Outside the Kort Room

I went to see, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry this weekend at an east side theatre in the Detroit Area. The line was filled with people between the ages of 16-15-years-old. The east suburbs of Detroit, Michigan are not the gay-friendliest so I expected to hear a lot of snickering, laughing at parts that were about gay couples and booing if anything was close to a scene of tenderness and romance between men. But, that was not the case.

I was updated to how people are today in terms of seeing and hearing gay issues. The crowed did not boo or hiss or snicker at any parts that I thought would be standard to do during scenes which were pro-gay.

I remember seeing, Midnight Express as a teenager and there was a scene where two men in a Turkish prison kiss. The audience booed and when one of the men in the scene stopped the kissing protesting that he could not do it, the audience applauded and cheered.

That was 1978. This is 2007. Perhaps thing are changing.

I even challenged the woman who took our movie theatres. I went with a straight friend of mine who cannot be mistaken for anything but straight. When the woman taking our tickets showed us the line (which was very long) I said to her, "Are these people all gay seeing this movie" to see if she would laugh. She didn't. Instead she gave me a dirty contemptuous look which normally would have angered me. However it was comforting. Even she was tolerating any anti-gay material that night.

Still, the skeptic in me thinks perhaps the movie did not get jeers because the two main characters were both straight--in the movie and in real life--and were not really gay. Maybe I should have seen Brokeback Mountain at an Detroit east side suburb movie theatre. That would have been the real test.

This audience of youngsters made my inner gay little boy feel safe and welcome.

I loved the movie. Two gay thumbs up!