You’re reading Boy Movies. My birthday is on Thursday and for that reason I feel no qualms about asking you to pledge a (potential, future) paid subscription, nor do I feel any qualms about telling you this week’s dispatch will be a short one — just a trio of stray thoughts about some movies I’ve seen recently. Subscribe and tell a friend!!!
Explain it to me like I'm a six-year-old
Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Antonio Banderas, Ann Dowd, and Mary Steenburgen in one film — can you imagine? You don’t have to imagine, because such a film exists: Philadelphia, Jonathan Demme’s 1993 legal drama, starring Hanks as a gay man dying of AIDS who hires a lawyer, played by Washington, to represent him when he sues the partners at his former law firm for wrongful termination. I once wondered whether a boy movie could also be a gay movie, and Philadelphia, I think, is the closest we’ve ever gotten. It’s mostly the legal drama of it all. Men are obsessed with legal dramas; I’m mostly only obsessed with legal dramas when an on-fire Denzel Washington is playing one of the lawyers.
Philadelphia1’s legacy is forever associated with an age-old narrative, the one in which a straight actor wins an Oscar for playing gay. It probably only resonated with mainstream audiences because the small amount of gay content it does have is so tame. Hanks and Banderas, who plays his partner — and, by the way, is so stunning in this that it makes me sick just to think about which I guess is neither here nor there but matters a lot to me — don’t even kiss. If you had the opportunity to make a young Tom Hanks kiss a young Antonio Banderas, why wouldn’t you, Jonathan Demme? And yet there’s so much to love about it, like the cautious chemistry between Hanks and Washington, two of our greats who have in the years since fallen into odd, amorphous, untouchably famous territory. In many senses, Philadelphia, in all of its near-cloying sensitivity, is a monument to what once was.
I’m from Waterloo! Where the vampires hang out!
BlackBerry is The Social Network. BlackBerry is Succession. No, okay, BlackBerry is neither of these things. Rather, BlackBerry is a movie made by a fan of both The Social Network and Succession who thought, “Yeah, I can do that.” BlackBerry is, nonetheless, pretty good. Or, well, I don’t know, it’s entertaining and well-acted without always being cohesive and that’s enough for me. Maybe it’s harder to be objective about the parts that lost me when I’m predisposed to love every Social Network knockoff that rolls down the conveyor belt. Director Matthew Johnson certainly ensures that BlackBerry has a lot of the same qualities as the ones so essential to permanently changing my brain chemistry in 2010: the innovative piece of tech2, the scrappy nerd genius with a boy best friend he eventually betrays, the eccentric interloper who gets in the middle of everything. There are times where the score even sounds, to be kind, like a bargain bin version of the Social Network soundtrack.
There’s a conversation going on between BlackBerry and Air as well. Both are creation myths, although Air is more optimistic than the bitingly cynical BlackBerry. The popularity of this type of movie is a no-brainer, especially when it comes to something like the BlackBerry, a capitalistic venture that was ultimately killed by late capitalism. This is the perfect moment for a movie like BlackBerry to storm the world stage, during this era where we — the royal “we” — have become fixated on shouting out the word “capitalism” and letting it bounce around the walls of our collective echo chamber without actually assigning it any meaning. Capitalism! What a bummer! Anyway, Glenn Howerton is so much goddamn fun in this I can barely stand it.
They said I was gonna die soon, but maybe not
It’s been many months since the shattering success of Fincher February, but I’ve just recently seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the first time and would like to briefly discuss it with all of you. I know, I know, but I actually have something specific to bring up, which has less to do with the content of the film than it does with how long it took to get it made. Apparently, that’s because men were basically lining up around the block trying to get the chance to direct it, but none of them were able to get it off the ground. Here are just a few selections from the long list of directors who were at one point attached to the film adaptation of Benjamin Button before David Fincher signed on: Frank Oz, Steven Spielberg, Spike Jonze… I could go on. Interestingly, I can easily imagine all of their takes on it, which is both a fun and funky exercise. There’s not one version I wouldn’t watch. But what is it about this story, originally written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, that speaks so deeply to male filmmakers? Do they as creatives relate to Ben Butt’s struggle as an outsider? (They’re not jocks, which is what all men should be.) Do they like how the woman Ben Butt loved his whole life was kind of a bitch even though Ben Butt was always so kind to her? (Men are famous for being kind to women.) Do they just like how Ben Butt eventually gets sexy in the middle and starts fucking constantly? (Perhaps they find this relatable.) It vexes and compels me.
Ben Butt was one of my few remaining Fincher blindspots, mostly because I always thought I’d hate it for reasons that are not that deep. A lot of it boils down to the concept itself being too goofy for my tastes, even though I think the phrase “Benjamin Button disease” is one of the funniest things to say out loud. Its core theme, about how love will always end in loss, is so feminine, which is to say that I believe I, in all likelihood, will go the rest of my life without understanding why this story about a guy who ages in reverse branded itself onto the hearts of so many of our most famous male directors. Consider it one of life’s great mysteries — much like the existence of Benjamin Button disease within the Benjamin Button universe.
Cyst update
Let’s pound the going off alarm, because on Monday June 12th at 1:45pm Eastern, my cyst was removed :) At the time of writing, I am still in a fair amount of pain but I think the hard part is over. Thanks to everyone who sent me kind words and double thanks to my fellow cysters (gender neutral term) who sent me their cyst war stories and assured me everything would be fine.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” is one of my favorite songs. “The night has fallen, I'm lyin’ awake / I can feel myself fading away / So receive me brother with your faithless kiss / Or will we leave each other alone like this?” Like sorry for having two ears and a heart.
My second phone was a BlackBerry. What? Why? Who was I emailing? No one. Truly not a soul.
Happy belated Allison!!!! BM 4eva
My second phone was also a BlackBerry and I was asking myself the exact same question - maybe I was just secretly fascinated with vampires from waterloo without knowing??