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Hollywood, after all, is a town where gay men run major production companies, direct big-budget movies and star in burly action adventures. Yet only a few studio pictures have depicted even subsidiary homosexual characters. Among the recent ones: the lesbian cop in Internal Affairs; Michelle Pfeiffer's gay neighbor in Frankie and Johnnie; the young black in Six Degrees of Separation; Harvey Fierstein as Robin Williams' brother in Mrs. Doubtfire.
When movie gays are prominent, it is often as murderous villains or vixens -- in Cruising, in Basic Instinct and (though Demme denies the killer is gay) in The Silence of the Lambs. Philadelphia would say of gay men, No, they are / also victims. Perhaps gays are more endearing to the average moviegoer if they are nobly wasting away rather than showing affection or passion.
Those feelings, in Hollywood movies, have always been the privilege of heterosexuals. Anything else was a threat, a jolt, anathema to the theology of movie fantasy. In 1936, when Samuel Goldwyn filmed These Three, from Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour, he removed the accusation of lesbianism from the plot. In 1947's Crossfire, RKO changed the homophobia theme to anti- Semitism. Interracial tolerance was in the air; homoeroticism may have lurked under every gruff bonding between cowboys, gangsters or G.I.s, but as for gay love, Hollywood dared not speak its name.
At heart, Kramer asserts, "it's all about money. They say there's no gay movie that has made money. Well, no movie about gay men has ever been financed by a major studio, except the 1982 Making Love, and that was terrible. So we have no data to base these theories on." Considering that the major studios release hundreds of films a year, Kramer asks, shouldn't a few of them acknowledge the existence of gays? "We're not asking Hollywood to make Gone With the Wind or Jurassic Park. They don't have to bankrupt the company or defraud the stockholders. We're talking $10 million or $15 million -- less if you try hard. To Matsushita or Sony or Disney, $10 million is toilet-paper money."
Are there enough homosexuals to support movies? The answer, on a small scale, is yes. Niche marketing has worked for blacks, for tots, for older women. These days the small, independent film movement, like theater and the book industry, tolerates and promotes gay themes. Some of last year's most successful independent movies -- Farewell My Concubine, The Wedding Banquet, Orlando -- were homo-, bi- or pansexual in spirit. "A film like The Wedding Banquet is more beloved by gays," says Richard Jennings, executive director of the lobby group Hollywood Supports, "because it's made for the gay community. We can more readily identify with it."
Oddly enough, some of the most sensitive work dealing with homosexuality can be found on TV. Murphy Brown and Roseanne have featured amiable gay characters; how far behind TV dare the movies be? As film critic David Ehrenstein says, "The entire history of the cinema is about the mass audience forging an emotional identification with people whose experiences are not like theirs. You don't have to be a dockworker to identify with Brando in On the Waterfront or a Southern belle to identify with Scarlett O'Hara. If you create a persuasive character, the audience will come."