I’m sorry that Bros flopped — perhaps an understandable thing from a Joe Popcorn perspective but a deeply wounding thing from the viewpoint of the Movie Godz, given the generally excellent craft levels — tight script construction, naturalistic acting, revelatory writing, etc.
All I can figure is that people know Billy Eichner from Billy on the Street and Parks and Recreation, and they just didn’t want to watch him in flagrante delicto.
Over the last 20-plus years Average Joes and Janes have gone through a sea-change in their attitudes about gay people, but generally speaking they don’t want to pay $16 at the megaplexes to watch certain bearded guys doing certain things bare-assed.
Last weekend Bros producer Judd Apatow told CNN’s Chris Wallace that the gay community has been “underserved.” Did he mean in terms of sex scenes featuring bearded guys or hunky good looking ones like Luke Macfarlane? No offense and due respect but given what happened last weekend, the gay community should probably get accustomed to being “underserved” in this regard.
It probably wouid have been more comprehensive to say to Wallace that over the last 20 or 30 years the gay community has been slavishly catered to by Hollywood six ways from Sunday, and particularly by way of emotional investments in films and TV series, general glamorizing, image enhancements and political alignments.
Apatow’s response to Wallace about his preference for “just funny”, or the stuff that many comedies put into their first halves, because he lives an overworked and over-stressed life…that was funny.
Apatow also mentioned how his two daughters, Maude and Iris, never let him soak in any sort of satisfaction when a civilian compliment comes along. When some random passerby praises Apatow for one of his comedies, say, “as soon as he’s out of earshot they’ll make fun of that person for, like, ten minutes.”