The revolution has been slower to take hold at movie studios, which all but banned gay characters after the dismal failure of Making Love, the oh-so-serious 1982 drama in which Michael Ontkean left Kate Jackson for Harry Hamlin (actually, audiences shied away from the film because it stank). Still, by the early 1990s, it seemed almost every movie hero or heroine had a lovable gay neighbor--a lovelorn friend in Frankie & Johnny, a flower-toting sissy in The Prince of Tides. But not until 1993 did a major studio, TriStar, release a film hinging on gay characters--Philadelphia, which was criticized within the gay community for playing it safe and never even giving Hanks and his lover Antonio Banderas an on-screen kiss. Didn't matter. The $197 million it grossed worldwide was the sound of cash registers ringing: The right stars could sell tickets whether they were playing gay or not. (And anyone who believes that playing a gay character can hurt a career should note the recent resumes of Hanks and Banderas.)
Even many recent depictions of gay characters--the pussycat-stroking upstairs neighbor in 1992's Single White Female, for instance--seem positively Cro-Magnon today, so rapidly are perceptions evolving. In Home for the Holidays, an upcoming family comedy-drama directed by Jodie Foster, Robert Downey Jr. plays a gay character whose life and sexuality are woven realistically and seamlessly into the film. And producers who showcase antigay images in any form, consciously or not, risk facing organized protests. Take Mel Gibson--please. Or so said gay groups earlier this year when the actor-turned-director (who has received flak for publicly expressing his disdain for homosexuals in the past) depicted Braveheart's Prince Edward as a rouged-up, mincing queen (a depiction, it should be noted, that might have a basis in historical fact). Audiences laughed and cheered when the king tossed Edward's male lover out a window to his death--a reaction that upset even the film's screenwriter, Randall Wallace. "My expectation was that there would be shock," he says, "certainly not one of people applauding."
"It's not that there aren't plenty of dreadful gay people," says Rudnick. "But sometimes the straight world doesn't understand that for a very long time that's the only way they were portrayed. You can afford plenty of gay villains, as long as there's some balance." Rudnick's Jeffrey, a low-budget independent film based on his 1993 Off Broadway play, is probably an indication of the shape of things to come. It's drawing long lines in its limited release, and it's cast with an impressive lot of stars playing a balanced array of gay characters, from Patrick Stewart as a likable (and stereotypically flamboyant) interior decorator to Steven Weber (Wings' womanizing Brian) as a straitlaced young gay Manhattanite who swears off sex for fear of AIDS.
It is, in fact, the AIDS epidemic that has exponentially increased the visibility of gays in the mass media. As performers like Elton John, Etheridge, and lang came out of the closet, other doors of acceptance opened. MTV viewers wrote hundreds of letters each week to Pedro Zamora, last year's Real World gay resident, as he wrangled with Puck and battled AIDS. And as coming out became more common, there was a crucial shift in the perception of those inveterate culture consumers, the baby boomers: According to an Entertainment Weekly/Gallup poll (see sidebar), 71% of 30- to 49-year-olds say they count a gay person among their relatives, coworkers, or friends.
