Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Know Your LGBT History

Friday, October 14, 2011

Know Your LGBT History - In & Out

I'm going to catch so much hell for this but I loved In & Out.

It was a 1997 comedy which was inspired by Tom Hanks' Oscar speech (when he won Best Actor for Philadelphia.) In the speech, he thanked one of his teachers and classmates.

In&Out repeated the speech moment but made one big difference.

What if Hanks had accidentally outed the people he thanked.

That's what happens in In & Out when an actor (played by Matt Dillon) thanks one of his high school teachers from the podium and outs him as a gay man.

Only one thing, however. No one knows that the man is gay, including the teacher himself.

Okay, some folks didn't like this movie because they felt it exploited stereotypes about gay men. This is true. Kline's character is a stereotypical gay man who likes Barbara Streisand and has a "fey" manner about him even while constantly insisting that he isn't gay.

And there are some scenes - i.e. the dance scene and the "I am Spartacus" type ending - which I felt were corny as hell:

But the saving grace of this movie has to be the performances. Tom Selleck is okay as the openly gay talk show host willing to exploit the entire incident for ratings. I found Kline to be marginal as the main character. Of course the scene everyone remembers is when Selleck liplocks Kline:

However the person who really steals the show in this movie, and this becomes its saving grace, is Joan Cusack as Kline's fiance - a woman who is counting on marrying him so much that she lost weight and based her entire self-worth on the fact that he would lead her down the aisle.

Cusack received a much deserved Oscar nomination for her role as a jilted bride (you really didn't think they would get married, did you?)

4 comments:

BJ Jackson Lincoln said...: I have seen this film 100 times! Joan was so funny and had some of the best lines. I love to watch Kline's face during the wedding. The expressions that flash across his face say it all. Newhart was classic. Yes it's corny but is a great way to spend a rainy day.; 6:07 PM
Prospero said...: I actually love this movie, too. Cusak is amazing and even Matt Dillon is less douchey than usual. It was written by openly gay playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick ("Jeffrey;" "The Addams Family;" "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told") and while it does have some stereotypes, they are there for a reason -- to show just how ridiculous stereotyping can be. I saw this movie on a date with a mostly straight audience, and everyone loved it.; 8:14 PM
Unknown said...: Haven't seen it. But this is a great review. May have to watch.; 9:07 AM
Unknown said...: my issues with the film don't stem as much from the stereotyping, but from what that stereotyping stands in for: clarity.

For my 20-something gay self (barely claiming bisexual status in 1997) this film was horrifying. The way it was presented, to me, it read like this:
An effeminate, fussy straight man is presumed gay and then pestered relentlessly until he finally succumbs to peer pressure and "decides" to be gay.
The problem here is that they never present us with unambiguous evidence of his homosexuality. There's no stash of bodybuilding magazines, or gay porn, or any other evidence that is unambiguously gay. Straight men like showtunes and Barbara Streisand and even some like to ride bicycles to work and hold onto their virginity forever. You know what straight men never like? Sex with men. Kissing men.
Kline's character is basically asexual, neither convincingly lusty for Cusack, or anyone else.

Until the kiss.
Which, as I recall, and I'm seeing here again, is still ambiguous, and complicated. Knowing what is supposed to happen, and how it's supposed to work, it doesn't read as anything other than awkward. Plus Selleck's kiss has no passion or even lust to it. His "you noticed" doesn't work, but WOULD work had then been pelvis to pelvis, but nope, it looks like there's an invisible mailbox between them. To sell it better, they needed Selleck to grab his butt, and for Kline to awkwardly mirror the gesture, and then break off, and then maybe Kline goes in for another kiss and then they break off again. Either way the kiss is just a little too far into the movie to help the viewer. By the end the flim basically says "yep he really is gay" but it didn't really earn it.
Now I realize than in 1997 we couldn't just stumble upon his dildo collection, or have a Jeff Stryker video fall out from between his sheets, but it would've made this movie far more clear. I get that the stereotypes stand in, sort of, for much much clearer evidence, but that honestly didn't help me as a audience member. I'm not going to blame my delayed Coming Out on this movie, but it is one of many things that made it that much harder to understand who I was.; 10:07 AM