Boy Movies #66

Prepping for Challengers with some classic MMF

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Year of the threesome

In January, I brazenly put us all on Throuple Watch for 2024. With Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers currently storming its way across the world stage, my point is finally, loudly being proven. (Loyal Boy Movies readers have already been here for months thanks to Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Jennifer Lopez — did you hear Matt and JLo recently had lunch together, by the way? Which, as always, could mean nothing.) It’s not that throuples, specifically MMF throuples, ever stopped being a thing in film. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a formative boy-boy-girl text, was huge for me in my youth, and there’s a good chance it was, at some point in your life, huge for you too. There’s Y tu mamá también… and Cabaret… and Fight Club… and Zoolander… etcetera. A precedent exists. I think the main reason the MMF throuple is so much fun is because it gives a little something for everyone, both within the boundaries of the relationship and to the viewer looking in. It’s sexy and fun and curious during a time where so few things are sexy or fun or curious.

In the case of Challengers, which isn’t so much a new concept as it is the most high-profile version of the throuple we’ve seen in a while¹, Zendaya provides something for the girls while the sports backdrop provides something for the boys. (Speaking as someone who knows nothing, tennis does seem like a girl sport, but work with me here.) I’m seeing Challengers later this evening, but to get in the mood I watched a movie that has basically been requested since the day this newsletter launched², Rebel Without a Cause. Welcome to the first ever Boy Movies Classic Movie Hour, presented by Challengers³.

Like… okay…

Do you need me to tell you what Rebel Without a Cause is about? I will, because I honestly did not know until hitting play: James Dean, famous dead hottie who I mostly knew from that screen test he did with Paul Newman⁴, plays Jim Stark, a troubled “teen” (what teen has ever looked like that) who feels misunderstood by his parents and the world at large. After moving to Los Angeles with his family, he meets Judy (Natalie Wood), a girl who feels misunderstood because she wants to kiss her dad on the mouth and he won’t let her anymore, and Plato (Sal Mineo), a freaky ass obviously gay Italian American, and a series of dramatic escalations occur after the film’s designated bully dares to call Jim… a chicken. The ‘50s were nothing if not goofy.

It’s not an original observation to acknowledge how funny it is that this is what turned James Dean into an eternal boy movie icon. The word I’ve heard most commonly associated with his performance in Rebel Without a Cause is brooding, which, sure, of course, though it’s quite funny and vulnerable and natural in a uniquely appealing way as well. He moves with ease and melts down with cathartic explosions of feeling. It’s easy to project whatever you want on Dean because he died so young with only a small handful of movies to his name, and the debate about whether he was gay or bisexual or straight in his personal life rages on to this day, but from my view, I fear I have stumbled on another long-term case of men across history misinterpreting the actions of another man. This is what looking cool smoking a cigarette and/or wearing cowboy hats does to a guy’s legacy — it confuses the masses.

Rebel Without a Cause is a movie about the fallout of a man’s masculinity being called into question (death and destruction) but it’s also a movie about a mentally ill teen who has both a loyal girlfriend and a loyal boyfriend. In one scene, Jim doesn’t reply when Plato tells him he wishes Jim — his peer — could have been his father; in another, Jim replies to Judy’s flowery confession of love with an uncomfortable, “Well, I'm glad.” There’s something so painfully exploratory about the whole thing: Jim is so unbelievably alluringly hot that everyone wants him, but inside he’s just a kid. How is he supposed to know what he wants yet? He’s found himself in the middle of a trio of misfits and only wishes he could escape with them. The rest, if the fates would just align properly, can be figured out later.

Like many other MMF films, Rebel Without a Cause falls somewhere in the murky middle between boy movie and girl movie. Its boyishness is obvious and its girlishness is surprising, like a hidden message only some will understand. And isn’t that just so fitting for a concept that is inherently about people not content to choose just one thing?

1. All my respect to Passages, but the only people who saw that in theaters were people who follow MUBI on Instagram.

2. See, I always get to reader requests! Even if it takes me a year and a half!

3. Jk, Boy Movies is unaffiliated with Amazon Studios but would happily accept paid sponsorship.

4. I have never claimed to be cultured!!!