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?)




Not to worry though. This is a comedy, which means it has a happy ending for all parties involved, including Cusack. Guess who her character ends up with at the end of the movie?

Past Know Your LGBT Posts: .


Know Your LGBT History - 'The Fabulous Gays' of Steambath

Know Your LGBT History - Bound

Know Your LGBT History - Gay characters from children's television show and movies

 Know Your LGBT History - Gay documentaries, past and present

Know Your LGBT History - The Hotel New Hampshire

Know Your LGBT History - The Crying Game

Know Your LGBT History - Set It Off

Know Your LGBT History - The Wedding Banquet

Know Your LGBT History - Bachelor Party

Know Your LGBT History - Starsky and Hutch

Know Your LGBT History - The Naked Civil Servant

 Know your LGBT History - Partners

 Know Your LGBT History - All in the Family: Cousin Liz

Know Your LGBT History - Rebecca

Know Your LGBT History - urban African-American movies

Know Your LGBT History - Charles Pierce

 Know Your LGBT History - Torch Song Trilogy

The Best of Know Your LGBT History

Know Your LGBT History - Masters of Horror - Sick Girl

 Know Your LGBT History - MadTV

 Know Your LGBT History - Gimme A Break

Know Your LGBT History - Not Another Gay Movie

Know Your LGBT History - My Beautiful Laundrette

Know Your LGBT History - The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Know Your LGBT History - I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

Know Your LGBT History - The Gay Deceivers

 Know Your LGBT History - Reflections in a Golden Eye

Know Your LGBT History - Dynasty

 Know Your LGBT History - Milk

 Know Your LGBT History - Black Shampoo

Know Your LGBT History - Never Too Young To Die

 Know Your LGBT History - All About Eve

Know Your LGBT History - Hotel

Know Your LGBT History - The Streets of San Francisco

Know Your LGBT History - Two looks at transgender characters in films

Know Your LGBT History - Flawless

Know Your LGBT History - Mahogany

Know Your LGBT History - Beverly Hills Cop

Know Your LGBT History - Some Like It Hot

Know Your LGBT History - Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia 

Know Your LGBT History - Dirty Laundry

Know Your LGBT History - The Willie Witch Project

Know Your LGBT History - Spartacus

Know Your LGBT History - Caged

Know Your LGBT History - The Birdcage

Know Your LGBT History - Maude

Know Your LGBT History - That Certain Summer

Know Your LGBT History - Boat Trip

Know Your LGBT History - Staircase

Know Your LGBT History - Beautiful Thing

Know Your LGBT History - Armed and Dangerous

Know Your LGBT History - The Proud Family

Know Your LGBT History - Suddenly Last Summer

Know Your LGBT History - Gay TV Now

Know Your LGBT History - Stewardess School

Know Your LGBT History - Up the Academy

Know Your LGBT History - Don't be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

Know Your LGBT History - A Different Story

Know Your LGBT History - Victim

Know Your LGBT History - The Color Purple

Know Your LGBT History - Making Love

Know Your LGBT History - A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge

Know Your LGBT History - Noah's Arc

Know Your LGBT History - Ode to Billy Joe

Know Your LGBT History - Adorable Adrian Adonis

Know Your LGBT History - The Night Strangler

Know Your LGBT History - All in the Family

Know Your LGBT History - Tongues Untied

Know Your LGBT History - The Celluloid Closet

Know Your LGBT History - Querelle

Know Your LGBT History - Theatre of Blood

Know Your LGBT History - Strange Fruit

Know Your LGBT History - Designing Women

Know Your LGBT History - The Children's Hour

Know Your LGBT History - Sylvester

Know Your LGBT History - Once Bitten

Know Your LGBT History - The Boys in the Band

Know Your LGBT History - Christopher Morley, the crossdressing assassin

Know Your LGBT History - Midnight Cowboy

Know Your LGBT History - Dracula's Daughter

Know Your LGBT History - Blacula

Know Your LGBT History - 3 Strikes

Know Your LGBT History - Paris Is Burning

Know Your LGBT History - The Women

Know your LGBT History - Soul Plane

Know Your LGBT History - The Player's Club

Special Know Your LGBT History - Fame

Know Your LGBT History - Welcome Home, Bobby

Know Your LGBT History - Barney Miller

Know your lgbt history - The Jerry Springer Show

Know your lgbt history - Martin Lawrence and that 'gay guy' on his show

Know your lgbt history - The Ricki Lake Show

Know your lgbt history - Which Way Is Up

Know your lgbt history - Gays in Primetime Soaps

Know your lgbt history - Boys Beware

Know your lgbt history - The Boondocks

Know your lgbt history - Mannequin

Know your lgbt history - The Warriors

Know Your LGBT History - New York Undercover

Know Your LGBT History - Low Down Dirty Shame

Know Your LGBT History - Fortune and Men's Eyes

Know your lgbt history - California Suite

Know your lgbt history - Taxi (Elaine's Strange Triangle)

Know your lgbt history - Come Back Charleston Blue

Know your lgbt history - James Bond goes gay

Know your lgbt history - Windows

Know your lgbt history - To Wong Foo and Priscilla

Know your lgbt history - Blazing Saddles

Know your lgbt history - Sanford and Son

Know your lgbt history - In Living Color

Know your lgbt history - Cleopatra Jones and her lesbian drug lords

Know your lgbt history - Norman, Is That You?

Know your lgbt history - The 'Exotic' Adrian Street

Know your lgbt history - The Choirboys

Know your lgbt history - Eddie Murphy

Know your lgbt history - The Killing of Sister George

Know your lgbt history - Hanna-Barbera cartoons pushes the 'gay agenda

'Know your lgbt history - Cruising

Know your lgbt history - Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones

Know your lgbt history - I Got Da Hook Up

Know your lgbt history - Fright Night

Know your lgbt history - Flowers of Evil

The Jeffersons and the transgender community



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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.

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.

Unknown said...

Haven't seen it. But this is a great review. May have to watch.

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.