In truth, the backstage soap opera of “I Love You Phillip Morris” and its long and winding road to theatrical release is complicated and not all that interesting. No doubt it’s unfair to boil the whole thing down to a story of homophobia. But let’s face facts, people: If Ficarra and Requa had made an outrageous farce built around two movie stars and a heterosexual love story, they might or might not have made any money, but they wouldn’t have endured two years’ worth of whispers and murmurs and unreturned phone calls and people treating them as if they had leprosy, boils and halitosis all at the same time, and you’d have had a chance to love or hate their movie months ago.
—Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir reminding America that Hollywood is still a place where it pays to play it straight [via]
Eric
Anyone with the internet already did get the chance to love or hate it.
Personally, I thought it was meh.
JWilliamson
Anybody with a modicum of insight into the biz would dismiss this quote entirely – what stopped I <3 U PM from getting released state-side for so long was a rights issue regarding it's two main distributors.
Once the LA courts granted an injunction on the film, it was pretty much doomed.
(Its also not that good a film – great performances, poor structure)
Allnighter
No.
Josh
Not only is JWilliamson correct, but studios release films that they know can be marketed and will make money. Just using simple numbers here, but if they have the opportunity to make $500million off a straight movie as opposed to $100 of an LGBT film, which one do you think the studio is going to release?