By Carmelo Perrione

There is a documentary called The Celluloid Closet, which is pretty much the gay authority on gay films, characters and their evolution from the first filmed image of Thomas Edison frolicking with a male friend in 1898 to The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the the Desert (1992). The gay film trend continues to thrive with fervor: this year alone we have had gay themes in at least 10 films, both favorable and not.

It seems that so far we have seen two extreme examples of bad profitable gay films: In and Out and Latin Boys go to Hell. I know you are thinking that you have heard too much about In and Out, but relax. We cannot ignore that this was a gay film and that this “harmless” film grossed more than $65 million. In and Out offers Kevin Kline as a Barbara Streisand — loving teacher who is practically going along with his denial in such a fierce manner that he schedules to marry some dowdy woman in his small town. This is not the problem with the film and this is not what makes this film “harmless”: the problem and the “harmless” factor stem from the main character’s lack of sexuality. Not showing the aspects of his sexuality may play up to the heterosexual audience members but is a gross disservice to all the gay audience members. It appears that his sexuality has no history: we do not know what has spurred him to come out nor do we know what happens when he does. He is only associated with heterosexual ideas of what gay people are: watching Funny Girl, dressing neat and if I hear Macho Man by the Village People again, I gonna rip someone‘s head off. Some may argue that Kevin Kline's character had that steamy kiss with Tom Selleck, but let’s get serious. There is no tongue, no teasing of the nipples, no rubbing of well, you get the idea. This was written by gay screenwriter Paul Rudnick (author of the just as frustrating character-driven play and film Jeffrey) and I feel the deletion of some key parts of the character's sexuality leaves some of us in the gay community empty. I am not saying that heterosexual directors cannot direct gay films (check out John Sayles’ Lianna if you do not believe me), but this production has some definite problems with exploring sexuality. While we have the sexless character in In and Out at one end of the spectrum, there are the hyper-sexed in Latin Boys go to Hell on the other.

Sorry, I hated Latin Boys go to Hell and I knew the film was going to be as vapid as the poster. You must have seen the posters plastered all over Chelsea: picture a glossed and retouched photo of a handsome Latino with his happy trail winking at us and his fingers gently touching his pouty, supple lips. In this film, a young Latin man is pursued by a horny yet hunky Latino who has a vengeful soap-opera watching boyfriend who is also, that’s right, Latino. The cheap looking quality of the film is not its crime, but stupidity is. The only thing that was spurring the audience in this film was whether or not the audience was going to see any dick. We did see some Latin ass, some Latin pecs, some Latin guys in their underwear, and we did get to see some dick, albeit it was hacked off someone and shoved in his mouth. The funny thing was that when I saw it, the theater was packed and the film had quite a successful run of about two months at the Quad. The film really was about nothing, and it upset me that gay audiences from city to city were eating this movie up like Krispy Kreme donuts, tasty but not necessarily good for you. It would seem that the slew of gay films would only be profitable if there is an absence of homosexual identity or an abundance of skin. Some people think that as long as there is some presence of gay characters or situations, at least there is a presence. I have hope that for every bad film, there is just one that’s just as good to counteract it: Latin Boys go to Hell might have been appalling, but a film like Happy Together is a pleasant find. As far as a film genre, gay film is still evolving. Hey, we might one day see a gay super hero as opposed to Batman, who just looks like one.

Carmelo Pirrone is a graduate of New York University - Tisch School of the Arts. He currently directs marketing and publicity for a major film company.