Was It Good For The Gays: ‘In & Out’

If you’re going to make a movie about queer people, you’re likely going to get a divisive response. Does it reinforce negative stereotypes? Does it provide an accurate cross-section of the diverse LGBT community? How many think pieces will it incite? In this regular column, we’ll look at depictions of queers in cinema and ask, Was It Good For The Gays? Today, a look at Frank Oz’s comedy, In & Out.

Coming out was a hot-button topic in the heady days of 1997. Ellen DeGeneres famously came out publicly on the cover of Time magazine and on her sitcom, instigating a national, public conversation about the private lives of gay people. Just a few months later, in September, In & Out was released nationwide. It was a light-hearted comedy inspired by another real-life event from a few years before, when Tom Hanks won his first Oscar for his role in Philadelphia as an AIDS patient. In his acceptance speech, Hanks thanked two openly gay men he has known who shaped his worldview: his drama teacher, and a former classmate.

In & Out, directed by Frank Oz and written by openly gay playwright Paul Rudnick, used the Tom Hanks acceptance speech as the basis for their film. When a young Hollywood heartthrob (played by Matt Dillon) wins an Oscar for playing a gay soldier, he thanks his high school English teacher, Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline) in his speech — and reveals that he’s gay. It comes as a complete surprise to Howard, and to his fiancée, Emily (Joan Cusack). Suddenly, Howard finds himself in the middle of an identity crisis, desperately trying to prove his heterosexuality to everyone: his girlfriend, his parents, his students, his colleagues, and even a gay entertainment reporter named Peter Molloy (Tom Selleck), who came to the small town of Greenleaf, Indiana, to cover the story — and ends up trying to coax Howard out of the closet.

In & Out sounds like a late-’90s relic — and, to be honest, it really felt like it when I rewatched it this week for the first time since I saw it 17 years ago. How does it hold up, and is it a positive look at the gay experience? Let’s break it down.

The Pros: On the one hand, it’s nice to see a mainstream movie about gay people that doesn’t end with one (or all) of them dying. And it’s also a delight to see what is, for the most part, a basic truth about coming out: the only person who really ever worries about it is the person who has to be doing the coming out. Once it’s all over, and once one can be honest with himself and with others, there a great absence of anxiety.

Howard does, eventually, realize he’s gay — in dramatic form, he comes out at his wedding ceremony. And while there’s a bit of a third-act conflict as he loses his job, it all wraps itself up in convenient fashion when Howard’s family and neighbors rush to his defense in a crowd-pleasing manner at the high school graduation ceremony (conveniently the day after Howard and Emily’s wedding). In an effort to show how Howard’s personal life has no effect on his abilities as a teacher, the entire town takes turns standing up and shouting “I’m gay!” to demonstrate that it’s a perfectly silly notion to suggest that a teacher’s sexual identity would “rub off” on his students.

The Cons: Hoo, boy. While In & Out means well and shows, well, It’s OK To Be Gay!, it doesn’t particularly help that it’s riddled with ridiculous stereotypes about gay men. Sure, it’s a comedy, but it’s a bit too broad and only reinforces the notions that all gay men are mincing, Streisand-loving, sexless fellows with a penchant for bow ties and musical theater. There are two gay men here, and they are direct opposite from the rather terrifying leather daddies in Cruising, as if Hollywood has no concept of a happy medium. Yes, both of these kinds of gay men exist, and, to quote Seinfeld, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But if you’re going to make an attempt at diversifying the screen, it’d help if you didn’t play with such extreme examples of a marginalized community.

Not to mention the notion that gay men are all effeminate. I dunno about you, but I find the whole dichotomy of either being masculine or feminine to be pretty damn boring. Is this what we really should be concerning ourselves with? Of course, that dichotomy is still present, with most gay men feeling pressure from each other (and, by proxy, from media like film) to fit into one box or another. It’s why the scene in which Howard consults a book-on-tape in order to regain his masculinity, only to be berated by the faceless narrator on the tape for dancing to a disco song, is so, well, stupid. Are we really going to suggest that gay men are gay because of these superficial qualities and not because, say, they are sexually and romantically attracted to other men?

Plus, there’s the controversial ten-second kiss between Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck, which did less for “visibility” and more for a shock-based sight gag.

The Verdict: Was In & Out good for the gays? I’m going to say no. The thing that struck me when I saw it as a 14-year-old, one who was admittedly confused about who (or what) I “was” and wouldn’t fully understand it for a few more years, was how it didn’t make me think that being gay was a good thing. Sure, it all worked out for Howard in the end: he got his job back, his girlfriend forgave him (she also conveniently got together with Matt Dillon’s character, because, why not?), his family and friends still loved him, and he got a boyfriend out of it, too (Peter Molloy, obviously — because naturally the only two gay men in this film would end up together).

But In & Out still depicts the gay experience as something to laugh at. To be gay meant that you were nerdy, effeminate, loved showtunes and Barbra Streisand movies, and had a high-pitched voice. And that scared me, because I didn’t want to be those things as a teenager, because none of those qualities were what anybody I knew thought were interesting. Years later, I recognize I’m a little nerdy, I love going to musicals, I think Barbra Streisand’s Stoney End is an amazing album, and my voice fluctuates as often as my hands move around when I talk excitedly about something. But I came to recognize that those things were OK on my own (and also knowing that anyone who had a problem with it could, well, fuck right off). I didn’t need In & Out to prove those things to me, because it did the opposite: it made those everyday inoffensive things into jokes to laugh at. I’d say it did more harm than good.

But at the end of the day, In & Out is mostly offensive because it’s not a very good movie. It’s formulaic and rather dumb — and, yes, The Village People’s “Macho Man” is heard twice. But like most bad movies, it has its fun moments. Joan Cusack more than deserved her Oscar nomination for her hilarious performance, and it’s quite a treat to see Wilford Brimley announce that he’s gay while standing next to Debbie Reynolds. And I’ll forgive Frank Oz and Paul Rudnick for the lame Streisand jokes (and the costume designer for Tom Selleck’s ugly ties), but only because June Squibb’s minor character reveals, with perfect dead-pan delivery, the following line: “My husband has three testicles, and it’s disgusting.”

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Photos: Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection