Boy Movies #70

They let me sit in the same room as Austin Butler

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I’ll elaborate

Just when I thought my 2024 Gemini season was unsalvageable, Austin Butler swooped in at the last second, much like he did when I walked unwittingly into the movie theater to see Elvis in 2022 — and happy anniversary to my fellow thought leaders. Loyal subscribers to the Boy Movies newsletter will of course remember that The Bikeriders, the Jeff Nichols-directed motorcycle drama, was far and away my most anticipated movie of the year, and that I have been breathlessly following its somewhat arduous journey onto the world stage. This is not because I like or care about motorcycles, and not even because I’m particularly interested in learning more about the ‘60s (despite being such a Beatlemaniac that I recently spent my birthday wandering Paul McCartney’s photography exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum). Obviously it is because Austin Butler is my blonde man of choice and I will watch him do anything. That, and I like it when Tom Hardy speaks in a funny little voice. (So, always.)

I have now seen The Bikeriders twice (does anyone want to buy me this lmao), but for today’s issue, I will finally break my silence on what happened the first time I saw it — or, really, what happened when I saw Austin Butler do a Q&A after I saw it for the first time. Nearly every single person I’ve told about this has responded, “Boy Movies recap issue when?” Okay, you fucking vultures, HERE IT IS.

Well, first of all, you would’ve thought friend of the newsletter Daniela, who I went with, and I were attending our debutante ball. We were “jokingly” texting each other about getting blowouts and buying ball gowns (“haha”). I did end up spending too much time picking out an outfit, like every single tweet about the girls who would shave their entire bodies to attend One Direction concerts. The vibe at AMC Lincoln Square wasn’t not like that, the line just to get your tickets scanned so long that it wrapped around the entire anteroom. It was impossible to tell who was there for The Bikeriders and who was there for Kinds of Kindness (will Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s combined reign of terror ever end), which was also out that evening. It became clear once we sat down that The Bikeriders was, somewhat shockingly, a girls and gays event. Gay guys in vintage Harley Davidson tank tops filed in around lesbians clutching bike helmets. There were straight guys there, of course — aren’t there always — but they were vastly outnumbered. And what is there to say about that other than happy Pride?

Our seats were the last two in the row; Daniela insisted I take the aisle in case Austin happened to walk up on my side after the movie, which is one of the most selfless things a friend has ever done for me. As we sat chatting while the theater filled up, I pulled out my Fenty Beauty Invisimatte Instant Setting + Blotting Powder™ (not an ad but please sponsor me, Rihanna) to dab the oil my father’s genes cursed me with off my face, to which Daniela responded, “Not this.” When I glanced at my phone I saw a text from Ariana sitting at the top of my notifications that read “i can’t believe u r probably making out with austin right this second.” I’m sorry, but the last time I saw Austin on a movie screen he was playing a nasty baldheaded freak and I did not like that one bit so it was a big night for me.

Do you want me to talk about the movie? Okay, I will: The Bikeriders is good. I have been describing it as the Platonic ideal of a three and a half star film, which to me is a compliment. It might even be one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, but I do think 2024’s film offerings so far have been Dud City¹ and I was also blinded by love and lust so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt. Don’t let me dictate whether you should spend money on a ticket to The Bikeriders. What I will say is that it is absolutely a boy movie due to its vast amount of boys being boys doing boy things. Like Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer² and Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon before her, the only woman character allowed to meaningfully speak in the entire movie is Jodie Comer, playing Wife. (I love that these male-dominated period pieces keep coming out because it keeps giving me the opportunity to say, “Everyone who wasn’t in Oppenheimer is in this,” and that is one of my favorite things to say.)

What makes the movie interesting is how Jeff Nichols chooses to frame a mostly mute (more on this later) Austin Butler. The camera treats him like he’s Helen of Troy and the script treats him like he’s Marilyn Monroe. When Jodie Comer’s Kathy first sees Austin’s Benny, she stops in her tracks. Time slows. Nichols cuts to Tom Hardy’s Johnny watching Kathy watching Benny, sizing up his competition. Kathy’s friend tells her that nobody wants to date Benny because he falls off his bike a lot or something, but the movie barely seems to believe that: “Five weeks later I married him,” Kathy says, grinning devilishly. Nichols knows everybody who sees Benny wants him. How could you not? He’s stupidly beautiful and literally everyone knows it. I didn’t have the slightest clue that The Bikeriders would be our second MMF offering of the year; when Kathy storms up to Johnny to tell him, “He’s mine, you can’t have him,” I was like, “Oh, they’re just coming right out and saying it, huh?” Don’t even get me started on the scene where Johnny, trying to convince Benny to agree to be his successor as head of the motorcycle club, moves to stand so close to him that from certain angles it looks like they’re kissing — people in my theater started tittering like, “Are they about to…?” What a bold, beautiful stance for a boy movie’s femme fatale to be its male lead.

When it came time for the Q&A, and I don’t know how to say this in a way that makes me sound normal so I’m just going to say it how I say it, you could truly feel the energy in the room shift. It was like everyone collectively leaned forward a bit, like that would get them closer to Austin. Because of the (incorrect) mass mocking of Elvis, everyone seems unaware that he is a gorgeous and magnetic person, which is how we end up with the masses gagged by how effortlessly he is able to discombobulate every single woman who interviews him. Some of us have known this. And yet: I was still pretty gagged being in the same room as him. It was like being thirteen again, giggling and twirling my hair every time he spoke.

When the moderator brought up how little his character speaks and Austin responded, “No, no, they didn’t allow me to say many things… there’s just baby oil all over my body,” I let out a full-blown Zendaya laugh. He told a fun story about Tom Hardy having the idea to reframe the scene I described above to give it its sexual edge and said that it’s rare to have someone that close to your face unless they’re going to “punch or kiss you,” which had everyone teeheeing. What else? In the middle of the heatwave that plagued New York last week, he wore a chic black sweater. At a certain point I became convinced that we were making eye contact, despite me sitting in the back of the extremely packed theater. I have no photos from the event because, as I explained to Daniela on our way out, if Austin recognized my phone case he would never be interested in speaking to me — I’d be just another fan. “These are the things we have to think about,” she responded, and they are. Overall, it was not a strong showing for feminism, but it was an important moment for me. Sometimes you need to get delusionally horny for Austin Butler in public in order to remember why you keep going.

So what else is up?

This has been one of the weirdest Junes I’ve had in a while, amid an altogether very weird year. I moved at the beginning of the month and am still majorly in a place of adjustment, both physically and emotionally. I haven’t accomplished much these past few weeks but I keep looking back at all I did manage to do and thinking, “Who the hell did that?” Seeing The Bikeriders a second time was me forcing myself to get my money’s worth for my beloved AMC A-List subscription this month. Maybe things will be better in July, or maybe they won’t, but I’m making a concentrated effort to not put too much pressure on myself either way. Anyway, here’s a quick round-up of the few boy-coded odds and ends I’ve made time to watch recently:

• Hit Man: The definition of a three-star movie. It’s so watchable and so forgettable. Deeply boy, especially because it’s built around proving that Glen Powell is a leading man. Girl, we know!

• Rumble in the Bronx: Katie and I went to see this on a whim as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s cute little ‘90s series. It is pure nonsense action, and very much a boy movie, as evidenced by the fact that there was a huge group of about eight boys sitting in front of us and I heard them talking about Letterboxd on the way out.

• Split, and the sequel to Split, Glass: Trying to become an M. Night completionist, especially before my SECOND most anticipated movie of the year, Josh Hartnett’s Fine Ass Presents Trap. James McAvoy is such a powerhouse in these it’s crazy? Glass made me SOOOOOO sad about Bruce Willis :(

• Avatar: My dear friend and sister in newslettering Nicole is the biggest Avatar fan I know, and I finally let her show it to me. I became the last person on the planet to watch this, and guess what? It’s good! I had a great time and I finally get what everyone was going on about in 2009. James Cameron is a mad genius, I fear. I am not interested in starting Avatar discourse in the year 2024 so please do not respond to this and tell me why it’s actually bad. The Na’vi are so scary they send chills down my spine! And yet I am intrigued by them??? Cameron, you tricky bastard…

• Entourage rewatch. Not a boy movie, but the most boy show ever made. I started this rewatch the night I moved, when I was at peak exhaustion and had just cried for like thirty minutes straight. Entourage… how do I explain my relationship to this show? I started watching it when I was fifteen, days after my dad died, and it became my horrid little lifeline. It was already bad when it aired but has aged atrociously. It might be the worst show of all time. I cannot believe it exists. I cannot believe the kind of virulently racist, homophobic, and misogynistic jokes they used to be able to get away with saying on TV. It’s fascinating! I’ll probably do an issue on it eventually, which will certainly lose me every subscriber I have amassed, but that’s on being fearlessly real.

1. Aside from Madame Web <3

2. “But what about Florence P—” Don’t piss me off.