Gay Best Friend: Matt (Matthew Wilkas) in "Gayby" (2012)

A series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope

How many of us have had babies with our straight female friend?Who doesn’t love gay lunacy? 

The classic straight girl-gay best friend trope takes center stage in the hilarious 2012 microbudget comedy Gayby. Unlike other films that have tackled this relationship (think The Object of My Affection), the film is set primarily in the gay world, rather than framed through the straight world. This movie has everything: gay comic book store drama, hookups lined up for every day in the week, early cameos from Girls stars Adam Driver and Alex Karpofsky plus, finally, an impromptu dance break.

Matt (Matthew Wilkas) and Jen (Jenn Harris) have been best friends since college. Both have been through their whole adult lives together and find themselves in the same post-relationship rut. Matt feels uncomfortable having one night stands with other men after his seven year relationship ended. Meanwhile, Jen feels her biological clock ticking and wants to have a baby. How to do it though? There’s no romantic interest to speak of in her life, and Matt has been the most consistent relationship in her life. She proposes they do it… the old fashioned way. Soon, Matt also becomes excited about the idea of having a child with Jen. He can move on to this stage of fatherhood and bypass the frightening world of being single.

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Streaming Thoughts: Broken Circles, Hunger Games, Gay Indies

Time for another "watch this before it leaves" warning. It's so stupidly complicated to follow these things is it not? So we'll do what we can here and there. The big 'new month calendar dump' is approaching but we'll deal with those next week. For now, let's just talk random streaming stragglers. The following titles are leaving either Amazon Prime or Netflix Instant quite soon so give them a shot if you've been meaning to.

As we do we've freeze-framed them randomly to see what they're serving up and to (hopefully) prompt discussion...

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Awards Leftovers: The Editors, The DPs, The Gays

The Editors
Do you have any thoughts you need to get off your chest about the ACE Eddies? They barely received any play coming as they did on the heels of the Oscar nominations but I wanted to mention them anyway since I love 'the invisible art' and it's what I think I would have done had I gone into filmmaking (if not casting). This year their drama nominees Argo, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Skyfall, all received Oscar nominations but for the latter which was bumped to make way for Silver Linings Playbook, the only Comedy recipient to transfer with AMPAS. Also nominated in comedy or musical: Les Misérables, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, and Ted.

"I know this will sound batshit crazy but your editing is just not as good as the editing in Silver Linings Playbook! which is also better than Skyfall"

This is not meant as a knock on Playbook since I know its fans are sensitive about my generally "meh" reaction to it (and distaste when pushed) but I actually have no problem with its nomination here in comedy. But that it should be the one chosen over the impeccably odd combo of razor sharp pathos and cool comic timing of Moonrise? And then bump out the action stylings of Skyfall? Me no understand.

Seamus McGarvey photo courtesy of the IECThe DPs
Likewise I forgot to mention the American Society of Cinematographers who chose Seamus McGarvey from Ireland  for Anna Karenina, Danny Cohen from Britain for Les Misérables, Claudio Miranda from Chile for Life of Pi, Janusz Kaminski from Poland for Lincoln, and Roger Deakins from Britain for Skyfall. All of these men went on to Oscar nominations but for Cohen who was replaced by Robert Richardson of Massachusetts for Django Unchained.

The Gays
Another group that waited to announce their nominees until Oscar time was The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association or "GALECA" who hand out the Dorian Awards. Full disclaimer: I became a member this year. I'm happy to be a part of it but, as with my BFCA membership, I don't always want to be associated with the results ;) That said, I joined this group because I like the presence of groups who, by their very nature, are forced to step outside the Oscar pool. You can't exactly nominate Argo and Lincoln for your LGBT FILM OF THE YEAR prize you know? Well... maybe 'Argo Fuck Yourself' and Lincoln. (haha. i'm here all week) But of course they also have a FILM OF THE YEAR prize which finds room for the titles you'll be totally sick of by Oscar night.

LGBT FILM OF THE YEAR 

• Any Day Now (interview!)
• Cloud Atlas (I can't escape this movie. Argh. That's the true true)
• Gayby (interview!)
• Keep the Lights On (capsule)
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower (interview)

I assume Keep the Lights On can't lose since it's the only LGBT film that's also nominated for Film of the Year but I'm personally trying to decide between Gayby and Perks for my vote. Both are so adorable I just want to cuddle with them. 

Complete Gayness after the jump...

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The Deep Blue Link

Awards Daily Spike Lee won't see Django Unchained "slavery was not a spaghetti western" and Sasha is right that if he made the film he'd be crucified in the media that's now celebrating Tarantino.
E! It's a third marriage for Kate Winslet who could now legally change her name legally to "Kate Rocknroll" should she want to.
Michael Murray's hilariously inappropriate interview with Rust & Bone's "Marion Cotillard" 
Movie|Line a good interview with Tom Hooper on his Les Misérables direction... and the controversial choices he made

Coming Soon the cast of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom follow up The Grand Budapest Hotel is revealed. I'm sad that there's no Anjelica Huston (I need her in my Wes movies) but it's fun to know that some regulars will return and the newbies Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law and Saoirse Ronan, who has, according to the man himself "quite a big part" are exciting gets.
/Film wonders if Famke Janssen has a cameo in The Wolverine. Ooh, that'd be sweet.
My New Plaid Pants If I had an award for "Best Reaction Shot" I'd also give it to Kiki Dunst in Bachelorette

Today's Must Read
McSweeney's "Answers to Rhetorical Questions Posed by Movie Titles". I died. 

Rachel Weisz for Vanity Fair. Photographed by Craig McDean

Year in Review
IndieWire interviewed the 37 indie film breakthroughs of the year including our friend Leslye Headland (Bachelorette) to Gayby's Jonathan Lisecki and Middle of Nowhere's Ava DuVernay 
Towleroad Michael Musto does impressions (Angelina Jolie among them) for Village Voice's 2012 to do
Vanity Fair shares their best celebrity photos of the year
Cracked says goodbye to 13 unusual and unusually awesome creatives who died this year from Ralph McQuarrie (Star Wars wouldn't be Star Wars without him) to the guy who co-created many of Batman's villains.
Movie Screams surveys the year in horror related releases

Linkfall

My New Plaid Pants "13 Whores of Halloween" a fun countdown of film characters: "Jules" from Cabin in the Woods, "Lucy" from Bram Stoker's Dracula and 11 more!
Star Ledger movies as political propaganda: Won't Back Down, 2016: Obama's America, and more
Pajiba a shirtless link roundup. Why haven't I thought of this? On a content related note: I hadn't heard that Ryan Gosling has left Nicolas Winding Refn's Logan's Run remake. Sad face. But I guess Ryan Gosling, who is 31 going on 32, would already be dead by Logan's Run standards! 
Hollywood Elsewhere on John Goodman's Oscar campaign problem for Flight.

 

After Elton cute and thorough interview with the star of Gayby out actor Matthew Wilkas
The Incredible Suit meets James Bond Daniel Craig in posh hotel as Skyfall takes London by storm 
Fashion It So funny newish tumblr on the costumes in Star Trek: The New Generation. Love how randomly specific the interwebs can be
In Contention looks at all the contenders in the Best Animated Feature race 
/Film gets excited by one random comment from the difficult brilliant genius Paul Thomas Anderson about Chris Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy  
Movie|Line wonders if Idris Elba will win the James Bond role in the future. But why are we talking about this? I want Daniel Craig to keep on running, shooting, fighting, travelling, stripping, and bedding those Bond girls. Don't you?
Cinema Blend ...at any rate, Daniel Craig's possibly final two Bond pictures MIGHT have linked stories, a la Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace