The only reason I am aware of the movie, “Bros”, is due to catching a couple of TV ads for it and the line one of the guys utters about his 60+ year-old male conquest being “like somebody shot Dumbledore up with steroids”.
I assumed it was a movie with gay characters, but I later found out it was a movie, a romantic comedy no less, about gay dudes.
I had no idea who this Billy Eichner character was until I googled him. I guess he is sort of a big gay deal in the entertainment world, who knew?
Not poor little cis-gendered me.
Well, the movie is bombing/has bombed.
Apparently as popular as a turd in a punchbowl.
Cost $29+ something million to make, plus another 20 or so in publicity, so maybe $40-50 mil, all in.
And it made about $4.8 million on opening weekend despite being launched in over 3,000 theaters.
I guess, not a real surprise, because it is mainly women who like romcoms and when you take over 50% of the prospective audience out of the equation, that probably isn’t smart marketing.
And Billy has been ranting that it failed, blaming the cis-gendered population for not being interested in a movie exclusively about gay males and their lives – or at least a lightly sanitized version of Billy Eichner’s gay life – which seems to be a little less Pollyanna and more PornHub.
Anyway, Ace at Ace of Spades HQ has a little snippet from an interview with the creators in the New Yorker:
“Early in the new movie "Bros," our cranky hero, Bobby (Billy Eichner), a podcaster suffering from chronic relationship phobia, sits at his microphone and rants. "So, these big movie producers came to me and said, 'We want you to write a rom-com about a gay couple,' " he says. A producer, in a flashback, asks Bobby for something a straight guy would go see, a movie that "shows the world that gay relationships and straight relationships are the same. Love is love is love!" "Love is love is love?" Bobby retorts, wincing at the regurgitation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony speech. "No, it's not. That's bullshit! . . . Our friendships are different. Our sex lives are different. Our relationships are different." Minutes later, as if to prove the point, we see Bobby shaving his rear end for a guy on a hookup app who demands an "ass pic."...
That early scene with the fictitious producer points to the question that animates much of what follows: To what extent can you map a gay love story onto the classic rom-com formula, or vice versa? The film, co-written by Eichner and its director, Nicholas Stoller, references--and wrestles with--rom-com tropes. Bobby watches "You've Got Mail" on the couch, but instead of AOL, he's got Grindr. On his first date with Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), his studly love interest, they go see a movie--and then wind up having a foursome at a "gender-reveal orgy."...”
Look, nobody likes shaving their ass for good ass pic and a foursome at a gender reveal party more than the cis-gendered folks in flyover country, right?
I can’t imagine why people didn’t want to be exposed (no pun intended) to such things.
I’ve wondered why gay people object to characters who are stereotyped caricatures of gay people – and yet, movies like Eichner’s seem to revel in promoting these caricatures.
But I have been thinking about this for a couple of days and I realized that the courtship rituals of young heterosexuals aren’t a lot different from those seen in Eichner’s movie. The attitude toward sexual promiscuity and casual sex – the so-called “hook-up culture” – and the willingness to share pretty much anything on Tik-Tok and Instagram certainly seems a lot like softcore (maybe a little more) porn.
Eichner’s tale reads like the script of a porn flick – and apparently, now our heterosexual courtship behaviors do too – and that isn’t a good thing, but if I’m intellectually honest, I must recognize the similarities.
Can’t criticize one without the other.
Maybe romcoms don’t work because they are all com and no rom these days.
I won’t see Eichner’s movie – not because I have anything against gay folks, but I get enough LGBTQIA+++ pushed on me by virtue signaling politicians and woke corporations. I’m just not into that groove, man.
Given the critical and commercial success of movies like Brokeback Mountain, I think it is safe to assume that “Bros” is just a movie nobody has a reason to see, even gay people.
I feel dirty after reading this essay. It reminds me of what has become of American culture. There is now a program on some NPR channels put on by the New Yorker magazine. I had the misfortune of listening to a glowing review of this sick perversion as I was driving up to Michigan Sunday morning. The host of the program seemed to be aroused as he discussed the benefits of something called a "throuple" and the idea of an orgy taking place at a "gender reveal" party seemed to nearly put him in ecstasy.
Go Russia!
Spot on