just out ▼
,
September 19 1997 ▼
29
INTERVIEW
aramount Pictures has joined a grow­
ing list of the major Hollywood players
who are putting some big bucks behind
gay material. The industry has begun to
Sparks fly during the chemistry lesson a closeted high school
see that films which show gay people as
normal as well as amusing—quel concept!—can
teacher learns from a TV journalist in In & Out
make money beyond the gay and lesbian commu­
▼
nities as they cross over to mainstream U.S.
by Dale Reynolds
society (and the rest of the world).
Last year The Birdcage made a fortune for
comedy Kiss Me, Guido this year). With the
Tom is handsome and kind of loopy, a guy with a
central elements in place, getting the other stars
menschy, human quality. We also strongly needed
was easy. Filming began last October within a 60-
someone who could get the joke, and Tom really
mile radius of New York City, the small towns
wanted to play this role. Frankly, I really couldn’t
successfully standing in for Indiana.
judge if they’d be romantic together, only if
In & Out is to comedy what Philadelphia was
there’d be some rapport between them; I’d be
to drama: an expensive (around $35 million)
unable to judge if there’d be romance between a
MGM/UA—a surprise because it dealt with a
homosexual love story, in which the stereotypes
heterosexual couple, either. They looked cute
middle-aged gay couple. But because it was funny
surrounding gay men are exploited for humor as
together, and it worked. I wanted that Cary Grant/
as only Mike Nichols and Elaine May can make
well as insight. Not so surprisingly, the creative
Doris Day quality they brought.”
’em (based on a pretty funny French script of 18
folk deny that it’s a “gay” story; why allow the
It is the critical kiss between the two men
years before), it succeeded with both straight and
obvious when you can put a more salable spin on
which propels the plot into full gear. To Selleck:
it?
gay audiences. And didn’t Bound, a hair-raising
“Howard needs a slap in the face as a wake-upcall,
Mafia caper, succeed in part because of the steamy
Oz, 53, a genial and quiet gentleman, says,
and we spent time on that. Yes, it was awkward
lesbian sex between the principals? The 1993
“It’s not a gay comedy—to me it’s a screwball
kissing Kevin, but it’s often awkward kissing
Demme/Nyswater drama Philadelphia was also
comedy with an edge and underbelly to it. I didn’t
actresses—you meet someone, shake their hand,
successful, brushing aside fears that an AIDS/gay
make it as a [film] for either heterosexuals or
and crawl into bed with them. That’s the nature of
love story would scare audiences away. Most of
homosexuals; if I’d made it to say, ‘it’s OK to be
this business, [and] you gotta get past that.”
the other queer-positive films in recent years have
homosexual,’ that would be too narrow; I want to
But the kiss is a solid laugh as Howard takes it
been low-budget U.S. indepen­
dents and foreign-financed films,
presented in a wide variety of
levels of quality, but many lack
the necessary big bucks to create
momentum for high ticket sales.
Now Paramount has joined in
with the search for gay hits with
In & Out, the Paul Rudnick and
Frank Oz upbeat and screamingly
funny film which deals with a
closeted gay man (Kevin Kline)
who is outed on worldwide tele­
vision by a former student (Matt
Dillon) as he collects an Oscar for
Best Actor. When the press rushes
to tiny Greenleaf, Ind., to inter­
view this unknown teacher of high
school English literature, his
fiancée (Joan Cusack), parents
(Debbie Reynolds and Wilford
Brimley), friends, students and
principal (Bob Newhart) sit in
shocked wonder at just what has
come over their beloved Howard
Brackett. This central act of com­
ing to grips with an essential real­
ity in the face of adversity and
fear is the gist of the comedy,
which has some of the best comic,
even farcical, moments to be
found in any film this year.
The original idea came from
filmdom’s strongest out gay pro­
ducer, Scott Rudin {The Addams Kevin Kline (left) and Tom Selleck star in In & Out
Family and Ransomon screen, Sondheim/Lapine’s
say it’s OK to be whoever you are—don’t hide.
and realizes the implications. It’s also where
It’s controversial in an acceptable way; I like
Kline gets to bust out as a physical actor, a talent
Passion on stage), who approached one of the
subversion.”
for which he was awarded an Oscar (for A Fish
best comedy writers around, Paul Rudnick
Called Wanda) almost a decade ago.
The subversion comes in as Rudnick has writ­
{Addams Family Values, Jeffrey), who is refresh­
ten a contemporary romantic comedy between
Selleck had a grand time with the scene: “Act­
ingly out as a perceptibly-gay man. They based it
two men in a film style popular 60 years ago—the
ing is basically doing, so we rehearsed it on a
on Tom Hanks’ careful outing of his high school
screwball comedy—and the surprise comes from
Friday night—we were concerned with tone at the
drama teacher three years ago when Hanks won
time, not the mechanics—and Frank likes sponta­
his first Oscar, for his brilliant work in Philadel­ the casting of the fellow who brings Howard fully
out as a gay man. The troika of producer, director
neity, which I’m quite comfortable with and which
phia.
and
writer
spent
a
lot
of
time
on
the
pivotal
Kevin is brilliant at. We played around with it to
Rudnick’s strength as a writer lies in the well-
see where [the kiss] fit—or even if it fit. Paul was
wrought gag and the off-beat situation, and In & character of Peter Malloy, the TV reporter played
by Tom Selleck. For it is Selleck—long known as
there and we adjusted some things. Then we
Out is blessedly filled with them. Director Oz,
returned Monday morning, laying it down in the
a political conservative uncomfortable with gay
married with four kids, has always exhibited a
wide shot. Well, after that you think you’re wind­
rights who has fought off rumors of being gay
keen awareness of social comedy and the tensions
ing down and you’ll just be matching what you
himself—who as Malloy plants a great big wet
which crop up when folk come into conflict with
did in the mid-shots. But Tuesday we started
kiss on frustrated Howard, at 40 still in denial
their well-honed lies. (Check out his directorial
over— which is very Oz; he’s sly—just when I’d
about his essential sexuality. The scene is a bril­
work in Little Shop o f Horrors, the Muppet films—
let my guard down, we found new stuff.”
liant shocker, guaranteed to raise the temperature
he originated Miss Piggy—and The Indian in the
The scene is destined to be a classic, but Oz
of
the
movie
house
at
least
5
degrees
Fahrenheit.
Cupboard.) With superproducer Rudin at the
So, how do you go about casting such a pivotal
insists that it wasn’t anything special. He lets slip,
helm, the project took off quickly, enlisting the
couple?
Oz
remembers:
“Kevin
was
already
on
however, a reaction which should have tipped him
gifted comic actor Kevin Kline straight away as
off: ‘There was a cop, a sergeant, who was holding
Brackett, which made the sale to Paramount a board when I was hired. We needed somebody
really
handsome—a
hunk—to
play
Malloy,
and
traffic for us, and I saw him when Kevin and Tom
snap (the studio also distributed the sour gay
P
(?
mema
T his S trange S ensation
kiss for the first time, and the look on his face was
pure ‘what the hell are they doing there?’ ”
Publicly Selleck keeps his own counsel on his
views of same-sex marriage, political protections
for gay people, or any other controversial topic on
the subject: Once bitten by the press, twice shy
about public pronouncements. He legitimately
feels that his private life is nobody’s business:
“When you’re married with a kid, it’s turning it up
about 10 notches saying [in print] that you’re
leading a secret [gay] life. People write lies all the
time—but when they write lies which hurt other
people, that’s where I draw the line.”
Apparently he no longer minds being a sex-
symbol for gay men. and as he plays his gay role
with humor and love, it will thrust him once again
into gay popularity.
“I never was closed-minded on the subject [of
homosexuality],” he says. “I’d have played gay 10
years before, but no one ever asked. My wife saw
the movie and she doesn’t see Kevin as a threat to
our marriage!”
The kiss plays an important emotional—and
comic— part in the film. But earlier none of the
creative staff, save Rudnick, thought very much
about it—proof positive that Kline, Oz and Selleck
are hets, because for the rest of us it’s a major
event. Selleck shakes his head: “The issue for me
in this movie was not could I kiss
Kevin Kline—I’m an actor, and
if the script says kiss him, I will—
the issue for me was could I kiss
him and make it look real enough
to make people buy it?”
Rudnick’s script itself is hys­
terically funny—a gay man’s take
on what happens when you deny
an essential reality to try to fit into
others’ more traditional vision. In
the plot, Howard is marrying
Emily (Cusack) in a week’s time.
But after he’s outed in front of a
billion people, things get stickier.
Debbie Reynolds as Howard’s
mother brings a necessary steel-
beneath-the-Midwestem-stucco-
exterior in explaining how she
doesn’t care if he’s gay, straight
or neutral, but by God, there will
be a wedding! So poor Howard
gets to the altar with his exposed
secret hanging all over him, when
fate allows him an out.
Before that he attends the tra­
d itionalist bachelor party ready
| to rock ’n’ roll like one of “da
i^guys”—except it’s with a group
| of straight men who have been
convinced by him about the righ-
o teousness of Barbra Streisand as
a cultural icon. (The 55-year-old
comes in for a series of comic
batterings—the sole use of the
word “fuck” in the film is at her expense—and no
one has heard her reaction as yet.) Howard also
buys a tape of “How to Be a Real Man” and tries
to follow it in order to fit in, only to blow it when
tricked into dancing to Diana Ross. It’s this kind
of loopy satire which elevates the film.
It’s tough discussing this fine and funny com­
edy without wanting to give away all of Rudnick’s
jokes and Oz’s inventive direction; a couple of the
highlights concern secondary characters such as
the model who lives with the film star played by
Dillon, played by Shalom Harlow, a beautiful.
Canadian-born, hugely successful fashion model
in her own right. Rudnick gets off zingers about
models’ aversion to food when Dillon castigates
her for looking “like a swizzle stick.” He demands
that she eat something, and Harlow’s reaction to
just the word “food” is drawn out into facial and
bodily revulsion, which brings the house down.
Queens around the world will be mimicking it at
Halloween this year.
This is a wise and goofus film, cleverly acted
and a boon to gay people all over the world.