The Gay Gauntlet

By RICHARD CORLISS

FOR ITS FIRST FEW WEEKS OF release, Philadelphia, Hollywood's first big attempt to tell an AIDS story in a feature film, played to good business in a scant four theaters nationwide. The picture was like a gay person who is cherished by his friends but reluctant to come out of the closet. In mid- January the movie finally fanned out on 1,200 screens and, of all things, it was a hit. America seemed to be accepting a few heretical notions: that a homosexual could earn respect and sympathy; that a star like Tom Hanks could play a gay man with credible grace; that another star, Denzel Washington, could play a homophobe who gets an education in brotherly love; that a film about AIDS could attract the mass audience thought to be hostile to films about the disease and its victims.

All this was very nice for director Jonathan Demme and TriStar Pictures, which had nervously spent $26 million on the drama about a gay lawyer (Hanks) who contracts AIDS, is fired by his staid Philadelphia firm and hires a streetwise attorney (Washington) to press his case. The public was buying Philadelphia, or at least paying to see it. But among homosexuals all over the country the film was stoking an agitated debate. Their central questions: Is the movie accurate? Is it good for gays? And does its success mean a more gay- friendly cinema -- one that admits to the existence and humanity of this besieged minority?

For playwright and gay activist Larry Kramer, the answers are No, No and Who Knows? In an article, "Why I Hated Philadelphia," which ran in seven newspapers, Kramer wrote, "It's dishonest, it's often legally, medically and politically inaccurate, and it breaks my heart that I must say it's simply not good enough and I'd rather people not see it at all."

When TriStar executives read Kramer's diatribe, they might well have uttered joyful yelps -- the show-biz equivalent of "The Eagle has landed!" Even if their feelings were bruised, the movie's makers had reason to cheer. Now Philadelphia was not just a worthy film and a likely moneymaker; thanks to Kramer, it was a flashpoint for argument. As Demme says, with a soft laugh, "Any kind of debate about a movie is always stimulating to public interest in the film." Translation: controversy sells.

It has certainly sold the movie to gays; Philadelphia has been the hot topic for a month, and nobody wants to miss out on the dish du jour. Cocktail parties are peppered with objections to the plot: Why does Andy Beckett (the Hanks character) get no more than a chaste kiss from his lover (Antonio Banderas)? Why is his case rejected by 10 lawyers, when even a simpleton knows that the ACLU, the LAMBDA defense fund and many other groups would jump at the chance of a precedent-setting suit? Why is Andy's huge family so conspicuously loving, so unanimously supportive? Why do the good guys have to be so pristine and the bad guys -- senior law partners, of course -- so ostentatiously venal? Andy's last joke is one that all viewers are expected to applaud: "What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean? A good start."

Some gays wouldn't mind if Philadelphia sank. "The movie was too polite, too ginger," says Scott Thompson, one of the cross-dressing quintet of Canadian TV cutups, The Kids in the Hall. "I am tired of the ginger treatment of homosexuality. It's insulting to the public. It says they are so stupid they wouldn't accept an honest portrayal. If Hollywood is using this movie to make America love us, they are making them love a false image. I don't want that kind of acceptance. And I am tired of hearing how brave Tom Hanks is! All you have to do to win an Oscar is play someone in a wheelchair, or someone blind, or someone gay. Besides, he looks better at the end of his life than most people do in their prime. It's like a bad hair day with a lesion."

Demme, sanguine with success, is ready to absolve the most rabid critic of Philadelphia. "We knew we were bound to tick somebody off," he says. "Actually, I was hoping to catch the ire of Jesse Helms -- that sort of terminally closed-minded person. I made this movie for people like me: people who aren't activists, people who are afraid of AIDS, people who have been raised to look down on gays. I feel we've connected with those people, and we've also generated press for the opposition. If everybody agreed the movie was great, it'd take the edge off the need for more films like this. So whether or not Larry Kramer buys it -- and I don't think it's his job to buy it -- he has to fight on behalf of the AIDS and gay communities for greater, in-depth material. We're just a little splash in the ocean."

It's a big splash for groups like the Gay and Lesbian Association for Anti- Defamation, which has named Philadelphia the "outstanding studio film of the year." As GLAAD sees it, the controversy could sell more than a movie. It could begin to persuade America to accept gay people as an intrinsic part of society and convince Hollywood that it should bankroll more movies with gay themes.

"Philadelphia is just one panel, not the entire quilt," says John Gallagher, San Francisco correspondent for the Advocate, the nation's oldest gay magazine. "But as a primer for people who are new to the issue, it is pretty effective." Tony Kushner, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning play Angels in America, believes the film has strong lessons for the straight majority. "It tells them, If you are going to be a decent human being, you can't just casually despise a huge segment of the human race. And if you are going to address AIDS, you are going to have to address homophobia."

That word -- homophobia -- has always seemed a misnomer. Many people don't fear the gay culture; they simply and unapologetically hate it. The idea of same-sex sex gives them the creeps. They want homosexuals out of the barracks and boardrooms -- really, out of American life. In Hollywood, though, homophobia may be the mot juste. There is fear that a film with gays might not appeal to every possible moviegoer.

The issue isn't even movies about AIDS. There is a good reason that there aren't more of those: people die in them, inevitably, grotesquely, and that's not a recipe for box-office success. The real issue is the absence of ordinary homosexual characters in mainstream films.

Hollywood, after all, is a town where gay men run major production companies, direct big-budget movies and star in burly action adventures. Yet only a few studio pictures have depicted even subsidiary homosexual characters. Among the recent ones: the lesbian cop in Internal Affairs; Michelle Pfeiffer's gay neighbor in Frankie and Johnnie; the young black in Six Degrees of Separation; Harvey Fierstein as Robin Williams' brother in Mrs. Doubtfire.

When movie gays are prominent, it is often as murderous villains or vixens -- in Cruising, in Basic Instinct and (though Demme denies the killer is gay) in The Silence of the Lambs. Philadelphia would say of gay men, No, they are / also victims. Perhaps gays are more endearing to the average moviegoer if they are nobly wasting away rather than showing affection or passion.

Those feelings, in Hollywood movies, have always been the privilege of heterosexuals. Anything else was a threat, a jolt, anathema to the theology of movie fantasy. In 1936, when Samuel Goldwyn filmed These Three, from Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour, he removed the accusation of lesbianism from the plot. In 1947's Crossfire, RKO changed the homophobia theme to anti- Semitism. Interracial tolerance was in the air; homoeroticism may have lurked under every gruff bonding between cowboys, gangsters or G.I.s, but as for gay love, Hollywood dared not speak its name.

At heart, Kramer asserts, "it's all about money. They say there's no gay movie that has made money. Well, no movie about gay men has ever been financed by a major studio, except the 1982 Making Love, and that was terrible. So we have no data to base these theories on." Considering that the major studios release hundreds of films a year, Kramer asks, shouldn't a few of them acknowledge the existence of gays? "We're not asking Hollywood to make Gone With the Wind or Jurassic Park. They don't have to bankrupt the company or defraud the stockholders. We're talking $10 million or $15 million -- less if you try hard. To Matsushita or Sony or Disney, $10 million is toilet-paper money."

Are there enough homosexuals to support movies? The answer, on a small scale, is yes. Niche marketing has worked for blacks, for tots, for older women. These days the small, independent film movement, like theater and the book industry, tolerates and promotes gay themes. Some of last year's most successful independent movies -- Farewell My Concubine, The Wedding Banquet, Orlando -- were homo-, bi- or pansexual in spirit. "A film like The Wedding Banquet is more beloved by gays," says Richard Jennings, executive director of the lobby group Hollywood Supports, "because it's made for the gay community. We can more readily identify with it."

Oddly enough, some of the most sensitive work dealing with homosexuality can be found on TV. Murphy Brown and Roseanne have featured amiable gay characters; how far behind TV dare the movies be? As film critic David Ehrenstein says, "The entire history of the cinema is about the mass audience forging an emotional identification with people whose experiences are not like theirs. You don't have to be a dockworker to identify with Brando in On the Waterfront or a Southern belle to identify with Scarlett O'Hara. If you create a persuasive character, the audience will come."

Soon they might have that chance. This week Kramer is in Hollywood to begin work with Barbra Streisand on her long-deferred film of his AIDS play The Normal Heart. Robert Altman will direct the Angels in America film. The independent Propaganda Films is developing two projects: Good Days, a gay coming-of-age story from John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday); and, with Oliver Stone and HBO, an adaptation of Conduct Unbecoming by Randy Shilts (And the Band Played On). "Nothing takes the taboo off of anything in Hollywood like box office," says Propaganda's boss Steve Golin. "These guys'll make anything they think will make money."

So let Hollywood make its money from Philadelphia. And let all variety of humanity be reflected onscreen. After all, what do you call a flawed, cautious movie about an honorable gay man with AIDS? A good start.

With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland/New York and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles