ParamountThis is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obssed, wrten by senr entertament reporter Kev Fallon. To receive the full newsletter your box each week, sign up for week:A very gay even gayer movie!A very gay even gayer vio!The gayt of them all. (Happy Pri Month!)Actually, Top Gun: Maverick Is the Gayt Thg This WeekLast weekend, I ma a gay pilgrimage of my own. I took my sad ltle self to the nearby Alamo Draf
Contents:
- JERRY BCKHEIMER WEIGHS ON TARANTO’S ‘TOP GUN’ GAY FILM MONOLOGUE: ‘A COMPLIMENT’
- ‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK’ IS ACTUALLY THE GAYT MOVIE OF THE YEAR
JERRY BCKHEIMER WEIGHS ON TARANTO’S ‘TOP GUN’ GAY FILM MONOLOGUE: ‘A COMPLIMENT’
* top gun is a gay movie *
“Top Gun” producer Jerry Bckheimer celebrated the film’s 35th anniversary this month by reflectg on the movie’s unexpected legacy as a gay film an terview wh Vulture. This readg of the film was immortalized by Quent Taranto, who has a sgle scene the 1994 movie “Sleep wh Me” which he appears to give a monologue explag why the Tom Cise-starrg “Top Gun” is really “a story about a man’s stggle wh his own homosexualy.
They’re gay, they reprent the gay man, all right? And they’re sayg, go, go the gay way, go the gay way.
They’re sayg no, go the gay way, be the gay way, go for the gay way, all right?
‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK’ IS ACTUALLY THE GAYT MOVIE OF THE YEAR
Top Gun has one scene so inic, the sequel shed and went even eper. Here's a look at the gay subtext that everyone's been talkg about. * top gun is a gay movie *
Taranto’s monologue and the blatant homoerotic unrton of the film’s signature oiled-up beach volleyball game have long kept “Top Gun” at least tangentially related to gay cema. Asked by Vulture what he mak of the homoerotic readg of “Top Gun, ” Bckheimer said he embrac even if that was not the specific tentn of the filmmakg team. Heather Dubrow Says She Felt 'Bldsid' By This Season of 'Real Hoewiv of Orange County'OffEnglishGif: ParamountYou ParamountTop Gun, my experience, is synonymo wh s perceived gayns.
There are untls piec probg jt how homosexual s pictn of a (mostly) homosocial world of naval aviators is. Such disurse was observable om the begng, too: Ple Kael’s review of the film that ran the June 16, 1986, issue of The New Yorker, about a month after the blockbter’s release, observed that when McGillis, Cise’s love tert, is offscreen “the movie is a shy homoerotic mercial: the pilots stt around the locker room, towels hangg prerly om their waists. Perhaps the most famo, and certaly most passnate argument for readg Top Gun as an explicly gay text is Quent Taranto’s monologue Rory Kelly’s 1994 film Sleep Wh Me, an apparently improvised (and entirely Tarantoian) b which Top Gun is fed as “a story about a man’s stggle wh his own homosexualy”:This sort of postmorn readg was particularly hip the ’90s (pecially Taranto’s work—see the multi-character “Like a Virg” analysis Rervoir Dogs), although is certaly heterocentric and, while jokgly so, predited on the notn of gay recment (Kilmer’s Ice Man, the film’s facto antagonist, leadg a crew reprentg gay men who are tellg Cise’s Maverick, “Go, go the gay way”).
On Nexis, the search rults for “‘Top Gun’ and gay, ” suggt that this disurse only grew the years after the film’s release. In the mentary on the physil releas of Top Gun, director Tony Stt says he found spiratn a book of black and whe photographs by gay photographer Bce Weber. “Everyone was sred bee was famo terms of the gay muny, this book, ” said Stt, who died 2012.