Pri Month: Gay directors who refed cema

Contents:

• PRI MONTH: GAY DIRECTORS WHO REFED CEMA
• HOW DID TOP GUN GET SO GAY?
• JERRY BCKHEIMER WEIGHS ON TARANTO’S ‘TOP GUN’ GAY FILM MONOLOGUE: ‘A COMPLIMENT’
• WHEN HOLLYWOOD STUDS MARRIED OFF GAY STARS TO KEEP THEIR SEXUALY A SECRET
• HUNGER, THE ( 1983) GAY, CATHERE DENVE, DAVID BOWIE, SAN SARANDON, TONY STT, DRAMA, HORROR

PRI MONTH: GAY DIRECTORS WHO REFED CEMA

Where openly gay director Tony Stt filmed sweaty and hard-bodied Tom Cise and Val Kilmer gettg wh kissg distance to smack-talk each-other or to play a round of homoerotic beach volleyball set to Kenny Loggs’ aptly named “Playg wh the Boys”. Was really a “gay” movie?

But while we’re on the subject of Tony Stt, let exame how some of the bt films of all time- or some of the most inic- have been directed by gay men. Emmerich is a huge LGBTQ+ proponent, and is openly gay. His beg gay was an open Hollywood secret, and the director very famoly opposed labels, as you n read a betifully touchg obuary piece penned by Matthew Hays of tled “Joel Schumacher: Reluctant and Conflicted Gay Trailblazer”.

Had enough overtly gay overton to suck your blood dry.

HOW DID TOP GUN GET SO GAY?

Easy Bety Hack Doubl As Primer While Protectg Your SkOffEnglishGif: 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. Key to the fun of exvatg the homoeroticism of Top Gun is s prentatn as a bastn of straight culture: It picts aggro ary men giant jets who are tent on blowg everythg up eher wh their ln-dollar toys or penis.

JERRY BCKHEIMER WEIGHS ON TARANTO’S ‘TOP GUN’ GAY FILM MONOLOGUE: ‘A COMPLIMENT’

’s script is full of gay nuendo, both overt (“This giv me a hard-on, ” says one of the naval trae durg a class, to which his buddy rponds, “Don’t tease me”) and seemgly unnsc (“I’d like to bt your butt, but I n’t! But if terpretg Top Gun as a gay movie is predited on s tend prentatn as straight, effectively teasg out subtext for sport, the fun is largely missg 2020. Its gay reputatn (due no small part to the yearslong mors about Cise’s own personal life) is so tablished that reads like a total exaggeratn today, pecially a movie wh so much open-mouthed hetero kissg.

Screenshot: ParamountScreenshot: ParamountOne uld argue that Cise’s endlsly dartg tongue is dog a lot of heavy liftg, prottg too much whout sayg a word, but otherwise, so much of the supposedly gay dialogue is dog jt the oppose. The adpan votn of gay sex amongst straight-intified men is rigur sh-talkg, a way of affirmg the unassailabily of one’s heterosexualy: “I’m so straight that actg gay will do nothg to alter me.

” It’s an exprsn of power that, however subtly, others gayns and often impli s weakns or unsirabily direct opposn to the man who’s recg . Top Gun’s efulns 2020 is not as an alternate gay text—we have plenty of actual queer texts by now mastream media ma by actual queer people—but as a straight one that expos how siar homosocial male environments tend to be, regardls of how they’re anized by sexual orientatn.

WHEN HOLLYWOOD STUDS MARRIED OFF GAY STARS TO KEEP THEIR SEXUALY A SECRET

Beg straight looks pretty gay, and vice versa. To borrow a sentence nstctn om Ghost World, Top Gun is so straight ’s gone past gay and back to straight. Grg Moror, the producer partially rponsible for most of Donna Summer’s bt-known hs, handled the Top Gun soundtrack, which I suppose one uld ce favor of Top Gun’s vague gayns, but his work here is butched-up and not que characteristic (Kenny Loggs’s “Danger Zone” has absolutely nothg to do wh dis or even synth-pop, really) are mil-mil moments, though.

The famoly homoerotic ’80s fly-boy flick ed to be totally no-homo(Origally published the Daily Telegraph May 12, 2016)Thirty years ago today, the stars of Top Gun were taxig the red rpet at the premiere New York.

When not his, ’s difficult to believe now, but when Top Gun was released 1986, the vast majory of the people who flocked to see did not thk ‘gay’. Nice-lookg, worked-out male heterosexual a on 1994 when I wrote about the outrageo homoerotics of Top Gun my book Male Impersonators, plenty of people still weren’t prepared to have Top Gun’s heterosexualy impugned.

HUNGER, THE ( 1983) GAY, CATHERE DENVE, DAVID BOWIE, SAN SARANDON, TONY STT, DRAMA, HORROR

Later the same year the director Quent Taranto ma a ntroversial meo appearance the movie Sleep Wh Me, argug that Top Gun was about a gay man stgglg wh his journalist Toby Young, a Taranto fanboy, was moved to wre an say the Sunday Tim fendg his favoure movie’s heterosexualy om Simpson and Taranto’s filthy lumni.

As I rell, his ‘clchg’ argument was that Top Gun uldn’t be a gay movie bee he’d watched twenty tim – and he’s a queer way, he was right.