Why the long wait for a film like Love, Simon?
Unlike Oscar-winning films, characters aren’t ‘punished’ for being gay
Love, Simon is rewriting history. Adapted from Becky Albertal
li’s 2015 young-adult novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agen
da, the film (in theatres nationwide Friday) follows a closeted teen (Nick Robinson) who falls in love with an anonymous online pen-pal from his high school who is also gay, and navigates the tricky waters of coming out to his friends and family. It’s the first major studio movie to focus on a gay teen romance. So why’d it take so long? “I kept asking the studio that myself, actually,” director Greg Berlanti says. “My sense is that they make fewer and fewer movies these days, and they’re more reliant on pre-existing things and want more sure bets. You see less of these smaller kinds of films and less risks taken, but at the same time, there seems to be a clear movement by the audience to have more representation in film.”
Simonis the latest in a string of projects to center on young LGBTQ characters, although it has the widest release (2,400 theatres) and biggest budget ($17 million).
Oscar-winning dramas Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name each tell coming-of-age stories about young gay men coming to terms with their sexuality. Comedic drama The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival in January, follows a girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) who’s sent to gay conversion therapy — a subject that will also be explored in Boy
Erased starring Lucas Hedges ( Lady Bird) later this year. Then there are TV sitcoms such as NBC’s new Champions, and Netflix’s One Day at a Time and Dear White People, all of which prominently feature teenage characters who happen to be gay.
What separates many of these stories from past LGBTQ representation in Brokeback Mountain, Philadelphia and The Crying Game is their content: The latest characters aren’t “punished” for being gay, and if they are, their journeys are punctuated by hopeful messages about acceptance.
“In general, we’re getting a lot more LGBT content out there in films and on television,” says Greg Hernandez, founder of gay entertainment blog Greg in Hollywood. With Simon, “I think they feel that the timing is right now. I was at a screening last week and someone said, ‘A gay-themed John Hughes movie, at last.’ That’s really the breakthrough here: It’s a love story about youth. It’s fun, it’s not tragic and has a lot of commercial potential.”
As a producer, Berlanti, who is gay, has championed LGBTQ characters on shows including Dawson’s Creek, Riverdale and Arrow. For him, it was crucial to avoid some tropes while leaning into others: Simon, a softspoken music geek who hangs with both athletes and theatre kids, and his more flamboyant classmate, Ethan (Clark Moore), show very different but equally layered portrayals of gay men. On the flip side, the movie also embraces some rom-com conventions, as Simon plans a grand romantic gesture to try and find his mystery boy.
“With each character, whether they’re straight or gay, you try to add authenticity to them,” Berlanti says. The roles reflect high-school stereotypes, yet “the point was to have stories similar to what we’ve seen before, but put a new twist on it.”
That mix of conventional and groundbreaking is what ultimately stands out about Simon, which has received strong reviews (88% positive on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes) and is predicted to make upward of $15 million this weekend, according to Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. Coming at a time when only 23 movies released by major studios last year featured LGBTQ characters, according to GLAAD’s Studio Responsibility Index, it could also help push the needle forward for more gay stories on the big screen.
“This is a way to make it palatable to the mainstream,” Hernandez says. “If they can get teenagers in to see this, that’s key. If this makes a decent amount of money, I think we might be seeing more of them.”
“You see less of these smaller kinds of films and less risks taken, but at the same time, there seems to be a clear movement by the audience to have more representation in film.” GREG BERLANTI DIRECTOR