(both snapping fingers)
She hasn't even seen Love, Simon.
He hasn't seen Moonlight.
- Hi, I'm Jake. - And I'm Shola.
Today we're going to be discussing and challenging one another
about LGBT films.
We both have really different experiences with this
so we'll see how it goes.
The character that had the most impact for me
was Elio from Call Me By Your Name.
I love that film so much
and part of me could really identify with Elio.
- I don't know about you. - Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, because he's young and he doesn't really know what he's doing
and there's no pressure on him to make any decisions
about his sexuality and about-, - Apart from himself.
Exactly, and that's the thing.
Most of us, we put pressure on ourselves.
His parents were really supportive,
he had so many lovely people around him,
but it was all, like, internal.
And I think it makes it okay to question your sexuality.
I think that's what that film shows more than anything,
it's okay to not really know.
You see that throughout the whole film,
so I really agree with you there.
It kind of normalises just that feeling of confusion,
seeing that in a character on screen
who actually does have happy moments but he also has quite sad moments,
just seeing that all wrapped up into one character,
I found it really impactful.
For myself, I think the film that had a massive impact on me growing up
would be 4th Man Out.
The character particularly Adam I related to a lot
because growing up, I was more masculine.
I think I was a lot more oppressed with my sexuality,
and I related to Adam quite a lot
because he had a lot of straight male friends
and I did at the time,
and when I was starting to realise that I was attracted to men,
I kind of paralleled myself.
It also had that kind of humour about how,
'Oh, he might like me, I might like him,'
and it makes it-, the whole farce of being a gay guy
that likes someone and they're straight,
and it makes it funny but also makes it okay.
Yeah, because that is a stereotype.
It's funny because that stereotype is used in films
but also people hold it in real life.
It's true, it happens.
His best friend thought it was okay and he was like,
'It's okay that you're feeling like this now
because we can move on from this.'
'You're like a brother to me, we can move past this.'
That's something which I'd always wanted and I got,
and then I came out and then it was okay.
And so that film inspired me,
and that had such a big impact on me growing up
and that's why I just love that film.
My favourite scene was when, at the very end,
his straight friend ended up kissing him
and said, 'Are you attracted to me?',
and Adam says, 'No, I think it's okay.'
'I see you as a brother to me.'
That film just really shows how it's normal and how it's okay
for people of different sexualities to all be friends.
Just for them to be able to understand
this doesn't have any impact on our friendship,
we can still just go on about business as normal.
And it also shows how-,
I think it was good to show how Adam was feeling
because they were like, 'Oh no, he's gay.'
'Oh no, that makes me feel awful. Oh, I'm so angry.'
And then he's like, 'But what about me?'
'I've been keeping this repressed for so long
and you're talking about yourself?'
And I think a really good dialogue began.
There's so many tiny moments in Call Me By Your Name where it's like-,
it's so good to be able to see Elio's uncertainty.
It's almost like he's really tentative
and he doesn't really want to approach Oliver
because he has this built-up image of this guy who he's really falling for
but he's too scared to let him know.
So there's a bit when they're all playing-,
I think they're playing volleyball. - I love that scene.
Oliver just touches his back and he's like, 'Err!'
You can tell that inside he's like, 'Oh my god!',
but on the outside he's trying to remain calm.
So relatable, yeah.
When I saw the movie Carol, it made me really consider
people coming out at an older age,
and not particularly that Carol had to come out.
It was kind of a known fact in the film
that she had had gay relationships before,
but for me, what really hit home was how high the stakes were for her
because as a woman in the '50s in America,
she was expected to fulfil certain roles.
She was expected to be a mother and not to steer away from her husband,
and it was also expected that her husband
would almost have possession over her
and keep the family together and provide for the family.
So when her affair with Therese in that film
threatened that family setup, that's where the main conflict lay,
so it really made me think about different periods of time,
and also as an individual coming out at an old age.
I think it would also show how we've progressed since the 1950s.
- Oh my god, of course.
Yeah, like with housewife syndrome and all of that nonsensical stuff.
(laughter)
There's so many good parts in that,
particularly with how they become attracted to each other.
It's so organic that they meet in a shop.
Carol's this amazing, affluent woman. I love her, she's iconic.
She always has her hair done,
she always wears these big, fancy fur coats.
She's like, 'Yes, my name's Carol.'
She meets a really sweet, more quiet girl called Therese
and they just have such an affinity to each other.
They get on so well.
That affair is threatening Carol's custody of her daughter.
Those were the implications of being
in a lesbian relationship in the 1950s.
I watched Freak Show recently and that showed-,
it wasn't really coming out but it was coming into this school,
this really conservative school, and saying, 'Here I am.'
In some gay films, they're very gay-centric
and there isn't that integration of straight people and gay people
and it separates the two, but having films that increasingly show
an integration of people just normalises it
because that is how it is in real life.
I actually haven't seen In & Out. I don't even know what it's about.
Well, it's about this man, an English teacher, Howard Brackett.
His ex-student Cameron says, when he wins an Oscar,
'Oh, this is all thanks to my English teacher. He was gay.'
And then everyone was like, at the same time, 'What?'
And he then starts to go on this journey to realising,
'Oh my, I'm gay and now I'm married to this woman.'
It's really funny and there's this one scene
where he puts on this dance tune,
it's meant to convert, make you more of a man.
It's this '80s dance music and he's there trying to resist the boogie
and then he's like, 'No, sit straight.'
'No, don't shake your hips,' and he just starts to go into it
and he's like, 'Argh!'
- It's a really good film. - It sounds really good.
I didn't realise at first it was a comedy.
Yeah, it's a comedy. It's really funny.
It's subtle comedy and it's good.
It just shows that I've been living under a rock
but I haven't seen Love, Simon either.
- I wouldn't recommend it. - Really?
I watched it because I was like, 'I wanna see a mainstream gay film.'
It doesn't have to be a gay film,
it should just be a film that has gay people or LGBT people in it.
It shouldn't be 'it's a gay film for gay people'.
It's like if I watch a film with a straight couple in it,
oh, I shouldn't see it because I'm gay?
No wait, sorry, you can't watch that. It's a straight film.
- Sorry, it's not for you.
Only straights allowed in here.
I do think we need accurate representation.
I guess, having a problem with the term 'gay films',
perhaps it takes away from the quality of the films themselves,
in a way, pigeon-holing them into one type of genre when really they span-,
I mean, the amount of films that I've seen
which include LGBTQ representation, they're not all the same
so you can't really put them in the same hole.
A friend of mine, she was saying to me,
'Oh, I don't really wanna watch a gay film because I'm straight
and I don't really feel that would be for me,
because I don't want to see two men making out on camera.'
I'm like, 'It's not about that.'
You don't even know if they're gonna make out on camera.
- They might not.
It might be about this guy who so happens to be gay.
In fact, there are parts of films-, so when I watched Moonlight,
I thought the ending was going to be this explosive romantic scene.
They're gonna kiss, it's gonna be amazing.
- No, no. - Nothing.
In fact, I didn't even get the-,
I would have wanted that and I didn't get it.
In terms of coming out, actually the whole culture of coming out,
when I watched Moonlight, it made me really consider that culture,
because there actually isn't really a moment in that film
where Chiron, the main character, is able to come out.
Basically, Moonlight's really cool because it has an episodic-,
it's like chapters, the log of his life.
Three chapters, right?
I think it is three chapters.
There's him as a child,
and then when he's a teenager and as an adult as well.
But all through those stages of his life,
he doesn't really have the chance to express himself that way
and it's actually really painful to watch.
He never comes out in the entire film?
I haven't seen it, so-, - It's really weird.
The funny thing is he doesn't, basically.
He grows up as a quite effeminate boy
but as he progresses into adulthood, he becomes a really hardened guy.
He goes from being a skinny teenager to a massive guy with muscles,
like, bodybuilding, and he becomes a drug dealer.
You said it's unnatural. Do you think he's repressing-,
It's like he almost-,
and even just his whole presentation, he's hyper-masculine,
it's almost just to hide that whole side of him.
And then again, when this guy who he kind of had a former love for,
comes back into his life, he's able to express that again
and it's just heartbreaking.
- You could look at Love, Simon. - I haven't seen that actually.
So the main character Simon lives in this kind of nuclear family,
but there's one problem, I'm gay, and he's like, 'Oh no.'
The whole film revolves around him, his progression into coming out.
And unlike Moonlight, he does come out in the film.
They have this whole mockery of coming out.
They have a two-minute scene
where all the characters who are evidently straight in the film
are saying, 'Mum, Dad, I'm straight,'
and the parents are going, 'Oh, no!'
Big element of responsibility when it comes to handling topics like these
and really sensitive subjects, yeah.
Yeah, and so I feel because they had that responsibility,
they did quite well, but what I think they failed to consider
is that coming out shouldn't be this whole dramatic scene where-,
- It doesn't have to be. - It shouldn't be, I don't think.
I think people shouldn't be presumed straight at birth.
What was your major issue with what happened?
Well, to be honest, I don't like how his interest, Blue,
he kind of had a feeling early on in the film that it was him,
well, he knew who he actually was in the film.
He's messaging Blue online, it's anonymous,
so he doesn't actually know.
And then he's at a house party
and he's getting on really well with this guy
and then he's thinking, 'Oh, it might be him,'
and then he ends up seeing this guy making out with a girl
and he's like, 'Oh, so it's not him.'
But then later he finds out,
when they go on the Ferris wheel at the end,
he asks, 'Oh, come to me, Blue,' on the Ferris wheel.
Yeah, yeah, it's good.
Okay, so I might actually give it a watch.
Yeah, it's worth watching.
The only other thing that I wanted to mention
was the culture around coming out has definitely changed over time.
I've seen that in both Moonlight and Carol as well,
because Love, Simon is obviously set now
so there are, of course, pressures to coming out,
but they are different pressures to what people had to face before.
Moonlight's set in 1980s Miami and Miami's-,
the landscape that's painted right from the start of the film,
there's a lot of poverty.
It takes a complete intersection of the society that they're living in.
Because we're talking about LGBT films,
we need to include how there's a political agenda
running through all of these films.
Most notably, I think, the film Milk really clarified the events,
of what happened and how he got into power.
Again, it is like I live under a rock.
I haven't seen Milk. So basically it's about an activist?
Yeah, it's about an activist, and he then runs for public office
and he's up against Dan White,
and there's a lot of conflict throughout the whole film.
I liked how in the film
they portrayed Dan White as being sexually repressed,
because I think there are some intimate moments between those two.
In the end, what happens, spoilers-, - Don't spoil, no!
I'm gonna watch it.
He walks into the office as he does every day,
but this time Dan White was-, - No, don't spoil it,
'cause I'm gonna watch it.
- Was exiled from-, am I allowed to do this?
And the portrayal of that, of LGBT politics,
in that film was just so accurate.
And as well, it brings up about how, growing up or being an adult
in that time period, I think it was '60s, '70s, '80s,
around that timeframe, how there was a lack of unity in the LGBT movement,
and he had to act as an icon to bring people together.
And it also makes me appreciate-,
- How things are now. - How things are now.
I'm interested in how you said that there wasn't a lot of unity,
because a film that really stands out for me is Paris Is Burning
which is a documentary, and that's late '80s New York,
and it depicts what's called the ballroom scene.
It started out as a group of people in a safe space
for LGBT-identifying people to get together and dance and celebrate.
There were competitions and it was a massive celebration
of femininity, masculinity, just talent, it was amazing.
But that film, as much as it celebrates that culture,
also really sheds some light on some quite hard issues to understand.
Aside from the really hard stuff,
I really enjoyed the show of unity and people coming together.
If you go to Pride now, in the world and in a lot of places,
Pride is just this big spectacular event where everybody comes together.
Even allies, like straight allies and cisgendered people,
they all come together.
It's just like a celebration of culture, isn't it?
And after the Stonewall riots,
I think that just triggered everything.
I think it was last year in India, gay marriage was-,
- Was it? Gay marriage was legalised. - It was legalised, yeah.
And I think this just shows how far we've come, it's great.
I think a really important subject in terms of LGBT films
is accurate portrayal in contrast with stereotypes.
- Yeah, yeah.
Because it's very difficult, as a producer,
you have to make a decision whether you should have-,
because you see those films like
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,
where they've got to have this kind of satirical-,
- Fun, comedic. - Fun, more like surface level.
Or, like, how, 'Oh, I'm such a queen.'
I watched this film called A Very Sordid Wedding,
and they have this drag queen and she's all really flamboyant.
She's this old woman, man, we don't even know.
(laughter)
And they're trying to portray it in an accurate way but with comedy,
and I think if you compare that to, you were talking about Moonlight-,
Stereotypes can be used almost in a cathartic way
to make light of things that people have really struggled with,
and it can be quite healing, in a way.
But I think when stereotypes are taken badly
and they're used to degrade certain groups of people,
that does not translate well on film at all.
I agree, yeah.
We've really, really enjoyed talking about these films
and had a great time. - Definitely.
If there's any comments or tales or thoughts
that you guys want to share, pop them in the comments.
We really, really want to hear them.