Just like a supergerm, Hollywood's de-gaying of film advertising is mutating more rapidly and successfully than predicted. Tom Ford's trailer for A Single Man
has been replaced by the Weinsteins' completely straight version which edits out the names of the actors who play his lovers. Peter Knegt reports:
"The new trailer essentially is altered to suggest the core of the film is the relationship between Colin Firth and Julianne Moore’s characters, even removing from the end of the trailer the names of both Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult (who play Firth’s love interests). Moreover, in the first trailer, we see Firth’s character kiss both Goode and Moore, in the second we just get Moore. There’s also a sequence of shots in the first trailer which crosscuts Firth, who plays a professor in the film, staring into the eyes of both a female student and a male student. In the second, as you might guess, we only get the female (in a telling twist, instead of cutting to the male eyes, the trailer cuts to a quote from Entertainment Weekly saying '[Firth’s] performance is bound to win attention in this year’s Oscar race')."
And then there's the Guccification of Isherwood's classic gay novel: so wrong but so pretty.
Take it easy.
Posted by: ChiChi Fargo | November 10, 2009 at 09:25 AM
Good catch. They're trying to trick straight men into theaters with their dates who will think this is a domestic drama with good period clothes and sets. I know several gay empathetic straight men who just couldn't make it to see Brokeback Mountain even though they always saw all the top films every year. There's a gut resistance they can't get over.
Posted by: fraught | November 10, 2009 at 12:21 PM