Reeling Film Festival: Straight talk on gay films

At last night's Reeling Film Festival I saw a film called Whirlwind about a quintet of gay New Yorkers whose lives become disrupted when they befriend a guy at a nightclub with ulterior motives. This group of friends includes JD, an insecure real estate agent who can't seem to get his shit together. There's also Mickey, an African-American who's still grieving after losing his boyfriend to a car accident three years ago. Desmond is the player among the group and finally there's Sean and Bobby, a young interracial couple.

Here's the thing: I liked this film, but I'm not sure everybody else did. After the movie was over my friend said he thought it was cliched, overly sentimental and that the acting was so-so. I sensed the rest of the audience felt similar reactions. But I had to counter that argument. I think most Hollywood films are cliched, sentimental and poorly acted, yet we're willing to let that slide if we've been entertained.

Why are gay films judged differently? In part, it's because they have lower production values. The actors are no doubt working for little or no money, the script is a labor of love for some screenwriter and the cinematography is never as good. But I think there's a double standard at work in the way gay men judge themselves in popular culture. Gay men are willing consumers of guilty pleasures. In the '90s we loved Melrose Place and today we have Gossip Girl, along with other truly terrible shows. But give them the soap opera equivalent on gay networks like Logo and Here! TV (shows like Dante's Cove and The Lair spring to mind) and gay guys recoil. They wouldn't be caught dead watching these shows (or at least admitting to it). I think this is in part because we still feel the need to be legitimized by the mainstream. We would rather glom onto a sidekick gay character in a mainstream Hollywood film than embrace a gay indie film made by queer people for queer people that presents an accurate reflection of our lives. I think this is disappointing and needs to end.

The fact of the matter is Whirlwind is not a great film and I'm not pretending that it is. But many of the people I've talked to these last few days at Reeling have said they think most gay cinema is terrible. Is it really? Or is just harder for some audiences to see themselves clearly in the mirror?