Discuss: Having Gay Pride Doesn't Help the Box Office

by Monika Bartyzel Jun 17th 2008 // 9:02PM

Filed under: Gay & Lesbian, Distribution, Exhibition



As proclaimed by then-president Clinton, June is Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. Pride festivities and parades are gearing up across the world with a flurry of color and rainbows, but lately, it's been about more than just extravagant celebration. Gay marriage is now legal in California, and more people are coming out, like the indirectly out Jodie Foster. Yet, as a new article by Reuters reports, these advancements are not doing anything for the LGBT box office take.

Sure, they're talking about a lot of indie films no one has heard of, but it's not like all of those films are worth just small whispers of existence (where the only people who have heard of it worked on it). The article specifically mentions C.R.A.Z.Y., the 2005 film from Jean-Marc Vallee.

C.R.A.Z.Y. is a great, gay-themed movie from Montreal that popped up years ago, yet it still can't score US theatrical distribution. It's the story of a father and son in a family of 5 boys, where the son lives with the pressures of being a Christ figure to his mother (he was born on Christmas), and a gay young man who has to hide his true self from his father. (Check out Jette's review.) While it has some strange twists, especially at the end, C.R.A.Z.Y. is full of great music (from Patsy Cline to David Bowie) and enough heart that it won a bunch of Genie awards in Canada, as well as Best Canadian Feature at TIFF in 2005. It's not a film destined to surf the huge wave of indie flicks like Juno, but it's the sort that could've easily created a solid following, if given half a chance.

Instead, as the article points out, indie films like this are falling into the shadows of success on DVD, television, and the web. This is, of course, excluding some star-led films for Focus, which are receiving bigger buzz -- from Brokeback Mountain to the upcoming Milk.

What's keeping some of these films from success on the big screen? Is there still a fear of public outing? Distributor fear? Or, are these films just falling to the increasing disinterest in big-screen movie outings?

But this isn't just about the abstract discussion. C.R.A.Z.Y. is the film I champion, but it's only one of many. So, please share any small or no-buzz LGBT films that deserve more than the dust of disinterest. The way it's going, that's the only way that we'll hear about them.

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Tags: C.R.A.Z.Y., Cinematical, featured, gay film, GayFilm, LGBT

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