Four Weddings and a Funeral

This is a rare example of a straight man having a gay best friend—two of them! Who have individual personalities! And never help anyone shop for anything! Oh, and they have love lives, with each other, which isn’t heavily emphasized until one of the couple dies. But he doesn’t kill himself or get murdered or die of AIDS—he has a completely banal heart attack, at a party, in his fifties, after spending his life drinking and smoking and generally having a good time. After he dies, the Hugh Grant character notes that while their group of friends had always rejected conventional settling-down, the two men had been “married all along.” There’s also this tearjerker, and notice how when the pastor describes Matthew as one of Gareth's "closest friends," he describes himself as a "splendid bugger":



But the movie doesn’t even make Matthew, the surviving member of the couple, be miserable for the rest of the film: during the “where-are-they-now” montage over the closing credits, we find out that he eventually gets married to some really hot guy. One of the nice things about this movie is that Gareth and Matthew aren’t stereotypically gay, but not in a way that seems the filmmakers are patting themselveson the backs for being so darn progressive. Their relationship provides the emotional heart of the movie, but being gay isn’t shown as anything particularly remarkable in their group of friends, and, while Matthew is the friend the Hugh Grant character repeatedly turns to for advice, it isn’t because he has any kind of gay superpowers. He’s just really levelheaded, and, as Hugh Grant points out, the only one of them to maintain a successful relationship. I could use more of this kind of gay best friend in the movies.

Saved!

“You’re not born a gay, you’re born again!”

In the imaginary competition between Juno and Saved, Saved wins hands down. Mandy Moore throws a Bible at a pregnant girl while dressed as one of Charlie’s Angels, okay? This movie is worth watching for that scene alone. Not to mention the part where Mandy Moore drives her car into Jesus.

In queer news, aattempt to save a gay kid from homosexuality sets the entire film in motion. When Mary, who has been born again her entire life, finds out that her boyfriend, a completely sincere figure-skater for Jesus, is gay, she knows that she has to save him. She also has this vision from Christ:

When she finds out that the love of Christ can restore a girl’s virginity, she knows that Jesus wants her to have sex with Dean. By the time Mary finds out she’s pregnant, Dean has been whisked away to Mercy House, a depository for Christian kids who fall prey to drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancy, or gayness. When the rest of the school finds out about Dean’s gayness, they hold a prayer circle, and tell Mary that they’re sorry about his faggotry. Mary gets sick of her community's judgment and hypocrisy and starts hanging out with the school's scandalous Jew, who helps her shoplift maternity clothes.

For a moment, Mary thinks about telling her mom she’s pregnant, but when her mom tells her that if Mary were gay, she’d send her to Mercy House like Dean because she wouldn’t know how to handle it, Mary decides to keep it to herself. And indeed, when the pastor finds out that Mary’s pregnant, he tries to get Mary’s mom to send her away. While Dean’s in Mercy House, he gets a boyfriend, and (sadly, offscreen) stages a mutiny, hijacks a church van, and then crashes the prom with his new boyfreind and posse of Christian outcast teens, where we learn the very special message of the movie:

It’s not subtle, but neither are ex-gay camps, and besides, it's aimed at thirteen-year-olds. What I really like about Saved! is how compassionate it is. Even Bible-throwing Hillary Faye gets some redemption in the end, and Mary isn’t villainized for trying to de-gay Dean, because she did it out of genuine, if ignorant, love and concern. There’s also a great moment where Mary, after accepting Dean’s homosexuality, refers to his (seventeen-year-old) boyfriend as his life-partner. It’s a movie about imperfect people trying to be more Christlike and taking unexpected turns along the way.

Some Like it Hot (1959)

If you’ve never seen Some Like it Hot, you should go do that. I’ll wait.

If you still haven’t seen it, Some Like it Hot is a classic cross-dressing comedy. Though it's not technically a gay movie, there's a male/male relationship, and lots of blurring of gender boundaries, with a lack of gay panic that would be refreshing today, let alone in 1959.

Two down on their luck jazz musicians witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and go on the run, but can only find work in an all-girl’s orchestra, so they dress up as Daphne and Josephine and go to Miami. Joe/Josephine (Tony Curtis) sets about trying to seduce Marilyn Monroe, and Jerry/Dapne (Jack Lemmon) finds himself dating an elderly playboy millionaire. As the charade goes on, the Jack Lemmon becomes more absorbed in his Daphne persona, and the beta relationship progresses until gender becomes somewhat beside the point:

Jerry: Have I got things to tell you!
Joe: What happened?
Jerry: I'm engaged.
Joe: Congratulations. Who's the lucky girl?
Jerry: I am!
Joe: WHAT?!
Jerry: Osgood proposed to me! We're planning a June wedding.
Joe: What are you talking about? You can't marry Osgood.
Jerry: Why, you think he's too old for me?
Joe: Jerry, you can't be serious.
Jerry: Why not? He keeps marrying girls all the time.
Joe: But, you're not a girl! You're a guy, and, why would a guy wanna marry a guy?
Jerry: For security! Look, I know there's a problem, Joe.
Joe: I'll say there is.
Jerry: His mother - we need her approval, but I'm not worried because I don't smoke.
Joe: Jerry. There's another problem, like what are you gonna do on your honeymoon?
Jerry: We've been discussing that. He wants to go to the Riviera but I'm kinda leaning toward Niagra Falls.
Joe: My God.
Jerry: I don't expect it to last Joe. I'll tell him when the time's right.
Joe: Like when?
Jerry: Like right after the ceremony. Then we get a quick annulment, he makes a nice little settlement on me and I keep getting those alimony checks every month.
Joe: Jerry listen to me there are laws, conventions. It's just not been done.
Jerry: Joe this may be my last chance to marry a millionaire.
Joe: Oh, Jerry — Jerry, will you take my advice? Forget about the whole thing, will ya? Just keep telling yourself: you're a boy, you're a boy.
Jerry: I'm a boy.
Joe: That's the boy.
Jerry: I'm a boy. I'm a boy. I wish I were dead. I'm a boy. Boy, oh boy, am I a boy. Now, what am I gonna do about my engagement present?
Joe: What engagement present?
Jerry: Osgood gave me a bracelet.
Joe: [examining it] Hey, these are real diamonds!
Jerry: Of course they're real! What do you think? My fiance is a bum?

Director Billy Wilder couldn’t figure out how to end the film, so the actor improvised the final line as a placeholder until someone could write something better:



As if that's not enough, it was rated C for Condemned by the Catholic Decency League, and was banned in Kansas City. So you know they did something right.

Heathers (1988)

Kurt: Hey, Ram. Doesn’t this school have a “no fags allowed” policy?

J.D.: Well, they sure seem to have an open door policy on assholes, though, don’t they?

In my totally unbiased opinion, Heathers might be one of the greatest movies ever made. The 1988 cult classic has everything: murder! Teen suicide (don’t do it!)! Moby Dick! Scrunchies! Group therapy! Wynona Ryder! Pep rallies! Corn nuts! It doesn’t actually have any gay people, but if you have even the most basic familiarity with the plot, you know why (besides its awesomeness) I’m including it in the project. Besides satirizing the public fascination with the plight of the American teenager, Heathers A) cleverly articulates the prevailing stereotypes about gay men and B) demonstrates that these stereotypes are held by assholes.

Background information: Veronica (Wynona Ryder) is a disgruntled member of an evil, powerful girl clique, who turns against them with the help of J.D. (Christian Slater), the dreamy new sociopath in town. Together, they murder the popular kids and leave fake suicide notes. Two of their victims, Kurt and Ram, are homophobic bullies/football stars, who, in the words of J.D., have “nothing to offer this school but date rapes and AIDS jokes.” Kurt and Ram’s homophobia is both virulent and, often, a total non-sequitur, directed as it is against a new kid flirting with a girl they like, and a random geek outside a funeral. When J.D. and Veronica murder Kurt and Ram, they choose to fake the most ironic suicide possible: a murder suicide pact between two gay lovers who choose to nobly end their lives rather than live with the persecution of their small-minded Ohio town. By the gun and notes, J.D. and Veronica plant evidence of the bullies’ homosexuality: gay porn, a candy dish, bottled water, mascara, and a picture of Joan Crawford. The gullible townspeople fall for it, and, because Kurt and Ram are no longer there to complicate their nobility with actual gayness, make the boys into martyrs against intolerance.

Though Heathers came out before any of us were even born, my high school friends and I got a lot of mileage out of its most famous line:

This YouTube clip leaves off J.D.’s less hilarious response, which is probably the most sincere moment in the entire movie: “Wonder how he’d feel if that limp wrist had a pulse.” Heathers is the rare film where the absence of gay characters actually contributes to its progressiveness. Homophobia exists as a collection of free-floating, inane stereotypes that have no basis in reality, and promoted by people who are shown in every other scene to be gullible assholes. It’s also a deft commentary on the treatment of gays in the media: exploiting the narrative of tragic, self-destructive gay men lets our protagonists literally get away with murder, and once the dead gay sons don’t have a pulse, people feel comfortable talking about their tragic lives.