East Coast Friendo: “My wife and I went to see Bros at our local multiplex; 4pm show on a weekday, so there were fewer than five other people. We thought it was very funny, smart and moving.
“As I was thinking about why it’s been such a box-office flop, I think the idea that it feels too woke and preachy misses the mark. When you get right down to it, it was so obviously gay that I understand why it didn’t find a mass audience.
“It’s one thing for Will & Grace, essentially the minstrel version of gay people, to be popular. But I don’t think most moviegoers are ready to watch men kissing, simulating sex and making jokes about ‘your gigantic penis and my tiny little anus.’ I laughed, but I think it would make many people in the flyover squirm.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a mainstream Hollywood film which included an explicit romantic sex scene w/men having face-to-face intercourse while lying down (something you see in hetero romcoms all the time). I’ve also never seen one in which the role of ‘the bottom’ is as explicitly laid out as it is here, where the top says, ‘I want you to fuck me tonight.’
“I would imagine there are a lot of people who are interested in the film but wouldn’t want to be seen attending it or even be known to have watched it. So maybe it will find its audience when it streams and moves to the other platforms.”
West Coast Friendo: “You don’t see much sex in romcoms either. That’s the point. They’re basically grown up fairy tales for heterosexual women. The genre is called ROMANTIC comedy, not sex romp. Thrillers tended to have more sex in them, although even that has been purged.
“No romcom would have Tom Hanks with his hands on Meg Ryan’s boobs or ass on the poster.
“Bros. should have been put on Streaming or HBO where it would have been devoured by its target demo.
“Why didn’t it debut on streaming? Because it’s a missionary movie — its aim is not entertainment but conversion.
“I couldn’t even get a black gay friend to see it with me. ‘It looks stupid,’ he said.”
HE to East Coast Friendo: “Ahh, the joys of gay sex! You brought up Bros sex so allow me to continue the thread…
“What about the fat gay guy telling Eichner that some guy peed on another guy? Did you find that bit amusing or even appealing?
“I rolled with the graphic sexual behavior depictions in Bros, but I can’t honestly say they were particularly welcome.
“Like I said in one of my riffs, at times the depictions almost approached the graphic levels of Frank Ripploh’s Taxi Zum Klo.
“40-plus years ago Eddie Murphy’s ‘Mr. T in a gay bar’ routine was hilarious FOR A REASON. Apart from Murphy’s unfortnate use of the “f” word, it’s still funny. And the funniest line? Mr. T growling ‘I want you to come on over here, and fuck me in the ass.’
Hilarious then, but if you so much as snicker at such a scenario now you’re probably a homophobe and (who knows?) a possible candidate for cancellation.
“In the early ‘80s I knew a couple of women, Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Vera, who were into peeing in front of guys and even peeing on their fingers and then licking them. Which was borrowed from the hardcore gay scene.
“Where was the Sleepless in Seattle scene in which an erotically aroused Meg Ryan peed on Tom Hanks?.
“Straight people occasionally do anal, of course, so where was the Sleepless scene in which Hanks slid his big fat banana into Meg Ryan’s tiny little lubricated anus?
“Which world-class gay filmmaker gave us a scene in which a young blonde teenaged girl was forced to eat a human turd? Who was that again? Oh, yeah…Pier Paolo Pasolini.
“If I never watch another scene in which a hairy-chested guy is fucking another hairy-chested guy up the ass, it’ll be too soon.
“Thank God I haven’t watched a guy getting Crisco-fisted since I saw Billy Freidkin’s Cruising (’80).
“Plus there’s a representative element to straight sex…a possibility, however unlikely or unintended, that a pregnancy or even a child might result down the road. That bestows a certain mystical fairy dust, at least in the mind…almost a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval…a kind of historically holy biological notion that could accidentally (or even intentionally) result in the creation of a new life.
