Queer Beacon

Wild Hogs (2007) - Shipwreck 0

The movie really is as bad as you think it would be.  In this piece of trash, William H. Macy (I didn't expect him to sink this low), Martin Lawrence (blank), Tim Allen (vomit) and John Travolta (double vomit) are a bunch of middle-aged losers trying to have some fun in a road-trip on bikes.  In their journey, they are confronted with a gang of real, nasty, bikers led by Ray Liota (vomit).

There are many homophobic (or at least heterosexist) jokes and innuendos in Wild Hogs; but what really locks in the Shipwreck Zero is the violence against gays the movie promotes.  On two occasions, John Travolta's character threatens to kill whoever smells him up close (a comment prompted by the fact that William H. Macy smells him while riding 'bitch' on his bike) or looks at his genitals (a comment prompted by his agreeing to swimming naked in this silly pond with his other butch buddies).  Travolta is supposed to be a good guy. 

The bad guys, as expected, take it even further and actually act on their homophobia.  One of the gay characters, played by bad guy Kevin Durand, is constantly talking about the things he would like to do to other guys, kinda inadvertently describing things only a gay guy would do.  At one point, he says he would put the balls of all the wild hogs in his mouth, and in response to that, Ray Liota, the gang leader, punches him hard on the face.  In the movie, Kevin is beaten for describing a gay act.  Although Ray Liota's character beats his buddy up many other times for other reasons, the beating for the gay comment was particularly sad, and, unfortunately, glorified. 

The other more common homophobic innuendos included the scene which you can see on the trailer, where John C. McGinley (the smart-ass doctor from Scrubs) plays a naughty gay cop lustful for the wild hogs.  Most of the scenes in which McGinley takes part are homophobic (even though those scenes were not nearly as bad as the ones in which violence against the gays is glorified).

Shame on writer Brad Copeland and everybody involved with this piece of crap for letting homophobia in their movie.  It is hard to understand how Wild Hogs could have been the #1 movie for so long -- it was awful and not funny at all.  The movie was unfortunately released on DVD on August 14.

The Fan (1981) - Shipwreck 0

By Guest Reviewer Andrew Belonsky from Queerty.com

It may not be the case anymore, but it used to be that if a screenwriter or author needed a good villain, they would look no further than the evil fag. The homo’s deviant sexuality provided a reliable excuse – or, perhaps, symptom – of his devilish ways. The odd – and endlessly commercial – character of Norman Bates springs to mind, as does the more recent and potentially just as gay, Hannibal Lechter. Meanwhile the 1980 Al Pacino classic, Cruising, spent an entire 106 minutes exploring the “sleazy and underground” gay world in which a serial killer got his S&M fueled kicks. One year later, John Hartwell and Priscilla Chapman – neither of whom, it’s worth noting, had ever written nor would ever write another movie – adapted Bob Randall’s queer killer novel, The Fan, for the silver screen. The critics blasted the film, and for good reason, but what it lacks in depth, it makes up for by providing a study of the gay gone bad.

The Fan concerns a famous actress, Sally Ross, played by Lauren Bacall and her obsessed fan, Michael Biehn’s Douglas Breen. It’s really not worth mentioning Biehn’s character’s name, for it disappears quite quickly behind his association with fanatic insanity. He starts off innocently enough – a conspicuously single, lonely and downright pathetic record salesman who writes letters to his favorite star of screen and stage. Too busy rehearsing for a Broadway play and dealing with her ex-husband, played very briefly by James Garner, and certainly far too famous to reply to her fan’s letters, Ross pawns the job off on her secretary, a low point in Maureen Stapleton’s career. Doing her duty, the secretary sends off a gracious reply, unaware her forged sentiments will only serve to feed Breen’s madness. She should have known better, of course, for give a fag a bone and he’ll keep coming back to strike more perverse terror.

And that’s exactly what happens. Breen’s letters become more and more feverish, exuding a dangerous persistence that leads the secretary to ignore him in hopes that he’ll disappear. But Breen – whose dementia’s already over taken his last shred of rationality and, thus, identity – refuses to go away. On the contrary, he intends to get as close to Ross as possible. How? By killing all her friends, of course.

Poor Stapleton’s the first to feel the cold of his straight razor, but The Fan wastes no time going after Ross’ other comrades, including her dance partner, whom he kills in the pool in that bastion of homo-variance, the YMCA. It’s really quite gruesome. Not to mention gay: The Fan swims underneath him, slashing him from neck to crotch, his blade coming within inches of his Speedo-clad penis.

What remains unspoken – namely The Fan’s faggotry – becomes a disturbing plot device after a Detective (Hector Elizondo) gets closer to discovering the truth. Thus, he cruises on through a gay bar, finds himself a hapless homo and proceeds to get blown on the roof. His ejaculation brings the trick’s extermination as The Fan uses his gleaming blade to finish him off and burns the body, leaving a guilt-ridden suicide note to cover his tracks.

The Fan’s cumming becomes The Fan’s climax, for it’s downhill from there (as if there were an up). Seemingly free of her stalker, Ross forges forward, unaware that her first performance may be her last. I won’t give away the details of the final confrontation, but rest assured that The Fan gets what’s coming to him, appropriately punished for his not so merry, but certainly very Mary murder spree.

While the movie provides a few chills, they’re washed out by the message: the solitary gay poses a threat to you and yours. Even the lighting – a staple in thrillers – seems a bit overdone, with The Fan stalking (literally) in and out of the shadows like the dubious, dangerous villain he was born to play. Certainly a stinker through and through, the film’s worth a view, if only to laugh (and grimace) at the stereotypes it propagates.

The Departed (2006) - Shipwreck 0

In The Departed, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a cop infiltrated in a mob syndicate led by Jack Nicholson.  There is a bunch of cops out to get Jack, including Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Matt Damon and Mark Walhberg.  Every single one of them utter more than one homophobic slur.  We had tons of "cocksuckers" and "faggots". Non-stop.

The movie starts off with racism.  N word and all.  But the racism dies down into the movie, while the homophobic slurs increase in tone and frequency.  I was very upset to see that level of homophobia in a good movie, with great actors.

I had seen on Towle that there would be homophobia, but didn't know that it would be this bad. 

Until quite late in the movie mostly bad guys (bad cops and criminals) were using the slurs, but the Shipwreck Zero was locked in when our hero, Leonardo DiCaprio, calls the worst crook in the movie a "two faced faggot".

A really shameful movie by Martin Scorsese (I always thought he was overrated anyway) and writers William Monahan, Siu Fai Mak and Felix Chong. 

I hope they don't try to justify the homophobia and hatred in their movie with the sad assumption that poor and uneducated guys are homophobic in real life.  If they do think that that is the case in real life, shouldn't they at least try to end, not reinforce, that hatred and homophobia?

The Benchwarmers (2006) - Shipwreck 0

What was I thinking?  Bad movie.  You can actually have a few good laughs out of Jon Heder's performance.  He pretty much plays his character from Napoleon Dynamite, which I thought was one of the best comedies in years.  I hope he gets good mileage out of that role because it'll get old.  While I'm at it, can someone please give Rob Schneider a mirror?  He is hideous and he was trying to be all sexy in the movie.  That did not work.  You know what else didn't work, his bulges in the the first scenes of the movie.  I almost barfed my lunch.  Repulsive.  And I am a friend of the bulges, trust me.

Here, Jon Heder is a nerd who never talked to a girl, never touched a ball.  David Spade is in the same boat.  Rob Schneider is a nerd who was more successful later in life, with balls and girls.  They decide to team up and avenge all nerds.  A billionaire friend, whose kid is a nerd too, helps.  The billionaire has a robot butler that will provide you with a few of the tackiest moments in cinema.

Now to our gay movie review.  The gay content was awful.  Truly awful.  I almost gave the movie a Shipwreck 1 though, instead of a Zero, because it had two minor facts that could perhaps be construed positively, but a lot of effort would be required for that.  I'll start with those two minor issues and then give you the real bad news. 

Early on, we see that David Spade is a DVD store clerk and had recommended a movie with Lesbian scenes to a female client.  The client hated the movie because of the lesbian scenes.  She found the scenes repulsive, but David Spade is clearly into those scenes.  David Spade liking lesbian scenes could be positive, but I'm not that sure anymore if it's really a good thing to have straight guys so into lesbians.  I suspect that the good that could do to lesbians is countered by the push for more female objectification, after all, in those cases, it's all about women pleasing men, not the lesbian part.  Well, I could be wrong, but I won't give that benefit to the movie.

The other possibly positive fact is that one of the bullies turns out to be gay.  You learn that early in the movie.  I would actually not mind so much a movie with a gay bully pushing people around for a change, it could actually teach people a lesson (after all, isn't that what this site is all about?  bullying movies into being more acceptable of the gays?).  But in The Benchwarmers, it's really all done just to have a laugh at the gays.  All done negatively.

In the movie, bullies and nerds are homophobes.  That's not a surprise in the case of the bullies (I'm not surprised by the homophobic gay bully even, internalized homophobia is common in that species).  If just the bullies were homophobes, the movie could actually possibly throw a positive light on us.  But the nerdy Benchwarmers also offer homophobia.  Sad.

In one scene, Craig Kilborn (the only mildly hot guy in the movie) is giving Rob Schneider, David Spade and Jon Heder a hard time and Rob Schneider calls him Jerry, the Fairy.  For the last time, I love fairies and fairies are good for the gays.  But it's bad to have a nice word, fairy, used as a slur.  I don't think fairy was used as a slur in Lucky Number Slevin.  But it was used as a slur in The Benchwarmers.

Later on, the bully who turns out to be gay calls the benchwarmers "she-men."  Nice, I'm not even done with the review and the movie was already able to offend pretty much the whole spectrum of the gays: lesbians, gay men, and trannies.  Real nice, only bisexuals were left out.  The bully returns again to call the benchwarmers "the three musketqueers."  Again, growing up hearing that to be gay is a bad thing is tough, we have all been there, and it makes it hard not to have internalized homophobia, but positive depictions can help, and it would be nice to see those depictions in comedies.  The Benchwarmers just added to the existing hatred.

When we find out the bully is gay I just wanted to purple nipple Adam Sandler, the producer (well, I got to take it with someone, right?).  The bully has a boyfriend that spends all of his scenes in tight and tacky speedos.  Everything was wrong with his scenes and he was used just as the butt of jokes.

I have no doubt that, if you are a teenager -- and there were lots of them in the theater I went to -- and you saw this movie, and if you are gay, you are going to try to hide it.  You do not want to be gay if you see this movie.  That all makes the nice portrayal of queens, like the little kid in Yours, Mine and Ours (just to stick to bad movies) even more important.

Homophobia was peppered throughout the movie.  Really, it was present in a quite large part of the plot. 

Date Movie is a good recent example of a comedy where homophobia could have prevailed, but didn't.

Shame on everybody involved with this ginormous piece of crap and I hope they enjoy their company at Shipwreck Zero.  Shame on Allen Covert and Nick Swardson, the writers, for writing a bad, homophobic movie.  And there's so much PPL you'll think you're reading the Queer Beacon.

In summary, the message once again (see Inside Man) is: everybody is avenged, but not the gays, screw the gays.  I am foaming at the mouth.

Find Me Guilty (2006) - Shipwreck 0

Mediocre movie.  I don't really know what is the fuss with Vin Diesel's performance.  I think he was good for the role, but come on, he played himself.  That's all. 

I am livid with the representation of gays in the movie.  Terrible.  The first Shipwreck 0. So far, this is the movie with the worst representation of gays on this blog, of all my gay movie reviews.

Here, Vin Diesel plays a small time gangster who is asked by the district attorney's office to rat on his gangster buddies.  He doesn't rat and as a result he spends 2 hours and 20 minutes of our time in a courtroom drama.  He is his own lawyer.  It felt long.

I must confess I was already a little riled up by Vin Diesel's behavior in his last Details' interview (page 132 in the magazine, middle of third column).  The Details interview reminds us of a recent confrontation Diesel had regarding his sexuality.  He doesn't deny the gay rumur, but here is his reaction when he was asked if he was gay: "I was like, 'How could you say that? Why would you say that?'' says Diesel."  All mad at the reporter who asked whether he was gay.  Not nice, right?  Like it is a bad thing.

Now to the movie.  The movie had so many homophobic slurs and scenes that it was difficult to keep track.  It appears the script replaced all the "commas" with the word "cocksucker."  The first time it is used by Diesel to refer to a lawyer he doesn't like anymore (and he then decides to represent himself, 'cause he's so smart).  Then it's used by Linus Roache, who plays the lead district attorney.  Then by the mob guys.  Everyone jumps in, it's amazing.

Linus Roache tells Diesel that if he doesn't cooperate, the only love he'll get is dick in prison.  All bad.

The Italian gangsters call an Italian artist a faggot, and claim the artist was fucked by one of the gangsters' grandfathers.  There's so much of it.  You wouldn't believe.

In one of the worst scenes, Vin Diesel is cross examining this witness and Diesel suggests that the reason Diesel had not been nice to the witness in the past is because the witness is a cocksucker who was caught trying to suck Vin Diesel's cock and Vin Diesel threw him out of the house.  In that scene, Vin Diesel offers the witness a lollipop, a pink lollipop.  The judge pretty much lets everything happen.  Bad.  Really bad.  Everyone laughs in the courtroom.

The only good acting scene in the movie was delivered by Annabella Sciorra.

She is Vin Diesel's wife in the movie.  Her appearance is brief but superb.  Unfortunately, her character was not spared of homophobic slurs.  When asked if she had been submitted to search in order to visit her husband in prison, she says she was searched, but at least it was by a female police, or what she thought could have been female.  All bad.

Nothing good is thrown for the gays.  No crumbs here.  Shame on the writers (Sidney Lumet and T.J. Mancini) for letting that much homophobia in a movie.  Italians and women should also feel degraded by the movie.