Fast Food

Did I mention this yet? Digital video sucks.

At least, it does now. I went to see Eating Out at the E Street. I know digital projection is eventually going to be the wave of the future, but currently, you can see the pixellations and the jags, and it's irritating. OK, rant off.

It's hard to excel at genre cinema. It can be done. There are great Westerns and science fiction, but by and large, trying to appeal to a certain audience with a certain genre makes for only a pleasant experience. Eating Out is about a straight guy, who's told by his gay roommate that acting gay makes one attractive to the opposite sex. The straight guy is blandly hunky Scott Lunsford. He's just broken up with Tiffani who seems like a Pamela Sue wannabe, and wants to date Gwen, the spunky gal, who also has a gay roommate (it's so in vogue, even at this phrase isn't).

Eating Out started with a clever scene, which I'm surprised they could got away with, given how movies usually start. For a while, it looked like it was going to be horrible, but ended up OK. The film never takes things too seriously, using clever one line insults throughout.

You can either call this a romantic comedy or a screwball comedy (though apparently, defining a screwball comedy is not so easy). A romantic comedy typically is boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy breaks up with girl, boy gets back together with girl. It's such a tried-and-true formula, yet the average filmgoer often doesn't realize the formula. Certainly, I didn't until a few years ago.

A screwball comedy apparently has bickering, fast dialogue, people pretending to be who they aren't. This film fits that description more closely. Basically, a straight guy wants to make it with women, and is convinced by his roommate to act gay. He's cute, but a little uncertain how to act gay, and basically comes across as shy and not-too-bright, in a jockish sort of way.

The girl he's interested in has a gay roommate, Marc, who really finds the Caleb (who he thinks is gay) cute, and wants to go on a date. The hottest scene (of a sort) occurs after Marc and Caleb are in Marc's house (who lives with Gwen, the girl Caleb wants). Caleb wants to avoid fooling around with Marc, and is hoping Gwen is around to meet up with her. She's at some relative's place, wanting to leave. She calls in, and essentially engages in phone sex, while having Marc fool around with Caleb.

The main scene, at the end of the film, involves a dinner with Marc and Caleb, Gwen, and Caleb's entire family, and Kyle, who is Caleb's gay roommate. There's misunderstanding, fast one liners. It's funny but not all that satisfying.

Eating Out doesn't really have much of a protaganist. Most of the time is spent with Caleb and Gwen, but Caleb doesn't have that much of a personality. Marc, played by Ryan Carnes (who now is on Desperate Housewives) is a little better as the gay musician who once dated Gwen before he realized he was gay. Kyle, too, is not much of a character. He's there to give advice to Caleb as he pines to meet up with Marc, who won't give him the time of day. You know what is going to happen between Kyle and Marc, but the ending simply makes no sense.

There are formulaic elements of gay comedies. Double entendre titles ("Eating Out", "In and Out", hmm, OK, those are about the only two tiles I could find that fit that category) are common (or not). It helps to have attractive leads. Kyle, Caleb, and Marc are all played by attractive men. It helps, in gay films, to have a little flesh, and this film provides it. These days, it's almost (but not quite) obligatory to have some kind of sex scene, though usually, not of a terribly graphic nature (being a comedy).

There are parts of this film that are somewhat good, but much of it is bad. It only rises above a sitcom because it has plenty of funny lines. But the characters and acting are done broadly, the situations aren't very clever, and scenes that feel too awkward, as if the characters are wondering how to act. To its credit, this is something of a screwball comedy, so there's no attempt to make this a very realistic film, though they try to touch on feelings these characters might have, were such a ludicrous situation possible.

I'm looking forward to watching Mysterious Skin, which is a serious film by Gregg Araki. Araki's films haven't always been that easy to watch, some of it due to cinematic inexperience, some of it due to subject. I've seen The Living End, about two angry gay men dealing with HIV, and The Doom Generation, a road trip with two guys and a girl, which has a harrowing ending. Mysterious Skin is based on a novel, and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, formerly of Third Rock from the Sun, who's starting to develop as a top-notch actor (or so I hear). This is supposed to be one of his better performances.

In gay cinema, I'm looking forward to seeing Brokeback Mountain to be directed by Ang Lee and starring Jake Gylenhall and Heath Ledger, as two gay cowboys, based on a short story by Annie Proulx. It's scheduled to come out in December. Rumors are that Ang Lee (possibly due to pressure by the actors) is going to cut down on the explicitness of the relationship, although I hope it won't be the kind of hatchet job Spielberg did to The Color Purple (he barely hints at lesbianism, even though the book is more forthright).

My other concern is that Ang Lee has been somewhat uneven in his career. Hulk was considered weak as a comic book made to film. On a positive note, Lee has directed a gay film (The Wedding Banquet) back before he filmed in English (Ang Lee actually did his film training at NYU, once serving on the crew for Spike Lee). I enjoyed The Wedding Banquet, even if the ending was way contrived (a deus ex machina kind of ending).

Gay cinema needs better movies, especially in comedies. Many comedies are only marginally better than TV sitcoms. I understand that it's hard to do good comedy---very hard. Drama is much easier. I'd be happy to see a good gay drama (a lot of them aren't very good either). There was once a rumor that Rupert Everett might do a gay James Bond-like character. Given how dreadful most Bond films are, maybe, in the right hands, that would be an interesting twist.

By the way, I need to write on The Woodman. This film touches on a topic that's difficult one for filmmakers to make, and for marketers to market (yes, pedophilia). While this film is well-acted enough, there are so many things wrong with this film (and I don't mind the subject matter, because I think it's worth addressing in film), that it outweighs the one thing that it gets right (or seems to). Anyway, that's for another post.