Mr. Ripley, played by a mainstream, Oscar-winning actor, was secretly gay. And there is no doubt about it, Anthony Minghella’s masterpiece is a gay movie - Ripley is gay. The only question is, is Dickey too? Ultimately, I don’t think so - Dickey likes attention from men and woman alike. And the attention was, as Gwyneth Paltrow’s character sadly explained to Ripley, bright as the sun when it shone on you and dark and cold when it went away. This proved too much for the deeply closeted, and ultimately tortured but evil Ripley, played by Matt Damon in arguably his best and most daring career role.
In the meantime, the movie takes us through stunning vistas in Italy, has a deeply resounding and emotional soundtrack by Gabriel Yared (The English Patient), and is based on the classic novel and character by the brilliant existentialist Patricia Higginsmith.
The story is gripping, and the internal struggle of gay men in the 1950s is hinted at but at times explored directly. And, for 1999, the movie makes no pretense of showing sexual tension and even scenes between Ripley and Dickey (the then-new Jude Law), as well as between Ripley and his lover Peter. To round out the incredible cast, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays another closeted man and antagonist to the wily Ripley, and he meets a fate not unlike others who cross his demonic past.
Twisted, dark, melancholic, The Talented Mr. Ripley was perhaps too much too soon in 1999, for it was mostly ignored by the Academy - relegated to technical categories. But, in that sense, it set the stage for other movies to be rewarded in the 2000s, from Brokeback to Milk, and in that sense is a landmark movie.
3. Boys in the Band (1970) Before he won an Oscar for The French Connection and directed the brilliant The Exorcist, William Friedkin gave us what is arguably the first LGBT-themed movie in modern history with the moving Boys in the Band.
The movie is an exhilarating mix of realism and untowardness, and it is very much a play-based film (a la Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). The characters essentially live in a single setting - a party being thrown in a New York apartment by one of the guys in the group. Where The Broken Hearts Club did it through sport and laughs in the late 1990s, Boys in the Band does it with liquor and tears. The people in this movie have so many psychological issues, both within and outside their sexuality, that it is hard not to pity and feel uncomfortable towards them.
The closeted gay guy, the alcoholic gay guy, the promiscuous gay guy. These men are not necessarily representative of the gay culture of the time they lived in, of today, or of when the movie was made. But for all the typecasting and inability to represent the average gay American of 1970 (really, what movie is ever representative of an entire subculture?), what the movie does achieve is to synthesize into five characters the anxieties and problems of a lot of gay males in the 1970s. There is little doubt that hidden relationships with women, internal struggles and cross-cut desires, hustlers, and alcohol, were a part of what it meant to be gay in 1970. By bringing those issues to the forefront with mostly likeable characters, however, the brilliant Boys in the Band humanized the issue for the first time in ways I can’t really think had happened until then.
2. Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Was 1999 the landmark year, the watershed year, for LGBT movies? I did not intend to but was genuinely surprised to find three movies from that year on my list. Of the three, however, it is the heartbreaking Boys Don’t Cry that deserves the number two spot today.
Hilary Swank plays Brandon Teena, a transgendered man who lives in Nebraska and faces constant persecution and threats because of his sexual identity. It is actually difficult to write a lot about this movie - recalling its well-acted, disturbing scenes is genuinely upsetting. Swank gives one of the best performances by an actor, in my view, of all time, and won a highly deserved Best Actress Oscar for it. Chloe Sevigny also dazzles as her love interest, who does not know that Brandon was born a woman.
It is predictable (and, I agree with some LGBT critics, annoying) that the lead character in this movie is another tragic figure whose existence ends in tragedy. But, it is also reality, as the story is based on a real person. Also, while the movie was being shot, and a year before it was released, the murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming shocked the nation. And, unfortunately, violence against transgender individuals continues to this very day, accounting for a ridiculously high number of violent hate crimes across the country, according to FBI statistics.
Boys Don’t Cry, then, was on the vanguard of exploring this issue. Where The Crying Game had been crude, and where Transamerica proved later to be emotional, Boys Don’t Cry was simply sincere, realistic, and tragic.
And, by opening our eyes to the issue and problem, it undoubtedly helped humanize LGBT individuals, and contributed to the cultural shift on LGBT individuals that led to Friday’s decision.
1. My Own Private Idaho (1991)
It’s an oxymoron, at times, to make these lists, because to say that this or that movie is better than another is so subjective as to be essentially pointless.
But, when it comes to LGBT movies, one can safely write outside the shadow of the beast that is taste-based classification. My Own Private Idaho is millennia ahead of the movies that followed it. Perhaps if Brokeback were eligible (after my arbitrary disqualification of it), it would give the Keanu Reeves/River Phoenix soft-core masterpiece a run for its money.
From Southern States to Idaho, the two star-crossed lovers discover the pain and beauty in a drug-fueled, stress-filled, loving and longing existence. Try as you may to enjoy the beautiful embrace of a long desired love, life simply gets in the way.
The out director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk) weaves a tortured tale of tortured love with an ending as devastating as it is predictable (upped and destroyed further only by the reality of the tragic ending of River Phoenix himself in real life, not a long time later). But what makes this a spectacle of a movie, despite its standalone quality, is that it really pushes the envelope in treading into a specific niche of gay subculture. Gay marriage was won mostly based on the notion that gay men and women are just like your next door neighbors - the same, unthreatening. My Own Private Idaho reminds us of another facet - drugs, intense sex, and prohibited love. How ironic, and amazing, that in doing so, it opened the eyes of so many to the realities of a few…
As a parting thought: I hope to one day to be able to add to this illustrious list a movie about the stunning and dignifying battle for marriage equality that was achieved this week.