So what? Surely you don’t think gay film should be denied the full range of comedy and tragedy, or that films about gays in bleak social surroundings (or the past) should be avoided.

The film is a crying howl against homophobia, external and internalized, and a great view of the damage done by the closet to both gays and those who become collateral damage in their sad marriages of gay-avoidance. And the love story works despite Ang’s formal approach, mostly due to the exceptional committment of the actors.

I KNOW what it was like to go to gay bars before Stonewall. Dance bars were like speakesies….no more gay than lesbians allowed on the dancefloor so that you could switch partners in a raid.

The local bar I went to was frequented by very cute vice cops dressed to entice the libido. If the bartender tipped off the customer, they both were arrested.

The owner was my friend, and since I was cute and 21, he and I had a code. I would say, “the usual” and if my gin and tonic wasn’t served, I drank my beer and discussed politics and religion and sports with the angry vice cop and then I would leave. This approach protected both my friend and I.

Yes, this was difficult. My father was a provincial legislator (MPP) and a Tory at that.

Imagine Canada today. Imagine Spain today…under Franco, it was prison for life….now you can marry.

If you say so, Mary……..and we have a bridge to sell you…

That’s funny.

Anything written by anyone in the comment section of any blog is an “in my opinion”. That’s a given. It’s also a given that there’s always gonna be some hateful douchebag who attacks those opinions for no real reason other than to spread their bitterness with life onto others.

I didn’t say it was a bad movie. I understand that a lot of people loved it. But in reality it was only OK, nothing special about it other than the significance to the gay community. It was the first of its kind and I recognize that, however, it WAS just a rehashed Lifetime TV movie, a chick flick for gay guys. You could have put Nancy McKeon or Tori Spelling together with some nameless male actor and you would have had the EXACT same movie on Lifetime or Oxygen.

And Jane Austin is just soap opera, and Hamlet is just a ghost story.

While I agree there was great novelty in it being an A-List gay love story, I sure can’t agree that it was *nothing* without that novelty. The movie had an incredible pedigree. If anything, Ang was too respectful and reverent about it, but the material did deserve to be treated with dignity. It’d be a shame to have its legacy cheapened by franchise commercialism–much like there were major social currents trying to cheapen the film throughout its run.

If we took away your keyboard, Jon, you would just be a drooling cretin with nowhere to type nonsense.

The original was a famous story by an important author, adapted for film by another important author. Who would be writing the sequel? Some commercial hack?